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- Huge week for Bitcoin NFTs
Huge week for Bitcoin NFTs
Plus, Proof's latest drop announcement
GM
Welcome to the 96 people who joined yesterday.
Hope we give you a good first impression, but keep in mind this was our first week doing daily emails and all those espresso shots got us feeling some kinda way.
In today’s edition:
BTC NFTs aren’t going away
All our latest NFT rankings
New drops found in the last 24 hours
A HUGE WEEK FOR BITCOIN NFTs
O Dear Reader, I do not consider myself a petty person. Truly I don’t.
Yet about a month ago I found myself creating a custom Twitter folder to bookmark tweets from influencers who were so sure that Ordinals (Bitcoin NFTs) were a flash in the pan – just another two-week pump-and-dump.
It’s true they may still not live up to their full potential (it’s early, who knows), but the smug confidence was really something to behold – chef’s kiss.
This has been yet another great week for Ordinals, with a few big stories:
One million NFTs
At some point today, the number of Bitcoin Ordinals will hit 1 million.
This is partly driven by a recent spike in BRC-20 text-based Ordinals.
Think ERC-20 tokens from Ethereum — so large, fungible tokens — but on Bitcoin. I don’t know if BRC-20 really has a meaningful future, but the level of experimentation happening right now is fun to watch.
But even excluding that, we’re still seeing ~15,000 image Ordinals launch every single day.
Magic Eden’s new launchpad
Magic Eden has been on a roll lately:
First major marketplace to support Ordinals trading
Expanding to Ethereum NFTs
And today, releasing an Ordinals launchpad
That last one could be huge. The process of inscribing Ordinals, and then selling them through a proper “mint” is still an overwhelming slog.
The Magic Eden launchpad aims to make this a lot easier and let creators run traditional minting events with whitelists.
They’re starting with DeadJira from the Godjira ecosystem but expect many more to come.
What color is your Bugatti?
Bugatti and luxury brand Asprey are teaming up to release a limited set of 100 eggs in April that will be inscribed as Ordinals.
This is one for the whales, prices for these eggs will range from $20k-to-$50k.
But the takeaway is that, for the first time ever, a major brand has decided to launch a luxury NFT collection on Bitcoin instead of Ethereum or any other chain.
Pretty wild given that Ordinals weren’t even a thing a few months ago. It also points to one of the main arguments for Ordinals in the first place: that it’ll be the home for high-end NFTs because of Bitcoin’s permanence and brand recognition.
First of many?
Stamps are… kind of interesting?
They’re not Ordinals, but Stamps have been one of the most discussed topics for Bitcoin NFTs this week. Essentially they’re a new way of storing images on Bitcoin.
Why use Stamps?
The main argument is that these NFTs are designed to be more permanent than Ordinals. Although some people disagree that the difference is that important.
The downside is that they’re more expensive than Ordinals and really only work best for pixel art similar to CryptoPunks.
We’re not sure we see a huge role for Stamps, but we can’t deny that they’re growing even faster than Ordinals did, so we’re staying open-minded.
NOTE: These drops are lightly curated. Our only requirement is that they have recognizable founders. As usual, DYOR. To learn more go here.
Elemental Creation by charlesai
Yesterday’s tweet unveiled this as the next BrainDrops, with less than 48 hours until mint (maybe an anti-botting strategy).
The artist is charlesai, a prolific AI artist who’s been around since 2021 and has previously exhibited at various galleries around the world.
The art combines imagery from ancient and modern societies. And it was created from raw curated outputs made from publicly available AI tools, which were specifically trained using only artists in the public domain.
AI art has cooled down since the February boom, but if you pay no mind to shorter timeframes then this might be one to watch.
Proof Curated: Evolving Pixels
Proof just revealed more details for its first curated exhibition.
Emily Xie is curating ten notable artists in the space. There will be a total of 858 pieces, and a live component at the Venus Over Manhattan gallery in New York.
As for the minting, Proof Collective and Moonbirds will have first and second dibs respectively, both of these at a 0.2 ETH mint price.
Public will mint at 0.25 ETH if supply remains. But we don’t expect it to reach public given that there’s a slight over-allocation for the allowlist phases.
Solar Transits by Robert Hodgin
The next Curated release for Art Blocks has been announced and is now viewable on their website as well as on sansa, featuring some beautiful space-themed generative work from Robert Hodgin.
There seems to be a mini-trend going on with space-themed art (maybe it’s the current moon phase?) and we don’t hate it.
In this case, the variety in the collection looks pretty special, so we would encourage you to head over to sansa and give their Algorithm Explorer tool a couple of spins to get a feel for what’s possible with this one.
Scents of Spring by Florian Zumbrunn
Following up “Tout tracé” on Art Blocks Presents, Florian Zumbrunn is back with another colorful generative art collection, this time on Verse.
Featuring similar textures as the last collection but with a lighter feel and tone this time around, 50 curated outputs from the artist’s algorithm will be sold for $300 each (or 0.16 ETH, as of the time of writing).
ATOM Genesis
Announced through a recent press release, in comes a collaborative project from Animoca Brands Japan and creative agencies AKIBA and MADworld, based on officially-licensed Astro Boy IP.
The 150-piece collection will feature 40 different artists (very few of them involved in the NFT space), each one doing their own derivative version of the iconic Japanese character. No mint date or mint price for this yet, but we do have a waitlist raffle that just launched today.
We’ll keep it real here: yes Astro Boy is one of the most iconic IPs ever in anime and manga, but it’s also one of the most boomer IPs. Not sure this makes sense for the current younger demographics buying NFTs.
THE MINT LIST
Reddit Series 3. Third NFT drop from the massive social site.
Project Animus. RTFKT's biggest launch since Clone-X.
FewoWorld. New PFP by Fewocious, a rising star in the art world.
Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT.
ZOGZ by Matt Furie. Open Editions from the creator of Pepe.
Ether. Anime PFP collection by viii, an artist with a cult following.
Moonbirds Mythics. The fourth collection in the Proof ecosystem.
Fellowship Show 1. Curated collection from Rope Rainisto.
Seaport Subject by Botto. 1st editioned work from an AI artist.
Starbucks First Store Collection. Next drop from the big brand.
