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Welcome to the 13 people who joined yesterday. Have a seat, your waiter will be with you shortly.

In today’s edition:

• Let’s talk about $PEPE

• Updated NFT rankings

• New drops we found

More info on Mint/Watch lists HERE.

Let’s talk about $PEPE

There’s a Pepe mint happening today. It’s from Matt Furie, the artist who made Pepe the Frog back in 2005. And it’s not even close to being the top Pepe-related story today.

By now you may have heard about $PEPE. The token is up roughly 3 gazillion percent since first taking off back in April. It also launched crypto Twitter into a shitcoin frenzy and spawned a bloodthirsty hunt for the Next $PEPE.

Now – this is not the sort of topic we normally cover. But it has become the elephant in the room and can no longer be ignored, as much as I’ve tried.

More specific to us, Dear Reader, is how these coins have been impacting NFTs.

Ok, impacting is an understatement, more like strangling them.

There are two main factors at play:

1. Competing for attention

I mostly follow people from the non-fungible corner of Twitter, yet you wouldn’t know it by looking at my timeline, which is now filled with purely memecoin related discussion.

The not-so-secret truth is that a decent percentage of NFT collectors are here to gamble. If not for NFTs, they would be trading meme stocks, or sneakers, or Pokemon cards. So naturally, many have transformed overnight into Lifelong Memecoin Maxis, and they’re more than happy to let you know.

Then there’s the fact that $TURBO, the other large shitcoin du jour, has planted roots within the NFT artist community, thus completing the double-whammy special attack on people’s attention.

2. Competing for blockspace

Take a look at current gas prices:

If you were to try to buy an NFT worth 0.1 eth on Blur right now, you’d find yourself paying another 0.1 eth, or ~$200, in gas (I just tried).

This is of course a classic symptom of memecoin szn, and we’ve seen it before during the days of SHIB.

Low-priced NFTs are dead under these conditions

Kaput, deceased, no longer of this world.

At least for this weekend, the NFT market is more or less on pause. Many NFT creators that were planning on releasing new projects are better off delaying until the frenzy dies down.

Now, how long will this last?

Anyone who tries to unironically forecast the top of a Memecoin should be forced to walk the plank. It’s an impossible task and you’ll just look silly doing it.

But we do know that it’ll cool off eventually, as it always does. And at the end, some people will have made life-changing wealth, others will have lost it all. Sorry if I’m not saying anything groundbreaking here, but this is all charted territory.

If you’re invested, get ready to stare at prices all weekend. For everyone else, you won’t find a better time to go out and touch some grass.

NOTE: These drops are lightly curated. Our only requirement is that they have recognizable founders. As usual, DYOR. To learn more go here.

The Fates by Jisu

Popular Korean-American artist Jisu is making her Nifty Gateway debut on Monday with The Fates, a 3-part collection featuring Greek mythology in her distinct anime style.

All 3 pieces drop in 24-hour auctions starting at 6:30 PM EDT on Monday, with the top 33 bidders on each receiving an edition. Bids over 0.3 ETH get an exclusive foil print.

With a starting bid of $1, this is an accessible one to try your luck.

✨ Added to Watch List ✨

killeracid.fun

Killer Acid is back with another edition drop of his signature trippy art on Chain/Saw next week.

The pieces come in various supply sizes, each priced differently. One of them, Wen Lambo, is a 1,000 supply free claim for BlEu ShrOOms holders.

Mint will likely happen at the project’s dedicated site, killeracid.fun.

Memories of Digital Data by Kazuhiro Tanimoto

The next Art Blocks Curated is almost here, and it looks good.

A release by previous Art Blocks Presents artist Kazuhiro Tanimoto, Memories of Digital Data is a 450-supply collection minting next Friday at 10:00 AM EDT through a Dutch Auction ranging from 4 to 0.14 ETH.

The work features colorful, glitchy worlds made solely from rectangles. Tanimoto took inspiration from the corruption of old data on floppy disks (’member those?). Check out Sansa to see the full breadth of the algorithm.

This one’s got me nostalgic so I’ve…

✨ Added to Mint List ✨.

Michelin 3xplorer Club

Tire companies doing NFTs? Yessir.

Michelin 3xplorer Club is an official Web3 club centered around IRL experiences and rewards from the multinational tire giant.

They just announced their roadmap yesterday: a mint in June with holder rewards coming afterward.

Seeing as Michelin runs one of the most famous gastronomy guides in the world, maybe this is one for the gourmets here.

ooze friend tries the guitar by Markus Magnusson

Markus Magnusson, famously known for Invisible Friends, announced ooze friend tries the guitar, a limited edition under the Typical Friends brand.

All 250 pieces will be allocated to past collectors via WL, with some Twitter PFP users also being rewarded (I really wonder how that’s being done). Mint price is 0.18 ETH.

This one feels like an appetizer for Garbage Friends so I’m interested in how the market responds.

THE MINT LIST

1. Nike Our Force 1. Digital shoe drop from the global consumer brand.

2. Project Animus. RTFKT's biggest launch since Clone-X.

3. FewoWorld. New PFP by Fewocious, a rising star in the art world.

4. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT.

5. 10KFT PFP. Drop from a team that includes Yuga and Beeple.

6. Ether. Anime PFP collection by viii, an artist with a cult following.

7. BIG INC. New free mint from the goblintown team.

8. ZOGZ by Matt Furie. Open Editions from the creator of Pepe.

9. Adidas Golden Ticket. Free access pass for Adidas Hype Products.

10. Memories of Digital Data by Tanimoto. Appealing AB Curated drop.