A Huge Day for Digital Art
A terrifying new art mint provides a quick 5x, while a few Sotheby's auctions may have left some holders horrified.
TylerD's Market Summary
GM!
Today's top news:
$JUP trades over $0.60 ahead of 10 am debut
Sotheby's "GRAILS" sales highlight leading artists
SMILE terrifies & quickly 5x's on secondary
Farcaster active users rocket after Frame debut
Crypto majors fall ahead of FOMC, GME surges to $40M
🖼 Sotheby's "GRAILS" Results Send Mixed Signals
Vincent Van Dough and the Starry Night collection, widely considered to be one of the top digital art NFT collections in the world, continues to be slowly sold off via auction house.
And the latest round of "Grails" sales came in on target, with none of the 19 pieces failing to at least meet the target Sotheby's estimated price, with 16 of 20 exceeding it.
But the results may have signaled some other new realities of the current digital art market.
What Happened?
On Tuesday afternoon, the Sotheby's "Grails: Starry Night" auctions closed after being open for a week.
XCOPY, Beeple, ACK and Grant Yun led in terms of sales price (unsurprisingly):
XCOPY "CITIZENS!" - $203,200
Beeple "TIME The Future of Business" - $177,800
ACK "til death do us part" - $165,100
Grant Yun "Bedtime" - $69,850
Dmitri Cherniak "Red October" - $69,850
OtherWorld "The Garden" - $50,800
Tyler Hobbs "Incomplete Controls #17" - $50,000
Hackatao "Flood" - $40,640
XCOPY "Blood Bubble" - $38,100
Seerlight "Castle in the Sky" - $27,940
What was somewhat surprising was the lack of fireworks.
Why It Matters
None of the sales crossed the 100 ETH level, and only the top 5 passed even 30 ETH.
It shows just how dry the top-end digital art market is with Punk6529 mostly on the sidelines after his grail "The Goose" purchase and VVD now a seller vs a buyer.
The art whales just aren't here right now, and big new money isn't coming in (at least yet).
With that said, a handful of artists are cementing themselves at the top, seeing consistently high-ish sales even through this art bear market.
The other takeaway - the artists which have fallen out of the spotlight.
Hackatao's "Flood" piece sold for $40,640 - less than 20 ETH. Their pieces sold for well over 100 ETH in the 2021 bull.
Seerlight's "Castle in the Sky" sold for $27,940 - less than 14 ETH. His pieces sold for 100 ETH as well.
And a similar story for Dan Giuz, whose "Carnival Plaza" sold for $21,590 - less than 10 ETH.
Darlings of one cycle are not necessarily darlings of the next.
And the whales who dictate which artists "win" and command big premiums - well they can be fickle.
At this point, it seems we simply will need to wait for later in a potential crypto bull cycle for the digital art market to return to anywhere close to 2021 levels.
💋 SMILE Terrifies & Delights
Did you sleep well last night?
Well then you must not have seen Roope Rainisto's latest digital art project SMILE.
The "Life in West America" ventured off on his own for his first solo drop, this time on Solana.
And at a very approachable entry. Not terrifying at all. Until you see the outputs.
What Happened?
Roope, a leader in the AI-post-photography sector, has seen tremendous success on ETH.
Yesterday, he tried his chances on Solana.
His "SMILE" project was a 5,000 supply collection of smile-themed images with a somewhat gruesome twist.
They were priced at just 0.2 SOL each (~$20) - an incredibly attractive entry compared to his LIWA set holding over 4 ETH.
Unsurprisingly, they sold out in seconds, botted in the public sale after a smooth WL process.
The floor rallied as high as 1.5 SOL in early secondary trading before settling below 0.8 this morning - still an easy 3x for minters.
But hopefully holders didn't spend too much time staring at their new pieces, or likely faced nightmares.
Why It Matters
Terrifying art aside - this drop highlights a new trend in digital art.
Artists who have primarily focused on ETH are branching out.
And Solana seems to be the arena for low-entry projects and for artists to experiment.
From a revenue perspective - it makes a ton of sense for the artist. Roope made a clean 1,000 SOL on this mint and an additional 125 in royalties from secondary.
Pop Punk did a similar 0.25 SOL sale on his Rubber set last week, selling out the 1,000 NFTs for a 250 SOL raise, but has since seen 900+ SOL in secondary royalties.
The low-priced sales offer an easy entry and a way to spread to a larger collector base - similar to open editions.
The unknown - will these low-floor collections on Solana impact artists' "primary" collections on ETH?
If someone wants Roope exposure, will they look to LIWA now, or SMILE?
Or is this just a passing meta, similar to last year's open edition craze, which largely came and went?
Only time will tell.
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
ETH trading volume came in at $18.1M on Tuesday, in line with Monday; leading NFTs were very red, down 3-4%
FarCats NFTs led top movers on ETH, jumping 120% to 0.2 ETH on a day without many gainers
Pixelmon announced a partnership with Playember to launch a new casual game in Q2; Pixelmon also announced a set of ambassadors spanning web3 influencers
RSIC led action on BTC with 26.5 BTC in trading volume and the floor up to 0.056 BTC; Puppets rallied to 0.049, NodeMonkes fell slightly to 0.167
A rare Gold Hoodie NodeMonke (only 4 in the set) sold for 1.8 BTC, equivalent to $77k or 33.1 ETH
Several Solana NFTs fell on the day ahead of the $JUP debut; Froganas -30% to 6.1 SOL, Crypto Undeads -15% to 7, Elementerra -29% to 4.05, while Mad Lads (184) and Tensorians (80) held fairly steady
Solana Mobile shared that it will provide soulbound tokens to buyers of its Saga 2 ahead of delivery (potentially lining up airdrop opportunities)
Magic Eden announced that its retroactive diamond drop for historical Solana users would come this Friday
0xfoobar teased a new product Clustersxyz with the tagline "All the chains. All your wallets. One name" with more details expected today
Frame extended its token claim window yesterday, also delaying their mainnet launch (more details expected soon)
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
Crypto majors are red this morning after a day of big green; BTC -2% at $42,630; ETH -0.7% at $2,300; SOL -6.6% at $99
GME has taken over Solana memecoins, rallying another 20% to a $40M market cap; other leaders dipped ahead of the $JUP debut, with BONK -9% to $693M market cap, WIF -14% at $269M
Jupiter's $JUP token was trading at $0.65 this morning on Aevo ahead of today's launch at 10 am ET; review the tokenomics here
Farcaster users have skyrocketed this week after the release of Frames, now over 10k active
🚀 NFT Total Volume (ETH)
Azuki (1,623 ETH, 6.57 ETH Floor)
MAYC (1,477 ETH, 4.08 ETH)
Pudgy Penguins (602 ETH, 16 ETH Floor)
DeGods (592 ETH, 2.84 ETH)
BAYC (324 ETH, 24.5 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)
FarCats (120%, 0.2 ETH Floor)
Sparkle Book of Destiny (64%, 1.8 ETH)
Karma (18%, 0.22 ETH)
Creepz (13%, 2.74 ETH)
Full Send Metacard (9%, 0.23 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Today is likely the most important day of 2024 so far.
FOMC results will come this afternoon impacting broader markets, and the highly anticipated $JUP debut this morning in what should be a $600M+ stimulus for Solana.
For new mints, 2 major art drops on ETH today with Claire Silver's "corpo | real" and "Balance" from Amber and Kelly.
Given how busy the day is, some traders could be distracted - leading to potential deals on those 2 projects. Worth watching today.
See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
$JUP launch (10:00 a.m. ET)
Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
Claire Silver - corpo | real (1:00 p.m. ET)
Kelly Milligan x Amber Vittoria - Balance (1:00 p.m. ET)
Ordinals Gang (6:00 p.m. ET)
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