Reddit Reaches The Masses
Reddit Avatars are now in 14M wallets, by far more than any other NFT project. Find out more on their latest Gen 4 drop, plus catch up on an OG artist's major drop from yesterday.
TylerD's Market Summary
GM!
Today's top news includes:
Reddit Avatars cross 18M threshold
Vera Molnar's drop soars 180%
ApeFest ticket sale faces major challenges, is delayed
Blur adds "compare" feature
RFK Jr. buys 14 BTC for his children
📈 Reddit Avatars Cross 14M Holders
Reddit made NFT headlines again yesterday with its Gen4 Collectible Avatar series drop - their largest expansion to date.
And the numbers that Reddit is putting up are dwarfing the rest of the NFT space.
What Happened
Reddit's Gen 4 Avatars featured PFPs reimagining iconic characters such as "Snoo," and featured designs from artists and NFT collections such as Cool Cats.
The NFTs reside on Poygon and were sold for prices anywhere from $2.49 to $199.99.
Collectors were limited to $1,000 in total spend and a one-per-character cap on day 1 of the sale (meant to protect against bots).
Early sentiment and reactions seemed very positive, both from the Reddit community and the NFT-native community which opted to participate in the sale.
And that community of buyers - it is large.
By The Numbers
Here are some of the eye-popping stats for the Reddit Avatars:
Total NFTs: 18.3M
Holders: 14.38M
Market Cap: $49M
% of holders with just 1 Avatar: 84.2%
I believe this makes the Reddit Avatars the single biggest NFT collection, by a large margin. And their distribution is incredible, with over 12M holders having just a single NFT.
At a $49M marketcap, this makes them the 12th biggest NFT collection, between Miladies and BAKC and ahead of major sets like Meebits and Doodles (though this is a flawed valuation metric, it still provides some directional value).
Why It Matters
Reddit is giving us a glimpse of what mainstream NFT adoption looks like.
They've got more holders than the top ETH NFT projects by over 2000x.
The top set by total holders on Blur is Coinbase's free mint NFT Base, Introduced which has 370k holders. Reddit Avatars have over 30x that number.
It's staggering.
But that adoption hasn't led to an increase in price. While we have seen some big price action on some of the earliest and rarest Reddit Avatars, that's mostly quieted down.
These NFTs are being bought for $2, and because people like them - not for speculation.
And that's likely what mainstream adoption looks like - widespread collectible buying, at lower price points, from those who don't expect to flip.
There is an argument to be made that a larger pool of digital collectibles owners will lead to bigger fish and more whales, and some of those whales will want to participate in the "best" NFT collections. It makes sense on paper, though we haven't really seen that play out yet.
We will see if it does.
🖼 An OG Generative Artist Returns
"Themes and Variations" soared yesterday in what was the best ROI NFT mint/trade of the day.
Why did it do so well, especially in a market that has seen a recent influx in generative art?
The artist - Vera Molnar.
Background
Vera Molnar has been practicing generative art since the 1960s, when she began creating computer drawings.
She consistently explored themes of geometry, form, and systemic disorder in her work with machine creation, and she's long used letter form (i.e. "A", "B", etc.). Letters provided an alternative to traditional geometric shapes, providing her new and fresh options for outputs.
Fast forward to this week, and Vera Molnar has created Themes and Variations at the age of 99 as her first on-chain generative art project (note she did do an NFT edition sale in 2022 for Sotheby's called "2% of disorder in co-operation").
The letters she chose to use for this set of 500 NFTs - N, F and T.
From Vera:
"All these variations around letters resonate in me like music. Even though I stopped playing the piano at the age of 15, music has never left me. I immediately think of Goldberg Variations or Beethoven's Diabelli Variations on a Waltz. That's why I gave the title Theme and Variations to the latest project with the letters N, F, and T that I am working on for my first and only long form generative art project"
Vera collaborated with artist Martin Grasser on the drop, an artist who's had tremendous success with Art Blocks and generative art over the past few years.
Market Reaction
Themes and Variations sold in a Dutch auction format which started at 25 ETH and ended up falling all the way to the 1 ETH level before sell out.
It immediately rocketed to 2 ETH on secondary, crossing the 3 ETH threshold at peak, before settling at 2.8 ETH overnight on a near-500 ETH in volume.
Several notable and OG collectors picked up several of these, including Rudya (18), Trill (13) and Bob Loukas (7).
Those large buys coupled with Vera's story and history seemed to be the drivers to propel this set to its day 1 success (vs pure aesthetics).
It does raise the question of how much the artist behind a set matters for its value compared with the aesthetics of the art itself and the outputs - but that debate is for another day.
Congrats to Vera and to all the minters and collectors on a very nice day!
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
Trading volume came in just over 7k ETH on Wednesday; leading NFTs saw mostly green with Azuki bouncing back over 5 ETH and Themes & Variations surging 180% in the art world
Blur unveiled a new analytics feature called "compare", allowing users to chart different projects on the same graph over different time frames
The ApeFest ticket sale had several issues last night, seemingly related to stress-testing issues impacting its partner TokenProof; the team delayed the sale until next week, giving them time to resolve the issues (those who did buy tickets are fine)
Memeland shared that new hairstyle traits for Captainz will be available this week (probably); Captainz fell 3% on the day to 5.5 ETH (-11% on the week)
Rollbit bought a rare ice-skin Pudgy Penguin for 88 ETH yesterday as a reward for a lucky wheel spin live on the Rekt Radio show
MoneyGram Haas F1 Team and RENGA revealed more details on their upcoming collaboration, which features dynamic digital art, with potential for bonuses and activations for holders
Realst, a new malware virus targeting macOS users, is being distributed through fake blockchain games, posing a significant security threat to crypto wallets
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
The crypto market was up on Wednesday; BTC +1% to $29,490; ETH +1.4% $1,880; SOL +6% at $25.30 as it continues to outperform
FOMC resulted in a 25 bps hike as expected yesterday, but Jerome Powell's dovish tone and new calls for no recession led to green in the stock market (and crypto as well)
Presidential candidate RFK Jr. shared that he has purchased 2 BTC each for all 7 of his children (14 BTC total), showing conviction to back up his pro-crypto rhetoric
🚀 NFT Total Volume
BAYC (1,652 ETH, 30.98 ETH Floor)
Azuki (846 ETH, 5.03 ETH)
DeGods (839 ETH, 7.9 ETH)
MAYC (664 ETH, 5.64 ETH)
Themes and Variations (478 ETH, 2.8 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase
Themes and Variations (180%, 2.8 ETH Floor)
Sproto Gremlins (31%, 0.72 ETH)
PepeAI Coupon (19%, 2.35 ETH)
PROOF (19%, 6.98 ETH)
RTFKT Animus Egg (15%, 0.39 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
No major drops on the radar for today - check back in tomorrow.
In macro, two major events happening today with the Q2 GDP report coming out along with new unemployment data. We will see how that impacts the market after a bullish outcome at FOMC yesterday.
Enjoy this write-up? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.
For all volume and floor price data, see Lucky Trader's Project Rankings page.
For all upcoming mints, see Lucky Trader's NFT Calendar page.