🙈 Yuga CEO Out, Founder Takes Back Control
Plus find out how the NVIDIA earnings smash impacted crypto (hint: 📈)
TylerD's Market Summary
GM!
Today's top news:
Yuga CEO out, Garga back in; BAYC & MAYC jump
An Otherside update signals shift, receives FUD
NodeMonkes spike 40%, dominate BTC
$PORTAL trades over $2 ahead of Feb 29 TGE
AI crypto tokens soar after Nvidia earnings beat
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🙈 Yuga Founders Axe CEO
It looks like some major changes may be coming to the Swamp.
After a blockbuster announcement that Yuga had acquired PROOF and Moonbirds just last Friday, another shocking announcement came out yesterday.
The current CEO is out, the co-founder is back in control.
What Happened?
Yesterday, Yuga co-founder Garga made the surprise announcement that he is stepping back in as CEO of Yuga Labs.
That means the current CEO Daniel Alegre is out.
Garga went on to clarify his vision for the company and brand:
More focus on BAYC (including an agile new BAYC LLC entity)
Doubling down on the importance of The Otherside as "the living room of web3"
Simplified approach to their gaming arm, focused on fun & crypto-natives
It was arguably the best possible outcome for Bored Ape fans and maxis.
More focus on the OGs and what drew people to this collectible brand in the first place. A more streamlined approach to gaming (which clearly became too complex). And continued focus on The Otherside (more on this later).
What Garga didn't explicitly say but many interpreted - this is a signal that Yuga is moving away from "the suits" and abandoning the corporate image it acquired over the past year.
Market Response
Clearly the market liked the news (mostly).
BAYC and MAYC led top movers on ETH by a 4-1 margin with each seeing 2,800 ETH in trading volume.
BAYC spiked 5% to 23.2 ETH and MAYC jumped 8% to 4.2 ETH
Kodas jumped 8% to 2.9 ETH
Moonbirds fell on the news to 2.06 ETH, as their place in the eco is once again in question
Otherdeeds were up 6% to 0.39 ETH
But Otherdeeds are certainly not in the clear.
An Underwhelming Otherside Update
Just a few hours after Garga'a massive announcement, Eric Reid snuck in an Otherside update.
Some of the highlights included:
Foundation Building: Focus on setting up Otherside accounts, optimizing environments, and enhancing avatars for better interaction
Rapid Release & Iteration: Quick feature releases to gather user feedback and refine the platform
Upcoming Events: Introduction of Apes Come Home experience and work on Meebits 1.3 for Spring
Kodas and Community: Development of the unique Koda collection and plans for engaging other collections in Otherside
But there was controversy, primarily around this quote:
"We are not making a competitive MMO that takes many years, many tens of millions of dollars, and has enormous risks. There are AAA game companies that have their thousands of employees working on these and other projects, and that red ocean isn’t one we want to swim in."
Many saw this as a signal that Yuga is shifting from the original Otherside vision and "downsizing" to a more achievable plan, and one that relies more on the community to help push development.
And of course, Yuga did raise hundreds of millions of dollars with The Othersie sale.
Eric replied to the criticism, saying that he "spoke too loosely" and that they are indeed still making an MMO.
But the damage may have been done. Time will tell.
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
Ethereum led NFT trading volume with $24M on the day; Bitcoin saw $11.5M and Solana was next with $6M
Align Draw was the big winner on ETH, jumping 160% to a 0.79 ETH floor in a rare recent win in the art sector; Pixl Pets, Imaginary Ones and Kongz all saw nice gains as well
Frank DeGods shared an update of some internal changes and the merging of Delabs and Dustlabs in an X post
OSF shared new details for his upcoming free mint "Professional Degen 5"
nftperp saw over $1.5M in trading volume in its 2nd day of its v2 launch (still in Whitelist only)
BTC NFTs were dominated by NodeMonkes which saw 47 BTC in volume and jumped 40% to 0.247 BTC floor; Puppets rallied to 0.071, RSIC held at 0.072 and Quantum Cats jumped 10% to 0.228; Fomojis reached new ATH at 0.034
Nat Cats were the hot new mover on Bitcoin, seeing a rare sale at 0.3 BTC and the floor rise to 0.03 BTC at peak (now closer to 0.02)
Solana NFTs chopped on the day with Mad Lads holding at 198 SOL and Tensorians -1% at 80
Elements was the hot new mint from the $WEN WNS platform, reaching 5.3 SOL floor in its first day of trading
💰 Token, Airdrop & Points Tracker
Introducing a brand new section, highlighting any major token or airdrop news from the day.
$PORTAL announced its token launch (TGE) will happen on Feb 29 at 10 am UTC on Binance, sending the token over $2 in Whales Market
Ordzaar teased a token airdrop for Bitcoin NFT participants with no formal details ahead of the launch of their upcoming platform
Pacmoon (an upcoming memecoin launching on Blast) shared new details around how to earn $PAC tokens, mostly via posting on X
Arcade completed its Clash of Claims, giving away 3M tokens (3% of supply) in the process
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
Crypto majors are green this morning; BTC +1.1% at $51,660; ETH +3.1% at $2,995; SOL +2.8% at $106
WLD jumped 30% to $8.50 ($1.13B mc and 85B fdv) and TAO jumped 11% to $637 after Nvidia's earnings beat lifted the AI crypto sector
Coinbase responded to the SEC's request for comment on the Grayscale ETH Trust, explaining why ETH is not a security
The Arbitrum Foundation is partnering with DPOP Studios to release "NEW HERE", a film (and series of 11 shorts) that combines art, gaming, fashion, and music with blockchain and AI tech
Story Protocol is introducing programmable IP with onchain liquidity and generative AI, allowing owners to set onchain rules for how their IP can be used (and be rewarded for it)
🚀 NFT Total Volume (ETH)
BAYC (2,845 ETH, 24.4 ETH Floor)
MAYC (2,832 ETH, 4.2 ETH)
Pudgy Penguins (792 ETH, 19.65 ETH)
Moonbirds (626 ETH, 2.08 ETH)
Lil Pudgys (623 ETH, 1.99 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)
Align Draw (159%, 0.79 ETH Floor)
Pixl Pets (46%, 0.14 ETH)
Imaginary Ones (17%, 1.6 ETH)
CyberKongz (15%, 1.27 ETH)
10ktf GTags (13%, 0.16 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Today is a massive day of drops, the biggest of the week.
Persona is one of the more anticipated ETH NFT mints in quite some time, happening today in multiple stages (it's a complicated mint so check the mint monitor for full details).
The Wizards of Ord is a hyped new PFP mint on Bitcoin.
And Dmitri Cherniak has teased dropping some new art today as well - likely the highlight with whatever he puts out.
See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
Persona (7:00 a.m. ET)
Revolving Games - GrabAByte (9:00 a.m. ET)
Botto x NFTParis (11:00 a.m. ET)
The Wizards of Ord (11:00 a.m. ET)
Dario de Siena - Flux (12:00 p.m. ET)
Dmitri Cherniak "TBD" (TBD)
Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com