TopShot
The first time I heard about NFTs was when Dapper Labs dropped NBA Topshot. As an avid card collector, I didn’t need to know much about NFTs to be sold on the product. I thought about how many valuable sports cards have been damaged and lost over the years. The idea of a “card”/highlight that exists on the internet forever and can be verified and authenticated as yours made perfect sense to me. I immediately bought in. At the time, the market was hyper-inflated due to the new technologies.
No one quite yet knew what we were dealing with in terms of the worth of some cards compared to others. The first card I ever sold was a Luka Doncic common that wasn’t a high serial number. It shouldn’t have been worth as much as I had sold it for. Yet I made a profit of $800 very quickly. The allure of such a lucrative flip was enticing but I knew eventually the TopShot market would eventually correct itself. Therefore, despite buying more packs, I was tentative about the future of NFTs. My mistake was not diving in further and researching to understand the possibility of what the future of NFTs could be.
VeeFriends: The one that got away
VeeFriends was the one that got away. Gary Vaynerchuk has been a source of inspiration for me for the last few years. Being a 21-year-old male with only some vague understanding of my place in the world, Gary was a big inspiration in terms of how to process and manage the next steps of my life. So when I heard that he was dropping an NFT collection called “VeeFriends”, it intrigued me. The concept of using an NFT as a ticket to a live conference was something I had never heard being done before. So that meant that this was a project worth looking into. Then with the bonus of having other different utilities (getting on calls with Gary, going to a Knicks game with Gary (#KnicksTape) or even just having the possibility to be airdropped random things from Gary. It was interesting.
But the price tag to me as a 21-year-old was steep. It was a dutch auction-style drop with the cheapest tokens going for 2.5eth and possibly dropping to 0.5eth. At the time (May 11th, 2021) Ethereum was worth about $4,000. Still not knowing enough about NFTs and my girlfriend’s 21st birthday trip to Vegas (Happy Birthday Soph!) coming up in a few days, I decided that the price tag was too much for me at the moment. As of today January 1st, 2022, VeeFriends floor price is 9.5 eth/$38,000! It still bothers me a little bit that I hadn’t taken that leap of faith then or that I hadn’t just taken the time to fully research what this wave of NFTs could potentially turn out to be.
To anyone reading this article, always do your homework if something even slightly interests you. Don’t turn your back on it just because it hasn’t been adopted by the masses yet.
My 8-Bit Universe: The Rugpull
After seeing the numbers Veefriends did and being super jealous that I wouldn’t be able to attend VeeCon or seriously be a part of the Veefriends community as a Veefriend holder, I knew it was time to research. But while I did my research I wanted to buy into a cheap project, just to see exactly what the process entailed, how the community of holders was like in the NFT space, and to change my Twitter profile picture, to be honest. After some research, I decided that I liked this one project that was in the 8-bit art style of crypto punks.
At this point, I still didn’t understand how to research a project, I barely understood the impact and insight Discord had. So I bought in at .069 eth, happy I bought myself a little 8-bit alien. Two weeks later I learned firsthand what the term rug pull meant. A rug pull is essentially a project being minted and the team behind the project not following through on promises made before the mint date. In severe cases, the team abandons the project altogether and takes the profits with them. As of right now, there’s no real way to avoid being rug pulled despite thorough research. At Metaversed, we hope to bring vetted, valued projects to your attention through our own process. As of right now, the 8 Bit-Universe project is at a 0 ETH floor. Unfortunate, but I knew what I was getting into.
The Goobers – Future Blue Chip?
As you may or may not know by now, whitelist spots are becoming incredibly difficult to come by. One of the projects that came onto my radar seriously after hours spent researching what exactly was happening in this space was The Goobers led by DNP3, founder of CluCoin. To get onto the whitelist, I just had to be incredibly active in their discord, and they would handpick members they felt were making valuable contributions. They didn’t have a crazy marketing plan and the project wasn’t overhyped like the Mekaverse drop. But they had a dedicated fanbase and a strong roadmap for the future including a DAO, Staking, and land in the Sandbox. Currently I hold 5 Goobers and am hoping to go to NFT Miami. A conference in Miami I have access to for free due to holding a Goober. They are also working on giving out whitelist spots using their in-house currency sludge that you can earn using their Minecraft server, their twitch arcade, and simply for being active on Discord. Whitelist spots were recently being sold for Akuma, Muri, Collider Craftworks and Kitty Crypto Gang.
The reason I invested in this project and I still feel the investment was successful and very worthwhile despite the non-exponential growth of the floor price is because The Goobers team treats the project as a company. They have a roadmap and it’s very evident that they work tirelessly every day to work towards fulfilling the promises they have made for the community. Anyone in this space could promise the world, what separates the winners are the ones that deliver on that promise.
Where is the future of this industry going?
Thus far, we’ve seen a massive rise in the popularity of PFP projects. For those of you who may not know, PFP projects are essentially profiled picture art that is usually primarily displayed on Twitter and/or Discord. They also usually have utility added to them one way or another but the reason this style of NFT is popular is because it allows you to flex and build credibility among the community depending on which profile picture you display. A person with a crypto punk or a bored ape is going to be able to establish himself a lot easier within the community and we’ve seen this tactic used when people are launching their NFT projects. The founder of Psychedelics Anonymous displayed a Bored Ape as his PFP throughout the entirety of his marketing on Twitter. This along with a very well-thought-out engagement plan has brought the project to 4.17 ETH in a matter of a few weeks. I believe that with the launch of the Twitter Blue feature that allows your NFT PFP to verify you as the owner, we’ll continue to see a focus on PFPsin the foreseeable future.
We’re also seeing a massive uptick in the gaming side of the industry. Gaming is set up to be a massive player in the NFT Community, despite pushback from current gamers. The idea of being able to own gaming items as an asset and then resell when you’re done with it is intriguing and seems like a natural progression of technology. Imagine doing a raid in Destiny or a dungeon in Elder Scrolls, being able to acquire a massively rare item as a reward for completion and then being able to own that asset and claim it as yours. It reminds me of ‘Ready Player One’ wherein gamers are all ‘playing’ in this metaversal type world using a VR setup.
There is also an uptick in games that allow you to earn crypto/other virtual items. It’s interesting to see the pushback from the gamer community, seeing as this push towards a web3 type of gaming would benefit the gamer more than anything. The pushback is mostly due to misinformation and misunderstandings about the negative impact this type of technology can have on the environment. While these criticisms are easily understandable, there are solutions and eco-friendly web3 options.
Love them or hate them, NFTs are here to stay for the time being. I personally don’t believe this is a fad, and I think it’s the natural progression of life for everything to eventually progress. There is always resistance against change, but technology will always advance and enhance the quality of life. In the upcoming 5 years, I truly believe everyone will own an NFT. I believe your 60 year old father that is obsessive over Football will own an NFT in lieu of a ticket just for attending a game. I believe that your younger nieces/nephews will understand this technology in a way we might never be able to fully grasp. Younger gamers will never understand a time in which NFTs weren’t tied directly to video games. We are in the early moments of this technology and if you’re reading this right now, you are in an extremely good position to really capitalize on this wave.