GM, GM, thank you for joining us here this morning. We're going to start the show in just a few minutes. We'll give it a few for folks to filter in and our speakers up on stage while we wait. Here are some tunes.
Good morning and welcome to the Lucky Lead. Today is Thursday April 20th. That means it's 420 a national holiday for most NFT participants.
Usually we have some fireworks today such a big day for the space we will see if tradition continues. I do see some friendly faces out there hunter and a T shark rushy. Thanks for joining us today. As I remind you for any new listeners, we run the show every weekday Monday to Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern. It's a 30 minute show.
covering all the major news in crypto, web 3, and in a t's. The show is meant for those interested in discovering the space, those actively buying and selling in the crypto and in a t markets, and those here just doing research. I'm your host Tyler D. I'm joined by my amazing co-host today. We've got Emily loves crypto. I'm sure she will be with us here shortly.
We've got Logan Hitchcock, Eddler and Chief over at Lucky Trader, rocking the Lucky Trader account with us here this morning. And we've got Ghost, content star over at Lucky Trader Deep in the So Rare Streets, quietly a whale and a tea trader still rocking the Nakamego. And it was a big day for the Nakas yesterday, Ghost.
GM how you doing? I was a go and Tyler doing well Like you said, it was a nice day for the Nakamegos I think some people started to think that it was just like a reminder of the eight aliens or whatever that was Where it felt like there was just no utility or anything behind the project which it happens but like it's very hard for those type of projects to succeed
So to see a filing announcement that wasn't just like a fit check from the the Nakamee goes Twitter account was nice and I think people are happy about it Yeah, I think so we'll break it down more here in the show We do have a lot to cover on the docket for today meme coins meant bots and our NFTs dead grails on
sale with Sotheby's Coinbase going offshore, ledgers, debacle, and not-communico's recovery, plus all the news. But before we jump in, a few housekeeping items goes if you want to run us through those. Yeah, we're going to pin it to the top. As always, Tyler does a great recap of the NFT market every morning in the Morning Minute Newsletter. So subscribe to that if you haven't already.
And then we've got our NFT Roundtable live show this afternoon here at 5 p.m. Eastern time. So come check that out if you like our casual Friday shows. It'll be interesting on 420 here, but it'll be a fun vibe there and we'll talk about all the latest news in the NFT space and have a little more casual chat there. So join us for that if you can make it.
Definitely excited for our 420 round table coming at 5 p.m. Eastern join the live YouTube stream and see Ghost and I beautiful faces front and center on your screen. All right folks, let's get into our top story our MedBots killing the NFT market. If you've
traded crypto or NFTs in the past few days and wondered why is gas so high? Well, you can think, Jared from Subway, the high frequency sandwich trading bot with a hilariously appropriate name has made a small fortune in the past few days for outrunning transactions in the meme coin crypto market. Why meme
Decoins likely because the typical buyer is less experienced and sophisticated than those frequently trading in the crypto and DeFi space. So some of those NFT buyers rotating into Pepe this week likely preyed on by Jared from some way. So here's how it works. I'm not going to go into a deep dive.
Most folks may know what MED is. MED stands for maximal extractable value and MED bots are akin to high frequency traders in typical stock markets. They look for arbitrage opportunities where they can sandwich transactions effectively front running both by and sell transactions for small quick profits which they can then
repeat thousands of times per day with their automated methods and their bots. And this method has been quite effective for Jared from Subway over the past few days, a few numbers, one point four million in profit he had racked up through yesterday morning. So that's not even updated through today's
up more, he spent over a million on gas fees on the Ethereum network. And then 70-way, that was the average gas fee on the Ethereum network on Tuesday. And I want to say it was close to that again yesterday. That's about $20 per transaction. So his numbers over
over the past two months are even crazier. He's executed over 180,000 transactions and spent over 7 million on gas fees. Now I want to bring this back to the NFT market. The impact of all this meme coin trading activity from these MedBots has again
lead to this increased gas. For multiple days in a row, that has certainly impacted NFTs. Lean traders to second guess whether or not to make transactions due to the fees. We've seen it now in the data. Daily active NFT wallets are down a whopping 50% on the
week and all right, yearly lows. The numbers I saw on C launch is dashboard this morning is 8,000. There are just now 8,000 unique wallets still trading NFTs actively across marketplaces right now. A shockingly low number for perspective through the first few months
months of the year, that was in the 20 to 25,000 per day mark through January and February, and then dropped to like 15 to 20,000 over the last six weeks. And then again, just in this past week has dropped from 16,000 to 8,000. So that is some rough metrics to look
at there. And with less traders comes impact to for price and NFT prices have certainly suffered almost all in red across the board this week. So there's a lot to unpack here. First, maybe we'll start with MedBoss and I would love to get Emily's thoughts on this. Hopefully she joined us
later. But my first question are met bots, bad actors, or just exploiting market inefficiencies, goes maybe I'll tee you up for this one. I think the latter. I mean, if you, there's always going to be people that find arbitrages in different markets and I think that that bot is is no different than anyone else that's finding those those edges.
And they're usually taking advantage of people that aren't using RPCs or don't know as much about the markets. And that's just an inefficiency that they're exploiting. So I don't think they're necessarily bad actors. But some of their consequences of those MED bots might be negative for the market, but I don't think that they are inherently bad.
Yeah, I tend to agree. I was a little surprised when I was doing research for my newsletter this morning. I wanted to make sure I captured the situation correctly. A lot of the rhetoric out there is overwhelmingly negative. But to me, I feel like it's again someone just kind of identifying
the market. There are ways for sophisticated traders to get around this and essentially block these MedBots. So it's essentially folks who haven't done enough research for just paying in a market that maybe they're not ready for and they're being taken advantage of. So that's the reality. You're playing in the wild west right now. You have to be able
to accept the consequences. So I want to move on to now the NFT market. So I'm curious and Logan maybe I'll tee you up for this one. Is it gas fees that that kill the NFT market here this week or what else might be going on? I'm curious for your thoughts.
Yeah, I certainly think it plays a role. It's difficult to stomach, of course, when many of the floor prices have already gone down so much. It's difficult to stomach paying what is a much larger percentage of the overall floor just to transact. So that's certainly part of it, in my opinion.
I think, you know, in large part, and this isn't to go back to the medium board thing, but things are just incredibly boring, right? At this point in time, I mean, there are still things happening, but nothing revolutionary in any sense. No new projects outside of Nakamego's really that have generated a ton of buzz in the last
few weeks to maybe last months perhaps. And so I just think people are kind of bored. And the Pepe meme coin stuff seems fun, right, because the number is going up, chart was going up. We'll see how long that fun can last. I think it's just, you know,
people are bored. That's what it boils down to in my opinion. No, I think that's pretty accurate. Ghost, I'd love to hear your thoughts. You know, I usually disagreed when I heard other people say that they were bored. And this is one of the first times in NFTs. I feel like that I have actually felt that that medium
board. There's just not a lot going on. And it does kind of feel like a casino at this point where everybody's just trying to get out with as much as they can. And that's why I think a lot of people have rotated to Pepe and Chick Coins because there was really no opportunities left at the moment.
and NFTs. And from a, I was kind of thinking of it from a founder perspective, not that I'm a founder, but like four founders of projects that are trying to ramp up the floor price. I mean, can you imagine trying to cater to a bunch of DGENs who are upset? They might have bought the top during the bull market.
There's not really a lot of liquidity now, and now you have all these other external factors. It's really a tough battle to be fighting if you're a founder trying to launch a successful project or just gain back any traction as one of those mid caps that are kind of flailing right now.
I do not envy anyone who is a product founder right now, especially those who were founded during the bull market and are still showing up every day dealing with users. And I think it does represent a very interesting problem that founders will have to solve here in the coming months. And it's this two headed
monster of trying to appease your current holder base while also trying to plan to reach future users and the masses to essentially grow your brand in the product. And those can be very different goals with different impacts to those users. And it's going to be continued to be a problem we'll see who solves it. Logan's additional thoughts.
Yeah, I'm only chiming in because Ghost said the words medium board, but I do really honestly feel like that's that's kind of where I'm at as well, right? This in between where we need to continue to pay attention and not turn it off entirely because things will come back around. This feels very much like a time where a lot of people
going to completely leave the markets or try their attention away for an extended period of time. And you'll regret it in six months, 12 months when some of these bigger initiatives from projects or from ecosystems like Anomoka, for example, actually come to fruition and you were like, "Oh shit, I was here while this was happening, but I was just
too lazy or falling around the hot potato of money rotation from knock-a-meos to whatever it is. I was personally when I first got invested in crypto, both literally financially and emotionally,
I did that. I asked out for years and then despite some opinions that I started to form for myself, and then you come back and you missed a ton of gains and you missed a lot of opportunities because you were just unwilling to put an even a modicum of effort to staying invested in what's taking place.
Very good point. I'm gonna I don't know that you need to throw Nakamegos into your to your dialogue there Logan. Sorry about that well received and I agree I think there are going to be some tremendous opportunities I think specifically in the art space right now I think there are Grails coming on sale and we're gonna
We're going to hit that a little bit later in the show. But for those who are active, sticking around, there are going to be some opportunities. But yeah, things are looking a little bit bleak. I think Kicks had a great take on the NFT morning show, the Nifty Morning show here. His perspective was, I mean, he's effectively feeling bored. He's saying that the PFP
market, super stale. You know, has been trading PFPs for going on two years now. Everything just feels like a game of hot potato who's left holding the bag. You made an interesting point for gaming. You know, everyone talking about gaming, his perspective is the current NFT trading pool are not interested in playing games.
They might be interested in trading gaming assets, but they are not interested in playing games, which I thought was a very honest and transparent take from a game founder in the NFT space. So his kind of perspective was we need a new meta to kind of re-energize everyone and he kind of pointed back to the 2020
one arc where NFTs were hot in January, February, through March, then kind of crypto heated up in April and May. NFTs died during that time and then rebounded, of course, in that epic summer run. I'm not sure if we're going to see a run like that, but it does feel like this year is shaping up
pretty similarly. And I remember 2021, I just come into the space and it was just absolute crickets in April and May. I mean, I have some amputees listed. I mean, you wouldn't get a bite or an offer for weeks. So we've been here before. So if folks who are new to the space just have some patients, go some curious for some additional podcasts.
I agree with all that. I posted the Wall Street psychology of a market cycle chart there. I'm just curious to where you think we are in the cycle. I was looking at that chart right there. There's like the anger, the depression down there. I feel like we're kind of reaching those levels. And I think that's like that that border that's setting in of people are kind of getting disillusioned.
with the markets and everything is super slow. So maybe that's a sign that we're due for a turnaround here in the next couple of months, but I'm not sure. Yeah, I think we're getting close to depression, but I'm not ready to call the bottom just yet. I think my last question on this, and then we'll move on, is I'm curious for our speakers.
makers thoughts, did blur cause this, accelerate it, or are they a kind of a non-factor in kind of the market action, this downturn that we've seen, certainly a controversial question about, but ghost all put you on the spot? I wouldn't blame, I don't really blame blur.
I think that it's similar to the MED Bot discussion, where it's just like that's another factor that people have to deal with. And maybe they accelerated a little bit of the bleeding, but I don't think that they're necessarily to blame for it. And I think that in some cases they've helped with liquidity in certain areas where people have stuff to get out. So I don't blame Blur for any of this by any means.
It's certainly a complicated situation. I think that the punk's market is undeniably impacted by Raptopom's trading on blur. I think it's hard to deny that. But now throwing them under the bus for the entire PFP market, I think, is a little bit aggressive. I think you can easily point to, I
the art box market, which has not been trading on Blair this whole time and has experienced very similar downturns, if not worse downturns. And it's absolute crickets over in that market right now. So I think they have contributed to the meta, to this downturn in certain ways, but certainly not the
I'm very dry, Mary, driver. Emily, I'm curious for your thoughts. I think Ler is actually significantly more responsible for this than we want to really give them credit for. I don't think it was intentional. I think it indicates a lot of naivete as far as product management best practices go and really understanding the impacts.
of these models that are being built. I highly doubt any sort of modeling was done to try to imagine what the effects of something like farming for a token would cause. I think it's pretty predictable if a little bit of time
had been spent on it. And at the same time, I think it really pulls a lot of the opportunists out and really highlights who those people are. And it shows us who really is here for the technology and to try to build a revolution in this space.
and who's just here for a capitalist opportunity. Yeah, I think that's a very fair take. I would agree. I don't believe... I've talked with some of the bluer founders. I don't believe they have any bad intentions. I think there are a lot of unintended consequences that have come out. And I think Sam and T. Stats has posted about this. It's a pretty surprising outcome.
that paying people to trade would lead to some of these the downturns that we've seen. But that's a story for another day, a longer conversation. I want to get into the 3 AC grills going on.
sale. But before we do that, let's read the news. Today's top headlines powered by Lucky Trader. Train volume came in around 17,000 eath on Wednesday down 15% from Tuesday. OpenC Pro captured 7% with blur holding 61%. While NFTs were read again on the day
most of the products at the top of the leaderboard down 2 to 5% as crypto punks fall below 50/8 for the first time in months B.A.Y.C holding at 50.5. Another headlines, UGLABS gained ownership of the crypto punks wrapper yesterday as a part of the punks restoration project. The cyberbrokers met
for Genesis Rug and T holders, more engagement incentives and establishing a grant committee. And then some headlines from the Web 3 in crypto space. Crypto was down again yesterday Bitcoin down in 1% at 28,000, 850, 8 down a percent at 1950. The meme coin Pepe jumped another 30% it reached $100.
$150 million market cap. I haven't checked on it in the last hour or so Coinbase has made plans to build an offshore presence as soon as next week with the Bermuda-based derivatives exchange. So that was a major headline and then ledger caught some backlash for security concerns after unveiling a new ledger
NanoX on-chain bundle, seemingly encouraging holders to wear their Legend NanoX as a necklace out in public. So that's a questionable decision. I am curious what our speakers think about that move from Ledger, but before we get there,
ghost. Any other headlines that caught your attention? Yeah, so we're going to combine the two sections here because it was such a slow day. We did see cool cats fractures lead to top movers. They were up nearly 40% to a point one e-floor and I think the shadow wolves are revealing today. So we'll be interested in watching the price action there. The cool cats main collections at a point eight three floor.
reminder that I bought a cool cat at 15E right before cool topia and have banned myself from the entire ecosystem there. And then we saw Memeland tweet for the first time from the meme coin account saying one meme to rule them all and having the meme coin Twitter handle there is a great handle to have honestly just at meme coin.
It is. I'm curious your thoughts on Bitcoin before we get there, Ghost. Emily, I've got to you up as a security expert. What are your thoughts on the ledger necklace product that's been rolled out here?
Okay, first of all, can we just acknowledge how terrible and cringe that looks? Like, it's just a god-awful look. It's not good. It's, yeah, god, it's tacky. And like, that... It makes me think that they don't understand the business that they're in.
which gives me a lot of concern and they've made a lot of decisions in the past that kind of highlight that and encourage really bad practices and they're still the most trusted security device in the space and I don't know, honestly, it gives me a lot of anxiety. Like, people are comfortable agreeing
to blind signing transactions and that is not what you should be doing at all. So, you know, now they're like just put it on your neck. Have a little four different, four-digit pin coat, you know? Is it your birthday? Maybe. Like it, it, it, it just like seems so epically silly.
And it makes it makes me hurt on the inside. You got me with that birthday. It's the pin to your leisure birthday. It is please change it right now. And also is it your child's birthday also change it. But I mean your point is well taken. I mean.
Even if it's not your real ledger you're wearing out. It's still just signaling to everyone out there any bad actor Hey, I am a crypto user and proud of my portfolio, but hey, please don't attack me Right, I bet you if you go find my favorite book my seed phrase is tucked into the front cover. Oh man
So I'm curious how ledger might try to recover from from this one or any releases they have coming out. I'm not going to your mother in law's house.
house to try to find that one. How big is this coin base off shore news? So this one, you know, Brian Armstrong had hinted that they might make some plans to move out of the US and now it looks like they're at least making progress against some plans with this new
derivatives exchange goes and I'm curious what were your reactions to this major headline issue? I mean, I think it's pretty Chad move for Brian Armstrong, but I think that it's sad for the US crypto space. And I mean, we've talked about it a lot on here about how it kind of feels like the US is driving
innovation in the space out of the country. And this is like a huge step. And if Coinbase decides to leave, it's not great for the US. But I mean, we saw Gary Gensler tweet yesterday, like basically doubling down on everything after being grilled on Congress. So I don't know if that that hearing even really meant made a difference or
or what the final outcome of that'll be, but it didn't seem like he cared too much about it. So I don't know if this is the outcome that they wanted, probably, but as someone who lives in the US and is in crypto, I wouldn't be thrilled to see Coinbase leave because I think it's a sign that the US is kind of falling behind and the regulations wouldn't be in our favor.
Yeah, of course. It is serious. I think we're going to be in for some political theater here in the coming months, perhaps years, as crypto becomes an even more partisan issue. And I think Coinbase and Armstrong are kind of playing a game here that they have to play. They've been forced to play.
Hopefully they're able to pull through here and there are some promising signs All right, I want to get into that the three AC Grails coming on sale so we have a major announcement from Sotheby's the auction house They are launching a new collection called Grails and we are so
soon going to find out the answer to the question is tainted art more valuable. So this collection again includes some of the most notable pieces in digital art and will feature some of the most anticipated auctions in NFT history with these pieces all coming from the now defunct hedge fund
three arrows capital or three AC. I'm very interested if the stigma tied to three AC's ownership will impact the price at Sotheby's. I want to tee up a few questions for our speakers. Before we do that, just a few more details here. The pieces will be released in chapters across various sale formats.
like private sales or auctions and across multiple global locations. Some of the most notable pieces in the collection, along with the price tags that 3AC paid. So we've got the Golden Goose ringers, which they paid 1800/eathe four or 3.56 million. We've got Zombie Crypto Punk, 664
nine, which they paid 810 E4 or 1.6 million, we've got the cube archetype that's they paid 420 E3, 830,000, a full spectrum squiggle. They went paid 70 E for that 139,000. That was a good buy in a small scale Fadenza that they paid 135 E3, 200
So there's some some good buys and there are certainly maybe a few overpays you could debate across just those five amp T's three AC spent $6.4 million and that does not include some of their other pieces which are going to be included in grills like an ACK one of one some of their auto
and I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question#
any of these three on my mind. Will these pieces sell for more than 3AC paid? Does the 3AC stigma make these pieces more or less valuable? And then will the art blocks and grail art market rebound after these auctions are over? So a few questions to
taken in their logo and I'd love to hear your thoughts on any and all of these. Yeah, man. Will they get more than they paid? I think that's unlikely just given the state of NFTs also to, I guess it depends upon ETH or USD's, denominations, ETH of course, is
likely cheaper or perhaps I'm not exactly sure actually based on when they acquired. So I don't think they'll get as much as they paid. I do think there is definitely a real chance that this attachment kind of like a metadata update would be required in some way. So folks will always know
So of course that probably won't happen. But I do think this event, the 3AC ownership event does make them potentially more valuable down the road. Yes. Multiple or magnitudes of order more valuable. I don't know. I guess it might be difficult for folks to really even know that these were the
We're going to have to lock you traders, somebody else is going to have to be in charge of ensuring that people are aware and we continue creating archive of that history for folks to know about. But otherwise, I do think they have a chance of hosting or garnering more than they would have because
they are 3AC, formerly owned by 3AC. I tend to agree. I also think there's a little bit of a spectrum of how much it will matter. I think it matters more for the true rare grails, like the most elite art in this set, like the Golden Goose. I think the Golden Goose, as one of the highest
for a NFT sales of all time went through there over, I think that was back in 2021, that coupled with the 3AC collapse, I think will be an important part of that NFT. Some of these other ones, I feel like it matters
a little bit less. Like the squiggle or even the Fendenza, is it going to carry the same level of magnitude? I'm not so sure. But I'm also curious what folks think this might mean for the R-blocks market. I've got some phosphide. Emily, what are you thinking?
I think it may provide a price boost. It's like owning a piece of ephemera that someone famous had before and it's very culturally significant to NFTs in crypto in general and I think that that is interesting, right?
It's like a curiosity and that's one of the coolest parts about NFTs in general is you know the history that we have in the bucket so I I think it may play in the favor Yeah, I totally agree and that is such an awesome part of the the blockchain and the NFTs spaces you can see that history right there
And just a matter of seconds when you navigate to these pages. Yeah, the part. Like, like, truly the provenance of one of my favorite things and like I know a couple of like, oh, I have Gary V. It's old cool cat or like whatever it is. And I think that's one of the most upsetting parts when a project decides that they want more
more blockchain features on their smart contract and migrates and loses all of the provenance. Like you lose all of that history and it looks so lame and people won't just use like really simple extension layers that exist for free. So I don't know. People will eventually adopt technology that they say they're in favor
of promoting, I guess. No, I actually hadn't thought about that, but yeah, I mean, the history is so interesting and important, especially for more of your quote unquote blue chips or grill art. Go some curious for your thoughts. I just pinned this to the top of the space is on this topic here. I saw this tweet yesterday, but just to show how wild the
of these acquisitions were in summer 2021, keyboard monkey bought a zombie punk for $450 on July 29, 2021, and then sold it basically 24 hours for almost a million dollars in profit at a 10 to the three-year-old's capital account. So I don't think that
they're going to see the same price that they probably got for that, but just a wild 80% in basically 24 hours there. Yeah, one of the most incredible flips of all time, one for the history books. It is so interesting. I feel like in a bull market, absolutely these grails
see a premium because of the three ACPs. And I think they still will, but just because of where we're at right now in this downtrend, it's hard. These, some of these are definitely not going to sell for more than they paid in my opinion. But we will hopefully see soon. And I do think another reason why this is so important.
I'm pretty confident that at least some art blocks, whales, have been holding liquidity for these NFTs to come on sale knowing that they were coming soon and have likely not been deploying that capital into this art blocks market during this downtrend.
you know, once these auctions actually take place and some of these grills get into holders hands and are no longer essentially on the market, I think some of these whales maybe weren't able to acquire the pieces are likely to deploy some of that capital back into the digital market. So I think the end of these auctions very well might
be the next catalyst for a leg up in Gerard of Art Digital Art. Certainly we'll see. Go, so you had your hand up some additional thoughts in the book. Yeah, what you just mentioned was something that was on my mind as well. And if there is some big sales on these grail pieces, maybe that invigorates the art blocks market a little bit and gives people some confidence to start snatching those up. So like you mentioned,
I think that if these auctions do go well, I think this could mark another leg up for at least the generative art ecosystem there with art blocks because I think people are kind of just sitting on their hands and don't really have a ton of confidence to buy stuff right there, but I think seeing some major grails go would kind of inspire that confidence that people still do really care about this art.
Absolutely, I think the only drawback is I think these auctions are going to be spread out across a fairly lengthy period of time. But hopefully we get the details on that timeline here soon from Sotheby's. All right guys, this is some great discussion here today. We're going to close the show, but before we do, let's draw.
dropping today. All on mode by Zuzana, breath 9 at Koba dropped this morning at 3 a.m. We've got pacemaker that just came at 10 a.m. Eastern, the Rolling Stones vintage slides coming at 3 p.m. Eastern later today. We've got Escher back with the Escher exclusive number five featuring
Arseneck coming at 420 PM Eastern and then the killabairs killacubs are minting later today Some definitely some notable drops the pacemaker team hit the talk show circuit hard They're gonna have some demand the roll and stones always need to made it for their NFTs and the one of
community members are getting first access to this one. Escher again back Arseneck has a a cult ball and he's been hot in the meme art space landing hard into memes with a supply of 420 and a $6,000 price tag. He will likely mental at that price point and then kill a cubs likely
the most anticipated of the day, 3333 for free for kill bears holders, 8888 minting for 0.25 each. That's a fairly high price tag for this bear market. So we'll see if they're able to mint that out. If they do, it is a fuller sign most likely for the kill bears. All right.
folks that is that is our show for today we will be back tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern thanks to our listeners thanks to my co-hosts everyone enjoy your Thursday and let's make it a great time bye everybody