Ember Nuggets Issue #30

Nugget #1: Coinbase NFT Launches

Coinbase’s long-awaited NFT platform launched for select individuals in their waitlist last week and continues to expand the rollout of its “beta” platform. Many in the NFT market expected a big push from Coinbase and consequently increased trading volumes. But instead, the launch seems to have been a dud driven by an extremely small group at launch and little activity on platform. 

Reports indicated that only 900 transactions took place between 650 users in its first week representing $217K in value. As a comparison, OpenSea did $808M in the same period with 36K users. 

It is probably too early to tell but Coinbase will need to step up its launch and have a clear value driver for users to come to their platform. 

Nugget #2: Ok Bears launches on Magic Eden launchpad

Ok Bears launched on Magic Eden’s launchpad on April 26th with a mint price of 1.5 SOL ($147). The collection sold out within hours and has begun breaking NFT records in the ecosystem. 

OpenSea saw over 187,500 SOL in secondary trading, equivalent to around $18.5 million, which exceeded transaction volumes of NFTs in the ETH ecosystem. It should be noted that OS accounts for less than 10% of Ok Bears trading volume. This record-breaking project is the most traded NFT collection in 24 hours for Solana. It also was the top traded collection on OpenSea, including ETH projects. 

We haven’t been able to verify and check volume on Magic Eden, but see a graphic shared by the team below. 

As of writing, the floor price has exploded to 160 SOL (~$16K), representing a 106x return from mint. The project has been picked up by notable players in both the SOL and ETH ecosystem. Furthermore, Magic Eden has endorsed the project and plans to host a spaces next week with the anon founders. 

As a disclaimer, this is a very new project and represents a big risk. Please do your own research and ape accordingly. 

Nugget #3: BAYC floor hits record $430K

Short little recap: The BAYC NFTs launched one year ago for 0.08 ETH each (around $200). The current floor price of ~152E ($430K) means its early adopters are now sitting on gains of 216,900% in dollar terms. Not including the free airdrops over the year including MAYC, BAKC, and most recently, APE. Not sure what project has been so successful out of the gate in recent memory providing users with so much upside. 

Why the all-time high floor price?

A few weeks ago, Yuga Labs and Animoca did a random KYC for somethingisbrewing.xyz and it all came down to this weekend, specifically, 4/30. The secret KYC was meant for the OtherSide land mint. 30K land deeds will be claimed by ape holders (both BAYC and MAYC), and 55K deeds will be available to mint, for KYC wallets only, at an asking price of 305 ApeCoin (~2.4E). The ensuing gas war made the mint a bit expensive with $100M+ of ETH being burned up, and the land selling out within 2 hours. Within 24 hours, the land already had 100K ETH in trading volume.

 In short, this drop turned out to be the largest NFT mint in history, coming in at close to $320 million USD, and was so in demand that it crashed Etherscan.

If you can’t afford a half-million dollar Bored Ape, invest in Ember Fund's Top NFT Index where you can invest in a piece of one at a fraction of the price.