Whether its Visa purchasing a CryptoPunk or JPMorgan weighing in on a seemingly-weely basis with a reminder that they are bullish on Bitcoin — legacy corporations have not only entered the crypto world, but have determined that aligning themselves with the industry is great for PR (whether or not they plan to put their money where their Tweets are.

https://twitter.com/VisaNews/status/1430185056098820105?s=20&t=Ixl0bdY3uhGjOYPe43fFPg

The common meme response from the crypto community is a tongue-in-cheek analysis that we’ve seen the “top.” Basically, if these conservative and risk-averse institutions are getting into crypto, it’s no longer “early.”

But two of the oldest, stuffiest, and most exclusive institutions in the world have avoided that disdain: Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

The two auction houses date back to 1744 and 1766 respectively. As far as early adopters go, bicenterians generally don’t fit the mold.

But in March 2021, Christie’s departed from centuries of tradition by auctioning off the first NFT to ever appear in a major auction house. The $69M sale of Beeple’s ‘The First 5000 Days' marked the start of NFTs joining the mainstream conversation.

https://twitter.com/ChristiesInc/status/1370027970560106497?s=20&t=V_oBp5uC0kZesj44N3qhBg

While NFTs had been around for years prior, it was this Christie’s sale that was the first to make a major splash across mainstream news outlets and popular culture (the price tag didn’t hurt).

Rather than jump aboard the bandwagon after it was deemed safe by the establishment institutions, Christie’s (and soon Sotheby’s) was earlier than 99% of today’s NFT community declaring themselves “OGs” of the space.

Think about it — that watershed moment occurred before the launch of Bored Ape Yacht Club.

**

**

Crypto has always appealed to me as someone who firmly believes in the idea of breaking down the barriers to wealth creation and opportunity historically afforded only to the wealthy, or accredited investors.

When mainstream news outlets argued for stringent restrictions on crypto, NFTs, and retail investing as a way to protect willing investors from themselves, I laughed — of course the legacy institutions don’t want wealth to be democratized.

I still feel that way, but after the horrific news that has emerged from the Terra Luna / UST crash — with stories of tragic deaths by suicide and token-holders who lost everything — my stance became more nuanced.

Before jumping into it, please consider donating to the Center for the Neuroscience of Psychedelics at Mass General, which has been on the forefront studying possible treatments for mental illness.

Death by suicide is already the 2nd leading cause of death among people aged 15-24. From 2007-2018, the rate of suicide increased nearly 60% among the ages 10-24.

But this spike wasn’t the fault of RobinHood, CoinBase, or OpenSea.

To the degree that this is measurable, experts have attributed the sharp rise to various downstream effects stemming from our increasingly all-consuming digital lifestyle. The clearest example is among teenage girls, who have become addicted to Instagram — deflating self-esteem through a constant barrage of photos detailing the ‘perfect lives’ of influencers.

There’s a million other factors, but like with Instagram and teenage girls, much of it stems from the virtual worlds in which we all live a growing portion of our lives.

As Terra crashed, it wiped out more than just net worth for many — it erased their vision for their own future.

This is the same for retail traders of my generation who have been given the keys to the kingdom as far as investing on margin and operating in a Web3 world that gives them home-field advantage over the older, less tech-savvy generations.

It’s not because of the autonomy.

It’s because of the gamification.

This shouldn’t be news to anyone, but just like social media platforms that devote a depressingly vast amount of capital to study and implement product changes to sink hooks into their users — many of whom become digital addicts at the mercy of their Instagram or Tik Tok feeds — the same is true for the crypto and r/wallstreetbets-type communities.

Our age group is already suffering from deaths of despair, but I worry the next frontier of the crisis lies in the gamification of the stock & crypto world.

Web2 caused the first spike, I worry Web3 could cause the second.

As I am intentionally refraining from highlighting the stories of individuals reported in the press or rumored via Twitter, I’ll speak for myself.

I have watched myself buy into NFT projects, stocks, crypto currencies, and more ‘investments’ feeling little more than FOMO and compulsivity. Thankfully, I am not one of the many people — largely males my age — who had their life savings evaporate. But I don’t have to work very hard to put myself in their shoes.

So many of my peers fall into the target demo for many of these investment platforms. If Instagram incentivizes teenage girls to buy beauty products or follow unhealthy diets to meet unrealistic expectations, young men are incentivized to engage in risky financial activity like options trading and investing in crypto, NFTs, and meme stocks. The mechanism used by these platforms carries many of the same traits of the ‘traditional’ gamified social media platforms, but there are other pernicious elements that convert emotions to dollars.

Like the trap of comparing ourselves to the attractive quasi-celebs on Instragram, we replace influencers with ‘financial experts’ shilling investments by flexing their own gains.

Teenage girls are made to feel ugly, 23-year-old guys are made to feel poor — unless they get in on the action.

And the action is available.

Everywhere.

I don’t have any solutions to offer. All I know is the fact that the young men making up such a significant percentage of these high-risk investors are pre-disposed to have a high-risk tolerance, a high risk of dying by suicide, and a desire for status.

This isn’t an argument for putting up the barriers of the past and undoing the strides made in recent years to afford access to these investments to the everyday person.

But it is a plea to reconsider the inherently addictive design in these structures amplifying the negative outcomes for the millions of people who are besieged with triggers form-fitted for their brains to take bigger and bigger risks. While it resembles increased accessibility to a degree, these methods are merely gambling cloaked in the guise of democratization.

“After careful consideration and consultation with my divorce lawyer, I have decided to resign my post as Chairman at Enron.”

This is pretty much par for the course for John W. Rich (Fake Tech Exec).

John Rich belongs to a special class of Twitter satirists who have grown massive followings thanks to a consistent, unrelenting, and unbelievable character posting memes, jokes, and replies that point out the absurdity of “real” finance Twitter personalities.

https://twitter.com/Cokedupoptions/status/1503906428561502211?s=20&t=Nd1jaVv8r1H7szz5kKsV6w

Mr. Rich’s bio features his greatest accomplishments, just like you expect from one of the leading finance voices on Twitter: “Chairman of the Board at Yahoo! and AOL  | Divorced 9 times”

https://twitter.com/Cokedupoptions/status/1501400849532207107?s=20&t=Nd1jaVv8r1H7szz5kKsV6w

Despite his 163K+ followers, most people probably spend little time thinking about the inner-workings of John W. Rich.

But behind the facade of “My wife left me” jokes — the latest coming courtesy of Jim Cramer — and questionable investing advice, there’s Charlie Light, who treats John Rich as far more than just a place to get off jokes. He’s developed a fascinating and intentional strategy behind the handle, which has truly become a brand — allowing him to quit his job and go full-time at FinTwit memery in January 2021.

As you might expect from someone with the chops to consistently churn out hilarious content aimed at the self-serious finance world, Light first had to rub shoulders with some of the same people he skewers with John Rich’s Tweets.

Coming out of school with a masters in accounting, Light worked for a private equity firm. While he never had formally dipped his toe in satire, Light had always wanted to start a side-hustle.

In April 2020, Light had plenty of time on his hands thanks to the Covid lockdown. So, on a whim, he started the original John Rich account.

“I figured it would be a thing I did for fun maybe for a couple of months. I had been reading other finance-related Twitter accounts since about 2017, so I was already familiar with the space, but I had never contributed until then,” Light said.

It only took a month to reach 5K followers, and by November, Rich had reached 42K. Then there was a bit of a setback… the account was banned.

“I was way too aggressive in replying to people, so I learned my lesson after losing that account. Thankfully, I had made plenty of good connections and was able to quickly start up a new account,” Light told me.

By now, nearly two years since starting the original account, Light has an incredibly insightful view on the character he created, the strategy of the Twitter game, and the art of community building.

Recently he Tweeted from his personal account that he basically makes the same five jokes over and over again.

https://twitter.com/charliewrich/status/1503407633272918029?s=20&t=Nd1jaVv8r1H7szz5kKsV6w

“People like consistency,” he explained.

I asked him to name the five buckets of jokes that he was referencing, and he distilled John Rich into a tried and tested formula: “The main jokes: My wife is leaving me, I lost all my clients’ money, I am very unhealthy, I run a tech company but don’t know anything about tech, and blatantly trying to scam someone.”

One of the things that drew me to John Rich was the realization that FinTwit’s meme culture has become one of the core components of the Twitter discourse. I thought I had an idea why, but couldn’t really articulate it. Of course, Light’s explanation nailed it.

“I think it’s easy for people to make fun of the finance space because there are so many ridiculous events. Stocks going up 500% for no reason, electric vehicle companies with 0 cars produced worth billions of dollars, and stock picking gurus who slip up when photoshopping their ‘amazing returns’.”

And the John Rich account hits home on all of these points.

“John resonates with people because he reflects many of the corporate executives who run public companies: Self-dealing, tone-deaf, inept, yet make massive amounts of money.”

As for learnings Light has picked up along the way, he found one strategy to be particularly effective.

“Identify accounts in your similar space with 10k to 50k followers. Reply to them consistently until they notice you, follow, and reply to your tweets. Once you are in with larger accounts, your growth will take off.”

Boom. Recipe for success. Now you too can have hold dual chairman positions at Yahoo! and AOL.

Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t congratulate Mr. Rich on his exceptional trading record.

https://twitter.com/Cokedupoptions/status/1498393065467355137?s=20&t=Nd1jaVv8r1H7szz5kKsV6w

NFTs Net Worth (Zapper): $5.5M+

If you head over to Rarity Tools and check out the rarest Bored Apes from the BAYC collection, a peculiar name pops up. Then again, and again, and again.

This anonymous wallet owns 2 of the top 5 rarest Apes and 4 of the top 25 in the entire collection

No other wallets show up more than twice in the top 25.

The account’s name is Skynine, and unlike most other super collectors of blue chip projects, Skynine has made no attempt to leverage their status in the social media sphere.

Skynine does have a Twitter, and will post about NFTs with semi-regularity, but that’s where it ends. If you came across the profile accidentally, you’d just see another BAYC PFP with a few hundred followers.

Diving into Skynine’s wallet tells a different story.

I was able to ask the mysterious BAYC holder a few questions via discord, which is listed in Skynine’s OpenSea bio.

Skynine wasn’t exactly willing to provide me with a full life history, but I’ll take what I can get.

“Entered crypto in 2017, first exposure was to bitcoin but have been more focused on ETH in the past couple of years, background in computer science and tech.”

When asked about their NFT origins, Skynine’s response was similarly concise.

“BAYC was my first NFT purchase, first learned about NFTs back in 2017 when crypto kitties congested ETH and gas fees went crazy, had been watching punks since then but never bought anything, almost minted a hashmask but they were sold out by the time I had ETH ready on MetaMask, saw BAYC and it immediately clicked for me so I finally aped in.”

I asked about the decision to remain anonymous, given the obvious potential for Web3 stardom.

“Anonymity is more of my character rather than a carefully crafted decision, NFTs are only one of my variety of interests, and laying low helps me keep a distance so I don't get too caught up in it all and spend more time/resources in the space than I'd like to. It helps me keep my life appropriately balanced.”

Skynine currently owns 17 Bored Apes (at least, those are the ones visible on OpenSea).

The first Ape (BAYC #5712) came into the wallet via transfer from Pranksy on May 16, 2021.

Pranksy minted the Ape 15 days earlier, and while the NFT currently sits in Skynine’s wallet, it has been transferred back and forth to other wallets multiple times since (whether these are separate people or simply additional wallets owned by Skynine is unknown).

This is a common theme for Skynine.

BAYC #9606, the rarest Ape in the wallet (3rd rarest overall) was minted by Pranksy and transferred to Skynine on that same 15-day timeline in May 2021.

Same thing for BAYC #4873, the 5th rarest Ape in the entire BAYC collection.

As to how Skynine views their portfolio, it’s a long-term investment.

“ I haven't really thought about selling any apes yet, so for now they're all more on the 'untouchable' end of the spectrum.”

If you like what you read, follow me on Twitter and subscribe below to receive an email whenever I upload a new story.

Last night, Paris Hilton appeared on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon — making waves with the announcement of her latest NFT purchase and comparing Bored Apes with Fallon.

The two chatted up NFTs for a few minutes, leading to a viral moment online as well as some serious plugging for celebrity NFT concierge service MoonPay, which I wrote about earlier this month.

https://twitter.com/FallonTonight/status/1485843736345161737?s=20

The kicker came when Hilton announced she would be gifting NFTs to every member of the audience.

https://twitter.com/matthewliu/status/1485860903740399617?s=20

“I think that’s the first NFT giveaway in television history”

- Jimmy Fallon

Hilton is no new face in the NFT realm, joining OpenSea in April 2021 (around the same time as the BAYC minting).

But she was around even earlier.

“I launched my first NFT drop in March 2020, and have been obsessed with NFTs and the never-ending possibilities of this technology ever since”

- Hilton told Bloomberg

She even mentioned in an interview with The Guardian that she had become friends with Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum.

Let’s take a peek inside the wallet of “Queen of NFTs”

NFTs Net Worth (Zapper): $971,542.15

NFTs Net Worth (Dappradar): $842,457.05

The Bored Ape that Hilton revealed on Fallon was BAYC #1294. MoonPay purchased the Ape on 1/22 for 119 ETH (~$287K). Today, the NFT was transferred into Hilton’s wallet.

Rarity Tools lists Hilton’s Ape as the 7166th rarest in the BAYC collection, with a Rarity Score of 74.07.

Hilton has collected over 1.1K NFTs, including an RTFKTstudios Easter Egg called Paris Hilton Drip ✨. The floor price for the Easter Egg Project is currently 235 ETH.

Other NFTs in Hilton’s wallet include an 888 genesis token, CyberKong VX #2445, as well as 900 NFTs from the MILLION TOKEN WEBSITE collection.

To balance out the portfolio, Hilton also has three ENS Domains: parishilton.eth, parishiltonnft.eth, and ⚡🚀parishilton🚀⚡.eth ⚠️.

And like any good NFT influencer, Hilton’s Twitter name displays one of her ENS domains.

If you like what you read, follow me on Twitter and subscribe below to receive an email whenever I upload a new story.

Once a week, for a few short hours, my Twitter timeline forgets to show me a constant deluge of NFTs.

Instead, I see cards. Lots of them. Sometimes I can’t help myself but join in and buy one, or two… my limit is five.

That’s because on Wednesdays at 7 pm, @CardsStory makes his weekly proclamation:

https://twitter.com/CardsStory/status/1483952423710437380?s=20

Then, without fail, the floodgates open.

Strangers from all over meet to buy, sell, barter, and admire some of the finest baseball cards ever made. The names Mantle, Cobb, Ruth, and Clemente suddenly become commonplace.

Cards from the famous T206 set are seemingly always available, graded and raw.

Outside of the infrastructure used by marketplaces like eBay to facilitate deals between buyers and sellers, this Twitter thread has sprung up as an unlikely option. In place of the security of eBay, it offers community. While the thread may lack seller ratings, the public nature of the weekly ritual helps root out any scammers pretty quick. And of course… no fees.

The thread’s host and creator is a 26-year-old collector who has been passionate about cards since he was 7. He told me he started the thread after seeing Twitter sales threads on his timeline, but none focusing on vintage baseball.

“I really see it as an opportunity to grow this community and make it stronger. Give people a reason to all get to know each other and grow their relationships with people who share the same love for cards and the hobby. I think that’s more valuable than the cards themselves.”

- @CardsStory

Last night, about $12K in sales were made over the course of the evening.

Amidst the 100s of cards posted for sale each week, there will always be some familiar faces, both on the cards & behind the accounts selling them.

One of the most avid sellers on the thread is Ryan Nolan, a card collector who has gained a strong following on Twitter & YouTube as he travels the country attending card shows. Ryan told me that he uses the thread to sell his weekend pickups and fund his next card show trip.

Ryan also recently published a book called “Spotting Fakes” — filled with tips to properly identify fake cards.

The diverse array of cards up for sale on any given week can be dizzying.

Last week, an 1888 R & S Artistic Philidelphia Series Baseball Card graded PSA 8 sold for $600.

That type of hyper-vintage oddball quality is exactly what hits home with the weekly thread-goers, who often seek out a niche of cards that the general collecting community might ignore. For many of the Wednesday night attendees, the history of a card or set can mean as much if not more than the player on the front.

But that doesn’t mean Hobby legends aren’t a consistent presence.

The most expensive card ever sold via the thread was a Hank Aaron Rookie Card graded PSA 4. @SonofSamIAm sold the card for $4,200 back in December.

The thread continues to grow, and for an increasingly large population of vintage baseball collectors, it’s become a can’t miss event.

@CardsStory credits its growth to word of mouth.

“Every week now I have people that either post a tweet about how excited they are for the next thread or they post tweets of their mail days consisting of cards they bought through the thread.”

See you next Wednesday.

If you like what you read, follow me on Twitter.

EtherScan account 0xc352b534e8b987e036 owns 4.1% of the entire CryptoPunk collection. Of the current 410 Punks held by the top-ranking account on LarvaLabs, 369 of them were claimed during the initial mint way back in 2017 — meaning 90% of the largest CryptoPunk portfolio was claimed for free (not counting gas fees).

• NFTs Net Worth (Zapper): $43M+

• NFTs Net Worth (Dappradar): $167M+

• Most Expensive Purchase: CryptoPunk #2329 for 11ETH ($2,469) in February 2020.

• Most Valuable Sale: CryptoPunk #707 for 160ETH ($547,901) in October 2021.

In total, the account has bought 48 Punks since the initial mint (the math doesn’t add up due to a combination of transfers and Punks bought and since sold). For the totality of these Punks, the largest Punk collector on the planet has spent… 29.19 ETH ($90,389.05).

Not necessarily what you were expecting from such a high roller?

That averages out to a bit under $3.1K per Punk. For some perspective, the average sale price of a Punk over the past year is close to 55.5 ETH ($173.3K).

As for the income generated from sales, the account has sold 126 Punks for a grand total of 2,355.26 ETH ($7,292,992.17).

The most expensive sale came in October 2021 with CryptoPunk #707. Claimed for free in 2017, the Punk was eventually sold off for 160ETH ($547,901). With a Rarity Score of 180.74 and a Rarity Rank of #777, this sale hardly represents the rarest Punk owned by the collector.

That honor belongs to CryptoPunk #372, which has a Rarity Score of 913.85 and a Rarity Rank of #37.

Another one of the most sought-after Punks owned by the account is Punk #9474. 1 of just 88 Zombie Punks, Rarity Tools evaluates it with a Rarity Score of 301.43 and a Rarity Rank of #126.

One wonders if this account belongs to one of the original Larva Labs creators considering the foresight needed to claim hundreds of Punks from the get-go and remain such a steadfast holder in the long–run.

According to the LarvaLabs rankings page, the account has been inactive for two months.

If you like what you read, follow me on Twitter.

A-List Stars don’t do their own shopping. They have a team of stylists and assistants to do that for them. Of course, that law of nature doesn’t simply stop at the boundaries of the metaverse.

So, naturally, celebs need personal NFT shoppers.

Enter: MoonPay.

MoonPay is mostly known as a payment infrastructure company, a connector between the fiat world and the crypto world.

From acting as an onramp for the average crypto investor, it wasn’t too far a leap for MoonPay to adopt a similar service for celebrities.

Remember when Jimmy Fallon changed his Twitter profile picture to a BAYC?

https://twitter.com/jimmyfallon/status/1459164143626424321

If you had pictured Fallon at home grumbling over gas fees and scrambling to find his seed phrase, you’ll be quite disappointed. Fallon bought the Ape through MoonPay’s ‘concierge service’ — meaning MoonPay brokers deals for blue-chip NFTs on behalf of the rich and famous, then initiates a transfer into the buyer’s wallet.

In this case, MoonPay bought Bored Ape #599 for 46.6 ETH ($224,191.20) at 12:28 AM on November 8. Then nine minutes later, the Ape was transferred into an ‘anonymous’ wallet that is almost definitely Fallon’s.

Though this all seems quite secretive, Fallon actually name-checked MoonPay during his interview with Beeple.

Here’s a screengrab of their landing page, which advertises to “high net worth individuals.”

Now that MoonPay’s services have come to light, every transaction coming from their wallet causes a stir.

https://twitter.com/HolocronApe/status/1481049602367315968?s=20

MoonPay hasn’t been limited to BAYC either. On January 6, 2022, they dropped 900 ETH ($3M) on CryptoPunk #2681. The sale was the 12th largest for any CryptoPunk in history, according to DappRadar.

The Punk has yet to be transferred and remains in MoonPay’s OpenSea wallet, where it sits as the most expensive NFT.

Currently, MoonPay is holding two CryptoPunks, nine Bored Apes, 13 World of Women, as well as a few other items which add up to an estimated value of over $7M according to Zapper.

Also worth noticing is the $1M+ ETH MoonPay is currently holding in their wallet, which could mean they are gearing up for another major purchase.

If you like what you read, follow me on Twitter.

Probably the most misunderstood of these use-cases is utility. That’s largely because the broad nature of the term can mean many things, and within the world of NFT projects, there’s been a diverse range of interpretations.

Projects like Jenkins the Valet’s Writer’s Room and Autograph.io are offering members vastly different interpretations of utility, but still both fall under this bucket.

One project that has quietly pioneered a unique path in this space has been Buster Scher through his project “The Buster Show Utility Mics.” Each NFT is an originally-drawn mic representing an episode from Scher’s podcast.

Here’s a look at the two Mics I own, #6 & #7.

For example, if you’d like to own the corresponding NFT to The Buster Show’s episode with Metta World Peace, you’d buy TBS Utility Mic Ep #32. Or, for the episode with AJ Vaynerchuk — TBS Utility Mic Ep #68.

When it comes to the utility for mic holders, it’s surprisingly tangible. Of course, that fits Scher’s work as a podcaster and social media influencer within the collectibles community — taking on topics ranging from sports cards to Lincoln autographs.

So, in that spirit, one of the benefits to holders has been real-life airdrops. Unlike an OpenSea notification, these community rewards arrive in the mail and come stuffed with rare coins, vintage sealed wax, and modern cards of today’s biggest stars.

https://twitter.com/angeloni_alan/status/1474106680011116548?s=20

“I want to overwhelm everyone who buys in with gifts, access, fun, equity and community.”

The Buster Show podcast started back in 2018. And when Scher saw the emergence of social media influencers launching their own NFTs, he saw most were missing a massive opportunity to tie the NFTs to their work.

“Seeing the lack of projects in the space around pre-existing IP was shocking. Everyone was making new stuff instead of attaching it to what they were already doing.”

The most exciting part of the project is still to come, with plans to announce a way for mic holders to benefit directly from their NFTs in the form of passive revenue generated directly from their corresponding podcast.

If you like what you read, follow me on Twitter.

And when you’ve got the Web3 version of a Rolex, you’re going to want to flaunt it. For most BAYC owners, their Ape is tied to their personal brand — evidence of their membership in one of the internet’s most exclusive communities.

But the team behind BAYC #1798 (A.K.A. Jenkins the Valet) saw things differently. Jenkins and brand strategist Safa were inspired by the community but thought there was potential for more.

“What if someone used their Ape to build an entirely new character, outside of the persona of the holder?”

https://twitter.com/jenkinsthevalet/status/1396568755497484290?s=20

Jenkins was bought for .065 ETH ($1,068.52) on May 22, less than a month after the project’s launch. The Ape became BAYC’s own Andy Kaufmann, spinning an origin story painting Jenkins as a lowly valet, humbly parking the boats at the yacht club.

One of the core components of the project is the unique nature of BAYC’s commercial rights terms.

“We developed a thesis that the next generation of household characters would be born on the blockchain. We wanted to lead that charge.”

Character creation was just a piece of the puzzle — Jenkins was also a challenge to the notion of rarity as the sole indicator of value. According to Rarity Tools, more than 67% of Apes are rarer than Jenkins.

They believe “brand” and “backstory” is actually more important than rarity. 

“You don’t need the rarest Ape to make it desirable.”

Jenkins was chosen based on his aesthetics, which “scream Valet” according to the founding team.

“As soon as we saw Ape #1798, we knew he had a story to tell. That is what we look for.”

The project began to take shape. In June, Jenkins wrote another update, admitting to killing a man (every good story needs tragedy) and beginning to roll out his plan to tell the stories of his fellow BAYC. 

It was a roadmap for a new project, one that invited members of the BAYC community in “crafting the world’s first community generative full-feature book.”

“With the ethos of Web3 being decentralization, we saw an opportunity to embrace that for content creation.”

Ownership of an NFT grants access to the “Writer’s Room,” where token-holders can vote on the book’s contents and take part in revenue sharing from sales of the book.

Here’s a breakdown of how the democratized writer’s process works & additional background on the project

https://topshotfund.substack.com/p/jenkins-the-valet

In the months since, Jenkins and the team behind him at Tally Labs have executed on their roadmap at dizzying speeds.

After selling out their August NFT drop in six minutes, they promptly signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA)... weeks before the talent agency agreed to a deal with the BAYC collection as a whole. 

https://twitter.com/jenkinsthevalet/status/1440714371848572928?s=20

I asked the team whether they felt that Jenkins opened the door for the rest of the BAYC community to gain the respect of industry-types like CAA. They were unwilling to take credit, defending BAYC as “a groundbreaking business that doesn’t need anybody to break down doors for them.”

But they don’t deny Jenkins’ impact, explaining that as the first individual NFT to achieve this type of success, he’s “paved the way for other collectors who want to build businesses around their IP.”

Within weeks of going ‘Hollywood’ they had inked a deal to bring 10X NYT Best-Selling Author Neil Strauss on board as the book’s author.

“Our North Star should be to write a better book together than we could on our own,” Strauss explained.

The book is just the first in a series of projects that will “lay the groundwork for the future of our business, and frankly, the future of Web3 storytelling.”

But in the early days of home gaming, developers abided by no such conventions, releasing consoles at a quicker, less-orderly pace that resulted in the cannibalization of previous generation console sales while offering sparse improvements to consumers.

This lack of foresight was one of the driving factors in the video game market crash of 1983, most clearly seen in the collapse of Atari, a pioneering brand that had risen to an 80 percent share of the video game market by 1982 thanks to hits like Pong and Pac-Man.

Just a year later, the decade-old company was fending off massive losses as it appeared that consumer demand for video games had dried up. The embodiment of the crash came in 1983, when Atari directed 14 trucks’ worth of merchandise to be buried in a New Mexico landfill, with cement poured over for good measure. 

https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/landfill-smithsonian-collections-et-extra-terrestrial-atari-2600-game

It was into this perilous terrain that Nintendo entered in the fall of 1985, releasing a limited test-run of their new Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), a repackaged version of the highly successful Japanese Famicom.

Wired’s Chris Kohler explained the massive roadblocks impeding the NES: “In America, videogames were dead, dead, dead. Personal computers were the future, and anything that just played games but couldn't do your taxes was hopelessly backwards.”

https://www.wired.com/2010/10/1018nintendo-nes-launches/

With some sleight-of-hand marketing initiatives, like Duck Hunt’s Zapper Gun and Gyromite’s R.O.B. (both games were packaged as a NES Deluxe Set Pack-In bundle), Nintendo hoped to convince retailers that their new device was closer to a fancy new toy rather than another console that they wouldn’t be able to get out of their inventory.

Though far from an overnight success, or even enough of a bump to totally convince market observers that the video game market was back, the test-run, featuring the 17 original black box games, did well enough to warrant a continued effort. The NES expanded to L.A. in early 1986, followed by Chicago and San Francisco, with a nation-wide launch by the end of the year.

The story goes that the NES became a hit thanks to its historically successful Super Mario Bros. title, but the narrative is much cloudier. It’s actually up for debate as to when Super Mario Bros. was released in the U.S., with the orthodox view remaining for years that it did not come out until 1986, but more recently questions have surfaced that suggest a release date much closer to that original October 1985 launch.

Either way, Nintendo only sold around 50,000 consoles during that first holiday season — a far cry from the 100,000 they had manufactured. Whether Super Mario Bros. was a part of that first release, or it followed a few months later, it’s clear that the game buoyed the NES and help revitalize the video game market. In 1988, Nintendo sold 7 million units of the NES console.

Snoop’s announcement came first, tweeting on 12/21: “When I APE in I APE all the way in!!”

https://twitter.com/SnoopDogg/status/1473367017172393987?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1473367017172393987%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsbtc.com%2Fcrypto%2Fsnoop-dogg-joins-the-bored-ape-yacht-club-and-the-sandbox-read-all-about-it%2F

Eminem’s purchase followed a little over a week later, paying 123.45 ETH (~$452K) for Bored Ape #9055.

Neither rappers are new to the Metaverse, with the D-O-Double-G controversially claiming to be the man behind the NFT Whale Twitter account @cozomomedici in September, which is connected to a wallet with an estimated $11.82M in NFTs (including 10 CryptoPunks).

Eminem owns 331 NFTs according to DappRadar, with this BAYC a long time coming. The Ape, which carries an uncanny resemblance to Slim Shady, was Tweeted about back in November by @Gee__Gazza: “I still think @Eminem is destined to buy my @BoredApeYC one day.”

https://twitter.com/Gee__Gazza/status/1455588012658626562?s=20

Before 2021 came to a close, the sale was a done deal.

https://twitter.com/Gee__Gazza/status/1477005759359733771?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1477005759359733771%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fhypebeast.com%2F2022%2F1%2Feminem-bored-ape-yacht-club-nft-450000-usd-purchase

With the Super Bowl losing its grip on key youth demographics — falling from over 52M viewers between the ages of 18-49 in 2011 to 34.3M in 2021 — the opportunity for two of the rap game’s biggest stars to display their Apes on the world’s most-watched jumbotron could be a tipping point for BAYC and NFTs in general.

After spending a year largely restrained to a small portion of the young adult population, Super Bowl LVI may be the moment we look back on as bringing NFTs from the wallets of young early-adopters to the living rooms of 10s of millions of potential new consumers.

If you like what you read, follow me on Twitter.

Months have gone by, and in place of even beginning the process of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys), I’ve settled for Twitter threads and excuses.

When I finally decided I’d run out of self-justifying ways to procrastinate, it all came together — I became totally prolific. I wrote twice, sometimes three times per day on all types of topics. My ideas came flowing out of me faster than I could type.

Na, just kidding. I’ve been stuck on the starting line for a month. It isn’t writer’s block if you can’t even decide what it is you want to write about, is it?

While I wasn’t writing, I was thinking. Strategizing ways to take that first step. I went back to first principles (a phrase I will assume I’m using correctly for the sake of this piece). In doing so, I put together a guide for myself. A set of heuristics to help ideate and parse out topics worth writing about. The exercise was oddly soothing, constructing guardrails to rely upon for the very painful moments of empty brain syndrome.

At the risk of coming across like someone who feels important enough to dispense advice about writing, I’m going to share some of these guardrails. At the very least, they will by definition prove themselves correct since the end result will be a piece of writing.

• Identify a niche problem and solve it.

Make sure it’s a problem that isn’t being discussed ad nauseum online, and most importantly, make sure it’s a hard problem. It should take serious leg work to solve. If the answer is available via a 5-second Google search, scrap it. You're not better than Google.

The more work it takes to solve the problem, the more interesting the answer will be. And it’s an added competitive advantage considering the resulting piece of work will be the only easily accessible answer on the internet.

Leonidas.eth did exactly this with this timeline.

It tackles a difficult problem: What was the first NFT? Which NFT projects came in what order? And it does the hard work to solve the problem for the reader, presenting them chronologically & providing an evergreen resource that was then used by One37PM’s Alex Gomez and Charles Kolbrener in a recap article.

https://www.one37pm.com/nft/tech/the-definitive-timeline-of-early-nfts-on-ethereum

• Find consensus and dismantle it.

This isn’t a tip to become a Bad Take Artist, disagreeing for the sake of contrarianism. But if you can find a genuine contrarian idea that goes against something widely accepted in culture, you’ll have a topic with a ton of meat on the bone. You can also use the consensus position as jumping-off points along the way to spark new angles.

Seth Godin writes a microblog every single morning. He presses publish so early some days that you’d be more likely to read it while getting home from the bar than drinking your morning coffee.

He’s also a master of going against the grain, like in this blog where he argues “Reach is overrated.”

What do you mean? Isn’t eyeballs the name of the game?

https://seths.blog/2019/05/reach-is-overrated/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29

• Go deeper

You don’t always have to write about a topic that has never been touched. A way to engage with the zeitgeist without getting lost in the ether is to take the mainstream story and hone in on one detail. Follow that detail until you’ve reached the innermost circle of the internet, and then figure out an angle from there. That way you will have your completely unique topic, yet with hooks into a story that already has traction.

A perfect example is this Nathan Baugh thread. He started with a world-famous homerun and ends with a sneaker company. The magic is in taking a mainstream headline and parsing out a story that even avid sports fans wouldn’t know.

https://twitter.com/nathanbaugh27/status/1471114970087706626?s=20

• Find data or a concept that confuses you

People love to share data and esoteric bullshit online in the most purposefully baffling way possible. There’s no shortage of it going around. There are plenty of good ‘explainer’ types on the internet that help bring clarity to the mess, but if you can move fast — especially on Twitter — then you can write up a translation of the topic, connect it to the bewildering matter at hand, and find a grateful audience.

All anyone on Twitter talks about is Crypto these days. But rather than trying to outsmart the crowd, Blake Burge allows his readers the space to take a step back and learn in terms they can actually understand.

https://twitter.com/blakeaburge/status/1445354083435515905?s=20

“There was a majesty in his swing, and a self-assured confidence in style and conduct that was uniquely Joe DiMaggio’s. In the eye of his public, he was more than a sports hero. He was among the most cherished icons of popular culture.”

-Ernest Hemingway

Joe DiMaggio stands ready on his home turf, a patch of grass in center field. Behind his poised face his mind races — not from the pressure of playing in the World Series (been there, done that, won eight), but because he knew the end of the road was drawing near.

Just a few paces to the Yankee Clipper's left is a 19-year-old rookie named Mickey Mantle. Before the game, Mantle was given strict instructions to take any ball he could reach, as DiMaggio's heel had become a concern for Yankees manager Casey Stengel.

After dominating his way through the minor leagues, Mantle's arrival at Yankees camp in the spring of 1951 was a spectacle, everyone hoping to sneak a peek of Stengel's new favorite prospect.

As if the pressure wasn’t enough already, Mantle was saddled with the ultimate responsibility by the Yankees long-time clubhouse attendant, Pete Sheehy, who was in charge of distributing uniforms.

Sheehy had witnessed the sequential greatness of Babe Ruth (No. 3), Lou Gehrig (No. 4), and had picked well by giving Joe DiMaggio No. 5. Now, before Mantle had seen a single pitch in the big leagues, he was entrusted with No. 6.

"Just wait till you see this kid… There's never been anything like this kid. He has more speed than any slugger and more slug than any speedster... and nobody has ever had more of both of 'em together."

-Casey Stengel

The 19-year-old kid from Oklahoma failed to live up to the hype initially, falling into a slump that sent him back down to the minors. Six weeks later he returned and pulled his act together, batting .284 for the remainder of the season.

Notching his first World Series hit with a bunt single in the first inning, Mantle's mid-season worries were far behind him as he watched the Giants’ Willie Mays loft a fly-ball to right-center field.

With Stengel's directions in mind, Mantle sprinted full-speed to record the out.

DiMaggio's declining athleticism had no effect on his pride, and there was no chance he would let some kid infringe on his territory.

“I got it!” DiMaggio calls out, sailing under the ball with the controlled instinct of a veteran. Meanwhile, Mantle, stopping short, catches his cleat on a drainpipe, tearing up his right knee and collapsing to the ground.

The injury was a lasting one for Mantle. Even as he seamlessly replaced DiMaggio in center field and joined the ranks of Yankee greats with a legendary career, he endured ceaseless battles with his own body, struggling to remain healthy. It became the most consequential knee injury in baseball history, not because of what was, but because of what could have been.

Later in life, he’d reflect on the words of Stengel, who said he was going to be better than the great DiMaggio, and even Ruth. “It didn't happen. I never fulfilled what my dad had wanted, and I should have…”

DiMaggio never took kindly to Mantle replacing him (more precisely, Mantle upstaging him), and for his hard-partying lifestyle that directly contradicted DiMaggio’s advice on how a ballplayer should behave. Though not blameless, Mantle always maintained a baseline of respect for his predecessor.

"Heroes are people who are all good with no bad in them. That's the way I always saw Joe DiMaggio. He was beyond question one of the greatest players of the century."

-Mickey Mantle

The grudge never thawed.

In 1995, as Mantle began to succumb to liver cancer — almost certainly a result of his alcoholism, which only worsened with age — DiMaggio still held on to his decades-long animosity.   DiMaggio would later tell his biographer, Dr. Rock Positano:   “You know, Doc, I don’t really feel sorry for the guy. He did it to himself.”

If you like what you read, follow me on Twitter.