Milady vs BAYC

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Today we cover:

• Tuesday Deep Dive: What we can learn from Milady and how to identify early trends

• Is Blur dying and taking NFTs along with it?

• Sam Spratt’s NFT collection sells out in 2 minutes (that’s $1M worth)

Market Update: Blood in the Streets

The Forkast 500 NFT index, which tracks top NFT collection prices across multiple blockchains, is down 7% on the week.

And our beloved NFT collections? They've taken a nosedive too, crashing 20% across the board. Everyone's pointing fingers and, as usual, Blur is the scapegoat. It’s the easier target out there. But we think it’s all just cope in a market with little organic demand today.

Notable collections:

• Bored Ape Yacht Club (23 ETH, -22% from last week)

• Mutant Ape Yacht Club (4.3 ETH, -27%)

• DeGods (3.8 ETH, -22%)

• Azuki (3.5 ETH, -29%)

• Pudgy Penguins (3.7 ETH, -9%)

A Tale of Two PFPs — BAYC vs Milady

Bored Apes (and most NFTs for that matter) have been bleeding down. But there’s one 10K PFP collection that’s bucked the trend — Milady.

We thought it’ll be interesting to look at some data and see if we can find the alpha that helps us identify the next early trade.

(Charts here from Nansen)

 💲 Price Trends

It’s pretty obvious that BAYC and Milady are on different trajectories, at least in terms of price. The floor price for BAYC has just been down only, falling over 50% to 23 ETH now. A lot of people are blaming Blur farmers for this: they have been selling their inventory as BLUR airdrop farming becomes less & less enticing as the token falls in price.

Milady, on the other hand, has been a shining star. After a period of stagnation, it saw a 50% price increase this month.

☘️ Ownership

Ownership tells a tale of two trends. The common idea is that a higher unique ownership means that less supply is in the hands of whales who are often speculators and not long-term holders.

BAYC has enjoyed high unique ownership, hovering at 60%+ for most of 2022. On the surface, this might seem positive, but it's been on a downward trend since the start of 2023, a concerning development.

Milady started with a low base, around 30% unique ownership, but has been climbing steadily since February 2023, now at 36%. It's a slow and steady race to the top, and Milady seems to be winning. At first glance, a low % of unique ownership appears negative for price, but it doesn’t seem so.

🤑 Number of Listings

The number of listings provides another interesting perspective. BAYC has seen a 70% rise in listings on OpenSea over the past 90 days (from ~300 to 500+ now), suggesting that more owners are looking to sell.

Owners that list their NFTs typically have a higher intention to sell compared to who haven’t listed.

In contrast, the number of Milady NFTs listed was pretty high in May (900+) but has been on a downtrend since. Listed NFTs have fallen 45% to ~500 today.

Both BAYC and Milady have approximately the same number of NFTs listed, but very different trends.

So, what's the big picture? Ownership and listings can be like tea leaves, giving us clues about the price trend of an NFT collection:

1. The absolute % of unique owners and NFTs listed is not so important, because there are different dynamics with every project (mint structure etc). Single point in time comparisons are less helpful.

2. Rather, the most important thing to watch for is the trend.

3. Rising % of unique ownership + Falling % of listings = Positive signal for price. And vice versa.

Of course, this is not a foolproof indicator and needs to be considered with other factors as well: community sentiment, market events etc.

BAYC and Milady have shown us that every collection has its unique story, and understanding these narratives can lead to more informed decisions.

Our Favourite Tweets

🐥 Is Blur dying? We don’t agree but interesting to see the market’s perspective

🐥 $PRIME is the GameFi token that has done spectacularly well in the recent weeks. Some counter takes:

🐥 Yuga Labs moving away from OpenSea in order to collect more royalties

🐥 Azuki gets into…football? Signs up Patrick Mahomes and will do a raffle for a 1/1 NFT on 24 Aug

🐥 RECUR shuts down without warning. A sad day for the space.

🐥 A mental model for Ethereum: a game environment?

🐥 Sam Spratt’s collection sells out instantly. Shows that there is still demand in the market, just that its very selective/sophisticated

🐥 Three early NFT projects: Mints are free

Upcoming Mints

🍿 Highlight x Fingerprints DAO on 22 August. This is part of Base’s onchain summer.

🍿 Adidas x BAPE on 22 August. 100 pairs only.

That's it for today folks, see you later. If you want more, follow us on Twitter (@the_metadata). If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can subscribe with just one-click:

Disclaimer: This newsletter is for educational purposes only. None of this is financial or investment advice. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell any assets. Minting and buying NFTs is risky. Please do your own research.