https://forkast.news/bitcoin-and-ethereum-two-titans-battle-for-nft-supremacy/

This past weekend, two major cryptocurrency/non-fungible tokens events happened, Veecon Indianapolis 2023 and the BTC Miami/Ordinals Conference 2023.

I chose to go to Indianapolis to meet my colleagues whom I’ve worked with for almost three years without meeting them in real life.

At one point, as I was walking back to the hotel on the streets of Indianapolis, it became apparent to me that there was a split in the NFT community. One was the “status quo” ETH-based community that’s in the pre-teen stage meeting up at Veecon, and the other was a newly birthed baby in Miami at BTC Miami/Ordinals 2023.

At Forkast Labs, we work on CryptoSlam.io to “unite the NFT community.” Ever since our co-founder Randy Wasinger added Loom (Sorare), Flow and WAX chains, alongside Ethereum in early 2021, we have always strived to include all new and relevant chains that we can. 

I also met loads of NFT industry celebs, including Richerd Chan from Manifold.xyz, who has created some of the most used Ethereum smart contracts in the NFT industry. He had actually reached out to me in 2020 through a client at the time and we had only talked online, but never met in person, and now he had so many folks around him that I could only briefly speak with him.

As an epic Ethereum NFT celebrity and developer, I decided to ask him a very telling question: “Are you developing for Bitcoin?”

His response made it clear that he wasn’t and had no intention of doing so at the moment. He posed a great question in return: “Is the BTC community even supporting Ordinals?”

It’s a great question, to be honest. 

In Miami, it seems that the main theme revolves around the “laser-eyed maxis” who view Bitcoin as having a single use case: being “better money” and a store of value that shouldn’t be tampered with.

On the other hand, the new Ordinal crew, represented by individuals like @rodarmor, @TO, @LeonidasNFT and @udiwertheimer, are leading the charge on alternative use cases such as digital artifacts (NFTs) and BRC-20s, which are the bitcoin equivalent of fungible tokens like ETH and BTC. 

The latest rankings on CryptoSlam.io show that $OXBT and $ORDI are in the top 10, indicating the rapid rise of Bitcoin in the scene.

Personally, I have never seen an ecosystem boot up this fast, except for NFTs in 2020-2021, and I would argue that it’s even moving faster this time around.

The Bitcoin market cap of over US$500 billion is more than double the Ethereum currency market cap of over US$200 billion. The Bitcoin protocol may be better suited to certain types of NFTs, ones that see immutability and scarcity as features instead of weaknesses.

Fundamentally, there is a big difference forming between what we are seeing on ETH and what we are seeing on BTC. The community is splitting into people who value UX, and corporate partners and one who values ultimate security/scarcity and immutability. While I think there are strengths to each, there IS a place for both.

Net new people are coming into the “NFT” ecosystem, even if they will only trade Ordinals on BTC or BRC-20s, and they are really small in numbers, they are net new people. What will happen when the Michael Saylors of the world see the value in Ordinal theory, and its burgeoning use cases on BTC?

Saylor talks about why Ordinals & Inscriptions are an important conversation, saying 👇

“If I were to discourage application development, I would be destroying the Bitcoin mining network.” pic.twitter.com/i2xAayWREz

— trevor.btc @ NYC (@TO) May 21, 2023

The NFT ecosystem, while can be seen as splitting, is actually growing and innovating, and while Taylor Swift fans are not coming in en masse, the core set of people who see the future of this technology is more excited about the growth of this industry than ever before.

https://forkast.news/why-im-excited-about-commercial-ip-nfts/

While I had a Creative Commons Zero PFP for some time (an Mfer) pictured here:

I sold and inscribed it on a satoshi (a millionth of a Bitcoin) and under 100,000 inscription number (#75499). Since ordinals theory uses sequential numbers, the lower the number, the more coveted, so I sold my Mfer on Ether and used the funds to inscribe the same image with a slight modification on Bitcoin using the gamma.io marketplace at the time. 

I could have done this because Mfers are on a CC0 license and that means I have the right to use the image in any way that I want because the creator of the art waived all copyright protections on the art and put it in the public domain. In fact, all Mfers are CC0 so I don’t even need to own the non-fungible tokens (NFT) to be able to use any image in the entire collection. So, in theory, I could right-click and save any image in the collection and use it however I’d like. I could put one of the rarest ones on a T-shirt and sell it if I wanted.

The creator of Mfers (Sartoshi) did this to propagate the art into the mind space of everyone and anyone who wanted to experiment with the brand. In this small world we live in, the corner of NFTs, having your brand multiply and grow is a genius move, in my opinion. The number of derivative collections using Mfer art exploded as a result. Creyzies is the “official” derivative, but there are at least 20 more.  This is especially so if the art is simple and iconic because it gives other creative people in the space a canvas on which to use that art to build.

On the other hand, CryptoPunks, Bored Apes, Nakamigos, and Wonderpals have a commercial IP license which means ONLY the owner of the NFT can use the art associated with the NFT they own. They can sell items commercially or use the image to represent their brand.

As a CMO, I get why this is important. However, it only works for the winners in the PFP space. For every 1000 PFPs with commercial licenses on the art, maybe only 5 are recognizable, coveted, and brandable as a viable commercial opportunity with mass appeal.

The ones that make this top 5, even top 10, have very exciting futures. For example, Wonderpals hired a company whose strength is creating internationally appealing household name brands and here’s a screenshot of an announcement in their Discord.

How can that not be exciting for the NFT holder?

The latest Nakamigos collection went out of its way to include the CC0 native Mfer community in their mint but made it a point in their marketing to assert that commercial rights for the holder are intact. 

I’ve also seen Bored Apes use their apes commercially as well. As a coffee brand, consulting business, and even a fast food franchise.

If the Web3 community is creating the brands that the future generation will trust and interact with, and eventually purchase from, then these silly PFPs which we thought of as a waste of time, are potentially valuable and exciting to own.

The PFP communities of the winning brands all of a sudden become a decentrally minded hybrid company, if they leverage and shepherd their brand the right way.

To me that’s exciting, and I have a feeling that others are feeling the same.

Have a great weekend and touch grass…

It’s Spring and it’s glorious!

(The writer of this commentary owns several Wonderpals and Nakamigos NFTs)

https://forkast.news/uncertainty-in-crypto-cycles-from-memecoins-nfts/

Before non-fungible tokens (NFT) came on the scene, the following chart was a fairly good representation of patterns that happened in the industry.

Fiat currency flowed largely through Bitcoin and other large caps before trickling down to mid caps and finally to low caps (also affectionately known as “shitcoins”).

A couple of things have changed in the past two years, one being the emergence of NFTs as a digital asset class that fits somewhere in the above cycle.

It’s my opinion that NFTs, especially PFPs, are a hybrid of an identity solution, a club and a fungible token. There are different sizes by market cap, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Azuki being the large cap of the NFT market, Mfer’s, Nakamigo’s, and Milady’s being the mid caps and then basically the rest making up the small caps. Finally, add to the mix memecoins. They really do not profess to have any utility other than social media posting and having fun!

Fun + memes can now be a digital asset? Yeah. We see this by looking at $DOGE, $SHIBA, and now $PEPE, which reached a $150m market cap in several days. The Milady Maker PFP community is rumored to be behind the $PEPE memecoin emergence.

Memecoins came back in after the Nakamigos and BAYC communities stagnated and had some large holders leave the community. That, combined with the boredom of retail crypto folks, and boom, on the scene comes memecoin season! It took over for a few days this past week with $PEPE, and others which I don’t really want to mention because I’m not sure it will be a long loved meta. But who knows?

The Milady Maker’s PFP assets rose this past week as the memecoin meta kicked off.

These new digital assets are now throwing more curve balls into the flow, and it’s yet to be seen where they fit in. One thing I know for certain, though, is that when large caps run, they rise fast, sucking all the liquidity from mid-lower caps. When they stop running, the capital flows back to mid-low caps. This pattern can happen across all classes (NFTs, fungible tokens) and also across categories as well (PFPs, Game-FI, fungible tokens, and utility NFTs), which is causing the Web3 scene to seem very chaotic.

With these liquidity ebbs and flows causing uncertainty even for the most seasoned traders, it’s clear that new patterns are emerging in the brave new world of NFTs and memecoins.

Note that the observations presented in this text are not intended as financial advice but rather the insights of an individual who has an interest in recognizing trends and patterns, much like many others in this space.

The Forkast 500 NFT Index is down over 2% over the past seven days, reflecting a sharp decline in the NFT market. A new memecoin called $PEPE has been trading at volume, causing high transaction fees on Ethereum. NFT volume, on the other hand, has suffered as traders practice patience, with many waiting for fees to normalize.