Crypto Weekly

• Crypto Weekly

Jun 4

Crypto markets have remained relatively quiet (although Elon Musk hasn’t) and stable this week. Last week, we wrote several notes about why we thought the market may have found a bottom due to the massive deleveraging, that a falling BTC VIX is indicating peak fear fading, and how news getting...

• Crypto Weekly

May 26

Given the recent crypto market volatility, we are writing a bit more frequently to help ourselves and our readers better assess where the market may be headed. In our Sunday night note, we discussed how the market may be seeing an exhaustion of sellers. In our Monday night note, we...

• Crypto Weekly

May 20

In our crypto flash Monday night, we laid out 9 reasons we thought Bitcoin was close to a bottom around $40k. But yesterday crypto markets went for a wild ride. We got yet another sharp move lower below $30k but have since bounce back and are now at $41k.  Part of this...

• Crypto Weekly

May 12

Each night when most people see the darkness ushering in the end of the day, J-P Metsavainio sees his day just beginning. J-P is known as an astrophotographer, but if an artist is someone who creates images that convey one’s passion and beauty, then J-P is the truest of artists. He works with a model that is all around us but has seldom been seen as clearly and magnificently as J-P has been able to display it. From his home in Finland which is about 90 miles from the Polar Circle, J-P has spent many years photographing the universe and capturing images that bring awe and even tears to not only the casual observer of the stars, but scientists and astronomers as well. In the winter, J-P can be found every clear night collecting data for his work, and in Finland the nights are very long. A self-proclaimed perfectionist, J-P doesn’t want to miss a single clear moment due to software glitches, so he prefers to do everything on his own without the use of automated tools. It makes for many silent and what would appear to be lonely nights (his wife calls herself an “astro-widow”), but J-P sees every moment spent looking at the stars as a moment forming a very personal relationship between him and the images of the universe that he will turn into his own unique art. Source: J-P Metsavainio Although J-P has been working on his art for over two decades and had produced a book with Queen’s guitarist, Brian May that displays his cosmic photographs in 3-D, it was only earlier this year that the world began to take notice of him. On March 16, 2021, J-P Metsavainio tweeted out an image that he had spent 12 years creating. It was a panoramic of our galaxy, specifically the space between the Taurus and Cygnus constellations. The image that J-P provided to the world is a mosaic of 234 frames that shows 125 degrees of the sky and 20 million stars. It’s an awe inspiring and one-of-a-kind photo that has been called a “masterpiece” from an astrophysicist, an “herculean project”, and even Chinese media has called it “one of the most spectacular astronomical works you have ever seen.”  Probably the quote that best nails J-P’s effort was from India where it was written, “_What have you done in the last 12 years? It could be plenty of things, but nothing as fascinating as this ridiculously, amazing and breathtaking Milky Way galaxy image by a Finnish photographer J-P Metsavainio_.” For a man who has spent more time working on creating his art than making money from it, J-P is a quiet and solitary man who is uncomfortable with his newfound attention. Prior to this, J-P worked with the small revenue he earned from his blog called AstroAnarchy which humbly offers photos of his work to the public, including at one time, even wallet photo prints of his amazing images.  Just as J-P has provided an image of the universe that we’ve never seen, he’s now encountering a world he’s never seen that is eager for his art. His image of the universe comes at a time when artists of all mediums are encountering the opportunities provided by NFTs or non-fungible tokens, and J-P has encountered a wave of enthusiasm for his art to be turned into NFTs.  NFTS ARE EMPOWERING ARTISTS TO ACHIEVE NEWFOUND FAME AND MONETARY INDEPENDENCE J-P is like many other artists who have toiled for many years on their art where the passion of their art has sustained them, far more than achieving the financial rewards that come with their hard work and talent. Now, the NFT opportunity is providing a gateway for many artists to realize a wider audience and potential life-altering financial rewards for doing something that they love. Whereas the initial wave of cryptocurrencies infected the minds of libertarians, hard-money evangelists, Austrian economists, and forward-looking tech enthusiasts, NFTs have captured the imagination of a more mainstream audience. Top athletes, musicians, and tech luminaries including Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Kings of Leon, 3LAU, Deadmau5, Mark Cuban, Gary Vee, amongst many others, have become the stewards of the NFT movement.    NFTs are one-of-a-kind digital collectibles that run on public blockchain infrastructure and have properties of scarcity, usage rights, or royalties programmed into them. They are unique transactable tokens that have the potential to empower athletes, artists, musicians, gamers, and content creators to better monetize their efforts. Although NFTs have seen an explosion of interest and usage in recent months, NFTs are not a new concept within the crypto ecosystem. As short-lived as the phenomenon may have been, the first NFT “killer app” was Dapper Labs’ CryptoKitties. The project initially launched in October 2017 to much fanfare and quickly became the most popular decentralized application on Ethereum in the bull phase of the previous market cycle.  CryptoKitties is a gamified NFT marketplace that allows players to purchase, collect, breed, and sell virtual cats. Each CryptoKitty is unique and owned by the user, ownership is validated on the Ethereum blockchain, and its value can appreciate or depreciate based on market demand. The virtual cats are breedable, carry a unique identification number, and possess a total of 12 “cattributes” that can be passed down to offspring, including pattern, eye shape, eye color, fur, color, amongst others. CryptoKitties popularity coincided with the peak of the last cycle, with a single CryptoKitty being sold for $140,000, before waning as the market euphoria subsided.  Source: Kriptoveri Riding the tailwinds of renewed interest in the crypto space over the past 18 months, a new generation of NFT platforms emerged on the scene offering novel products and collectibles that built on the innovations of the past. Sports-focused platforms like NBA TopShot and Sorare, digital art marketplaces like Gemini’s Nifty Gateway and SuperRare, and NFT-enabled digital games like Axie Infinity have generated over $1.4 billion in transaction volume lifetime to date. These platforms open up the design space for innovators to create unique and memorable moments and collectibles, enabling content creators to invite users to more intimately interact with their work.  By inviting individuals to participate in an artist’s story, NFTs can buttress an emerging or already successful artist’s career as they offer specific perks or royalty rights to token holders. Whereas the traditional capital markets enable investors to gain exposure to the upside of a new venture through the issuance of debt and equity, NFTs may enable fans to gain exposure to the upside of an individual artist’s career. Token holders may capture this upside as the token appreciates in value alongside the artist’s rising popularity or cash flows accrue to the token if structured with revenue share or licensing fees. Although already accomplished sport stars and best-selling musicians may claim the lion’s share of the media attention and headlines, the NFT space is providing struggling and rising artists like J-P an opportunity to redefine themselves and monetize their life’s work by weaving entirely new narratives. THE $69 MILLION DIGITAL ART PROJECT Mike Winkelmann grew up in North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin in a normal working-class family and currently resides in North Charleston, South Carolina. After a brief career designing corporate websites, Winkelmann turned his attention to creating animated digital art. On May 1, 2008 Winkelmann began his “Everydays” project in which he created a new piece of digital art every day since then. The project is ongoing and has spanned over 5,000 days of art creation. Now, more commonly known by his online persona Beeple, Winkelmann made headlines when his piece “Everydays: the First 5000 Days” sold for over $69 million worth of ethereum at a Christie’s auction in March of this year. Winkelmann continues his Everydays project and he is known for his distinct artistic style incorporating bizarre and often disturbing and grotesque imagery that combines pungent pop culture, politics, and technology themes.  Source: Pinterest By tapping into the rising popularity of the NFT ecosystem, Winkelmann and many other artists have captured the opportunity to reach new levels of public exposure and catapult themselves to the top of the art world. The most successful artists in this new digital realm are those that understand they can use the medium to weave new stories, capturing the imagination and devotion of fans.   Despite the early success of NFTs, they are still largely a “proof of concept” and critics have rightly questioned whether they would have enduring value. After all, NFT minting services like Mintable and Mintbase enable anyone to easily create an NFT with just a few clicks and the cost of the blockchain network’s transaction gas fee. Are they truly scarce and valuable memorabilia if content creators can so easily flood the market with new pieces of digital work? Although, we may not get the answer to this question anytime soon, it is clear NFTs have sparked a shift in mindset in how users think about and engage with digital goods and experiences. Users and investors will always value a claim to the artist’s original work over any copy, and the technology employed by NFTs plays a critical role in verifying provenance.  Although J-P can’t claim domain over the glorious universe that he has painstakingly photographed for decades, his claim to being the artist who was able to capture “the magnificent beauty of the entire Milky Way galaxy” and a view of “the first black hole ever discovered” can be assured through NFTs representing his art. For J-P, the NFT universe may be a new one for him, but it may provide him a way to prove ownership of a small corner of the real universe which has been his model for decades. And that ownership could open up recognition and rewards beyond anything he has ever dreamed of.  Like the universe that J-P is probably photographing now as you read this article, the NFT universe is also ever expanding. As I was completing this article, J-P received word that he has been approved to list on the SuperRare NFT platform. As an artist who has been working for years on his art, he has many pieces beside the Milky Way mosaic and is unsure which of those he will initially list on that platform or even subsequent NFT platforms. Whatever he decides, the astrophotographer will still be most comfortable sitting in the dark looking to the heavens and ensuring that we have the most wondrous view.