The Wolf Den #493 - Are NFTs Flatlining?

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Are NFTs flatlining?

It depends on who you ask. 

If you ask the Wall Street Journal, you’ll find a pretty convincing article outlining why the NFT market year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter is in decline. But ask the same question to an NFT bull who is making generational wealth and you can expect the answer to be a firm “no.” Let’s look deeper.

If you haven’t read the bearish WSJ article that’s making the rounds, you can do so HERE. The article is pretty straightforward. Here are a few of the general points regarding the market.

“The sale of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, fell to a daily average of about 19,000 this week, a 92% decline from a peak of about 225,000 in September. The number of active wallets in the NFT market fell 88% to about 14,000 last week from a high of 119,000 in November.”

They also mention two examples of failed celebrity NFTs, featuring Jack Dorsey and Snoop Dogg. Do you remember all of the buzz around Jack Dorsey’s first-ever tweet turned into an NFT last year that fetched $2.9M? That same NFT was put up for auction last month with an ambitious asking price of $48M. The best offer was .09 $ETH, worth a total of $277.

Epic fail.

Snoop Dogg’s NFT is suffering a similar fate. With an asking price of $25.5M, the current bid is .07 ETH, or roughly $210. 

Jack Dorsey and Snoop Dogg are examples from a growing NFT graveyard. Celebrities, athletes, politicians, and superstars have taken their shots in the NFT market and failed miserably. These failures, plus the millions of knockoffs of successful projects have created an army of the dead. The Wall Street Journal makes a strong point - much of the NFT market is in shambles.

But these examples do not tell the entire story.

Let’s see what the bulls have to say. I’ll speak on their behalf.

NFTs are well established now as an emerging asset class. Ethereum is unsurprisingly the most sought-after blockchain, but others have become promising as well, with Solana being the most notable. If you have held any of the blue-chip NFTs, you have done much better than if you would have just held stocks or even crypto. Punks, Apes, Azukis and Doodles have been strong stores of value.

The NFT market as a whole isn’t flatlining. There is some over saturation, which is expected when people FOMO into a bubble with a new asset class. Interest in some areas is higher than ever. Considering the fact that all markets are down and a large portion of the crypto market is sustaining heavy losses, it’s actually quite impressive how well some NFTs have held their value. 

Just a few days ago, the Otherside project broke a number of NFT records. According to Nonfungible.com, an NFT tracking website, “with nearly $8 billion traded in the first quarter of 2022, the market cannot really be considered to have collapsed. We are seeing more of a form of stabilization, in line with the last quarter of 2021.”

NFTs are here to stay. When the internet was first created, most websites failed. That’s the nature of hype and growth cycles. Most internet companies went bust, but the most important businesses on the planet rose from the ashes of the collapse.

Most fungible tokens have failed as well, or are on their way to 0 eventually. It’s difficult to assess the NFT market without definitive stats. Both CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko track NFTs, but are in beta forms.

Just ignore the hype and the FUD and focus on safe investing, that’s the key.

Choose your projects and coins wisely.

Beautiful. We got the exact move and volatility that we expected, with a break of the descending wedge we have been watching and a break above the $39,218 resistance. It appears price is coming back to test that as support, which would be a scalpers long entry. Bitcoin is still making higher lows, and bouncing off the bottom of the ascending channel should technically give us a target at the top.

Again, this is all conjecture. Charts are just ideas.

Time to pay attention. Bitcoin is forming potential hidden bearish divergence, which would invalidate the bullish divergence and is a signal of downward continuation.

That said, this is not confirmed and right now does not really exist. We would need to see price close lower and a definitive elbow down on RSI. Not a big deal for now. Also, hidden divs tend to be weaker signals.

The Bollinger Bands still remain relatively tight, even after the volatility we have seen of late. Most notably, price finally broke above the centerline, which it has been below for a month. Price is currently testing that as support. If successful, the next stop should be the upper band.

I do NOT share signals in this section. I share setups and charts that I am watching, in an effort to help show you how I view a chart and what criteria would be necessary for me to consider taking a trade. NEVER blindly buy something because it is listed in a newsletter or posted on twitter. You need to have a plan when you enter a trade. These are just ideas, and are almost always “if, then” scenarios. If a certain set of things happen, then I would consider a trade.

Altcoins had a nice little relief bounce yesterday, but it is far too early to tell if they are reversing. That said, there are a few large caps that are showing signs of breakout.

After holding the EQ (equilibrium, center dashed line) of the blue channel as support as discussed, BNB is now working on a local breakout through descending blue resistance. Nothing is confirmed here yet, but my alarm on that blue line went off.

This still has a ton of resistance ahead - MAs, horizontals etc. Not something I would personally rush into, but an example of a coin that is showing signs of reversal. Holding the channel EQ as support should technically target the range highs eventually, around $700.

I continue to watch ETH/BTC for clues on the entire altcoin market. As you can see, price is still in a descending wedge, which should lead to a break to the upside. Further, we had a golden cross between the 50 and 200 MAs, meaning that the shorter moving average crossed up the longer moving average. I consider this generally a lagging indicator, as MAs are a result of past price action. That said, when price is interacting with the lines when the cross happens, you generally see a reaction, which we did in this case. The safest entry here is still a break of the upper descending blue line.

This is the famous brontosaurus pattern. That’s a joke… but we actually see this form on assets all of the time

Ethereum has broken through descending resistance and is funding resistance now at $2950. The safest entries (no entry is ever safe or guaranteed) is a retest of the descending line as support, or a retest of $2950 as support after a candle close above. The drawn path is the ideal scenario, but far from certain unless the entire market is reversing.

SOL looks quite a bit like ETH/USD. We have a breakout through descending blue resistance and just got the retest as support, which had not yet happened when I drew this out. That’s one entry. The next potential entry is the flip of $94.55 to support. The path drawn is hopium, let’s take it step by step. For now, this is still below the $94.55 resistance.

The FOMC meeting is over and the markets appear temporarily appeased. Immediately following the central bank’s decision not to raise rates more than expected, the S&P rose 3% for the biggest increase since May 2020. Investors got what they wanted/expected. Powell added that a 75bps hike was currently “not being considered,” which sent assets flying. This is not a call for celebration, we are still in a pretty dire situation. Inflation continues to rise (for now) and the solution has not been found.

We will take what we can get for the moment.

We have hit the point where it’s no longer a normal day unless something crazy happens. Yesterday, it just happened to be the world’s richest man making fun of ApeCoin. After changing his profile picture to a collage of Bored Ape NFTs, ApeCoin jumped nearly 20%. About an hour later, Elon tweeted and the coin retraced almost back to where it was. As much as there is to say about Musk’s influence, I will say the following - this is the reason most people should avoid trading and just hold quality coins. Quite literally anything can happen that we simply can’t predict.

Understanding the history of money is essential in understanding just how important Bitcoin is. Today’s guest, Mark Moss, is an advocate for financial sovereignty and total history buff. He walks us through the history of money, carefully explaining the roles of both trust and human nature. We also talk war, freedom of speech, and finances. All important topics to consider when deeming Bitcoin the superior currency.

In this episode with Mark Moss, we discuss: