I haven't really dabbled in NFT JPEGs since CryptoPunks and BAYC took the world by storm, mostly because I haven't really got over my 2017 Cryptokitties and I felt like they were just another hype fad in the crypto ecosystem. That being said, after some of my ETH got freed up, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to take a peek into some of these NFT communities. Specifically, NFT profile picture (PFP) communities.
Picking an NFT PFP Project
My strategy was simple - I'd go to the "Top NFTs" section on OpenSea, sort by ascending floor price and pick those that were reasonably priced (<0.1ETH). I ended up picking two projects to go with mostly due to how I "vibe" with the artwork - Cartoons and the sunnies. They were cute!
I popped into their respective Discord channels just to take a look at the activity in each, but I had already made up my mind regardless. So I pulled the trigger and bought a few of these cute little PFPs.
I started off with one of each.
CartoonsNFT: Buying Pre-Reveal
Since I was still very new to this space, I made the mistake of buying a Cartoon NFT before the reveal - which is the event where every NFT's attributes get revealed and there's a huge scramble to see whether you've gotten a top 10% or a top 1% rarity. And everyone who's been in NFTs for a while probably already knew this, but the floor value of an NFT collection usually goes down after the reveal since you're effectively paying a premium for getting a chance at a rare NFT. And sadly, I didn't. D'oh!
I paid nearly 0.1 ETH for what was basically a "floor toon" - those Cartoons that sit at the floor of the OpenSea marketplace, which is currently at 0.064 ETH and went down to 0.04 ETH at some point. I was quite bummed, but it didn't stop me from buying even more.
In the Discord, activity was bustling. There was tons of discussion about the current floor price on OpenSea all the time, sprinkled with some small talk here and there. Occasionally, good news would flow in - "XXX tweeted about Cartoons! 👀", which would spark a frenzy of bullish sentiments in the short time after. I'm not going to lie, being in a circlejerk where everyone tells each other that the price is going to increase does appeal to my basest desires - which is to buy the next BAYC for cheap, of course.
At the same time, the Discord would organize "Twitter raids" where they'd find a prominent figure or whale in the NFT community and bombard his tweets with Cartoons. Pretty interesting, but this strategy seemed to work well for bringing new eyes to the project.
I did eventually cave in and buy 3 more Cartoons while they dipped, even managing to snag a top 10% for cheap. And while I don't want to fool myself into thinking that these cute-looking clouds will bring untold fortunes to me, perhaps they will one day. Who knows?
the sunnies collection: Experiencing a Pump Right After Buy-In
I really liked these JPEGS - they were cute, inoffensive, and the first one I bought even had a snazzy rainbow background to go with it. Surely, the sunnies were clearly getting mispriced by the market and were affected by the general bear market sentiments - the floor price deserved to be so much higher! At least, that's what everyone agreed on in the Discord.
And truth be told, after I bought in at 0.06 ETH, I was lucky enough to experience in real-time rumors of collabs with bigger, more established NFT collections, alongside whale buy-ins. These events brought the floor price to a very respectable 0.14 in just a day. I was hyped - the sunnies had great potential and I wasn't about to miss out on it!
I bought two more sunnies on the way up and was feeling pretty good about my purchase when the floor hit 0.14. The team's AMA on their Twitter Space was apparently very promising, and everyone in the Discord convinced each other that the sunnies was going to the sun and becoming a blue-chip. Well, turns out that this pump didn't last long and it's now back to a modest floor price of 0.065 ETH.
Channels in the sunnies' Discord
The community seems nice though - there are plenty of Discord channels where you can find people just chilling. Will that be enough to allow this project to compete with the hundreds of other NFT PFP projects out there? Well, we'll see.
Conclusion
While I haven't made any profits (actually probably in paper loss right now due to gas fees and creator royalties that have to be paid when selling), I'm quite intrigued by this space in the cryptosphere. I'm not totally sold on NFT JPEGs in general, but it has been an interesting few days in these communities and I'm looking forward to seeing how these play out in a few weeks or months. Maybe these will become worthless and I'll lose all my money, but I'd just like to see how far the self-delusion can go on this journey 🤣