NFTs, Bitcoin, Ordinals, Trends

With Bitcoin Hovering Near Its All-Time High and Ordinals Absolutely on Fire, Are ETH NFTs Dead?

My two cents. Hint: No.

Times are strange in the NFT and crypto worlds, frens. Bitcoin briefly hit an all-time high this morning, blasting through $69k for a short time before pulling back about 10% to $63k. Ethereum is hovering around $3,600+, by comparison — continuing its own climb back toward its own ATH of I believe in the neighborhood of $4.8k.

Both chains now have NFTs, of course, which is a new development since the last bull run. So whatever’s coming should be quite interesting. The previous bull run gave a ton of OG ETH stackers plenty to do with their idle ETH. What will OG BTC hoarders do with their stacks now that there’s something fun to do with that BTC?

The difference in the NFT scenarios here, I think, is that ETH was fairly accessible to normal non-whale types when ETH NFTs took off. When the Bored Apes minted, ETH was just a little over $2k, and anyone could get one for a few hundred bucks.

With Ordinals taking off, though, BTC is $69k and the top collections are already showing floors of 0.6+ BTC. Here’s the current floor of the NodeMonkes:

That’s 0.6733 for the cheapest one, which works out to $43,300 USD, or 11.89 ETH. NodeMonkes minted for, I believe, 0.03 BTC — which sounds cheap in comparison to its floor now, but right now that’s around 0.5+ ETH per mint, which would be considered outrageous in the ETH world unless maybe it was an exclusive mint from Yuga or something. By my calcs, NodeMonkes raised about $19 million USD with their mint.

Quantum Cats have a floor around half of the NodeMonkes. They minted for 0.1 BTC, I believe, raising $21 million USD (I believe around 333 BTC — 3,333 supply @ 0.1 each). That would be equivalent right now to a mint at 1.77 ETH each.

Quick aside… those $23k-each cats remind me of my first generative collection, the NFTuxedoCats:

Anyway, yeah, BTC Ordinals is where all of the NFT money is going at the moment. It’s a rich man’s game, in my opinion, which is why I’ve stayed away. I did see notices from influencers about NodeMonkes and Quantum Cats, but tbh I just don’t have 0.5 ETH or 1.77 ETH lying about to mint things, even if the prospects for a great return might look favorable.

So I think this new BTC Ordinals thing is really meant to extract liquidity from OG BTC holders, and also to create even more profit for bigtime ETH NFT holders who are/were ready to level up a bit. It’s fun to watch, but I just think you have to have a lot of available crypto liquidity to risk in order to participate. Well either that or a ton of conviction.

But What About ETH NFTs?

I think that’s the $64 question, right? With so much obscene money being spent in Ordinals circles, it’s a fair question as to whether ETH NFTs have a solid future. I think they DO, though. Mainly that’s because:

• They’re really the OG NFTs in the whole NFT space. While most of Yuga’s offerings are down bad at the moment, I personally believe they’ll come back as the bull returns. If I had extra $$$ at the moment, I’d finally buy a MAYC, at least. God knows I’ve tried to raise the $$$ myself to be able to participate (whether through GlitchDeck, ZittyBrits, LoopieLoos, TEETHscriptions, my 1/1s, or even the old NFTuxedoCats). But, alas, I just am not good at marketing, so have raised about $0 via all of that. (Well, either that or my artwork just sucks royally. But come on, my cats are better than the Quantums, right?)
• There are SO many hugely popular setsand artists still — hundreds or even thousands of them, many with well-established and active communities, many with giant tech platforms built around them, not to mention the tens of thousands of independent artists who’ve issued 1/1 artwork on ETH. Even if Ordinals currently enjoys the limelight in the NFT space, will people abandon CryptoPunks, Bored Apes, Pudgy Penguins, (and the thousands of others and so many thousands of artists)? I just can’t see that happening. (But hey, who knows?)
• I believe MagicEden may play a small role, as it looks like they’re involved in ETH NFTs via their new partnership with Yuga, and that royalties will be enforced there, which is a giant thing for the space. Whether MagicEden replaces OpenSea as the #1, default marketplace … remains to be seen. But ME’s participation in Ordinals is probably a huge thing for them. Why OS hasn’t followed suit is anyone’s guess.
• ETHscriptions continues to develop. These are actually the ETH equivalent to BTC Ordinals and, if Ordinals is any indication of the possible success that ETHscriptions could have, then ETHscriptions are currently criminally undervalued and could really take off. I think that’s going to be a long game, though, as the big players are going to want to play with their BTC for a long time to come before things level off. But still, the floor price of a sub-10k Ordinal inscription is currently 0.0745 BTC — about 1.32 ETH or $4,791. The floor price of a sub-10k ETHscription punk is currently 0.0488 ETH, or $177. That’s an interestingly huge difference (27x) for essentially a thing of the same overall rarity.
• ETH itself is massive and powers tons of other stuff — defi, coins, L2 chains, and just millions of other applications. So it’s not like ETH itself is going anywhere. It’s clearly the #2 crypto coin in the world and, looking ahead at the coming ETFs and whatnot, it’s absolutely going to follow BTC to the moon. (I mean, NFA, DYOR, etc.)
• And finally, as I’ve been talking about all throughout this article, not everyone can afford to play in the BTC world. Sure, we’d all like to, but there are more regular Joes in the world than high-end influencers. It’s fun to watch their antics, and we can sit in awe as they rake in giant bags and flex their holdings. But until we hit that 1000x on an alt coin or something, ETH remains a perfectly fine and accessible marketplace for normies.

✍🏻 Jim Dee founded GenerativeNFTs.io to offer generative art programming, smart contracts, and minting dApps to NFT teams worldwide. Sometimes called the “Michael Jordan of generative art coding,” Jim has coded ~300k+ NFTs with $40+ million in sales. His blog, read by 1+ million web3 insiders since 2021, is considered by many the definitive source of generative art coding and NFT drop team project mgmt. info. Reach out: Jim [at] GenerativeNFTs.io. 🔫

Essential Generative NFT Coding / Team Bookmarks

• My NFT articles organized → → https://GenNFTs.io/
• This blog’s home page.
• The Basics of Generative NFT Coding — (oldie, but a goodie).
• At What Pixel Dimensions Are Most Generative NFT Art Projects Built?
• How to Prepare Artwork for a Generative NFT Programmer
• How to Prepare a Rarity Table for a Generative NFT Art Programmer
• Another article on Rarity Tables (more advanced)
• How to Setup Your Super Rare 1/1s for Your 10k NFT Drop
• Strategies for NFT Teams Regarding Whitelists, Allow Lists, Presale Lists — How Many Wallets to Collect
• Logic Rules in Generative NFT Sets Help Curate the Art, but Need to Be Understood, As Well
• How Generative NFT Reveals Work — Options and Strategies for a Smooth, Secure, and Profitable Reveal Process
• Problems in Generative NFT Coding: Technical Uniqueness Versus Aesthetic Uniqueness
• The Trouble with Overlapping Traits in Generative NFT Programming
• Anatomy of a Generative NFT Drop Team: Roles and Responsibilities for Success on the Ethereum Blockchain
• A good list of general information on generative NFTs.
• Cool NFT Projects Now Minting!

Support Jim’s Writing:

• My 2023 novel 🙀FRAZY CREEK (about cat gangs) does not cover anything crypto related, but if you like hiphop and gangsta rap, you should definitely check it out!
• My 2019 novel 🐕 CHROO (about the world’s richest dog) may have been the first novel to include an actual crypto address within the text!
• My main author web site → JPDbooks.com