Issue 44 🍵 We're running towards the holidays
We're chilling early.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is not financial advice. We buy what we like, and you should buy what you like.
🎄 Reminder: we’ll be taking a break holiday break after today. And extending our break a bit—Cup will be back on January 12! After constant grind, feels long overdue to step back and hopefully gain some objective distance to review things.
Nothing stood out as a news-worthy item for this week, and it’s the holidays. We’re probably not the only ones running towards that beautiful light in the horizon that’s the holiday break.
So no cover story for today, just a chunky reading list that you can enjoy taking your time with.
Otherwise, happy holidays! If you’re reading Cup, either you’ve been in crypto for a while and adapted to a new market, or you’re completely new and you jumped into this deep rabbit hole.
Whatever it is—you’ve worked hard this year, and you deserve a break. 🥂
Other news
🌱 So 10,000 NFT “slices” of the famous Banksy’s “Love is in the Air” will be dropping in early January. “Buyers will receive a digital collector’s card, permission to view the painting IRL, and ‘the right to call the painting theirs.’” Let’s see how they execute it.
🌱 The mysterious artist Pak dethroned Beeple with his latest NFT sale, coming in at a record-breaking $92M. (Look: Pak’s mechanics are always cool, but at some point, these projects engineered so that collectors “win” the game by dropping a ton of money are getting repetitive. But it’s a landmark sale, so sigh, it gets a slot today.)
🌱 There was some hubbub when the new Chief Financial Officer joined the popular Opensea marketplace. The vibe was that Opensea was gonna “sell out”—were they just gonna release an American stock instead of a token? But the new CFO would like to reassure people that no matter what happens, they’ll involve the community. Let’s see if they do.
(Note: How do you even define Opensea’s community at this point, though? It’s such a general service, you can define users, but what’s the parameters for community?)
Reading List
Technical stuff:
Want some year-end reading? The Messari research firm has put out its annual Crypto Theses. It clocks in at 150+ pages, and there’s a section on NFTs and Web3.
Chainalysis also put out a report on the 2021 NFT Market. We linked a shorter summary from their blog, but you can also download a chunky PDF here.
More slightly technical stuff: here’s a review on Foundation’s new custom contracts feature. (We don’t understand the code stuffs either, but let’s pretend that we do)
Alright, last: want to understand how much it costs to deploy an NFT project on Ethereum? Still a bit technical, but this was definitely written to help beginners understand.
Non-technical:
If you’re in NFTs, then it’s definitely worth reading Dror’s piece, “In Praise of Ponzis.” A lot of economic models in the age of the Internet run in ponzinomic structures, and it’s worth understanding that.
A really good read on mental models for NFTs. A provocative quote from it: “NFTs are a better kind of vaporware, and that’s a good thing.”
Hype hype: our very own Gian did a talk about Web3 for a student-led tech organization! Comes with a good list of resources too. :D
Creative Corner
Tom Langfield (Tompop) is a graphic designer, musician, and dad from England. We couldn’t pick a better way to end this year, but with his colorful artworks. The combination of geometric shapes, colors, and movements (from kaleidoscope-y, to going around the canvas), encapsulates the energy in the NFT space with the most familiar of elements.
Check out more of his works on Objkt, OpenSea, and Foundation! If you want to get the latest updates on Tom, follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and Showtime.
Try This
If you want to do something, the Reading List today will genuinely take some time to parse through. Have a go at it.
Otherwise, take your rest, frens.
If you got any news or feedback to share, you can find us on Twitter. And if you like the newsletter, please, share it with a friend or two.