Cornering The Market #59 - Jan 19, 2024
Terraforms long awaited upgrade, Mapan's next release, and more | Cornering The Market #59
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Sentiment Check
Sentiment is a bit flat at the moment on the art side. Solana and Ordinals were ripping for a bit, but now things are stagnating. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a bit of a downturn in the coming weeks after a big move for BTC and all of crypto, but now the good news of the ETF is behind us. Either way there are some really nice pieces selling for less than expected!
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Market Overview
ETH gen art - We're seeing pockets of volume with rising prices (LOVE by Martin Grasser, Cargo by Kim Asendorf) and some falling (Memories of Qilin). Overall though liquidity is low so movements are being dominated by a few motivated collectors, which doesn't give us a great overall signal on the market
Tezos, Solana, and Ordinals art - Of the three, Ordinals art is holding up the best with new collections coming out and doing quite well all things considered, especially with the attention on the Sotheby's auction
Chromie Squiggle update - Squiggles had solid volume (283E vs 182E in the past 7 day period) and the floor price is holding around 8E, though we are seeing some really nice floor+ pieces going for the floor or into WETH bids. This is fairly consistent with the rest of the art market seeing sales as folks look for liquidity. As I've consistnetly thought this is an opportunity to get really nice works at a discount for those patient to hold long term
Friendship Bracelet (FB) update - A down week with 75 sales resulting in 4.97E in volume and a floor price of 0.064. Compared to the last 7 day period we checked (182 sales leading to 21E in volume and a floor price of 0.068) we've seen mostly some movement without real action. Continues to be consistent with the rest of the gen art market!
Release Recaps
Linea by Stuart Batchelor - I wanted to highlight this collection because I really loved the art and want to commend Verse for continuing to find and elevate fantastic artists. Textured, detailed, and dark in a captivating way, I'm a big fan of this collection that released on 1/10 and look forward to seeing more of Stuart's works!
Generative art news
Terraforms got their upgrade - Terraforms 2.0 is now live and folks can attach Antennas to their terraformed pieces (not all have taken this irreversible step though!). We love this step towards
Sotheby's Ordinals auction! - Sotheby's is leaning into the Ordinals art scene and have kicked off their first curated auction of 19 pieces. Leading the way as of this episode is Genesis Cat by FAR, which is a precursor to their pfp project releasing Quantum Cats. We love the legitimization of this art from the leading auction house and can feel the Ordinals explosion coming
Great art, great prices - beautiful art for ~$500 or less
alignDRAW by Elman Mansimov - A historic collection as the first images ever created by a text prompt, this collection is sitting at a 0.14 ETH floor - way too low given the importance of this technology in my opinion!
Plasticity by p4stoboy - 555 piece early collection with GM DAO. Floor is currently at 0.135E with a number of great pieces close to the floor and rarer pieces close to the amount. Beautiful collection with early GM DAO provenance. The collection has a cool city type theme with attractive palettes.
Exciting upcoming drops
Centrifuge by William Mapan on Avante Art - A beautiful 1/1/35 collection with a physical (as Avante art does), we're always excited to see new works from William. This one has a raffle for 17 pieces that ends on 1/24, and the cost is a reasonable ~$5000 given what William's other works sell for
SMILE by Roope Rainisto - The post photo AI wizard is back at it again with a 1/1/5000 collection on Solana for only 0.2 SOL. I'm a big fan of this on multiple levels, but most notably bringing this new aesthetic to the Solana community with a very low mint price. The art is definitely creepy and provoking, which is Roope's style. Excited to see how this does when it releases on 1/30!
Artists to highlight
Tyler Boswell - An awesome person and even better gen artist, Tyler's September is a blue chip on fxhash and overall his work on combining geometric shapes with brillaint colors is second to none
Mathias Isaken - The talented generative artist has been quiet since his Artblocks Curated release Gumbo, but we're patient awaiting the next work from this master of the craft!
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