Cornering The Market #61 - Feb 16, 2024
Bitcoin roars, great art releasing, and more | Cornering The Market #61
Welcome to your generative art review!
For more context and images of beautiful art check out our weekly Youtube video of the episode (also below) and follow us on Twitter.
But definitely read on because this newsletter has exclusive stories and art!
Sentiment Check
Sentiment is...interesting on the art side. On the one hand everyone is happy with Bitcoin booming and airdrops raining free money, yet on the other hand much of art hasn't moved too much. However it does feel like the bull market is entering another phase and we suspect we'll see folks who were out for the last 18 months returning and later new entrants. I suspect this will be an overall less degen crowd and more art focused - let's see!
Reach Out To Stay Ahead Of The Best Art & Opportunities
Do you want to make sure you don’t miss the next big trend or collection? Trying to figure out the best time to buy that grail you’ve been eying? Collector’s Corner Premium is the place for you!
We make content specifically for those who want to collect the best work early and not miss the mega collections of the next bull run. In addition, we have a private discord server where some of the smartest minds in web3 art share info. We also have special speakers and exclusive giveaways.
Market Overview
ETH gen art - ETH gen art continues to have an interesting profile as we are seeing liquidity moreso in the higher end, more expensive collections, and we're occasionally seeing fresh wallets come in and buy above floor pieces (or at least market buy), such as a recent wallet that bought 3 Fidenzas. Then we're seeing really nice pieces sell for cheaper than expected (for example a Chromie Squiggle, that I'll touch on a bit later). We haven't seen something really pop off the charts yet, but the fact that people are *not* capitulating is a very good sign IMO. Now with ETH ripping up we'll see where things go from here
Tezos, Solana, and Ordinals art - We'll focus on Ordinals art today because we saw a lot of excitement around two very different mints, the first Floraforms by Harto and the second FLARES by Far (the founder of popular PFP Quantum Cats) - both saw significant price action after the fact. Also the generative art platform Function (of which I am a curator) has started releasing many affordable releases for those on the VIP list!
Chromie Squiggle update - Another downish week for squiggles with only 13 sales accounting for 100 ETH in volume vs. 9 sales and 83 ETH in volume the last 7 day period we checked. Floor price has largely held up though currently at 7.23 vs. 7.6 two weeks ago, but we are seeing some really nice pieces sell, notably low color spread fuzzy 6392 at 8.6 and CS 6 slinky 1009 at 7.95. However given the rise in ETH prices, we're actually up in USD at around a $20k floor, not too far off a year long high of $25k in Jan of 2023. Again, bullish if you take a different viewpoint on it - these are holding up quite well
Friendship Bracelet (FB) update - 80 sales leading to 7.5 ETH in volume and the floor price is relatively stable at 0.06, which is pretty comprable the last 7 day period we looked (75 sales leading to 5 ETH in volume and a FP of 0.064). FB continue to mirror the relatively low liquidity in the broader gen art market
Release Recaps
Proscenium by Remnynt - The latest Artblocks Curated was beautiful, but it seems speculators got word and all 400 pieces minted out at 1.25 ETH. Clearly this was too high for the market and it's dropped to a 0.83 ETH floor (as of this writing) with 30% listed. Hopefully Artblocks seriously considers rectifying this open mint concept, which has likely killed all momentum for this collection and sadly the attention may just move on. Not what the art deserves.
Flares by FAR - FLARES was a 1/1/512 release on Ordinals by the founder of Quantum Cats and Taproot Wizards, who is also a prolific generative artist with works on Solana and Ethereum as well. It minted at 0.015 BTC (regular DA), jumped to 0.025 BTC, and now is around 0.02 BTC with ~15% listed. Overall it's an intriguing collection with lots of constant changes and motion, so it's fun to see and great to see the enthusiasm for gen art regardless of chain
Generative art news
Art has started to not mint out, and that's OK - Bright Moments Paris is struggling to mint out, Tonic's newest release by Lovid, Pindar Van Arman's Reflections, XCOPY's latest Max Pain burn, and many others. We think this is the inevitable ebb and flow of markets as the supply of good art has outstripped the $$ availabile to buy it, so mint prices naturally have to come down.
Check out our weekly Twitter Spaces! - Jared and I are doing a weekly twitter spaces Friday 5pm EST and so far we've had some fantastic conversations with top artists like DCA and James Merill, and great collectors. It's literally no script, just talking about what we are seeing and hearing takes from the crowd. This week we're going to talk about what institutions might matter in the future, looking at Pebbles and the Ether Rock Sotheby's auction coming up
Great art, great prices - beautiful art for ~$500 or less
Universal Rayhatcher by Piter Pasma - One of the most interesting collections I've seen, UR was a fxparam project where Piter made sure another artist who could code it got the mint ticket then they had some guard rails to make very different and intriguing art. It's an innovative collection that doesn't get the attention it deserves, but that is to your benefit dear reader as the floor is only 100 XTZ at the moment
SOL-365 by Cory Haber - At a 0.18 ETh floor this just sneaks into our criteria, but my god this is a beautiful collection, amazing generative art, and looks brilliant on your wall. I can't think of a better pick
Exciting upcoming drops
Monument by Kjetil Golid - Releasing on Verse on 2/20, this 1/1/180 long form generative art project comes from a beloved early Artblocks Curated artist with a particular style of rectangular partioning. It will be $333 for the presale folks and then dutch auctions for everyone else (check this tweet for the presale details)
Faster than Light by Makio135 - We dont' have a ton of details yet, but we know it will be 0.15 SOL (crazy cheap!) and the kick off of Code Canvas' season 2, a curated long form generative art platform on Solana. Love to see gen art kicking off in Solana as well!
Artists to highlight
Makio135 - Horo by Makio135 is one of my favorite collections and I'm excited to see him coming back over on Solana. He's got a great street art vibe and is a brilliant coder, one worth checking out for sure
Zeblocks - The artist duo of ARs0nic and Cheaterflums has been around for some time going back to Unigrids an early Artblocks Curated. Ars0nic is a fantastic digital artist and mixing that with long form gen art has always intrigued me. Now with their Pebbles grabbing the attention of the 6529 memes community, these are ones to pay attention to
Thanks for reading Cornering The Market. If you enjoyed this please subscribe and share it. Also make sure to follow us on Twitter and Youtube for the latest and greatest in the generative art world!
Please subscribe and share this newsletter with anyone you think would enjoy it.