Back in July I became interested in ‘OG’ NFTs. I wrote about stumbling upon Curio cards here and picking up a Mooncat here.
This was good timing as it fortuitously ‘front-ran’ crypto-twitter’s fascination with OG NFT projects. Basically this started as a result of massive gains folks were making from Cryptopunks sales, which led to a search for the next Cryptopunks. The reason attributed for Cryptopunks’ success was that it was (one of) the first NFT projects. It began life in 2017, so now folks are digging up other 2017 treasures and speculating that their scarcity will make hodling them a good long-term investment.
There have been some really cool timelines produced recently to show the early developments of NFT projects, with some 2015/16 projects found and also 2018 projects being thrown in the OG bucket -
Source - @LeonidasNFT
Source - @HarryBTC (this one even shows Rare Pepes on CounterParty)
Source - @WRabbit1111
Curio cards were my first experience buying NFTs outside the Axie Infinity ecosystem. Incidentally, although Axie Infinity has been around since February 2018, increasingly they are excluded from these lists, much to the behest of the Axie community. I understand why though, because Axie Infinity NFTs have a lot of utility, whereas the others are just scarce relics. Whilst technically speaking an Axie is an NFT, it is a fully functional yield-bearing asset and not just a static JPEG. Anyways - in my mind - 2018 NFTs are not OG. 2018 NGMI - that’s nerd crypto talk for not gonna make it (I learned this in the last month or so), or don’t bother wasting your time and effort with those. For me it’s got to be 2017 or earlier.
I don’t have enough invested in crypto to ape into all these relics but I am hodling my Curio card collection and my lone mooncat for mid- to long-term returns. There are a number of catalysts for both these projects that will hopefully see their valuations continue to rise -
- Curio cards - it was announced recently that Christies would be auctioning off a whole set of Curio cards, which saw a big surge in price. I believe that in the weeks leading in to this auction and after (assuming it sells for crazy-high value) prices will continue to moon.
- Mooncats - it has been speculated that mooncats will be next in line to be auctioned by Christies. Also the CUDL mooncats game (although it was hacked and the game is paused) led to a huge resurgence in interest for mooncats. A new version of CUDL is set to be launched in the coming days. Ponderware are also working on another mooncats game. Imagine using your mooncats to yield-farm in two different games simultaneously. This is a great example of the power of NFTs, in that value can retrospectively be built around them through incentivised game mechanics.
I am also casually following CryptoKitties. I bought a ‘vintage’ black-and-white CryptoKitty a month or two ago on the cheap as a nod to my IRL ‘vintage’ cat Collie - hence why I named this one CryptoCollie. There are a couple of other specific kitties that I would like to add to my collection but I’m waiting for the day when I have more ETH to buy. I think interest will cycle back to CryptoKitties soon. In my opinion the only reason why it has largely been ‘forgotten’ in this OG NFT narrative is that CryptoKitties was actually popular in 2017, whereas most of these other relics were not - it is not a discovery project.
By and large, these projects have been the earliest NFT projects on Ethereum, but there is a whole other universe out there on another blockchain - Rare Pepes (RP) on CounterParty, a bitcoin side-chain. Going down this rabbit hole was the next logical step for me.
I would be kidding myself if I said I fully get RPs. I don’t love their aesthetics either but since it was the next logical step I couldn’t resist going down this deep, dark (dank?) hole.
There are varying layers of complexity to buying RP cards -
- ‘Emblem Vault’ on Opensea. For those already familiar with the Ethereum ecosystem and Opensea, this is the easiest way to invest in RPs but it’s also the most risky as there have been a lot of scams. Emblem Vault allows folks to ‘wrap’ RPs from the CounterParty chain into ERC721 tokens (standard Ethereum NFTs). I have heard from the RP discord lots of examples of folks buying RPs on Opensea only to find that the actual CounterParty RP card was never wrapped in the NFT. There is a way to check it is there before buying but a lot of folks don’t know this and get scammed. It’s not a very elegant solution either as a lot of the meta-data for the RP is not on the OpenSea wrapped NFT. It’s also confusing that the collection is called Emblem Vault, not Rare Pepes. RPs are not the only CounterParty NFTs able to be wrapped as Emblem Vault NFTs - more confusion. Yet another reason that led to me ultimately deciding not to buy RPs on Opensea is that the RPs are priced at a premium to the same assets sold on CounterParty - for the convenience for sellers used to buying on Opensea and gas prices and other fees covering wrapping and minting on Ethereum.
- ‘Dispensers’ on Xchain. Using a dispenser means that one only needs to transfer the seller’s nominated amount in bitcoin from your wallet to a unique address. The RP card is then transferred to your wallet. There is a slight premium for this compared with the more difficult way to purchase RPs but it means that one does not need to acquire XCP or PEPECASH, the most common mediums of exchange on CounterParty.
- Counterparty DEX (here or inside some of the CounterParty web wallets) to buy RPs with either XCP or PEPECASH. I tried to acquire some XCP to do this but the price mooned after I put my order in and I haven’t tried since.
Anyways, currently I hold six RP cards. When deciding what RPs to buy, I’ve figured out that the most important questions to consider are -
- What series is the card from (the earlier the better - series 1-9 are from 2016; series 10-30 from 2017; and series 31-36 from 2018)?
- How many cards were issued - 100 or less is the sweet spot for high value RPs (I do not have any of these as I was not prepared to invest that much)?
- Do I find it aesthetically pleasing and/or funny?
- How does it meme value stack up?
- What is the subject matter of the card, what is its cultural significance and does this resonate with me?
In my collection I have one 2016 card (HEISENPEPE - series 2. I really like this one as I am currently watching Breaking Bad), with all the others from 2017. I also have two cards featuring Wojak, who I am currently obsessed with (PEPEAMD and SPCPEPEWOJAK). The cards I hold with the lowest issuance (420) are NINJAPEPES and RAGZTOPEPE.
I’m pretty comfortable just to hodl these for the mid- to long-term. Life is not that exciting right now, as we’re in the midst of COVID v2 lockdowns, so I’ve pretty much looked at every single card from series 1 to 30. I’ve made a shortlist of others I like that I might buy if someone is selling at a price I would be happy to pay (not much). It feels a bit counterintuitive spending bitcoin but RPs are the speculator’s leveraged bitcoin. As I’ve already said, I don’t totally get Pepe and am not in love with the aesthetics so if these do one day moon, I would be happy to sell for the sik gainz. This rabbit hole has been a welcome distraction from lockdown life boredom.