Cast Your Playoff Bracket 🎟️
Featuring 5 different brackets you can enter, tons of cool mints, and all the hot stories from the week of NFT sports.
The playoffs are here folks!
I could write you a whole emotional take about this time of the year is so special, and give you some awful takes like the Lakers can win it all, but honestly that’s best left to the Twitterati.
No, this newsletter is about dumping on sports projects providing value to you, the passive collector, who has 20-minutes to themselves on a Saturday morning before the kids wake up.
We have a loaded Making Moves ⚡ section today, and before we get to that we even have a full list of every NFT-based Playoff bracket available (and non-brackets too!)
🗳️ Top Shot Bracket Challenge
Prize: $250 / Lego Pack / Merch
Details: Hosted on the NBA site
🗳️ Predict The Finals MVP on Top Shot
Prize: Rare Pack, depending on how many people get it right
Details: Just pick ONE player to set as Finals MVP
🗳️ Ballerz Bracket Challenge
Prize: $75 / Ballerz NFT
Details: Hosted on ESPN
🗳️ Own The Moment Playoff Hoops
Prize: $1,000 travel package to Las Vegas
Details: Similar to OTM Rumble (for NFL AL DAY), you’ll need TS Moments
🗳️ Moment Ranks Playoff Tournament
Prize: $2,000 for 1st place
Details: Accumulative daily points throughout the Playoffs
There also tons of good community challenges going, so check them all out under my tweet here from earlier in the week. Good luck 🍀
Looking for help? Check out Mike Zakarian’s thread with his expert picks.
Now let’s get into all the action from this past week.
Loaded section today, and that doesn’t include all the playoff brackets you can enter!
🎁 Mint a FREE Mastercard Pass | 30 seconds
Whoa, who had a Mastercard artists AI pass on their bingo card for the bear market? You can claim one by inputting your birthdate and email.
💳 Mint a FREE Pass on Mint.Fun | 30 seconds
I actually use this website to see what’s minting out at any given moment - and now they have a FREE PASS for anyone who has ever minted on ETH.
⛳ Open a FREE Draft Kings PGA Pack | 30 seconds
To celebrate its launch of the PGA product, Reignmakers has a free pack available right now with NFTs that can be used towards upcoming tournaments.
🤖 Sign up for SWOOPS Presale | 2 minutes
I don’t know TOO much about the Swoops NBA simulation game, but I’ve heard good things. Their next launch is May 17th and costs $100 (and you can pay with fiat).
🏆 Top Shot Announces Fancy Playoff Format
Well lets give some credit to Top Shot here - they are flipping the script on their typical playoff format, and putting the fun into collectors hands for once!
Here’s how it works:
You get “Redemption” Moments
Each Moment is for a specific player, and minted to 5k
When a round ends, you burn the Redemption for an actual moment of that player from that round.
You can also burn one of the previously burned-for moments for a new moment of a new round (so burn your Round 1 for Round 2).
Player moments get scarcer per round as the player advances through the playoffs
If you have ALL moments from the Championship’s teams players, you get a special highlight reel NFT at the end of the Playoffs.
Packs go on sale this Monday, and cost roughly $10 per redemption Moment (and you’re just as likely to pull a Jayson Tatum Redemption as you are a Nic Claxton Redemption lol).
Full info if you click on the tweet below.
What I like:
Love to see Top Shot do something new, and effectively develop its first ever “mint pass” system.
This is a step in the right direction, and shows that Dapper is finding ways to gamify the platform in a way that isn’t possible with paper cards - while also keeping the absolutely essential speculative aspect of NFTs.
They should do this for every single Dapper property, across all sports, across all campaigns (Drafts, Start of Season, All Star, etc.)
What I don’t like:
This should not be a revenue-generating campaign. If they sell out the packs, that will be $2.5M extracted from the ecosystem.
Imagine if they released these moments via a blend of airdrops, trade tickets, and burning current moments, without taking a dime from the community! That would not only rewards the collector base, but also allow that $2.5M to flow back into the market, rather than leave it.
That, and 5k per player is too much supply to be truly exciting (open to being proven wrong here). If these were capped at 1k per player, it would make the 2nd and 3rd round really thrilling to speculate on.
But hey, points for innovation here!
I think the good outweighs the bad for this one, and props to the Dapper/TS team for something really cool.
💰 Sorare NBA eclipses $10M in Q1
Thanks to Sorare Tools, The First Mint has exclusive access to Sorare’s primary and secondary sales data - and as a result we are able to pull them for every month and quarter.
For a long time, its been difficult to distinguish how much of Sorare’s volume is revenue (auctions, new supply), and how much is secondary trading.
But now we got it for all three sports!
Of note, the uptick on MLB secondary volume as the season approached through the month of March. What will this look like next quarter?
🃏 Jokic Auctions for $73k on Sorare
Yes, you’re right - it IS way too late in the season for Sorare to be selling these cards.
But hey, that didn’t stop super collector YNWA from winning the bidding war on the Jokic 1/1 Unique card, which he can use in Unique Tournaments and for years to come.
Up next on the Unique auction block? '
This guy.
Alright, listen.
The Raptors were trash this year, and played an even trashier game this week against one of the only teams thats more trash than they are.
So as a result, I’m mad and instead of posting fun slam dunks and baseball catches, I’m just gonna turn this negative energy around and post feel-good content.
First, Jacob Trouba from the Rangers becoming friends with a Sandy Hook survivor.
Next, Izzy’s speech (mixed in with emotional music?) after knocking out Alex Pereira last Saturday.
Long-time Chicago Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews recently announced he will be departing the team at the end of the season, as Chicago enters a rebuild.
And last, a full clip of Kobe’s final game (which came 7 years ago this past Thursday), followed by his goodbye speech.
**This is not financial advice. Nothing in this newsletter, podcast, or publication should be considered financial or trading advice of any kind. Please do your own thorough research and make your own trading decisions. This is not advice.”
About The First Mint
A web3 sports community. Collectibles, NFTs, and Metaverse.
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