The Winds of Football Return 🏈
Featuring a sellout football drop, Candy Digital's big move, Tom Brady's major loss, and Dapper staff cuts.
Listen, I missed a lot of time these the last few weeks.
While I was gone:
Wemby made his debut at Summer League.
Some players made passive aggressive trade requests.
Opepen dominated the NFT headlines.
Crypto pumped after XRP was deemed “Not a security” in a landmark case.
Chamber Rekt filled in for me on the podcast, and spend 3 total hours discussing Threads, Toronto, Summer League, and Bigfoot with Phil D.
Naturally, it took me a few days to catch up.
And for my return newsletter I had many topics to pick from including Melania Trump breaking NASA rules with an NFT collection and Pudgy Penguins landing at Comic Con.
Both very entertaining stories.
But listen, what we need to talk about is the looming behemoth that’s less than 50 days away: Football Season.
The NFL season is closer than we think.
Just yesterday afternoon, ALL DAY sold out 2,500 “Hot Route Mega” Packs for $45 a pop ($112k in revenue), each containing TWENTY moments and a chance at Legendaries and Rares.
And although they cooled off this past week, low asks in the NFL ALL DAY ecosystem have been creeping up since the Spring.
On top of that, Own The Moment announced the return of The Owner’s Club NFT, which you may remember as my favorite NFT art of all-time:
The summer is still hot and fresh, but soon that autumn breeze will come flowing through and it will the best time in sports yet again.
Until then, here are the best stories from this past week.
Every week, we feature FREE or EASY mints from the web3 world. These are generally safe and take less than a few minutes.
Some good picks this week. That’s 4x NFTs below for a combined price of $3.
🎹 Collect the Openpen Anthem | 30 seconds
One of my fave web3 platforms is sound.xyz, and right now they have the OPEPEN Anthem listed on their front page for $3. What’s with the Opepen hype? Check out this article from Tpan for the full details.
🏟️ FREE Candy Digital All-Star Game NFT | 30 seconds
You can collect this free NFT from Candy, which also enters for a chance at 2x tickets to the World Series!
📦 FREE Bridge Pass on Mint.fun | 30 seconds
If you’ve collected Mint.fun NFTs before, you should be eligible for this one. The platform has rolled out functionality for Zora Network and Optimism.
🎁 FREE Polygon x Fair.xyz NFT | 30 seconds
Fair.xyz (similar to Mint.fun) announced an integration with Polygon this week, and have released this free NFT to celebrate.
This is more “Stories of the Month” since I was away, o don’t get mad if there is some old news here!
😓 Dapper Cuts More Staff
This is the 3rd round of cuts that Dapper Labs has made since last November, when it laid off 22% of staff, and its first since February 2023, when it laid off 20% of staff.
The news was delivered by CEO Roham on July 12th.
Although things are not necessarily going poorly for Dapper - they still hold many sports IP licenses, sell out pack drops, and have hundreds of teams building on FLOW - the move is still not that surprising.
We’re in crypto winter, and these things happen as startups look for long term cash flow and adjust expenses to revenue. Hopefully its the last one for Dapper!
Un-ironically, Roham also posted this boat/ship/titanic emoji the other day, in reference to new features on the Top Shot site.
Which led to the typical razz from the twitter crowd.
📉 Tom Brady Lost $30M in Crypto
The headline speaks for itself.
Reports came out last week that Tom Brady lost $30M in stock during the FTX collapse, and his ex-wife Gisele lost an additional $18M.
You can read the story here on Sports Illustrated, or read the original story on The New York Times, which also details how Taylor Swift “avoided” the crypto crash, if you have a fancy NYT subscription (I don’t).
Brady did not comment publicly - in fact, he’s still rocking his Autograph PFP, and actively promoting the platform on Twitter!
As you may recall, Autograph is an NFT platform that Brady launched during the 2021 bull run, and seemingly abandoned last summer as he returned to the NFL for one final season. Good to see him holding true to his word.
🏟️ MLB Launches Virtual BallPark
I have often spoken about how boring and behind-the-times MLB is, but looks like they came to play for real at this year’s All-Star Game.
Perhaps taking a note from the NBA’s in-app metaverse (that also launched at the All-Star Game), the baseball league revealed a virtual ballpark at this year’s festivities.
Notable features of the park:
Custom-built avatars for fans, including team jerseys
Realistic stadium design, where fans can walk around and see other fans
Live experiences and events, although I’ve been unable to dig up what this means.
Not to be outdone, MLB’s NFT partner also had some big news…
🤝 Candy Merges with Palm
You may remember Palm from such hits as Game of Thrones NFTs and the Batcowls collection - well now, they are merging with Candy Digital!
Of note: all Candy Digital NFTs have been on Palm thus far, including the MLB, Netflix, and Getty Images collections.
This comes just 6 months after Fanatics divested their 60% stake in Candy Digital, as Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin proclaimed NFTs to be basically dead.
Although Candy is “backed” by hustle-porn artist Gary Vaynerchuk, the social media guru has not mentioned or tweeted about the platform since March 2022.
**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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Chamber killed it taking over for 2 weeks!!