Top Shot Doubles Its Money💰
Featuring another death of Top Shot, Sorare's "Collector Score", and a Flowty Feature.
Listen guys.
Predictions are very difficult to make in sports.
For the last 3-4 Mondays, I’ve been calling out the best bets on Top Shot Redemptions; as in, which players were underpriced and set to moon.
I called Jimmy Butler at $3 (now $25), Joel Embiid at $10 (peaked at $25), and Steph Curry at $9 (peaked at $38).
But I also called Kevin Durant at $15, and he’s now $5 after the Suns were eliminated for the second year in a row - and also trailed by 30 points at halftime in an elimination game for the second year in a row.
Tough break for KD (lol), and even worse for me, who stacked a few of his moments!
But at least there’s an NFT project that, despite the downturn, still provides excitement in the form of speculation and actual sports action.
(foreshadowing)
Now lets get into all the action from this past week.
This newsletter is brought to you by the SWOOPS SSN1 drop!
Swoops is a basketball simulation game where you can compete for championships, win daily cash prizes, and honestly just enjoy owning a basketball team!
And their Season 1 drop is coming May 17th, and SIGNUPS for the PRESALE are open right now!
On Swoops, every player has a unique set of traits - as in no two players (NFTs) are the same - and they can all be used to build your squad. And they already boast 200+ community owned teams, and have simulated over 145,000 games!!
Key Details for the SSN1 Drop:
1,500 Total Supply
0.05 ETH per Swoopster
Begins May 17th (see full schedule in above graphic)
The SSN0 public mint sold out in less than 35 mins!
Nothing this week. Go outside and play!
☠️ Community Calls Top Shot “Dead”
Well it happened again.
A story we’ve seen play out MANY times in the last two years; the death of Top Shot.
If you want to get a sense of how often this has been called out, you can simply search “Top Shot Dead” in Twitter.
In that timeline, this tweet in particular stands out to me. It dates back to literally this past November, and features a market cap that is double what it is now.
This week, the latest iteration of "Top Shot is Dead” came at the hands of the latest HOLO and MGLE drops - the former of which failed to “sell out” instantly, marking a lack of demand for the platform’s most premium of products.
This one was especially bad, since this year’s edition of HOLO Moments have been rebranded to “Top Shot 50” and are apparently in collaboration with the NBAPA to feature a unique mix of players (i.e. the stars).
These should be exciting right?
Nope.
Although the packs did eventually sell out, the reaction from the community was nothing short of exhaustion.
It honestly makes zero sense to be dropping packs for $499, that feature regular season plays, right now when the second round of the playoffs is about to end.
Nor does it make sense to drop these packs at all, when the market is already hurting and the pack sales will extract a few more million $ from the community’s liquidity.
Yet, this has been the story for over two years now.
Dating back to the All Star drop fiasco of 2021, when THREE DIFFERENT ALL STAR GAME sets were dropped, TS has been on an over-supply bender in what is now a very clear pursuit of revenue.
There is no other logical explanation for this excess of supply. The team continues to spin new supply as an exciting feature, but no sane person would look at the community’s sentiment + the state of the market and decide that selling millions more dollars of packs is the right thing to do - unless revenue was required as part of the agreement with the NBA.
We keep asking things like “when will they get it right”.
But I’m sorry to say - THIS is it.
This is the product. A constant stream of supply, sugar coated with game tickets, meet-and-greets, and a few thousand t-shirts🤷
⚽ Sorare Launches “Collection Game”
On Thursday, Sorare announced some major updates to their Soccer platform, and focusing on Team Sets + Boosted Points.
Although its a clear copy of Top Shot’s initial Collector Score system (since replaced by “Top Shot Score”), its a solid move for a company trying to make their game pieces worth more.
You can read the full product update here.
Will this apply to MLB and NBA?
I would assume so, as the “team set” system is already on display for both platforms.
Heck, it might happen sooner than later, as this update was posted in Sorare x MLB just yesterday…
🤝 Flowty launches Offers for ALL DAY
Flow marketplace Flowty has finally launched Offers - and it supports many collections that don’t even have it on their native platforms!
You can now use the platform to make offers on:
UFC Strike
NFL ALL DAY
La Liga
And 150+ more!
Despite the sense of “disarray” surrounding Dapper, its great to see some of its community-grown platforms continue to ship and build product.
We got the best plays of the year from the NBA!
Some real beauties in here.
Also, here’s a quick update on how the NHL Playoffs are going (splendid!)
This was really cool. A video from Panini on how their logoman cards are made.
Now if only we had this for NFTs.
Oh wait…
**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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