🥩 NFTs leak into meat-world.

Nike buys RTFKT

• NFT fashion start-up RTFKT has been acquired by Nike in a high-profile move that cements the global apparel brand’s commitment to achieving a concrete presence in the 

• The virtual sneaker brand recently dropped Clone X, a virtual avatar collection that promises to be the beginning of an ambitious metaverse ecosystem.

• The acquisition signals a growing metaverse arms race between Adidas and Nike, as each company is exchanging high-profile moves in the NFT space.

Whitney Houston NFT

• An unreleased demo track recorded by Whitney Houston at age 17 was auctioned off as an NFT for $1 million this week on the Tezos blockchain.

• The auction was conducted by OneofNFT, an NFT music platform that connects collectors to artists and musicians.

• The success of the auction may very well be a harbinger of what’s to come for blockchain music in 2022, and we’ll be keeping an eye on other drops from legacy musicians and bands, who hold powerful IP that can be utilized in the NFT market.

Kasparov’s NFT chess play

• A collection of memorabilia related to chess legend Gary Kasparov is being minted as NFTs, opening another front in the market for cultural figures with infamous legacies.

• The drop is being run by a platform called 1Kind, which describes itself as “a luxury marketplace bringing exclusive NFTs and experiences from the world’s most remarkable people.”

• The Kasparov collection is released as daily drops, and offers memorabilia from the Grandmaster’s career that includes handwritten score sheets from famous matches, childhood photos, and trophies. And they are even auctioning the chance to have a face-to-face meeting with Kasparov…pretty neat.

Speaking of "new projects"...

Nomad BLVD

Iconic L.A.-based muralist Isabelle Lago has created Nomad Blvd, a 3500-piece pfp project based on her work, which graces buildings all throughout Los Angeles. The project also includes a broader range of 15 respected artists to contribute artwork to each represent 150 unique pieces in the collection. The avatars are digital paintings, and together the artists involved have generated over $10 million in NFT sales to date, bringing their collective collector bases together for what is expected to be a very hot drop.

In the Weeds

• Underlying the project is a plan to develop an arts brand that includes merch, events, giveaways, and possibly a DAO to drive future community participation. We’re keeping our eyes peeled.

• The drop will take place over three phases. The first is a whitelist for those who own a piece from Lago’s previous drop, Nomad Blvd | Muralls 2011-2021. The second to collectors who own work from one of the participating artists. And then the third, pieces from the collection are still available, will open to public sale. 

• Aside from Lago, the other artists participating in the collection include: Shanee Benjamin, Claire Salvo, Yuko Shimizu, Amanda Oleander, Jana Nicole, Parin Heidar, Wes Henry, Brian Morris, Kevin Vigil “Mr. Melty:, Luther Brown, Ali Ossayran, Gabe Weis, and Gavin Meeler.

Bird’s Eye View

• The project also weighs heavily toward bridging IRL events and virtual communities, a trend that seems to have become normalized in many of the more successful collections out there. 

• Noman BLVD uses a unique community model in which they bring together artists who’ve already built strong collector bases, creating an immediate and broad audience for the project.

• Keep your eyes peeled for further art-coop-style collections projects, where a pool of artists can both contribute to collection artwork while leveraging combined networks for shared promotion.

Web3 Report

The Wide World of Web3 Sports

We all know of NBA Topshot, and have heard plenty of loose plans by sports figures and leagues to get into the NFT game. But look deeper that you’ll find that integration of sports and crypto isn’t a one-sided, top-down affair. From the ground up we’re seeing initiatives begin which could, possibly, begin to upturn traditional structures of professional sports ownership and management. This week we’re taking a look at two of them.

Krause House

In short, Krause House wants to buy an NBA team, and are composed of a community of “hoop fanatics” to whom being a fan just isn’t enough. The DAO seeks to be the first fan-governed team, allowing members to participate in decisions affecting all business operations including merchandising, partnerships, and management of players and coaches. It sounds audacious, given that sports ownership is the plaything of billionaires. But missions like this underline the potential of disruption that DAOs can pose if they are focused, well-organized, and well-funded. 

Where do they stand? 

With a Discord membership of just over 3,000 people, and 8600 Twitter followers, the organization appears to slowly be building momentum. The group recently held a fundraiser to build a 1000 ETH treasury, with donations being exchanged for the DAO’s own $KRAUSE token. The group’s mantra? WAGBAT - “We’re all Going to Buy a Team.”

WAGMI United

WAGMI United is a group of American investors aiming to use NFTs to buy an English Football team. Describing themselves on Twitter as “Crypto’s road to the Premier League”, the group would be the first organization to buy a sports franchise using crypto as a primary funding source. If successful, WAGMI United plans to make NFTs a central pillar of its community/fan experience. While it might sound like a joke at first, we wouldn’t discount an investor group that includes figures like Gary V and the Philadelphia 76ers’ president of basketball operations, Daryl Morey. Sounds like this can get serious. 

Where do they stand?

The group reportedly is in advanced stages of purchasing a club, rumored to be among one of the two “lower tier” leagues of the English Football League. An official from the group has claimed that the league has been “progressive” in conversations about an acquisition, and if that’s the case, the likelihood of WAGMI United becoming an owner of a professional football club seems possible, if not likely. We’re watching this space.

Since it matters...

The Taxman is Coming 

• As we near the end of a certifiably bonkers year for crypto and NFTs, it’s high time to talk about the elephant in the room: taxes. And yes, we encourage all of you to degen responsibly. We don’t know about other countries’ tax rules, but here in the U.S., the IRS is watching closely.

• First off, you should know that anytime you sell, swap, or buy something with crypto, you trigger a taxable event. Those mad gainz you made by flipping cartoon giraffes? Taxable as well.

• And just as a forewarning, the IRS has pretty substantial resources to track down crypto tax dodgers. In 2022 they will be hunting for non-compliers like never before.

• There are a number of crypto-based tax tools now available at our disposal. TaxBit, Koinly, and TokenTax are a few that connect with your wallet to automate the breakdown of all your transactions. 

• And if you hold NFTs that have gone under in value, it’s possible to sell them for a loss to offset your gains. There are even some protocols like Harvest.Art that act as tools for that very purpose. 

• Tax loss harvesting can also come in the form of wash sales. That is, selling crypto at a loss and purchasing it right back. This practice is regulated for stocks and bonds, but crypto isn’t (yet) classified as a security. 

• There are other ways to lower your tax liability if you act quickly before the end of the year. Don’t say we didn’t warn you, degen. And please, don’t rely on us, because none of this is financial advice. DYOR please and thanks.

Feature: Party Degenerates

Party Degenerates launched in Mid-October to a great deal of promise as a 10k project with involvement from a great number of high-profile artists. Influential creatives like Seedphrase, Claire Silver, Jess Wiseman, and Fvckrender, among others, were included as guest artists offering work to members who owned the collection pfp. The project entered the space with great hype, but how has it done so far?

Floor: .189  ETH  Highest sale: 29 ETH Value Traded: 4.4k ETH

Issues: 10,000 Unique Wallets: 4.1k Average Owned: 2.45

Fundamentally Speaking

The artwork for the collection could be described as similar to Superlative Society in their pseudo-cubism and colorful renderings of figure form. Avatars are rendered in 2-d profile, cast in fragmented and abstract bodies and facial features that feel collaged together in goofy exuberance. The collection is premised on a “rebellious spirit”, and are pitched as misfits and creatives who march to the beat of their own drum.

On the Radar

• The project comes with a slew of membership benefits, including virtual and IRL events, merch, and commercial rights. In addition, there are plans to create a member-owned charity DAO which will provide 10% of secondary sales toward supporting artist and musicians in mental, physical, or economic distress.

• Roadmap 2.0 includes the promise of access to private clubs and lounges around the world, a community platform for live streaming, and partnerships with electronic music festivals. 

• Further on, if the project sustains, the plan is to produce virtual “superclubs” in Sandbox and Decentraland while dropping collection owners 3D avatars to use in the metaverse. 

Technically Speaking

We often see collection drops that hit big after hyped up launches, only to fizzle after the first wave of success, and so far Party Degenerates appears to fit that mold as well. After a couple October peaks of average sales reaching .93 ETH, volume and interest have been declining steadily since to its current average sale of .24ETH to go with a floor of .185. Now two months in, ownership has yet to hit the benchmark distribution of 50%, while total volume feels light compared to other high-profile collections. The team behind the project has big plans in store, and we’ll wait to see if they can execute in order to bring enthusiasm for the collection back into the fold.

Photographer of the Week: Cait Oppermann

Cait Oppermann is a New York-based photographer with graphic and colorful sensibilities, and a track-record for shooting for high-profile clients such as Airbnb, Instagram, Nike, and The New York Times, among many others. Oppermann has recently brought her expertise and her flavorful work to Foundation, where she has just dropped her first project, The Dead Sea.

The project was made over a series of visits to the Dead Sea, a lake that divides Israel and Jordan that is known as among the world’s saltiest bodies of water. The work in this project is composed of Renaissance-like scenes of swimmers showering the salt off their heads and bodies. In effect, Oppermann captures such benign activity with qualities of magical realism. We do not see the eyes of any figure in her images, bodies and swim suits combine to create visual melodies, and the slightly desaturated palette of Oppermann’s work transforms sunny and colorful scenes into quieter, romanticized, and even melancholy works. 

The pictures of Dead Sea sum up to a unique body of work that scratches as something below the surface. Swimmers at leisure are turned to blinded seekers and near-tragic figures, leaving the viewer of the photographs seemingly as the only person with eye-sight.

Also brewing...

• NFTs coming to the Super Bowl? Some crypto investors are trying to raise $20 million to buy a Super Bowl ad spot, this we’d like to see.

• The global market for NFTs just topped $22bn this year. Predictions on how far it rises in 2022?

• Meanwhile, Crypto scams have rugged degens out of roughly $7bnthis year…yikes.

• Bloomberg has been wondering when Google is going to make its move into web3.

• For those who are behind on the times, Coin Market Cap has a list of top NFT games of 2021.

• Kickstarter announced that it’s pivoting to the blockchain, a pretty good idea, really, although their users aren’t happy about it. We’ve got a long way to go

Liked this issue?

Tweet about it and see what happens.

Share this on Twitter and tag @theMorningDrop with a photo of the coolest project on your radar lately, and a few words on why we should check it out.

We’ll feature the most interesting entries in our release next week, and send you something for the trouble. We heard it’s rare.