“May Moonbirds smile upon you.” — Ancient DeFi proverb

In equities, people pay up for puts in order to hedge their downside. In crypto, by contrast, people were paying up for calls in order to not miss out on the upside. Crypto was a wonderful, wacky world where FOMO reigned supreme.

As seen in data provided by Genesis Volatility, the shape of the options curve — the “smile” — has changed dramatically. Here’s the BTC options curve from September of last year:

That long, upward-sloping tail to the right is a reflection of the huge premiums people were paying for upside exposure to bitcoin: 115% implied vol for the right to buy bitcoin up 100%! And here’s the BTC options curve today:

The market is no longer worried about missing a giant rally in bitcoin.  In fact, upside exposure now costs much less than downside protection.  (i.e., the right-hand side of the chart is now lower than the left-hand side.) That’s the options market’s way of telling you that the upstart crypto market has become a lot more like the boring, old equities market.

There are a number of reasons for this: Realized volatility has been lower, there are more professional market makers selling implied volatility to retail buyers, and options vaults are pushing short-dated volatility lower. Could we ever get back to the wildly upward-sloping smile?  I’m guessing not.  I suspect this is a structural change — Crypto is just a little less special than it used to be in many ways, and more exciting in others.

To the Moon It’s still plenty special, however, as evidenced by the recent trading in Moonbirds. Moonbirds is an NFT collection that launched this weekend at a mint price of 2.5 ETH.  Just a few hours after launch, they were selling for a floor price of over 25 ETH. 25 ETH!

That’s a 1,000% gain in less than a day. Which, mathematically, works out to an annualized return of approximately infinity. You won’t find anything like that on offer in TradFi. In equities, there is occasionally an IPO that opens up 100%. (A measly double).  But those are only available to institutional investors paying millions in commission to bulge bracket investment banks.

As retail, you have a zero percent chance of getting an allocation to one of those — they won’t even let you place an order. Everyone was welcome to place an order for Moonbirds, however. And you had a randomized chance of about 9% of being offered a spot to mint. That’s a 9% chance of 10x upside. Not bad! The barrier to entry here is just being aware that it’s happening.

And being open-minded to the possibility that a pretty ugly jpeg of an owl could be worth $75,000 to someone. Why that might be the case is a story for another day. But the point is that crypto remains a world of right-tail risks — the opposite of traditional finance.

Bitcoin and ether are acting more like TradFi equities. But crypto is still a wacky and wonderful place for investors. (Okay, fine: degens.) Left-tail risks abound in crypto, of course; you may occasionally get rugged. Or lose the seed phrase to a wallet. Or, in a moment of madness, buy something with 8,000% APY that is of course going to zero.

But you might also get a Moonbird.

MOONBIRD UPDATE 4/30 This is the difinition of Going to the Moon!

In case you were under the mistaken impression we’re already in a bear market:

Nasdaq may be down 19% YTD, but animal spirits remain high enough that there are people willing to spend $100,000 on pixelated JPEGs of owls. Someone even accidentally paid $720,000 for this one:

The Sandbox Spent $1 Million on Moonbirds – Top 10 NFT Sales

Originally Posted by Robert Hoogendoorn DappRadar

Community-powered virtual world project wants to promote NFT culture with million dollar purchases

The virtual world project The Sandbox paid 350 ETH or little more than $1 million for Moonbirds NFT #2642, making it the most valuable NFT purchase of the week. This also makes the green Moonbird the highest sale in the NFT collection so far. Another green Moonbirds NFT sold for $519,590, suggesting that the buyer could already be looking at a good amount of profit. about:blank

The Sandbox is no stranger to buying high valued NFTs from prominent collections. Last year they bought a golden Bored Ape NFT for more than $2.9 million. That particular NFT then became a showpiece in the company’s virtual museum. The purchase of Moonbirds #2642 fits the same narrative, bringing valuable NFT culture into The Sandbox.

The NFT collection owned by The Sandbox contains collectible assets from various projects, including 31 Bored Apes, 21 Mutant Apes, 30 World of Women, 8 CyberKongz, 7 Doodles and the list continues. DappRadar estimates the total value of their vault at $21.96 million at the time of writing. https://www.youtube.com/embed/weoEnyT03k4?feature=oembed

Top 10 NFT Sales – Week 16 – April 18-24, 2022

Moonbirds #2642 – $1,030,000 / 350 ETH – Bought by The Sandbox
Moonbirds #3904 – $905,930 / 305 ETH – Bought by 0x79
Moonbirds #5602 – $888,110 / 299 ETH – Bought by 0x79
Moonbirds #7789 – $612,430 / 205 ETH – Bought by 0x19f NFT whale
Moonbirds #8154 – $591,080 / 199 ETH – Bought by 0x79
CryptoPunk #9235 – $561,720 / 190 ETH – Bought by Magic Shen
CryptoPunk #5974 – $549,760 / 185.69 ETH – Buyer moved it their vault
Moonbirds #8249 – $541,070 / 175 ETH – Bought by 0x4b
Moonbirds #5079 – $519,590 / 169 ETH – Bought by Kran.eth
Bored Ape #2552 – $477,860 / 155 ETH – Buyer’s wallet

The rise of Moonbirds

Moonbirds only launched one week ago and already dominates headlines in the NFT space. Last week we reported that Jimmy Fallon got his hands on two Moonbirds and now the Moonbirds NFT collection has become the talk of town. Minting started at 2.5 ETH. The floor price reached 20 ETH after two days, and right now the cheapest Moonbird will cost you 34 ETH or $97,000.

There’s a bigger story here than just the value of the Moonbirds. There’s a story about a collective of NFT collectors and artists, a boys club created through 1,000 NFTs.

What are Moonbirds, the NFT Collection That Broke All Records in a Weekend?

Moonbirds already has a floor price of close to 20 ETH two days after the official mint

Moonbirds is an NFT collection by PROOF Collective, and within 2 days after the official mint, these pixel birds set some impressive records. Moonbirds consists of 10,000 utility-enabled PFPs, developed as the avatar collection for the PROOF Collective. The collection launched on April 16th, and already has a secondary market floor price of 19.59 ETH only a couple of days later. about:blank

Summary:

PROOF Collective is a very influential and rich community of NFT collectors and artists
Members of PROOF got 20% of the Moonbirds supply as they got to mint 2 Moonbirds each
Moonbirds NFT nesting, or staking, supposedly brings rewards to users.
$191 million or 66,000 ETH in secondary market trading volume in just 48 hours
Moonbirds has more sales in hours than Azuki and CloneX did in more than a week
Value of Moonbirds pushed by a close-knit community of PROOF Collective

To better understand Moonbirds NFTs as a phenomenon in the blockchain space, it is important to take a step back and look at the team behind this project. Created as the official PFP collection for the PROOF Collective, Moonbirds has this important connection going for it.

What is the PROOF Collective?

The PROOF Collective is a small but very influential and rather rich community of NFT collectors and artists. As a closed-off society, details regarding this high-end NFT club are scarce. However, the official PROOF website shares that current holders of the 1,000 passes have more than 150,000 NFTs in their collections.

What’s more, a big chunk of this member portfolio includes more than 800 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs and over 5,000 Art Blocks collectibles. In other words, PROOF members have both a lot of money and a good sense of valuable collectibles.

An important note here is that 1,000 NFTs does not signify 1,000 unique PROOF Collective members. Take artist Trey Ratcliff for example, he currently owns 4 PROOF Collective NFTs with a total floor price value of over $1.16 million.

What do Moonbirds have to do with PROOF?

Moonbirds is a profile picture NFT collection created by the PROOF team as a way to denote its members. Importantly, the Moonbirds collection is ten times larger than the original PROOF Collectors pass project. The idea behind this is to allow a new group of NFT collectors to take advantage of the exclusive PROOF Discord channels and events.

Importantly, each PROOF Collective NFT had a spot to mint two Moonbirds NFTs. That means that 20% of the Moonbirds collection was reserved for PROOF Collective members. Still, almost all of the remaining Moonbird NFTs went to collectors outside of the PROOF Collective through an allowlist mechanism. A total of 125 Moonbirds NFTs went to the PROOF Treasury for future collaborations and marketing campaigns.

What does holding a Moonbird NFT give collectors?

One of the biggest perks of holding a Moonbird NFT is the aforementioned access to the exclusive PROOF Collective Discord channel. This is an opportunity for new collectors to join in discussions and gain access to the coveted private club.

Aside from exclusive Discord access, Moonbirds holders have the opportunity to lock up their NFTs in a process resembling staking. The creators have called this locking mechanism nesting. Once a Moonbird NFT is locked and nesting, it brings its owner additional benefits. Importantly, the longer an NFT is nesting, the better the rewards it brings to its owner.

As most things PROOF, the rewards mechanics and roadmap for the Moonbirds project is veiled in secrecy. Despite that, the official Moonbirds website puts an emphasis on the lucrative rewards nesting will bring to owners.

Moonbirds with record-breaking performance in 2 days

The 10,000 Moonbird NFTs officially launched on April 16th, a Saturday. While at first sight there’s nothing impressive about that, in the hours that followed Moonbirds became one of the top-grossing projects in the history of NFTs.

At the time of writing, the Moonbirds collection has already generated more than 66,000 ETH in secondary market trading volume. The dollar value of this volume is worth over $191 million with the current price of ETH. Keep in mind, this volume was amassed in less than 48 hours.

An important detail contributing to the magnitude of trading volume Moonbirds has attracted since launch is the floor price for the collection. The Moonbirds public mint price was 2.5 ETH, while PROOF Collective members minted for free, paying only the gas fees associated with the transaction. It is true that this is a rather high entry price for a 10,000-piece NFT collection. However, an even more impressive feat was the way the collection first marketed on OpenSea.

On April 16th, the average sale price for a Moonbird NFT was around 10 ETH. A steep increase from the 2.5 ETH mint price, and an even steeper revenue generator for PROOF Collective holders who minted for free. Impressively, the floor price has continued to rise and currently sits at 19.59 ETH, or about $56,870.

Of course, not all Moonbirds sold at floor price either. Looking at the Top Sales on the Moonbirds Single Dapp Page, we can see that some of these NFTs have racked in some serious volume for the collection. The top 10 most expensive Moonbirds sales to date all surpass a 90 ETH value, with the most expensive one switching owners for 135 ETH or $412,850.

A brief comparative analysis

To put these impressive stats in perspective let’s look at some of the other trending projects in the NFT space right now. CloneX and Azuki are two of the most traded collections on the market, both gaining popularity in 2022. According to one of the January editions of the New Dapps Report, CloneX managed to generate about $120 million in trading volume in its first week on the secondary market. Remember, Moonbirds has already surpassed that by a significant margin with $191 million generated in less than 48 hours.

Azuki is another highly-valued project in the NFT space at the moment. According to the third January edition of the New Dapps report, the collection recorded $122 million in trading volume after two weeks of being on the secondary market. Once again, Moonbirds surpassed that volume in a matter of hours.

As you can see, Moonbirds far outperforms big names in the industry only a couple of days after its mint. This is a remarkable performance and sets the bar high for the collection in the future. What’s more, the floor price of Moonbirds already outperforms both CloneX and Azuki.

Why is the floor price so high?

In the NFT space, value is determined by the owners of a given collection. Usually when a new collection mints, there are plenty of “flippers” looking to make a quick buck and get a minimal profit on the recently minted NFTs. However, the case with Moonbirds is far from usual or ordinary.

The collection had a public mint price of 2.5 ETH which is rather high. However, considering the ties to the exclusive PROOF Collective project, the high mint price was somewhat expected. The more impressive feat was how the community valued their Moonbirds NFTs. When the collection first hit the market, the floor price was already set at about 8 ETH. This is unprecedented for a collection of this size.

However, mindset and community have a big role to play in this record-breaking performance. Collectors looking to get a Moonbird NFT were mostly tempted by the idea to be part of the PROOF Collective. This is a highly esteemed group of artists and collectors, which demands exclusivity. Often, this exclusivity is achieved on the basis of sufficient wealth. In this sense, an already rich community values its assets in a much different way than what the general NFT space has seen previously.

Moonbirds is an impressive phenomenon revealing that PFP collections can easily rake in millions in volume in a matter of days. All that’s needed is the right kind of backing. DappRadar will continue monitoring both PROOF and the Moonbirds collection, as these are set out to be some of the most traded and top-grossing assets in the NFT space to date. To keep a close eye on the high-end collections check out their official pages below. Additionally, you can join the DappRadar PRO community to get the most up-to-date sales data for these projects.