NFT God Newsletter 8/12: Farokh Gets Sell Shamed, Apepes Pump, The Merge is Coming

The Daily Alpha 8/12- Happy Friday everyone! Wrote a small thread today on the power of asking questions. It's in my opinion the most underrated skill on the planet. Seriously. You want to have success in any walk of life? Practice asking good questions. Questions lead to you gathering better information, building stronger relationships, and enhancing your own emotional intelligence. Want to nail a job interview? Ask really good questions to the interviewer. Want to have a perfect date? Only ask questions. People love talking about themselves, and getting them to do this through good questions will instantly endear them to you. Anyway, onto the alpha-

Latest Twitter Thread:

Today's News:

🔥 Farokh Catches Heat For Selling

🔥 Rare Apepes Surge

🔥 The Merge Confirmed for September

FAROKH IS THE REASON YOU'RE HAVING A BAD DAY

Even in a deep bear market NFT Twitter never sleeps. The big buzz this week was around Farokh selling his Cool Cats collection for over a 6 figure loss. This caused a ton of controversy online as last year Farokh was one of the most outspoken promoters of the project. After a wave butt hurt comments, a new meme was born in the NFT community. The blame Farokh meme. It actually was such a central topic of conversation that Farokh started trending on the platform.

I’ve held many influencers accountable for their actions before. I largely believe several of the thought leaders in the NFT space are bad actors that use unethical tactics to make a buck. In this situation I think it’s ridiculous for Farokh to be taking heat. He sold his collection for a massive loss. He clearly wasn’t pumping in order to dump on his followers. He was excited about the project then eventually gave up. If he would have pumped the project and sold at the same time that would be another thing. That clearly wasn’t the case here though.

Overall this is just another example of toxic sell shaming in the NFT community. It’s so widespread and for sure not the last time it will happen. Sell shaming does nobody any good and just makes your project look hostile. Respect to Farokh for handling this situation well and turning negative attention into positive attention.

RARE APAPES PUMP (WILL SOON DUMP)

Flavor of the week meme NFT Rare Apepes surged from a sub .1 floor all the way past a full ETH. While these type of meme NFT’s usually don’t hold my attention for more than a second, this one struck a chord with me. I was sitting on my plane to Chicago when I saw on my Twitter home page a Space for Apepe’s was going on with over 1000 people listening in. I decided to join and hear what the founders had to say. What I heard was red flag after red flag.

First, they were doing a 20 ETH giveaway to get people into the space. Here’s a spoiler for everyone here, none of these projects actually give away that money. They give it to burner wallets they own if they even transfer the money at all. These meme NFT’s make nothing close to that amount in their first couple of days, so giving away $40,000 to listen to a space is not a good business model. Next, they promised to sweep their floors at the end of the Space. Another cheap pump and dump marketing tactic. They are using floor sweeping as a way to emotionally manipulate people into buying into their project. This kind of price manipulation doesn’t actually work. Lastly, they didn’t talk about the project or the roadmap at all. Instead, all they talked about was the floor price and how it was going to surpass 1 ETH. Another form of emotional manipulation.

The project has pumped. It’s going to start to dump. And by this time next month it’ll be at .1 ETH. This is how every single free mint meme project from the last 4 months have gone. Listen, if you really love the art and think it’s worth spending thousands of dollars to own a frog wearing glasses then go ahead. But if you have any expectation whatsoever of making money on this please don’t buy in and support these pump and dumps.

THE MERGE CONFIRMED FOR SEPTEMBER

This week Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin announced the Merge is coming in September. Quite possibly the biggest event in Crypto since the advent of the Bitcoin, the Merge is set to turn the Mainnet of Ethereum into a Proof of Stake blockchain. Many have speculated on how this will have an impact on pricing. Some suggest prices will pump because miners will no longer be selling their fees into the market. A large portion of selling pressure on Ethereum today is from miners selling their profits. With proof of stake, most of the miner revenue will disappear, eliminating large amounts of selling pressure.

Here is my concern, a vast majority of ETH holders share this same opinion. Typically in the finance space, if a lot of people hold the same opinion, they are going to be wrong. It’s impossible for everyone to be right and everyone to make money. This is feeling a lot like an Otherdeeds situation where you want to buy the rumors and sell the news. I’m continuing my current investment strategy with ETH which is slowly DCA on dips. I don’t plan on going all in because of the Merge, but I am still making small buys here and there. As always, be responsible with your bets, and never over extend yourself. Just because everyone is saying one thing is going to happen, certainly does not mean it will.