NFT God Newsletter 9/22: Magic Eden, The Merge, Frank Returns

The Daily Alpha 9/22- Happy Thursday everyone! I posted a thread last week on different ways to grow your audience on Twitter. I've gotten quite a few replies asking me why the average person should care about growing their following. Here's what I have to say: in 2022 there's no more powerful way to gain leverage than to build an audience. When you have an audience it's like a super power. Opportunities just chase you. People want to be associated with you. They want to work with you. But even more important than that, the journey you take building a platform improves you in so many ways. Whether you're building your writing skills by constructing threads or improving your communication skills by talking on Spaces. If you work on building an audience for a year and don't gain a single follower you still won because you built the business of YOU. Questions, comments, or straight up disagree? Feel free to email me [email protected]. Anyway, onto the alpha-

Contents:

1️⃣ Latest Twitter Thread

2️⃣ Sponsored: XQUI

3️⃣ 1% Better Every Day

4️⃣ NFT Stories of the Week

5️⃣ Email of the Week

6️⃣ Favorite Tweets

Note: This week there is a sponsored column(marked as sponsored). Please DYOR before making any investment decisions.

Latest Twitter Thread:

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1% Better Every Day: Mindful of Every Second

The Scariest Navy SEAL Imaginable...And What He Taught Me (#107) - The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss — tim.blog "Discipline equals freedom." — Jocko Willink"Leadership is infinitely more about brains than it is about brawn. The brawn stuff is from the movies and it doesn't work in reality.

Went on a roadtrip across California a couple weeks ago down the PCH, could not recommend this enough to everyone reading. Anyway I was determined to make the 10 hours of sitting in the car as productive as possible, so I made a playlist of self improvement podcasts and listened to a bunch of episodes. Listened to Tim Ferris, Jay Shetty, and a few others. Got through like 9 different episodes. The one that stood out to me the most was Tim Ferris's interview with Jocko Willink (linked above). Jocko is a former Navy Seal Team 3 member and is now an author and podcaster. In his interview he talks about motivation vs discipline. The point that stood out the most to me though is being mindful of every second of every day. I think this concept ties perfectly into the '1% better every day' mindset I talk about.

When you're going about your day you need to pay attention. You need to watch every second. Every second turns into minutes. Minutes turn into hours. Hours turn into days. Days turn into years. You might think doom scrolling on Twitter real quick before you work on that project isn't a big deal, but those seconds will quickly turn into minutes and hours. Each and every second counts.

In every second that goes by in a day you’re either building or decaying. You’re either gaining ground, or losing ground. In that second, and in every second, one of those two things are happening. Getting better isn’t a hack or a trick, or 1 change. It’s a campaign. It’s a daily and hourly fight against temptation and laziness. It’s a campaign of discipline.

For me this is a daily battle. I have a full time job that requires about 12 hours of my time a day, then on top of that I run NFT God. Yet somehow, I still find time to waste. I always feel guilty when an hour slips by and I realized I haven't accomplished anything. I haven't moved forward at all. This mindset though of being observant of every second has changed the way I've gone about my day. If you don't have the time to watch the full interview above I'd encourage you to watch the Youtube video below which cuts together some of the best clips from Jocko. I'm curious how you manage your day and stay disciplined. If you have any thoughts on this kind of mindset, cool productivity+discipline habits, or any other good interviews that cover similar topics feel free to email me [email protected] so I can feature it in my newsletter next week. Also always happy to chat!

Today's News:

🔥 Magic Eden starts selling ETH NFT’s

🔥 Merge Comes and Goes, ETH Tanks

🔥 Frank Returns to Twitter to Interview Himself

MAGIC EDEN STARTS SELLING ETH NFTs

By far the most popular Solana marketplace there is announced they would immediately start selling Ethereum NFT's. Upon the announcement several popular ETH NFT projects including BAYC and Doodles launched on their homepage. Discussion immediately broke out whether this was big news that would bring new liquidity to Solana, no news at all, or possibly bad news because now Magic Eden might be too distracted by ETH to improve their Solana functionality.

I'm a big believer that competition is beneficial for everyone. Will users be rushing over from Opensea or Gem in order to start purchasing ETH NFT's on Magic Eden? Probably not. But imagine a world where Magic Eden takes even 1% of marketshare from Opensea. You don't think that would cause Opensea directors to call a meeting and figure out new ways to stay ahead of the competition? I mean just look at the improvements Opensea has made over the past 2 weeks. They've completely overhauled their UI and added new stats and metrics to all of their listings. All universally applauded changes. Now I can't say with 100% certainty this is because of Magic Eden, but these are the types of improvements that get made when you have competition breathing down your back. Will Magic Eden become a big player in the ETH space? For sure not in the short term. But will the new competition be a wake up call to the other players? Absolutely. And that's a big win for the consumer.

MERGE COMES AND GOES, ETH TANKS

Ethereum's much hyped Merge took place this week with very little interesting news. Which was probably a good thing, as it meant absolutely nothing went wrong. Many people had different theories on how this would impact the price of ETH, as most hypothesized that the price would go up because sell pressure from miners would be eliminated. As I talked about a few weeks ago in a previous newsletter (check here for all my back issues) typically when everyone agrees a price is going to go up, it ends up going down. Same thing happened with Otherdeeds. It's impossible for everyone to be correct when it comes to investing. Well I ended up being accurate with this one as Ethereum dumped off after the merge. First slowly, and then quickly when Jerome Powell had his hawkish fed meeting. At the time of writing the Ethereum price is now $1260, far below recent highs of $1900.

I personally have been hoarding cash the last month or so. While I was DCA'ing the previous couple months as the markets and crypto inched lower, I'm now in a mindset that there are just way too many risks in this market. The reasons for the market to continue to go lower far outweigh the reasons the market could go higher. Interest rates control all markets, and as long as interest rates keep going up, markets will keep going down. That means we need a tick down in inflation for there to even be a chance markets start recovering. I'm not going to try to time inflation going away. I'm fine being 5% late to the party, just as long as I get to the party. This obviously isn't financial advice, but I'd just say this, make sure you have enough in emergency funds to survive losing everything. If you can't make it 6 months on the current cash you have, you might be too over invested in crypto/NFT's or other volatile assets. Please make sure you are prepared for any worst case scenarios that might happen before putting more money into these markets.

FRANK RETURNS TO TWITTER TO INTERVIEW HIMSELF

Famed NFT founder Frank returned to Twitter this week after a multi day hiatus that followed more delays in his highly anticipated project Y00ts. For those not in the know, Frank is the founder behind the most popular Solana project on the market: DeGods. After announcing the follow up collection Y00ts months ago, the project has faced multiple delays including a day-of-mint delay and then a subsequent reveal delay. This week Frank returned to Twitter after being silent for a week with a new interview where he interviews...himself. Now I'm not going to do a breakdown of Y00ts or the numerous delays but I will say this, the NFT space is going to evolve. Every delay, bug, or mess up will put a scab on the consumer. They'll come back tougher, with higher expectations of projects. 2021 was filled with rug pulls. in 2022, people are a lot more careful. In 2022 we are faced with delays and lack of communication (not a commentary specifically on Y00ts) from our biggest projects. In 2023, expectations will be different.

This is how markets mature. We experiment, see what works, what doesn't, then we learn what we need to avoid and what to expect from our founders. In 2023 the NFT consumer will have a lot higher standards. Delays won't be as accepted. We'll expect our founders not to announce a project until the code is done and tested. This kind of maturing will put pressure on founders to treat their projects more like Web2 businesses. This is turn, will produce better product. Which will in turn bring more people to the space. A lot of people ask me what it'll take for the NFT space to grow. The first thing it'll need is a lot of maturing.

Email of the Week

Last week I talked about how being strong at 2 skills is a lot easier than being the master of one. When you can find the cross section of 2 skills you can really start to build a platform for yourself on those skills. For me, my cross section is Web 3 and self improvement. I'm not the best at either, but combined I've found my niche. I asked you guys to send me what your cross sections are and I got a few really thoughtful responses. One of my favorites was from Tom Coppens, a frequent writer to me on Twitter (highly recommend checking out his feed). He wrote to me about his cross section of data and fitness/mindset. If you have any thoughts on any topics or stories I wrote about in this newsletter feel free to email me at [email protected] so I can potentially feature you in my next newsletter. Include your Twitter handle so I can attribute and follow!

From Tom:

I feel my cross section is data and fitness / mindset.

I’ve been doing sports since forever. Soccer, horseback riding and now Crossfit/ Weightlifting.

I just love the mental aspect of it.

Improving yourself and striving to be better than yesterday.

In my opinion mindset is as important (or more) as your physical abilities.

Fitness gives me a sense of purpose.

I’ve started coaching and programming for others. It gives me a break of the analytics of my daily job.

I’m looking to expand in this and help more people become their best version of themselves.

And in the end in ties all together.

Implementing a better mindset in my job > better performance at my job > more time for fitness > happier life.

Tweets of the Week: Morning Routine Edition

Thank you so much to everyone who's replied to my tweets or emailed me this week! A couple days ago I put out a tweet asking for your morning routines and I got some incredible responses. Picked out a few and embedded them below. Look forward to hearing from more of you soon! Take care and have an excellent weekend!