Trump’s NFT Prize Collection Surfaces on Secondary Markets, Generates $53K in 24-Hour Sales

January 12, 2023 Bitcoin.com

The worst influencer and celebrity NFT cash grabs of 2022

January 4, 2023 Coin Telegraph

From Donald Trump’s trading cards to Tai Lopez’s peculiar NFT collection, 2022 marked another year of poorly thought-out NFT drops by big names.

Mainstream hype for the nonfungible token (NFT) market cooled down significantly in 2022, but that didn’t stop a host of popular and wealthy figures from stinking up the space with dreadful collections last year.

In the 2022 edition of the worst influencer and celebrity NFT cash grabs, Cointelegraph takes a look at four projects seemingly designed to milk capital out of their fans pockets, while delivering very little.

Tai Lopez — OG (Original Garage) Social Club

First on the list is the oddball entrepreneur Tai Lopez, best known for his cheesy marketing campaigns that used to plague YouTube not so long ago.

Lopez’s most famous video is his “here in my garage” business course promo from 2015 where he first shows off his Lambo before switching gears and noting that he is more proud of the thousands of books he owns because of the “knowledge” they give him.

Paying homage to the video, Lopez launched a collection dubbed the “OG (Original Garage) Social Club” in March.

The NFTs came in three tiers of rarity, going from anywhere between $150 on the lower end to $50,000 for the premium tokens that offered exclusive benefits such as a one-on-one basketball game with Lopez, watching a movie, or eating dinner together and private mentorship sessions.

Tai Lopez is selling an NFT that gives you the CHANCE to win $10,000 if you beat him at 1 on 1 basketball.
The price? $50,000. pic.twitter.com/ySJc52PItu
— Coffeezilla (@coffeebreak_YT) March 5, 2022

The current data on OpenSea now paints a grim picture however, with the floor price for all the NFTs regardless of rarity, sitting at 0.08 Ether (ETH) or $97 at the time of writing.

Looking at the premium NFTs, the basketball-related token is on sale for as low as 0.880 ETH ($1069), while an NFT granting access to a one-on-one dinner with Lopez is now on sale for 1 ETH ($1214) despite first being sold for around $30,000.

Donald Trump — Trump Digital Trading Cards

Despite historically being a vocal crypto-hater, former president Donald Trump announced a strange licensed NFT project in December that consisted of 45,000 self-themed trading cards.

The shoddy and potentially plagiarized artwork of the NFTs depicted Trump in various forms such as a superhero, hunter, cowboy and golfer. The NFTs offered buyers a chance to win a host of one-on-one experiences with the 45th president via sweepstakes.

*Trump Digital Trading Card NFTs: OpenSea*

The NFTs initially sold for $99 apiece quickly selling out on Dec. 16 with the floor price rapidly rising to 0.83 ETH ($1,008) on OpenSea within two days. Since then, however, the price has significantly tanked to 0.164 ETH ($199).

While people who first bought in are likely to still be in the green, the Trump NFT project is good either way as it pocketed around $4.5 million from the initial sales, with an ongoing 10% creator fee also coming back to it via sales on secondary markets.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. — Mayweverse

Boxing icon Floyd Mayweather Jr. also makes the 2022 list for an NFT project that seems to have been completely abandoned at the time of writing.

Tweeting on Mar. 22, Mayweather announced the “Mayweverse” consisting of 5,000 NFT collectibles.

“If you are in the NFT world and you’re betting on me, you will never lose,” he said.

Here before the project slow rugs. Don’t you have a reputation of promoting scams? pic.twitter.com/szJQmwqTkT
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) March 21, 2022

The NFTs initially went for a mint price of roughly $900 on Apr. 13 offering hodlers the chance to win cash prizes ranging from $5,000 to $30,000 and exclusive experiences such as joining Mayweather in an upcoming Metaverse called “Floyd’s Gym.”

Since the mint, the Mayweverse Twitter account has remained dormant with not a single follow-up tweet throughout 2022. It’s unclear if anyone received prizes or when the Metaverse will be shipped.

The website’s roadmap also remains undated despite initially stating other “future benefits” would be announced soon.

**Click “Collect” below the illustration at the top of the page or** **follow this link**.

OpenSea data also makes it hard to ascertain what is happening with the project.

One Maywevere collection listed on the marketplace contains 73 tokens that are not for sale with no price history. Another contains five NFTs which all last sold for less 0.050 Wrapped ETH ($60) but have a floor price of 0.1 ETH ($121).

Lana Rhoades — CryptoSis.

Last on the list is the popular influencer and former adult film star Lana Rhoades launched the now-abandoned Crypto Sis NFT project in February 2022.

Crypto Sis consists of 6,069 Rhoades-themed cartoon avatar NFTs with the number initially meant to be 6,969 which it didn’t reach due to a lack of demand.

The NFTs went for a mint price of roughly $261 but the value now essentially sits at $0 on OpenSea as there has been less than 1 ETH worth of total trading activity since its Feb. 2022 launch. The project’s Twitter page is also currently suspended.

Rhoades reportedly pocketed $1.5 million from the sales, then promptly withdrew the funds from her Ethereum wallet before walking away from the project altogether stating her community was too negative.

In now-deleted social media posts, Rhoades initially touted the avatars would be usable in the Metaverse along with offering a host of utilities such as whitelist access to future drops, inclusion into a Metaverse community, signed merch and virtual meet and greets.

Rhoades claimed she was working hard to make the project a “lucrative investment for holders that they can sell for more than they paid to mint.”

However, none of that has come to fruition, leading to people in the community to accuse her of operating a rug pull. Rhoades counter-argued the project flopped and there was nothing she could do to fix it.

Nifty News: Trump’s NFTs tank, NBA star’s collection gone in 77 seconds and more…

December 21, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

NFT gaming is at a similar stage to the early mobile gaming days, says a Magic Eden exec, while an analyst from Dune Analytics claims 58% of NFT trading volume this year has been wash trades.

After a sell-out launch that pocketed roughly $4.45 million from primary sales, former United States president Donald Trump’s NFT collection is already on a crash course towards earth.

Trump rolled out his odd-ball self-themed 45,000 NFT trading card collection on Dec. 16 for $99 a pop. The NFTs were all gobbled up within a couple hours of launch, and within the next two days the floor price shot up to an all-time-high of around 0.83 Ether (ETH), or $1,006 on OpenSea.

Since then however, the floor price has been volatile, while some in the community have highlighted that the NFT artwork may been plagiarized from other sources.

According to OpenSea data at the time of writing, the floor price sits at 0.2 ETH ($242), marking a hefty retracement of roughly 75%.

Trump NFTs Tanking as Hype Dies, Floor Price Down 70% https://t.co/gFAQLguJbl
— Commom'sen (@SenCommom) December 21, 2022

24-hour trading volumes have also dried up significantly, going from around 1,541 ETH ($1.8 million) on Dec. 18, to just 14.37 ETH ($17,402) by Dec. 21.

Gone in 77 Seconds

Another big celebrity name jumped on the NFT bandwagon this week. NBA hall of famer and Chicago Bulls great Scottie Pippen launched a NFproject that sold out in just 77 seconds.

The drop dubbed “Scottie Pippen SP33” consists of 1,000 unique NFT Metaverse wearable sneakers which went for a mint price of 0.2 ETH ($241). The NFTs are Ethereum-based and said to be compatible with “just about any ecosystem.”

The floor price has since risen to 0.42 ETH ($507) according to OpenSea data, and the project has generated 211 ETH ($255,000) worth of trading volume since Dec. 21.

A limited number of randomly chosen hodlers will also receive bonus benefits, with 33 receiving a physical pair of sneakers, two getting the chance to play golf with Pippen and one lucky person getting a tour of Pippen’s home town plus a dinner afterwards.

The NFTs were developed in partnership with Web3 entertainment firm Orange Comet, which seems to have a solid format down pat given that it also produced a collection for Sir Anthony Hopkins that sold out in just seven minutes.

SP33 SOLD OUT IN 77 SECONDS

ORANGE COMET MAKES HISTORY ONCE AGAIN

Thank you all for participating in the @ScottiePippen SP33 Mint on @opensea.

Things only get better from here, stay tuned for more announcements on the utility reveal...https://t.co/cRXVOidCtV
— Orange Comet (@OrangeCometNFT) December 20, 2022

NFT gaming akin to early mobile gaming days

Chris Akhavan, the chief gaming officer of Solana-based NFT marketplace Magic Eden, believes thaNFT/blockchain gaming is at a similar stage to the early days of mobile gaming.

“I was around in the very early days of mobile gaming, right after the iPhone came out, the App Store came out,” he told TechCrunch on Dec. 21, adding that “I remember the attitude back then amongst traditional gaming companies was that mobile games were stupid.”

Despite facing much skepticism in its early days, mobile gaming has gone on to become the most popular method of gaming across the globe. A report from New Zoo in Jun.2020 in particular, highlighted that there were 2.5 billion mobile gamers compared to 1.3 billion PC gamers and 800,000 million console gamers that year.

As such, Akhavan is not fazed by the criticism of the Web3gaming space and tips it to boom over the next few years.

“We think the same journey is going to happen in Web3,” he said, emphasizing that billions of dollars have already been invested in the Web3 gaming studios to build out a new avenue for gaming.

NFT wash trading on Ethereum

The impressive trading volumes of Ethereum NFTs may be a “mirage” according to a recent Dune Analytics blog post from pseudonymous NFT market analyst hildobby.

This is because NFT trading volumes on Ethereum may have been skewed by significant NFT wash trading, which hildobby says made up of around 80% of total trading activity in January this year duringnits

Looking more broadly at the entirety of 2022, that figure sits at around 58% according to hildobby’s data, highlighting that the issue is still rampant and that trading volumes may not necessarily be the best indicator of a NFT marketplace’s usage.

“In a nutshell, the most common method is trading your own NFTs between two wallets you control for the highest amount of ETH possible. The goal is to accrue token rewards with a value in excess of the gas fees you pay,” hildobby wrote, adding that:

“The boom in wash trading really made life tough for us data analysts, since it skews basic statistics that we use to track marketplace usage.”

Limit Break CEO and Web3 game designer Gabriel Leydon highlighted via Twitter on Dec. 20 that the removal of royalty fees by a number of NFT marketplaces may have significantly contributed to this issue.

“Exchange incentivized wash trading will destroy NFTs. It’s amazing how many different ways royalties were important for the space,” he wrote, while suggesting that royalty fees had previously “tamed the exchanges and prevented washtrading on the scale we’re seeing now.”

Exchange incentivized wash trading will destroy NFTs. It’s amazing how many different ways royalties were important for the space.
— Gabriel Leydon (FREE,OWN) (@gabrielleydon) December 19, 2022

Various data platforms such as CryptoSlam have since developed their own methods to filter out potential wash trades, and in their post, hildobby outlined how they are filtering out such trades from their analyses moving forward.

In particular, hildobby is now flagging trades where the buyer and seller have the same wallet address, NFTs that are sent back and forth between two wallets, addresses that buy three of more of the same NFT, and wallets in which the buyer and seller were first funded by the same initial wallet.

“When we apply all these filters, the results are eye-opening. On Ethereum, wash trades are only 1.5% of all trades, but…….Over $30B of NFT trading volume - almost 45% of the total - is from wash trading.”

Other Nifty News:

Independent game developer Metaverse Game Studios, which boasts a host of developers that have worked on various AAA titles such Far Cry and Diablo Immortal, has announced a partnership with Web3 development platform ImmutableX to continue building its upcoming RPG Angelic.

Blockchain entertainment firm Coda Labs commissioned a survey targeting game developers to have a peek into their thoughts on Web3. The researchers found that a majority of the respondents believe Web3 gaming is on its way to their firms, with 75% expecting to work on Web3 projects in the future.

Community baffled by Trump’s bizarre ‘SimpDAO’ NFT collection

December 16, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Even conservatives and MAGA supporters are not pleased with Trump, as they were hanging on for a more serious announcement from the former president.

Former president and crypto hater Donald Trump’s bizarre NFT collectible project has left the community baffled.

Even conservatives and avid MAGA supporters are scratching their heads, while analyst Eric Wall likened the project to a “SimpDAO.”

In what Trump called a “major announcement” via his social media platform Truth Social on Dec. 15, the former president unveiled a collection of 45,000 NFT trading cards, with the artwork depicting himself in various outfits such as golf attire, hunting gear and a superhero costume.

Thank God, the digital trading cards are here. It was indeed a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT. pic.twitter.com/T1nsqRwr92
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 15, 2022

The Polygon-based NFTs are selling for $99 per token, and buyers are automatically entered into sweepstakes which include “1000s of prizes” such as one-on-one dinners, zoom calls and rounds of golf with Trump.

At the time of writing, there are around 35,600 Trump Digital Trading Cards listed for secondary sales on Opensea, with a floor price of 0.065 Ether (ETH), or $82.

People in the NFT community have reported that some of the biggest sales so far have ranged between 1 ETH ($1270) to 2 ETH ($2,541).

35 wallets hold at least 45 trump nfts, which entitles them to dinner with him pic.twitter.com/AsDwa5dehC
— foobar (@0xfoobar) December 15, 2022

Wall, who was one of the first to explain the SimpDAO concept and started his own with EricaDAO, noted the resemblance on Twitter:

“Wait a minute. These NFTs give you access to a community. A dinner with Trump. Golfing with Trump. Zoom calls. One-on-one meetings. Autographs. These aren’t baseball cards. This is 407506a SimpDAO!”

The term "SimpDAO" was coined after social media star Irene Zhao launched IreneDAO in January. The NFT project offers fans — known as ‘Simps’ — a way to bond over their love for Irene and get benefits such as free tokens, meet and greets, phone calls etc. It has generated $3.3 million worth of secondary NFT sales to date on OpenSea alone.

Isn't it insane he says he doesn't like cryptocurrencies blablabla and now there's a "MATIC/WETH" error on the checkout page of a product he's selling

Life comes at you fast pic.twitter.com/gDeclpLR1j
— Eric Wall (@ercwl) December 15, 2022

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao ignored the politics and was relatively bullish about what the project signifies, noting that the “former United States President issues NFTs. And he didn’t like crypto before. We are getting there.”

In response, Bitcoin proponent and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey asked: “getting where?.”

getting where?
— jack (@jack) December 15, 2022

While Trump's polarizing moves are often embraced by his supporters, a surprising number haven’t got behind him in this instance.

Far-right internet account and Capital riot attendee Baked Alaska (Anthime Gionet) tweeted “I can’t believe I'm going to jail for an NFT salesman,” while conservative content creators the Hodgetwins also expressed their dismay.

“Man…when all Patriots are looking for is hope for the future of our country and Trump hypes everybody up with a ‘BIG ANNOUNCEMENT,’” they wrote, adding that “then [he] drops a low quality NFT collection video as the ‘announcement’, it just pushes people away…Damn.”

Donald Trump NFTs