The 1 true sign an NFT bull market is back on: Wale, NFT Collector

The rise of NFT influencer and content creator Wale, aka Wale Swoosh or Wale Moca as many know him, began with an insatiable curiosity about NFTs in 2021. The young German has grown his X audience from a humble beginning to 112,000+ followers with his deep dive threads into NFTs, particularly on the PFP and collectible side of the market.

Wale is the researcher and resident for the prominent NFT project Azuki, the collection he proudly reps as his PFP. More recently he was appointed an adviser to Mocaverse by Animoca Brands.

Wale recalls minting his first NFT and flipping it for a few hundred dollars in early 2021, and being “immediately hooked.”

“I bought some Bitcoin and ETH before I joined the NFT space quite a while back but that was more about buying it and you forgetting about it. I didn’t really check the price every day. I didn’t pay too much attention to what’s going on in crypto in general,” says Wale.

“Then I saw this NFT thing pop up. None of my IRL friends or family were really interested in it but I started to pay attention. I had got my ETH and thought I’d give it a try, booth minting new NFTs and buying off secondary. I actually flipped some early NFTs for a couple hundred bucks. It was crazy money for me at the time, and flips happening the same day or within a short timeframe.”

At the time Wale was studying at a German University and yet to graduate. Despite making gains on NFT trading, he was hesitant to jump into Web3 full-time as he had an existing job at a German car manufacturer.

“I had this decision, there was this new NFT thing that I thought was interesting and where I made a lot of money. More money than I ever made in my life back then. But I also sensed that it was something that felt very unreal, the whole space. If people were around in 2021 and 2022, and if it was kind of your first cycle where you were really involved and not just watching from the sidelines. It felt really unreal, so I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to go all in on it so I continued working in marketing at the automobile company here in Germany.”

Even though the money was good back then and I made more money than I did in any of the jobs I had before that, I wasn’t confident enough to leave everything else behind in 2021.”

 

 

“I made that decision later in 2022 when not only had the market collapsed a little bit, it’s when I started to get more serious on the creator angle. It was a slow start for me when it comes to commitment to going all in into NFTs.”

Are NFTs back?

Over the last month, NFTs have seen a huge resurgence spearheaded by price increases in CryptoPunks, Pudgy Penguins — which just dropped their PENGU coin — as well as Doodles and many 2021-22 projects that Wale was following last cycle.

But are NFTs really back? Wale believes the signs are good but we’re still some ways away from seeing anything remotely close to the mania of 2021-22 that was often spearheaded by the cultural phenomenon of Bored Ape Yacht Club. 

“So I think we’re back in the sense that people are starting to pay attention again. I see that on the X timeline. My focus is almost exclusively on NFTs and the broader topics of the NFT space, and my engagement has gone up like crazy in the last two to three weeks. I think that’s also a good indicator people are starting to pay more attention,” says Wale.

 

 

 

 

CryptoPunks not too long ago were around $50K or a little bit above, and now they broke $150K. We see a lot of movement in the other legacy projects and Pudgy Penguins now with this PENGU airdrop announcement. Azuki’s Doodles, Bored Apes are all on the move too. The bounce in NFTs though has spread across the ecosystem, even dead collections, bounced 50% or more.”

 

 

 

Wale strongly believes that new mints of collections that don’t even exist yet will be key to driving interest from new participants. 

“To be truly back I think that’s something that’s missing right now. The excitement around not just established projects but also new mints and new projects popping. We don’t really see that yet. I always thought that’s similar to how memecoins worked. A lot of the memecoins that performed best this cycle aren’t the memecoins that were here four years ago.”

“Some of them are, but if you take a broader look, I think a lot of the best-performing memecoins actually onboarded new people and new blood in the space. A lot of that comes from new mints with NFTs. When you can mint something for 0.01 ETH or 0.05 ETH, and it runs to 4 ETH. We don’t really see that right now so I don’t think we’re 100% back yet, but I think we’re starting to see early signs of excitement and interest in NFTs coming back for sure.”

Bored Apes entering true collectible status

In the recent NFT run-up over the last four to six weeks, CryptoPunks showed the first sign of strength but to many collectors’ surprise, including Wale’s, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) floor price doubled despite there being no catalysts on the horizon. That’s even as Pudgy Penguins announced PENGU, a coin that Pudgy holders would receive a healthy allocation in a similar vein to APE being launched for BAYC ecosystem holders in March 2022.

The phrase “minimal external dependencies,” coined by Flamingo DAO member Derek Edwards, is a framing to think about certain types of NFTs, with many art collections and Punks falling into this bucket. There are generally no promises of anything but the NFT itself and it just sits there, no catalysts, no airdrops, no roadmaps. Speculation still occurs but it’s not built upon external dependencies that NFT projects with a strong IP building or gaming focus might have.

During the last bull cycle, there was talk of whether BAYC would eventually fall into this category of minimal external dependencies and become more of a collectible that people simply want to own rather than because they are anticipating future benefits. Wale believes we’re seeing early signs that Apes may already be headed in that direction.

“I was surprised that Bored Apes did so well in this run. Before Pudgy Penguins announced PENGU, they were outperforming the Penguins by a lot, even though everyone knew Abstract token might be coming in the future. What surprised me is that the whole BAYC ecosystem performed so well even though there are no catalysts coming up,” Wale says.

“They already have a token (APE); they can’t drop an additional one, and their NFT ecosystem is saturated. They can’t really drop another NFT collection that would make sense. Contrast this to other ecosystems that could have catalysts like Doodles, who can still drop a companion collection, while Azuki and Pudgy Penguins can drop tokens. All of these catalysts are gone for Apes.”

Wale identifies two key reasons and still believes that despite other projects like Doodles and Pudgy Penguins crushing it with their IP and awareness plays, the brand BAYC was able to establish in 2021-22 was so massive and had such mainstream crossover that more “normies” know what a Bored Ape is over rather than any other project launched.

“I think it’s for two reasons. One is the launch of the ApeChain ecosystem, which did really well. After it was introduced, I think they found something that’s really appealing to their core community and the core community of NFT traders, collectors and people who like NFTs,” says Wale.

The second reason is I do see Apes moving to more of a status symbol, maybe not at a Punk level within Web3 yet but but when we talk about mainstream attention, I would still think nine out of 10 people would know about Bored Apes as a brand than they would know Pudgy Penguins or Doodles. I think it has a lot to do with the mainstream attention that they got back when NFTs were going really hard in 2021 and 2022.”

 

 

Projects that kept building during the bear

Despite a lot of empty promises and failed roadmaps of a large percentage of NFT projects in 2021-22, the ones that stuck around and continued to build are starting to gain traction again.

Doodles’ recent mega collaboration with McDonald’s, which saw 110 million coffee cups branded with the Doodles IP, is an example. So is Pudgy Penguins with the introduction of PENGU this week, their partnership with Walmart and other major retailers selling plush toys, and their incredible ability to rack up billions of impressions across all the major social media platforms.

“The McDonald’s and Doodles collaboration surprised me, it’s kind of the holy grail of partnerships. I remember seeing them tweet about a big partnership coming up, I didn’t expect it to be McDonald’s, so that was great. I love how the campaign was done, how they integrated the Doodles IP and even the collectible side was really smart. I think they crushed it with other announcements and partnerships previously too but of course, McDonald’s being the biggest one by far,” Wale says.

“From Pudgy’s with Walmart to Azuki with anime.com, we’re seeing a lot of green lights across the space. Projects are actually starting to deliver something. Even though we were in an NFT bear market for big parts of 2024, memecoins and broader crypto did really well. I think from a standpoint of what projects delivered this year, I think we did really well and who knows, maybe we’re now seeing the start of the market valuing that in a way that it didn’t do in the last few months.”

Rapid Fire Q&A with NFT Collector Wale

What’s your favorite NFT that you own? 

My Azuki PFP because of the massive impact it had on me joining Azuki and has had on my career. 

Do you collect many art NFTs or are you more on the PFP and collectible side with your personal collection? 

I think my personal collection is, for sure, more on the PFP side. I do collect art. I think that’s another interesting area for NFTs. Well-known projects like Art Blocks, Chromie Squiggles, and XCOPY.

I’m not like a giant art collector, but for these blue chips, I’m trying to get some exposure to them because I think from an NFT point of view, it’s one of the areas where it makes a lot of sense. But I always also like the community aspect, so that’s why I’m more heavy on the PFP NFT side for sure.

Who is your favorite NFT artist? 

I think Doodles artist Burnt Toast. It’s not just the PFPs, but the whole universe that he’s built around that. His art style is super expressive and I’m a big fan of that.

What do you think is an underappreciated NFT project right now? 

I will go with a slightly different answer rather than naming one NFT project. I think the whole Ordinals area is still underpriced. We don’t have a top Ordinals project in the top five of PFP market cap. I think that some are mispriced, such as Bitcoin Puppets, NodeMonkes, Quantum Cats. On ETH, you have a million different collections but on Ordinals, I would argue you have 10 relevant collections at most.

I’m surprised today, especially during this rally in Bitcoin, they didn’t do better floor price wise, but I would say the Ordinals ecosystem is still undervalued relative to NFTs on ETH or Solana.

Who are your top three favorite followers on X for NFTs? 

1. Stats (formerly NFTStats), he always has good content so he’s definitely one for sure.

2. T.M.A. I don’t think he has 100K followers, but he has a lot of really good insights; he’s early on narratives and early on collections, so I enjoy following him.

3. NFTboi. He’s not doing a ton of content about NFTs but he’s also into Ordinals. He’s really spread across a lot of areas so I would go with him too.

If money was no problem, and you could buy three NFTs from three different collections right now, which would you choose?

I would go quickfire Azuki and Pudgy Penguins. The last one is difficult: either Doodles because I like their trajectory or Bitcoin Puppets because I think they’re tremendously undervalued.

In 2034, which project do you think will be the most successful longer term, 10 years down the track? Doodles, VeeFriends, or Pudgy Penguins? 

I think from a standpoint of attention of how many people will know the brand then I think Pudgy Penguins will have kind of an edge over VeeFriends and Doodles. I think Doodles are great as well but maybe a little less Gen Z understanding. With VeeFriends, I don’t pay too much attention. They’re kind of outside the day-to-day conversations on NFT Twitter, so I don’t really know what they’re up to on the content-wise.

To rank them, I’d go with Pudgy Penguins, Doodles then VeeFriends.