OpenSea: Milady Maker NFT Boom
The Milady Maker NFT collection has been on OpenSea since August 2021.
It consists of nearly 10,000 NFTs on Ethereum, which have so far generated a total trading volume of more than 45,000 ETH (more than USD 26 million).
However, until April 2023, it had never exceeded 1500 ETH in weekly trading volume, but in April it experienced a sales boom.
Suffice it to say that the average weekly selling price of the NFTs had never exceeded 2 ETH until April, but by the beginning of May it had already risen to over 3.5 ETH, with a total weekly trading volume of more than 4400 ETH.
So there is a collection of NFTs that have been on the rise in recent weeks, despite being almost two years old.
Elon Musk’s intervention causes Milady NFTs to explode on OpenSea
On Wednesday, Elon Musk posted a tweet showing one of the images from the Milady Maker collection.
It is unclear whether Musk knew this image was part of the aforementioned NFT collection or not, so he commented on it by saying “it’s not a meme, I love you”.
It’s no meme’ is actually a meme, it just uses a different image each time.
The image used by Musk to create this meme is definitely from the Milady Maker collection, but has been modified by adding a red-out frame.
Nevertheless, NFT Miladys was taken by storm yesterday.
Milady Maker: the boom of the NFT collection at OpenSea
The base price jumped to 4.15 ETH and the weekly volume jumped to over 11,000 ETH, even though it has only been a little over four days since the start of the week.
In other words, the four-day trading volume was almost three times that of the entire previous week, and almost a quarter of the entire historical trading volume of Milady’s NFTs on OpenSea was concentrated in the last few days.
It is not clear if Elon Musk was aware of what he was doing, or if he was doing it deliberately to make money, perhaps having bought some of these NFTs in the past.
What is clear, however, is that the Twitter patron is still capable of exerting a strong influence on the crypto markets.
Elon Musk’s influence on the crypto markets
On the other hand, while he has not been able to get the price of his beloved Dogecoin to recover for some time now, he has also been able to move the price of Floki, or formerly Shiba Inu, quite a bit.
Apart from Dogecoin, which Musk is known to be a fan of and has even bought some of, it has never been made clear whether he also had FLOKI or SHIB in his portfolio before his tweets pumped up prices.
However, it must be emphasized that in the medium to long term, Musk does not seem to be able to sustain the value of a memecoin.
His interventions are only able to move prices in the crypto markets quickly and significantly for short or very short periods.
For example, right now the price of Dogecoin is -90% from the peaks, as well as Floki and Shiba Inu.
So these are short-term or very short-term dynamics that often disappear when the hype dies down.
Perhaps this will also be the case for NFT miladys, even if their little April boom started well before Musk’s tweet.
The NFT market
Overall, April 2023 was not a particularly good month for NFT trading on OpenSea.
Total monthly volume was around $285 million, compared to $383 million in March.
However, last month’s volume was still higher than in November 2022, when it barely exceeded $255 million.
The current figures are far from the historical monthly peak of $4.8 billion in January 2022, but are still significantly higher than in the first half of 2021.
In other words, the NFT market has deflated somewhat from the resounding bubble in the second half of 2021, but is by no means back to pre-bubble levels. On the contrary, monthly volumes are still much higher compared to early 2021.
This is all the more relevant if we add the fact that OpenSea has lost its historical lead in the sector to Blur in recent months.
So the situation is actually less serious than a superficial analysis might suggest, although the period the NFT market is currently going through is certainly not particularly prosperous.
Top collections
The top collection of the last seven days at OpenSea is indeed Milady Maker. Such has been the boom that in just four days it has risen to fourth place overall among the top collections in the last 30 days.
It was previously dominated by Mutant Ape Yacht Club, which remains in second place for the week, while Bored Ape Yacht Club in second place in the last 24 hours.
Looking at the last 24 hours alone, Milady Maker dominated with 1,900 ETH of total trade volume, followed by Bored Ape Yacht Club with 1,300 and Mutant Ape Yacht Club with 1,200.
In fourth place is Pudgy Penguins with less than 1000 ETH in daily trading volume.
In third place comes Azuki with 12,000 ETH, almost on par with Mutant Ape Yacht Club. This ranking is also dominated by Milady Maker with 13,000 ETH and +231% increase from last week.
Trading volume
These numbers are not huge, but they are not insignificant either.
So at the moment the NFT market, especially on OpenSea, is by no means dead, and in fact still alive.
However, it is still a long way from the peak of a real speculative bubble that was bound to burst, as all bubbles do sooner or later.
Currently, there is no sign of a speculative bubble in the sector, although microbubbles may form at certain times, such as the one likely found on the NFTs in the Milady Maker collection.
On the contrary, the fact that Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Azuki are still riding the crest of a wave, despite the bursting of the 2021 bubble, probably means that at least these collections do not seem doomed oblivion for Until further notice.
However, if a new big bubble starts to inflate, it is possible that other collections can get the most support, especially if they are new collections created just to ride the wave.
