In this issue:

• This Week in Neo Tokyo: Remember Why You’re Here and Who You’re Doing It For (by PhoenixxDown)

• Azuki & The Future of $ANIME (by Flower83 & Photoshopped AF)

• Runes: Let’s Try This Again (by PhoenixxDown)

Last week, I opened with “This week has been brutal.” I think we can all agree this week has been far better. An absolute belter so far as Bitcoin approaches $106K at time of publishing. Long may it continue!

Straight into business: late last week, Firestorm outlined some initiatives in progress for Neo Tokyo, and although we’ll hear more details soon, here’s a teaser of what’s to come:

• 2025 Goal Setting to be shared and discussed in January’s Town Hall

• Bytestreet Fund

• NT Plays

• NT Agency

• Sacred Writs

To read the full announcement and get more details on each, click through here.

In commemoration of Justin Sun having lots of money, we ran a competition midweek offering subscribers a chance to win one of two lots of 6.9 $BYTES. We had 12 valid entries, making this the least successful marketing campaign we’ve ever done. But seriously, where were you all? We were giving away free money!

Regardless, the winners are @Degenerate141 and @lkgLukeS. We’ve got your ETH addresses, so we’ll send those out over by Monday at the latest. Well done to both of you!

This is how things shaped up with the NT content:

Interlinked #64 - Ben and Cryptoetheus starred this week, discussing a question we all ask ourselves from time to time: “Why are you in crypto?” They touched on the importance of being mindful about how time is spent, especially in a world filled with distractions like social media and news, which can detract from quality interactions with loved ones. A reflective episode to remember why we’re here and who/what we’re doing it for.

Market Monday - This past Monday, we had the esteemed honor of hosting Griffain Founder, @Tonyplasencia3, on the show. This was an intriguing discussion where we delved into the mind of the brains behind the tech. Tony was very generous in sharing his insights and this is a must-listen if you missed it.

NT x Unfungible Space - This week’s session was one for the OGs (translation: older ladies and gentlemen among us). Guests Elympics, Space Nation, Haven’s Compass, and 77-Bit discussed “The Resurgence of Retro Gaming.” Much like us Gen X’ers and beyond, retro gaming is making a wild comeback in recent times. Some may say we never really left. Listen back here.

Short Scoops

A big warm welcome to one of our newest recruits into these hallowed halls, EstateX, who not only graces us with their presence and expertise but is also getting off on the right foot by gifting Citizens a whopping $100K airdrop! Learn more about our new friend in the thread above.

Later today, the NT Plays crew will dive into the brutal battleground of MadWorld. Some Citizens were recently beneficiaries of an airdrop, so it’d be rude not to show up! Even if you weren’t among the winners, join in and show them why it should’ve been you instead! Details in the post above and in the NT Plays Announcement channel.

The NTPlays Team isn’t the only division working hard for The Citadel. Check out the Outreach Announcement channel to see what’s been cooking, including new marketplace listings. Plus, if you haven’t noticed already, $DTRXBT has been airdropped to all stakers of 2000 BYTES and over when the snapshot was completed in early January. I missed out by THIRTY-SEVEN—can you believe it? Still feeling sick.

And finally we round off with Shibuya Mall again, who earlier this week released new wares for you to peruse. The Angie mug, as shown above, won’t be around forever, so check out their X profile page for updates and visit the store here.

Until next next week, citizens.

This one has to be one of the most impactful and hyped releases after Pudgy Penguins’ $PENGU token launch. Not to mention, Azuki is also one of the only major OG NFT brands that has yet to issue a token.

Given how the Azuki community always comes back on top, no matter the amount of FUD they absorb, it is not surprising that the sentiment is absolutely positive. The current price action around all their assets within the ecosystem reflects that. Their collections have been climbing in both the floor price and volume, as well as obviously popularity on social media, as it seems all eyes are now on them.

The main OG azuki collection almost 3x’ed from the bear market lows of around 4 ETH, and is now challenging Bored Apes for the 3rd spot by market cap behind just Punks and Pudgies.

But what can we anticipate leading up to their release? And how does it all work?

Well, the most universally agreed on thing is that they devised their tokenomics smartly. The date for launch has just been confirmed, set for January 23rd.

Everyone was bullish when they announced the details of the launch, and what is worth observing is that they allocated a lot of the supply to actual holders, while still keeping a notable— but not too greedy amount—for the team and the company.

What I predict (NFA) is that the price of the NFTs will likely stay above 10 ETH leading up to the release or even slowly grind upwards. After that, it is safe to assume that a good chunk of the value will transfer to coins as people rush to claim and then sell both assets hoping to get out in profit.

Essentially, the same dynamic that happened to Pudgy Penguins, which declined by 40% on token launch day. Exactly how high of a market cap the $ANIME token will hold is left up to speculators, but in general people tend to agree it should be around $1B.

For more in depth price predictions around this, grail.eth made an excellent breakdown here:

They also implemented an interesting scoring dynamic for eligibility. Your collector score matters the most. Each NFT in their ecosystem will get an allocation based off score with bonuses for time held and gacha’s.

For example, 1 Beanz NFT is worth 300 points, and would get more allocation than an Elemental worth 100 points.

A moderately bullish case for about the drop is assuming that an Elemental will get about $2k from estimations above, whereas OG’s get $10k+, with Beanz probably $800-$1500 each. For those of us priced out, another strategy is to wait for people to sell immediately after TGE when the floor dips 30-50% and sell when it recovers.

After the TGE, Episode 2 of the anime they have been producing will also be coming out. They teased that there will be a lot more announcements soon, so keeping an eye on their socials might be smart.

So far it seems they are riding the hype very well, but what remains to be seen is if they can sustain this tempo after all is said and done. Furthermore, whether they can deliver on a good anime show to attract audiences not native to just web3, and how that would translate to value creation for their community.

Back in June of 2024, I wrote an article titled “Rune June: What To Watch.” As it turns out, the only thing I watched that summer thereafter was those Runes being sent into oblivion—to my absolute horror.

I’ve got one more left in me, though. Let’s try this one more time. Let’s run it back.

To be fair, they did recover going into the fall, with some reaching all-time highs, and now they’re back to the lows again where the upside seems far greater than the downside. With that said, this is a much better time to be making predictions.

A quick shout-out to an Ordinals community that is closely tied to Neo Tokyo: ExtraOrdinals. If you’re interested in learning more about assets on Bitcoin, there’s no better place to be, and it’s available at a very affordable price point of around $60. 

I also contribute to their newsletter over there, where we share alpha, news, giveaways, and market analysis Monday through Saturday. Subscribe here.

None of this is financial advice you’ll be glad to know, I’m merely highlighting some of the best ones if you want to dive further.

$DOG - $617m market cap

DOG is still very much the top dog of this sector, managing to maintain mostly above the $500m market cap mark even during the harsh downturn of the past couple of months. While even memecoins on Solana hit extreme lows, DOG held its ground. This is by far the safest play on Runes.

$PUPS - $74m market cap

PUPS once hit just above a billion market cap, for all of about three hours, way back in April 2024. Now over 90% down from its highs, I see this as an easy pick to recover once things pick up. A little-known fact: the PUPS team has a war chest of millions of dollars at their disposal to use—in their words—to assist with CEX listings. Only a matter of time.

$BDC - $40m market cap

I personally love the Billion Dollar Cat branding and see it as a potential big winner if—nay, when—the first Rune gets listed on a T1 exchange for spot trading. It won’t be the first, but speculation will run rampant, and BDC will trail closely as people try to guess which is next. That, along with PUPS, will be the frontrunners.

Incidentally, I believe BDC was the only pick from the previous article that is currently in profit, as it was $13m market cap at the time. Two lessons there: one, 1/9 isn’t bad when you aim for 1/12. A roaring win if anything. And two, it simply outperformed everything else since then.

$BIP - $2.2m market cap

Now we get to the micro-shitters. The thing is, if these lower-tiered Runes were on Solana, they’d be $10m+ at least in my opinion. Based Internet Panda has dedicated leaders and the strong backing of a community that has been memeing through the highs and lows. Like any coin, watch for the ones that don’t disappear during the rough times. The Panda is battle-tested, and is cute. Great combo.

$GIZMO - $11.5m market cap

This is a super easy one if the stars align. Gizmo is another spin-off from the Bitcoin Puppets brand, with Gizmo as the cat mascot. Heavy hitters like Vombatus (yes, he of FriendTech fame) is the largest whale and has reportedly set aside funds for CEX listings as well. This could be seen as a minus due to Vombatus’s checkered history, but the meme itself is strong and the token has stood the test of time during rough periods.

$CYPHER - $8.05m market cap

Currently the leading AI Rune, this one offers exposure to something different if you’re into AI at the moment. The founder, King Bootoshi, is one of the hardest-working and most genuine people in the space, so the project is in good hands. Ansem has acknowledged Bootoshi once or twice, so it’s on some radars.

Honorable mentions:

• $RSIC - $37.8m

• $MrYen - $837k

• $BRO - $2.94m

• Based Angels Rune - $1.54m

• Mystic Rune DEX - $3.97m

The five above are good but could go either way. BRO has a really strong community, and some say it’s the only real meme on Runes. RSIC—the founders are AWOL but could come back at any point. MrYen is disgustingly undervalued for the meme value, but the support isn’t there currently.

Based Angels is an offshoot of Milady’s and should have been included in the main list—so consider it halfway between. Mystic is a dark horse that could go wild if they deliver on a UX that transforms the Runes experience.

Not financial advice. Use these as a starting point to explore further. There’s absolutely no way I could do worse than June’s effort, though, so let’s revisit this again in about nine months.

All content from Neo Tokyo News is for entertainment purposes only, and not financial advice.

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