In this issue:

• This Week in Neo Tokyo: Don’t Get Your Back Doors Smashed In (by PhoenixxDown)

• It's Always Been NFTs (by Flower83)

The headline story this week is… us. Well, us, and some very fine company that keeps the cogs of the Neo Tokyo content machine well-oiled, running, and the best crypto gaming has to offer.

Firestorm pulled some wild stats from our content divisions, which have been grinding through bear and bull, and we’ll keep going through however many cycles we’ve got coming.

And the best part is: it’s all out there, none of it token-gated, for our good meatbag friends to view and get value from.

Huge respect to everyone involved in making this happen. And thank you to citizens and non-citizens alike for continuing to support us with your views and engagement.

This Week’s Neo Tokyo Content

Interlinked #75 – Ben and Cryptoetheus welcome back Tanner Matthews, the COO and Co-Founder of Altura. The trio kicks off the show with a look at the current state of the financial markets, covering dynamics like the US-China tariff war and the strength of the US dollar.

Shifting to Altura, Tanner shares updates on partnerships and innovations there, including their work with RavenQuest. Other topics include the challenges of pricing in the gaming market and the future of play-to-earn gaming.

Market Monday #118 - Something strange has been in the air lately. Felt it too? A general uneasiness, a disturbance in the ether, if you will.

It feels like a shift in the matrix. A break in the code. Something’s... off?

Maybe it’s just me. Anyway, in other news, Flower was bullish this week on Market Monday. Tune in to hear his thoughts, plus talk of NFTs and how the panel uses AI to level up their lives.

Listen back here.

NT x Unfungible Space #28 - Later today, the Gaming Space panel will take on a topic that has eluded many projects—not just in gaming but across all of crypto: How to build sustainable economies in Web3 Gaming.

It’s not easy. But given the many questionable examples we’ve seen over the years, we’ve at least learned what not to do, right?

Find out by setting your reminders or listening back here.

Short Scoops

This week’s NT Network Effect feature is AMA Lead and RENGO Co-Founder, Ben Gothard. 

Ben affirms that the true value of NT is the connections you make here, citing the ROI he’s got from that as dwarfing anything else. These threads are a good glimpse into what lies within these walls for networkers looking to make colleagues and friends in this space.

Here’s the OpenSea link to our most affordable price point, your key to joining Ben and everyone else here.

Shibuya Mall merch got a shout-out from Tommy Kingham, praising Crasher and the team for their “high quality and dope designs” on the NT hoodie and tee.

Be like Tommy and cop yours here.

Citizen E-Dogg has been putting his four S2s to work with AI. You might’ve seen his image from a few weeks back, and he’s since created an unofficial ad for Shibuya Mall and is working on a one-pager short story comic series. Nice work.

NT Plays hosted an OffTheGrid event yesterday, and here’s the link to the stream on Twitch if you missed it.

And don’t forget, you can join in on RavenQuest every Sunday with the NT Guild. A helpful starter guide can be found in the thread below:

The Citizens-only exclusive Marketing Talk was held again yesterday, with topics like when to hit reset on your brand and how to recover when things start slipping.

Missed it? Lucky for you, it was recorded and should be posted in the Discord channel here soon.

Don’t miss the next Town Hall which will be held this coming Monday. Set your reminders here.

Again, make sure you're in, non-citizens. 

Here's that OpenSea link again. Go do the needful. Go ballistic and get an S1.

$BYTES Bullposts

Two again this week.

One from ourselves, reminding you not to get your back doors smashed in; literally by the gentleman in the video, and metaphorically by the plethora of rugs and daily runners.

Return to your home. Return to BYTES.

ICYMI, Ktrap dropped a flash BYTES update earlier this week, shortly after a whale unceremoniously dumped 7,000 BYTES in one clip.

How did buyers respond? What’s the current yield rate for stakers? Find out below.

Until next next week, citizens.

It's easy to get distracted with various rugs, tariffs, memecoins, AI and politics these days.

It's easy to lose sight of what matters most: NFTs. It's always been NFTs.

Time to go back to our roots. Let’s cover the latest news and overall sentiment (spoiler: it's bearish.)

Volume & Floor Prices

The NFT market has seen a persistent decline in trading volume throughout 2024, with annual volumes dropping 19% to $8.8 billion, the lowest since 2020. OpenSea and Blur are still very much in charge, both doing just around 30k ETH in monthly volume.

The current state with floor prices is as follows:

What is interesting to observe is that Penguins are back below 10 ETH floor, Doodles want to climb back to 3 ETH, whereas Yuga’s BAYC didn't even make it to the top 10 by trading volume this week.

The Captainz, with their 20% increase are trading as if some bullish news is about to be released soon.

Interestingly, for some reason, Goblintown is also rallying to the moon:

Big Sales

This month it has only been Punks that are topping the charts, most of them with sales above 100 ETH for rare traits within the collection, with some art pieces sprinkled in within the top 10:

That Alien Punks sale, particularly, made headlines after it was confirmed it is in fact not a wash trade. It was sold for 4,000 ETH, which makes it the largest sale in recent history by far.

For some perspective, it is equivalent to over $6 million USD. The sale was brokered by Fountain (a group connecting high-value asset holders), but what is most interesting about it is that the seller lost a lot of money. He was holding the punk for a year after buying it for 4500 ETH. In this time ETH fell down by a lot, so the trader lost around $10 million in general.

Other News

This month, the only really hyped mint this month was Final Bosu on April 10th. The public mint price was 0.134 meaning that the team likely raised just shy of 2 million. The collection ranked 2nd in 24-hour trading volume ahead of Pudgy Penguins and Azuki when it was released and was described as “arguably the most anticipated mint of 2025 to date.”

Obviously it sold out in minutes, with floor price holding above mint at around 0.17 ETH.

Perhaps the most important parameter that signifies the state of NFTs is the fact that marketplaces are shutting down.

Recently, X2Y2 announced that they will be pivoting to AI and intend to close their NFT marketplace by April 30, 2025, after a 90% drop in activity, which signals continued pressure on trading platforms.

A similar thing happened to Bybit’s marketplace. They are cutting costs on operations after the recent hack they endured, and apparently NFTs are the first to go.

There have also been a few interesting developments in mainstream news, however.

The Indian railroads are partnering with polygon (lol) to bring soulbound NFTs as train tickets:

We might be in that stage of the NFT market cycle where hype subsides and people search for meaningful use cases and actual utility. I’d say that's progress.

See you in the next one,

Flower83

All content from Neo Tokyo News is for entertainment purposes only, is not financial advice, and does not reflect the opinions of Neo Tokyo.

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