In this issue:

• This Week in Neo Tokyo: $BYTES Is the Ticker. Citizen Is the NFT. (by PhoenixxDown)

• CloneX’s Final Rug. (by Flower83)

Neo Tokyo is $BYTES bullposting on the main account? And you’re bearish? And you’re selling? What?

A nice breakdown of the journey BYTES 2.0 has undertaken was posted yesterday, highlighting the fact we have had no VC unlocks or team allocation, ever. Along with what seemed like a teaser of what’s to come.

What are those? We’ll find out soon enough, surely. But we do know that $BYTES will soon unlock more utility, and this point is important, “even outside the Citizen ecosystem.”

You wanted $BYTES to have a purpose for holders outside of The Citadel. This statement doesn’t suggest so—it literally says it.

Meatbags, are you loading up? Someone is! More on that later…

This Week’s Neo Tokyo Content

Interlinked #77

On this week’s episode, Cryptoetheus and Jarred focus on legal updates from the SEC, including new guidance on memecoins. The conversation also touches on the appointment of a new SEC chairman, Paul Atkins, who is expected to bring positive changes for the crypto industry. GOD WILLING.

Additionally, the pair discuss the implications of new euro-based stablecoins, and of course, a bit on crypto gaming.

Market Monday #119

You’d be forgiven for thinking that last week’s revelation of Flower being bullish on Market Monday was a sign of the apocalypse. Not great, when you consider what’s transpired this year so far where WW3 is concerned. But no, the end of the world took a break this week.

Is AI scheming the real end of the world though?

The panel discuss, along with topics such as Fartcoin, Coinbase, and an Ordinals update from WhiteCoco4U. Listen back here.

NT x Unfungible Space #29

Are you bullish or bearish on decentralized game development? Is letting the community build a good or bad idea? Is letting the lunatics run the asylum a solid working plan?

Well… it worked out alright for Neo Tokyo.

Find out what the panel have to say when they go live at 11:00 EST. Set your reminders or listen back here.

Short-ish Scoops

Right after the Gaming Space ends today, NT Plays will be kicking off the Aurory: Seekers of Tolkane livestream over on Twitch for some chilled Friday afternoon vibes to welcome in the weekend.

Then on Saturday, it’s the NT Plays x Arcas Champions event starting at 16:00 EST. There’s 60,000 $ARCAS up for grabs, plus 3 NFTs—making the total prize pool $1200!

Find out how to get involved, and importantly, what you need to do to be all set for the Arcas event in the thread below:

This week’s NT Network Effect feature spotlights GreenCandle Jack, the co-founder of EQ Labs and ExtraOrdinals. A busy man, a Day 1 Citizen, and a man with a heart of gold, speaking from personal experience.

Jack highlights, like many featured before him, that the real value comes from the business opportunities and relationships made from being in Neo Tokyo. Read his story below:

Jack is also CEO of Yurei, and they quote-posted Jack’s spotlight, heaping praise on The Citadel, interestingly saying the connections between the two “are about to run even deeper.” Interesting.

Shibuya Mall dropped what looks like a preview of an Angie action figure! Market Monday regular Photoshopped spoke for everyone in the comments saying simply: “I need it.”

And we always end the week with some unhinged BYTES bullposting. Remember up the top I mentioned someone was loading up? We have some breaking news courtesy of Digital Crypto Shark.

Behold: a whale just slammed in $40K into $BYTES.

Bottom sellers in agony. When will they LEARN?

More breaking news! For further context, Ktrap tells us there’s been more than 20,000 $BYTES purchased in the past 24 hours!

And CryptoNFTManiac highlights how $BYTES outperformed everything in his portfolio recently.

We’re going to be seeing a lot more of that in the months to come, I’d bet.

Until next next week, citizens.

You know what, perhaps it was never a good idea in the first place to have all these web2 companies collaborating with web3 projects and launching their NFT collections.

At least we learned something, and now we know better. Right? Most of them went and stayed there: Pepsi, Porsche, Lacoste, Taco Bell, Tiffany & Co, etc… (Note from the Editor: “Dolce & Gabbana”)

But none of them hit as hard as this week’s rug: CloneX. A project by RTFKT that was tied to Nike through their acquisition of RTFKT Studios in December 2021.

Since then it's been a bumpy road. Collection initially skyrocketed to incredibly high valuations, alongside with other prominent collections, and CloneX was at some point even referred to as a true “blue chip.” It got coughed up in the hype of 2022 NFT bull run but then, like the rest, they didn't deliver anything of real value to holders. Well, besides some coupon sneakers.

For context, the money they made from mint price and royalties is around $100 million.

When the floor properly collapsed in 2023 and 2024, down from the 2022 highs of around 23 ETH to 0.5, the most cited reason for FUD was “they are treating us as customers not holders” to which many non-holders on the outside replied “well what did you expect lol.”

After months of downtrend, this week eventually put the final nail in the coffin. It turns out they didn't even bother paying the $10 fee to host the art on the website, so that it can be properly displayed on NFT marketplaces.

What a shame, but probably not that surprising.

This resulted in some funny twitter comments, and got everyone talking about a long dead and forgotten collection nobody really cares about anymore.

Of course the Ordinals people couldn't stay silent with their “BTC fixes this” narrative. I guess nobody told them that “Ordinals are dead,” Like, move on already, please.

This recent debacle just shows how little companies care about advancing tech and building in the web3 space. All it ever was, was a cash grab trying to extract value from the space.

But hey, at least we learned something, and now we know better. And we will stop supporting grifters and give them no more money. Right, you guys?

See you in the next one.

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

That’s it for our 95th edition of the Neo Tokyo Newsletter. Be sure to subscribe and share with your friends so you don’t miss out on future content.

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