NFTs vs. Macro
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Sponsor: Frax — Fraxtal Ecosystem: Where DeFi Meets AI.
It was a rollercoaster week in the markets, to say the least. And at first glance, some top NFT collections looked like they held strong. Over the past 7 days, CryptoPunks rose +5.2% in ETH terms, Mutant Apes +5.1%, and Lil Pudgys +6.5%. Yet in dollar terms, those same collections fell between -6% and -9% over the same span.
Why? Because with trade war volatility ramping up, ETH dropped against USD on the week. That means even as some NFT floors rose in ETH, their dollar values sank. On top of that, the dollar itself took a hit, with the DXY falling ~3% since last Friday as nervous investors rotated out of USD and into assets like gold and the yen.
Still, there’s a silver lining. Seeing collections like 'Punks tick up in ETH terms shows that ETH-native collectors are still bidding, even amid the broader macro picture.
And there’s hopium yet: if the weakening dollar continues to push capital into crypto, we could see ETH rally, and with it, NFT floors may climb in kind.
For now, though, uncertainty reigns. But one thing’s clear: as the world’s money starts to increasingly hedge against America, the ripple effects will be felt all the way down the chain, from treasury bonds to onchain JPGs...
Plus, other news this week:
📰 General news
- Blackbird introduced Blackbird Club
- Bonfire is sunsetting in May
- Coldlink added support for Bitcoin connections
- OpenSea submitted a letter to the SEC on NFT regulation
🎨 Cryptoart
- Jonathan Mann released a songrwriting AI, Hugh Mann
🏆 Digital collectibles
- based dropped glyphs via OpenSea
- Chonks released its native marketplace
- CryptoPunk 3100 resold for 4,000 ETH
- Doodles published a style guide
- Pods has facilitated +1M podcast mints
🎮 Decentralized gaming
- byeddy.eth released GameHub, an onchain gaming info hub
- EVE Frontier launched its latest playtest
- Nifty Island expanded its Playground options
- The Nounsvitational, the final Melee major of 2025, is coming to Tokyo
📱 Onchain social
- Bonsai enabled staking on Lens Chain
- Coinboost now lets you reward traders with any token
- Farcaster added trending topics
- Orb launched on Lens Chain
- Rekt News deployed on Lens Chain
- Zora unveiled coin-to-coin swaps
🪙 Memes & NFTfi
🌐 Virtual worlds
The Fraxtal ecosystem is expanding at lightning speed—this month’s biggest highlight is IQAI.com, the newest Agent Tokenization platform from IQ and Frax. IQ is building autonomous, intelligent, tokenized agents launching on Fraxtal in Q1. Empower onchain agents with built-in wallets, tokenized ownership, and decentralized governance—all within a fast-growing Fraxtal ecosystem.
- 📱 Consumer Crypto Aggregators — TPan
- 🪂 The Ultimate Guide to Airdrops — Zeneca
- 🌐 The Universe Will Run Onchain — Stani
- 🎨 In Conversation With: Parker Ito — Archetype