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2/28/2022

GM!

When I returned to the USA back in 2013, I was struggling to find work and had a family to support. I’d always been a collector and admirer of old things and I started flipping antiques and collectibles, which eventually led to owning a store and doing a lot of antique shows. We sold the store when we moved (back) to Hawaii but I kept a lot of inventory and kept doing shows.

The pandemic destroyed that income stream for nearly everyone in it. This weekend, after two years, we had the first in person show since. Things have really changed. There were very few people interested in art, silver, heirloom antiques, furniture, books, or other antique or vintage collectibles. Prior to the pandemic – it was almost impossible to sell baseball cards or comics – but those are now the hottest thing going along with toys from the 2000’s and forward. Hot Wheels too have made a huge comeback.

Gary Vee called this. He was spot on. As for me, I was excited to be back in the sellers stalls after two years away – and I hung a sign that said crypto accepted and looked for people to talk about my favorite collectible with – NFTs – I figured the toy and comic folks would be savvy and I would be able to make some new friends – nope. We are still so early. Not a single person asked about crypto payments and I only had one conversation about NFTs the entire weekend.

We are super early folks – but the good news is that I was able to buy an entire long box of Valiant (90s era) comics for $30. As the only major comic label that has wholeheartedly entered the metaverse, I feel sure that I got an incredible score on these – but, as with all markets – only time will tell. Have a great week.

~CD Vagobond

Moving forward, I will be publishing this Monday thru Thursday but you will always be able to find the updates for DAOs and Influencers on my site at Vagobond.com

News

* ALPHA * – The Vagobond Discord is one of the best free alpha servers around. You might see it in this briefing, but you’ll definitely see it in the Alpha channel of our discord first.

Literary NFT Beat

(Updated Mondays by Greg R. Fishbone, Publisher of Cryptoversal Books – Find the latest at https://vagobond.com/literary-nft-beat/)

BookCoin’s First Tokenized Book Doesn’t Give a F*ck

This week, the team at BookCoin (Website | Twitter | Discord) offered a masterclass in “tokenizing” a book, specifically The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. In this 2016 New York Times bestselling self-help book, Manson riffs on improving our lives, not through our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but through learning to stomach the lemons better.

Building upon the model of generative art collections, the BookCoin folks created 1,111 text-on-background graphics with a variety of text and background traits and rarity tiers. The text of each token in “The Suble Art…” Collection is a unique excerpt from the source material, ranging from pithy mantras to decent-sized paragraphs, all minted as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.

These tokenized excerpts include only snippets from a larger work, with none telling a complete story. They fall under the general umbrella of literary NFTs rather than being fully realized NFT books in themselves.

Each active holder has been granted a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license in the content of their token with some added restrictions. The holder can make and sell prints or merch versions of the graphic file but can’t string multiple tokens together into a larger work or use the tokens to promote a business or political campaign. No-f*ck-giving politicians will just have to use their own words. Token holders also receive an unpublished chapter from the book, access to a Zero F*cks fan club, and the promise of future airdrops of a BookCoin governance token.

Could tokenizing be a viable path that more authors should consider for monetizing their books? We think so, but only with the right kind of book, using complementary art and an effective marketing campaign.

Tokenizing works well for a book such as Manson’s that riffs on a central theme in a variety of ways and includes numerous quotable excerpts that can stand alone as motivational memes. The limitation of generative backgrounds is that while some ideas in the collection are enhanced by their visual representation, others are undermined and a few are rendered horrific, such as Subtle Art #263, in which the words “I remind myself that it’s all right to die” appear over a smiling baby who appears to be contemplating its own mortality.

The marketing and resultant community for Manson’s book tokens seemed to have been aimed squarely at collectors and investors, rather than existing fans of the book and its messaging. The rarest item in the collection is Subtle Art #564, the singular token with a presumably unintended typo in its metadata. Reaping additional value from such a mistake would embody the lemonade-from-lemons approach that Manson so consistently rails against, so we’ll be watching #564 closely to see whether its holder stomachs the lemon or flips it for a tall glass of profit.

The mint was an initial success in that it sold out quickly, but long-term viability is still an open book. Will the tokens retain value over time? Can holders monetize the derivative rights? Will the fan club membership and bonus material add sufficient value to meet buyer expectations? Will realizing tokenization rights now become more common among authors and collectors?

Only time will tell, but let us know what you think on the Cryptoversal Discord server and Facebook group.

—GRF

Lit NFT Directory:

Listings are informative and do not constitute endorsement of books or services.

Alexandria Labs (Website | Twitter | Discord) – Literary NFT publisher and marketplace.

Annie’s Bookshop (Website | Twitter | Discord) – Publisher of generative NFT books in MP4 animation format.

The Atheneum Project (Website | Twitter | Discord) – AI-generated poetry creation tool and literary NFT publisher.

Barewords (Website | Twitter | Discord) – Publisher of NFT poetry in text-on-image format.

BookCoin (Website | Twitter | Discord) – Publisher and marketplace for books “tokenized” into NFT text-on-image format. Token: $BKCN (anticipated Q3 2022)

Cosmia (Website | Facebook) – Italian-based women’s literary NFT publisher and DAO on the NEAR blockchain.

Creatokia (Wesbite | Twitter | Discord) – Literary NFT publisher and marketplace from the parent company of book producer and distributor Bookwire. Token: $NFTBS

Crypto Poetry (Wesbite | Twitter | Discord) – Curated community of NFT poets with links to their works.

Cryptoversal Books (Website | Twitter | Facebook | Discord) – Author community and publisher of author-centric, marketplace-portable, carbon-neutral, NFT-first smart-books.

Jenkins the Valet (Website | Twitter | Discord) – Multimedia studio creating content, including literary NFTs, from licensed characters from the BAYC and MAYC collections and from an upcoming collection of original PFPs.

KOTA (Website | Twitter | Discord) – Literary NFT minter, marketplace, and mobile app planned to deploy on a blockchain being developed through the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure project of the EU’s European Blockchain Partnership.

LIT DAO (ICO | Twitter | Discord | Telegram) – A cultural DAO including literary, artistic, musical, and fashion NFTs. Token: $LIT

Medusa Writer’s Studio (Website | Discord) – A community-directed space for holders of the Medusa Collection to direct the creation of an original novel and collection lore.

Mirror (Website | Twitter | Discord) – Literary web publisher and NFT minter and marketplace on the Ethereum blockchain with an integrated crowdsource funding platform. Token: $WRITE

Nuclear Nerds (Website | Twitter | Discord) – A lore generation project integrated into a generative NFT art collection. Holders respond to prompts about their character to build the story world.

PageDAO (Website | Twitter | Discord) – A DAO for authors innovating the formats and accessibility of NFT books. Minter on Polygon blockchain now open to DAO members. Token: $PAGE

Readl (Website | Twitter | Discord) – Literary NFT minter and marketplace on Moonriver blockchain. Beta marketplace now open. Token: Rumored by End of Year 2022.

Soltype (Website | Twitter | Discord) – Literary NFT minter and marketplace on Solana blockchain. Beta minter and marketplace now open.

TimeWriter (Website | Twitter | Discord) – A collaborative writing experiment starting at the midpoint of a story that expands forward and backward in matching steps.

Token Literary (Discord) – Focused on helping creators with marketing, logistics, and tokenomics.

The VerseVerse (Website | Twitter | Instagram) – Community of NFT Poets with links to their curated works.

WIP Publishing (Website) – The publishing arm of PageDAO.

NFT Textbooks:

Gary K. Michelson, et al., Copyright Basics (PageDAO/OpenSea) – NFT textbook chapter with integrated reader on Polygon blockchain.

Neil Strauss, Survive All Apocalypses (LIT DAO/OpenSea) – NFT survival guide in integrated reader on Ethereum blockchain, notable for assigning copyright interests to a randomly selected holder.

NFT Scripture:

1455 Gutenberg Bible (PageDAO/OpenSea) – NFT scripture with integrated reader on Polygon blockchain.

1611 KJV Book of Genesis (PageDAO/OpenSea) – NFT scripture with integrated reader on Polygon blockchain.

Vagobond, Holy Bjble–AB Edition (PageDAO/OpenSea) – NFT scripture with integrated reader on Polygon blockchain.

NFT Poetry Books:

Indefatigable, Peace of Mind (PageDAO/OpenSea) – NFT spoken poetry collection with integrated reader on Polygon blockchain.

wordstobecrossroad, puff (Soltype) – Genesis NFT poetry collection on Solana blockchain.

NFT Novels:

Dazerine, T. Dylan Daniel, SpartTwain, White Chocolate, The Mask of Ganymede (PageDao/NFT Book Bazaar) – NFT book and audiobook in gated reader with print-on-demand feature on Ethereum blockchain.

Brian Toups, Drifter (OpenSea) – NFT book in integrated reader on Ethereum blockchain.

Literary NFT Collections:

Greg R. Fishbone, “Mad Messages” Collection (OpenSea) – Unlockable content NFT book chapters of Galaxy Games series book The Mad Messenger on Polygon blockchain.

Saami Heyes, “Night Creatures” Collection (Objkt) – Text-on-image NFT poetry on Tezos blockchain.

Saami Heyes, “Saami’s Journal” Collection (Foundation) – Text-on-image NFT poetry on Ethereum blockchain.

Mark Manson, “The Subtle Art…” Collection (BookCoin | OpenSea) – Text-on-image NFT tokenization of NYT bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck on Ethereum blockchain.

OddWritings, “Oddness 2022” Collection (OpenSea) – Text-on-image NFT poetry on Polygon blockchain.

OddWritings, “EmergentPoems” Collection (OpenSea) – Text-on-image NFT poetry on Ethereum blockchain.

Enzo Chul Ortega, “Tales from the Blockchain” Collection (OpenSea) – Unlockable content NFT short stories on Polygon blockchain.

Various, “Barewords” Collection (Barewords/OpenSea) – Text-on-image NFT poetry on Polygon blockchain.

Various, “Genesis” Collection (WIP Publishing/OpenSea) – NFT books in an integrated reader on Ethereum blockchain.

Various, “Genesis v2” Collection (WIP Publishing/OpenSea) – NFT books in an integrated reader on Polygon blockchain.

Various, “Readme” Collection (PageDAO/OpenSea) – NFT books in integrated reader on Polygon blockchain.

Literary NFTs (Anticipated):

Neil Struass, Jenkins the Valet (Jenkins the Valet) –Holders may choose to burn or stake the book for rewards. Anticipated April-ish.

Literary NFT Collections (Anticipated):

Bailey Bridgewater, Various Titles (Annie’s Bookshop) – 1,984 unique generative titles of animated MP4 books in the Crime genre. Currently pre-sale.

Mary Esther Farnstrom, Various Titles (Annie’s Bookshop) – 1,984 unique generative titles of animated MP4 books in the Horror genre. Currently pre-sale.

Patrick Garrett, Various Titles (Annie’s Bookshop) – 1,984 unique generative titles of animated MP4 books in the Post-Apocalyptic genre. Currently pre-sale.

Alicia Suastika, Various Titles (Annie’s Bookshop) – 1,984 unique generative titles of animated MP4 books in the Romance genre. Currently pre-sale.

Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity and There Is Never Anything But the Present (BookCoin) – Anticipated Q1 2022.

Shawn Whitney, Various Titles (Annie’s Bookshop) – 1,984 unique generative titles of animated MP4 books in the Sci-Fi genre. Currently in a pre-sale phase.

Vagobond’s New Acquisitions

You can find my NFT buying methodology and more at https://vagobond.com/nft-101/

Danger Islands – Skull Island Rare https://opensea.io/assets/0x9421497d7ada5c672974e625a76af7539aea4585/5
55 Island Unity https://opensea.io/assets/0xd8723058f2b456484e3cde4ccfaea903116fa9e4/532

My Chip List Top 5’s Today

(Feel free to disagree) – this list will change daily based on my own hype and holdings. To get the latest news on all of these and my more permanent lists go to https://vagobond.com/my-bag-of-nft-chips-blue-red-white/

Blue Chips

BAYC/MAYC
Pixel Vault/Punks Comic/Metahero
Huxley
BYO
On Chain Monkeys

Red Chips

WVRPS
Valiant Comics
Peaceful Groupies
Moons of Mars
Influence Asteroids

White Chips

Dead Heads
Danger Islands / Lazer Defi
Non-Fungible Heroes
2112
Satoshiverse

NFT & Metaverse Religion & Sprituality

The First NFT/Metaverse Religion- Bald Jesusism Bald Jesus – BJ is Your Bro

https://www.baldjesus.com | Bald Jesus Twitter | Holy Bjble Twitter

https://www.baldjesusdrinkingclub.com – Minting Now!- for Bald Jesus Drinking Club

.05 ETH limited to 777 total

Holy Bjble – AB version – Readable on OS! Only .001 ETH on Polygon so no gas

Cult Dao– https://app.cultdao.io/ | Manifesto

I bought some of this. I staked it. I’m not sure what will happen with it, but I like the ideology which is more like an anarchist cult than a religious cult.

Useful Info

I periodically move all of this to the NFT 101 page on Vagobond.com https://vagobond.com/nft-101/

Watchlist:

Moonlings – Metahero derivitive project by PVFD – https://discord.gg/cXjPutEu4h

Great Projects I’m Not In or Following:

aka projects I missed and am salty about. There are too many – see the whole list at:

https://vagobond.com/nft-101/great-nft-projects-ive-missed/

Missed in February: Generative Dungeons, Heroes, Mfers , Dented Feels

Tokens & Staking

These are the tokens and crypto/defi projects that NFTs have led me to. Bizarre when you think about it. See the full list at here

These are projects that I wanted to believe in that simply seem like they are dead. I bought into many of these instead of the winning projects above. Take that as a warning. I sincerely hope that they resurrect – but when I put them here, it means that I’ve stopped believing and looking. I hope to someday have a section at the top called ‘Resurrections’ for when projects in the Graveyard manage to rise up again. As time goes on, I have no doubt this will be the biggest section of this newsletter and I will let it keep growing so that those who care to look can understand that the majority of projects fail and investors lose money. Pick wisely, my friends, and good luck!

Newly Buried: See the huge full list at https://vagobond.com/nft-101/nft-project-graveyard/

Daily Features – Just click on the image to read the latest