Interview with the NFT whale who intends to acquire Azuki: I increased my position, and NFT will not die

In the early morning of June 28, Azuki, one of the few well-known projects in the NFT field, shocked all NFT players with a jaw-dropping sale. This is the only NFT brand in the bear market whose price only goes up but not down. It sold 10,000 PFPs that are almost identical to the original Azuki for 20,000 ETH in 20 minutes, making several unreasonable mistakes in the NFT industry. A group of community players who firmly believed in Azuki suffered heavy losses.

In this regard, BlockBeats interviewed the big player in the Azuki series, who is also the founder of NDV Fund and Christian, the joint founder of ManesLAB. Currently he holds 40 Azuki, 700 Beanz, and 400 Azuki Elementals. After the "thunderstorm" incident, Christian expressed his willingness to bid $40 million to acquire Azuki on social media. This may be a joke, but it also reflects the emotions of the Azuki community, anger and helplessness.

**BlockBeats: The community must be very dissatisfied at present. As a big player, you choose to bid $40 million to acquire Azuki. Is it a joke or a serious one? **

Christian: To be precise, it was half-joking and half-serious. The serious side is that I am really optimistic about the Azuki brand, and I think it contains infinite possibilities, and it can establish a truly influential fashion brand and cultural benchmark.

This is why the reinvestment has invested a lot. In fact, a rough calculation, it should have spent several million dollars on it. Including the Chinese community, there are actually many powerful and loyal big players. The combined holdings of everyone should be far more than 40 million US dollars, so it is a sure profit to acquire Azuki at this price. My valuation of the community behind it is far beyond this figure. At the same time, I am also confident that through practical operations, the brand can be developed from a pure narrative to an entity enterprise that can sustainably generate cash flow.

The joke is that $40 million is definitely not something you can buy. I used to trust Zaga and the team very much, they are not the ones who would give up such a promising project for such a small benefit. Because in fact, as long as you work hard, the income from royalties alone should be more than 10 million US dollars a year, but if the FUD is not handled well this time, I think it may ruin the entire project. Of course, this situation is actually a bit beyond my expectations. Because the pictures posted this time and the series of actions after that were indeed a bit unexpected, and the quality was particularly poor, we still want to wait for an explanation from the team.

**BlockBeats: People who are not in the Azuki community may not know how high the community's expectations for this new product release are. Can you tell us what your expectations are for this release? **

Christian: Looking back now, every step the team took was indeed a little bit wrong. First of all, the choice of timing is not very good, because the sentiment in the NFT market has dropped to freezing point recently, but the team still has to absorb market liquidity at such a high Mint price. I don't think the team will cause such dissatisfaction even if the price is set at 1 ETH. However, the price of 2 ETH this time is indeed somewhat beyond the upper limit of everyone's understanding, so I think many people are actually gritting their teeth and holding on to participate in this sale.

At the same time, this sale is actually not very friendly to the original Azuki Holder, especially the holder of the Beanz, which also makes me sad, because at the beginning, from the image of Beanz to the cultural attributes, I I feel that the potential is very great, and the team has not had any particularly big movements this year. I always thought that maybe they were still doing something, but this time they directly issued a new one, which seriously violated some rights of the previous old holder.

Before the release, I also tweeted and expressed my attitude: If Azuki can still release something very different after this high-priced sale, some actual benefits and progress, it may be very good for the entire NFT field. is a boost. Because I think there are still a lot of funds that are currently waiting and watching, but looking at it now, it is true that this sale is very disappointing. It has become a meme event, which is actually quite embarrassing.

**BlockBeats: Now that Azuki's word-of-mouth has fallen to the bottom, let's assume that the acquisition is successful, what ideas do you have to save Azuki now? **

Christian: The specific idea must be carefully deliberated and analyzed, but I think there are a few principles that must be adhered to. First of all, a very important thing for NFT projects is to get rid of the dilemma of "cutting community users" and be able to truly create benefits from the outside. I have been emphasizing and adhering to this concept from a very early stage, including my choice to invest and join Weirdo Ghost Gang, also because I can see from the business model that the team is really working hard to expand the circle. Whether from selling physical peripherals, holding music festivals, or developing Web3 e-commerce products, etc.

A good IP can theoretically create unlimited value, and these sources of income should drive the continued development of the entire project. I believe that the vast majority of NFT holders sincerely hope that they can become project shareholders, but so far, I have not seen any project party has a clear dividend model. Including that I also participated in Azuki's previous gold skateboard auction. Looking at it now, the team may still target all paying users on these community members who sincerely want to make contributions.

But the real NFT and Web3 concept should still hand over ownership and benefit distribution rights to users, instead of "harvesting" under such a guise, so that there can be a positive flywheel-driven development. Azuki used to have the strongest community, including Red Bean Garden and other sub-communities. They all have a large number of talents. Everyone did not get a penny, but they are still doing things for the brand and the community they love. This also makes me support them. feel unfair.

I think NFT projects must get out of the vicious circle of infinitely extracting value from Holder, including delegating rights to communities in various regions, so that they can receive support and benefit distribution, so as to better spread and develop the brand. Of course, this matter is very simple to say, but it is still relatively difficult to manage. But if I think there are fresh narratives worth exploring in this field, this is a direction I will choose to develop.

**BlockBeats: You said before that you would sell all if you didn’t meet expectations, but now you don’t plan to sell the Azuki series? **

Christian: I don't plan to sell at the moment, because objectively speaking, the current mood is already very bad. Unless the team does something more irreversible, the rebound should actually be fast. Cutting the meat at this time will cause a huge loss not only for me personally, but also for the entire project and the community. On the contrary, I have started to buy the bottom slowly, and I actually picked up more than 200 Beanz today. If I lose in the end, I will admit it. Think of it as a thing that I once loved, and also to participate, or to have such an experience, to be able to build a community with so many people and pay for it.

**BlockBeats: The next question will be more macro. I talked about it in the previous interview, that is, you are more optimistic about Azuki than other blue chips. Why? **

Christian: First of all, the overall brand has a good tone and a large narrative space. This must be his biggest advantage. But at present, if we only rely on these, we will definitely not be able to make a long-term brand.

Putting these aside, there is only one reason why I am really optimistic about Azuki. Even when it fell to 6 ETH, I still didn’t sell any of them. I have never sold until now, but I just kept adding positions. The only reason for this is that I can deeply appreciate what a powerful community force he has, which is the foundation of his life.

Although I lost money today, I didn't feel particularly uncomfortable, but rather relieved. But when you think about it, it is very sad that the confidence of such a stable community has been fundamentally shaken. The price is only a short-term feedback based on emotions, but once the fundamentals change, the trend will emerge, so I hope the team can come out as soon as possible to give a reasonable explanation to stabilize everyone's confidence.

**BlockBeats: Now it seems that blue-chip NFTs with teams are dead, but meme communities like Punk and Milady are bucking the trend. Where do you think the value of blue-chip NFT is reflected? **

Christian: To be honest, I think the value of blue-chip NFT is the fantasy space. These examples such as MoonBirds and Doodles also tell us that no matter how good the project team looks, no matter how huge the market value of the project is, and no matter how many "powerful households" there are in the community, as long as the team does not develop or the narrative stops, it will not be able to stop the decline. decline.

Besides BAYC, Azuki is by far the only blue-chip project that I think has value. Only when a project establishes a stable cash flow in the future and can feed back the community, will it become the real value of NFT. Today, there is no such project, and I expect more founders with a vision and a sense of responsibility to stand up and do this. The little ghost Weirdo Ghost Gang is also working hard in this direction, but it is true that they did not have the ability to publicize this matter before. Compared with Azuki, there must be a big gap. Of course, if you want to develop culture and brand in a down-to-earth manner, it is definitely not a matter of entering the city in a day.

I think Crypto needs to have a more real business model, whether it is NFT or homogenized Token. Of course, the most interesting thing lies in this tension. Because in the field of Crypto, once a narrative business model is too clear, such as the current DeFi, their valuation has actually already had an upper limit, and a capable team should make a perfect combination of the two aspects.

**BlockBeats: According to the current performance of blue-chip NFT, will the future market and valuation of NFTfi track be affected? **

Christian: This is for sure. No matter how much infrastructure and derivative applications there are, there needs to be a core asset in front to lead the market forward. A project with communication power can only be completed by this project. PFP used to be the leader, and the future is not sure. I think there will be a head project, but today's Azuki shattered everyone's original illusions. At this point, I can only say to myself, "Where can I go?". I will still be firmly optimistic about the NFT field, and I have also invested in NFT projects such as Paraspace. Emotionally, I think today is a severe blow to the NFT industry, but intellectually, I believe that the future is still bright.

**BlockBeats: Many projects are trying to make sustainable profits, such as Nike's .Swoosh and Little Ghost's CutUP. What is the correct way for NFT projects to make sustainable profits? **

**Christian: **It doesn’t need to be a big innovation, as long as the physical peripheral products are done well and the entire supply chain is opened up, it is great enough, and the profit margin is huge. Although there is not much publicity for Little Ghost's CutUP, the previous release did let outsiders know about the brand. People who used to be non-holders and non-Web3 industry will buy branded clothes. I think these are relatively good prospects. Another advantage of the Web3 project is to build projects online, not to mention e-commerce, and it can even be combined with DeFi in the future, which are some good attempts.

**BlockBeats: Does the blue-chip NFT have a narrative? Is the next cycle still related to the avatar NFT? **

Christian: I don’t think the avatar NFT will die, but anyone can see that the narrative of the blue-chip NFT today is unreasonable if it still relies on the perspective of the picture.

You can think about it from this angle. At that time, BAYC actually created a miracle in the history of business. In just one year, they made a project from scratch to a valuation of 5 billion US dollars. And this is purely based on the consensus of the community and the call for orders. At that time, many BAYC holders were the most influential people in the world, whether it was Curry, Eminem, Dog Lord, Neymar, etc. But even with such a strong lineup, BAYC's market value at that time stagnated at $5 billion.

So I think this question is the same as when we talk about the essence of DeFi as a whole. Now it seems that it will indeed experience certain bottlenecks, and the high Ponzi income model that relies on continuous funding will come to an end one day. After the disillusionment, there will definitely be a substantial correction and more thinking. Who can grasp this kind of thinking after the industry has gone through a trough, and go back to explore which real business models can be verified, so as to gain a certain advantage in the next trend.