25 Years for SBF: The End of an Era and The Cambria Blast Gold Mine
SBF sentenced to 25 years in prison with an $11 billion fine, while Bitcoin ETF inflows resume with analysts forecasting another leg up to six figures. The Blast game, Cambria, is a gold mine (Guide)
GIVEAWAY: I’ll be distributing 10 Guaranteed (GTD) and 100 Waitlist $MOCA Codes to the first readers that quote tweet this post with what you like about this newsletter and DM me the task completion on X
To be eligible, you must follow:
My X account and turn notifications on
The deadline for completion is April 4th (Thursday)
I’ll use a decade of traditional finance/corporate experience to refine the chaos into bite-sized chunks for you to digest.
This newsletter consists of four parts:
Market Overview
Snippet Partner (Modern Market)
Headline News
Weekly Airdrop Guide (Cambria: The Web3 RuneScape)
Enjoy the journey.
The Modern Market Show is a live daily show on the NFT market, the crypto market, and how to make money on the internet
Live on X and YouTube from Monday to Friday at 7 am ET, running for 60 minutes
Tune in to better understand the latest trending matters across the market
This newsletter goes out weekly to 3,400 subscribers
Please don't hesitate to message me directly for sponsorship, partnership enquiries or consultation requests
The mainstream media coverage is all over Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) as he is sentenced to 25 years behind bars and ordered to pay an $11bn fine
Probably not long enough; he’ll leave prison as a billionaire at the age of 52
Ironic that he’ll be coming out in 2049 given the name of the renowned crypto conference “Token-2049”:
Bitcoin has experienced a choppy week following the pump from $67k back to $72k, before dropping back to the $69k region; consolidating close to prior all-time highs as analysts forecast another leg up to six-figures:
Bitcoin ETF inflows resumed last week after experiencing net outflows in the week prior — $0.4bn of inflows on Tuesday, with $0.3bn flowing into the Fidelity ETF alone:
Goldman Sachs Group said pension funds may sell an estimated $32 billion in stocks at the end of the quarter to rebalance their positions; kanazawa0x0 predicts to see a lot of interest in Bitcoin ETFs Demand
Meanwhile, BlackRock's Ethereum-based tokenized fund BUIDL enjoyed strong demand in its first week, attracting $245 million in deposits
NFT Market Volume
Bitcoin Ordinal trading volume rebounded this week:
ETH Trading Volume:
Ethereum NFT trading volume continues to decline despite the two recent $16m Alien Cryptopunk sales:
Other Activity (Mintify Heatmap):
(A): Mfers pump this week following the fair launch of the $MFER token on Base which rose beyond a $300m market cap
(B): Mocaverse announced details of its $MOCA token, with the NFTs changing hands following the recent 30% pump beyond 5 ETH
(C): Azuki Elementals surged 3% this week on the Azuki Anime token news
Bitcoin Ordinal Volume:
ON1 Force ordinal collection mints out on Bitcoin
DarkFarms sells his first Ordinal Inscription for 19m $BOME ($273k)
A Bitcoin Rock sells for 3 BTC ($300k)
Bitcoin Puppets lead on volume traded as its memetic culture captures the timeline — no significant price action following the prior pumps from a $50 mint
Node Monkes price action cools off following their price rise in prior weeks
SOL NFT Trading Volume
SOL continues to trade at the 50k to 60k SOL mark ($10m) daily:
The HOA (Parcl) NFT pumps 70% as Parcl Season 3 approaches a conclusion and Parcl announces a separate 4m $PARCL allocation to HOA holders
Mad Lads remain the Solana blue chip despite dropping to 130 SOL — Continued rewards are distributed with holders eligible for a $PARCL claim
Notable NFT Sales
Key stand-out sales are on Bitcoin this week:
Darkfarms1 sold a Bitcoin Ordinal inscription for 19m $BOME
An Ordinal Rock sold for $200k (3 BTC)
A rare Azuki Elemental sells for 24 ETH and two 70+ ETH Spirit Azuki sales
Active Wallets
There was no significant change in the number of active NFT wallets this week.
Airdrop Tracker —> Link
(A cut of this tracker will be taken weekly and an updated version will be included each week for you to view — so tune in weekly for further opportunities!)
WARNING: Ensure you use a burner wallet that is NOT your main wallet for this.
Weekly Insight
News
Mocaverse releases details on $MOCA tokenomics and allocations
Inspect partners with Sui Network and Season 2 of the LootyFi rewards go live from the Avalanche partnership
Parcl release details on the $PARCL tokenomics
$DEGEN token breaks $2bn FDV on Base
Bold Leonidas Base open edition closes after minting 11.8k for 118 ETH
ParallelTCG announces $35M Funding Round in Parallel Studios
Munchables got exploited for $63M, they were able to recover the funds
Azuki announces AnimeChain in collaboration with Arbitrum
Playchronoforge announces Play & Earn Season
Todaythegame minting on April 9th
Portalcoin announces Playsomo as the first Launchpad Partner
Todaythegame minting on April 9th
InfiniGods taking a snapshot of NFT holders on April 4th
XterioGames announces different ways to farm $XTER Rewards
Revolving_Games starts a social farming campaign
Well3official public sale receives $55m of interest
Airdrop Tracker Link
If there’s appetite I’ll continue to include a weekly walkthrough on a selected airdrop.
This Week: Cambria Degen Arena on Blast
Cambria — Degen Arena
Use Invite code: “S4mmy” if you’d like to support me in writing these guides
Last week I covered the Blast ecosystem attention, this week I want to cover a game on Blast that I believe to be a gold mine — Degen Arena
What is it?
It’s a RuneScape-inspired PVP duel arena
I won’t go into the mechanics of how it works, but I will:
Give you a high-level overview of how to start
Optimal strategy of what I’ve learned over the past few weeks
How do You Join?
Head over to https://lobby.cambria.gg/
I required an invite code to join, so here’s mine: “s4mmy”
Then when you join you’ll need to set up a character — this is purely cosmetic
Then click on ‘World 1’ or ‘VIP World’ to play, walk south to a crowd of players
Speak with the Wizened Old Man for a Blast Orb
You can either:
Play for free, (earns Arena Tokens only) or;
Wager ETH (earns you Arena Points + Arena Tokens)
I suggest you do free duels to begin until level 10 duelling to familiarise yourself with the mechanics — you’ll need level 10 duelling to open chests for loot anyway
You’ll earn 15 XP per duel and you’ll need 1,154 XP for level 10 (77 games)
How do You Play?
There are three duel game types you can do:
Whip (Skilled)
Whip + Dagger (Skilled, hard!)
Great Axe (Random luck)
If you start playing for ETH, I would suggest Great Axe unless you’ve become proficient at the Whip strategy:
“Aggressive” stance when you hit, then switch to “Defensive” when they hit you
If you leave it on Aggressive and your opponent uses this strategy, then statistically, they will have a 5 to 10% edge over you in the duel
What’s the Objective?
There are four key objectives here:
Obtain Blast Gold — earn Arena Points to earn “Tomes” which grant Blast XP
Compete to win Arena Tokens or ETH
Earn rare cosmetic items, which will become NFTs!!
Strategically play to achieve additional custom rewards from the Cambria team:
Obtain Excalibur for a 0.2 ETH airdrop:
The top 10 for wagered volume in a given week earn 1 ETH
If you place in the bottom 50 for those who lost the most ETH then you can earn 0.2 ETH, as a consolation
Bear in mind that there is a 4% fee on winnings, paid by the winner
So for a 1 ETH wager duel:
The winner will take home 1.92 ETH (96% of 2 ETH wagered after the 4% tax)
This 4% fee funds the custom rewards, team treasury and referral fees
So what’s the optimal strategy?
Those with low liquidity can compete for Blast Gold, but high volume prevails
The more you wager the higher the likelihood of obtaining Excalibur and also the custom rewards, to offset your 4% fees
You can do as little as 0.001 ETH in wagers, so based on mean reversion you could do these size bets and likely end up netting off, with just the 4% fee essentially looked at as a cost of farming Blast Gold
I prefer to do the odd 1 ETH wager to try to hit Excalibur and you accumulate a lot more Blast Arena Points — you earn 50% more while wielding
1 ETH wagered = 1.5k Arena Points + 30k Arena Tokens
Higher wagers will put you in a stronger position to obtain the rare items, and the legendary “Oversized Toy Hammer” skin from the Puglists Chests (3K Arena Tokens):
Once you’ve played ETH duels you will start accumulating Essence Points — Herro currently leads with the most Essence, thus obtaining the most Tomes and Blast Gold
It would take Herro 864 “1 ETH” wagers to obtain this many Arena Essence, which equate to thousands of Tomes per week and, in turn, high amounts of Blast Gold
Herro estimates they will receive 10k Blast Gold from this distribution — which is estimated to be worth $100k fair value, all from one app on Blast!
This would also net Herro 26 million Arena Points, which has enabled them to accumulate the most Party Hats (15):
The cheapest Party Hat (Purple) currently trades OTC for about $1,505
$1,505 = (7.5m AT/10,000*$2)
It moves in line with OTC Arena Token prices, tied to the shop price of each PHAT
At the moment it costs about $2 for every 10k Arena Tokens OTC:
So while it’s advantageous to have ETH to speed up Blast Gold accumulation, there are plenty of ways to make money in-game to more than compensate for the 4% fees on ETH transactions
If you want to learn more, you can read through the official documents
See you at the Sand Casino!
That’s a wrap for issue 66 of S4mmy’s Snippets. I hope you enjoyed it.
Please leave me any questions or thoughts here - I will respond to everyone!
And if you thought this was interesting, please consider subscribing to this Substack and following me on Twitter for more on NFTs and Web 3.0.
Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered investment or financial advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.
I hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.
You look like a badass wielding that Excalibur, my good man!
I honestly don't know how you keep up with it all, but thank you for keeping us apprised of all the opportunities out there, S4mmy!
Wow that explanation made a non Gamer almost FOMO into a fight 🥷