Before I start talking about the hottest NFTs on the market right now. Let me wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope you finished 2021 with a bang, and are motivated to make the best of the year to come. I celebrated mine on the beach, with a lot of tequila and fireworks. Took a few days to recover, but I’m back on the grind now.
2021 has been a crazy year for NFTs, especially since the profile picture (PFP) niche blew up last summer. Record-breaking sales of Crypto Punks and Bored Apes (BAYC) go deep into the millions of dollars. And everyone is looking for the next top project or trying to trade his way to one of the blue-chip collections like a Bored Ape.
List of Hottest NFTs of 2022
Today, I’ll share with you a list of the current trends in the PFP NFT market. But, I’m not only here to share the good stuff with you. I’ll also shed some light on my worst NFT bets of 2021. As an NFT trader, you will make mistakes. Logically, so did I. No shame in making mistakes, just learn from them. And I hope you can learn from mine.
Now let’s dive into the NFTs that are pumping.
1] Mutant Apes (MAYC)
This NFT collection is part of the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club. Each BAYC holder received a serum airdrop, which they used to create Mutant Apes. Subsequently, 10k more mutants were minted for 3 ETH each, which sold out within 30 minutes in September.
Even tho, the collection is roughly 5 months old. With 182k ETH trading volume, they rank #5 on all-time volume amongst NFTs on Opensea.
Some of the rare M3 Serums (that were airdropped for free in September), are sold for millions. Just last week, one Serum received an offer for 1750 ETH. Which the owner didn’t accept. Cray Cray if you ask me.
The MAYC floor ranged between 5-7 ETH for a few months, before taking off at the end of November. But the real surge started right before the holidays. At the time, the floor was around 8 ETH, and today, it’s near 15 ETH per Mutant Ape.
There seems to be no stopping the Apes, and because of it we see a lot of Ape NFTs, or even derivatives of Apes popping up and doing well. Right now the ape market is hot AF and everyone wants to have an ape as their digital avatar.
For the BAYC and MAYC there is an $APE token coming, which rumors have it, will be airdropped to the holders of a Bored Ape or Mutant Ape NFTs.
Mutant Ape NFT #2854
2] Doodles
There’s a new king in town when it comes to the hottest NFTs within the NFT community: Doodles. You know it’s the new leader, just by the sheer number of Doodle derivatives entering the scene.
The jolly-looking PFPs have a “good vibes” sort of feeling to them. Which apparently captured the hearts of NFT collectors.
What stands out is that they have a doodle bank with 1273 eth, which is’t a set amount, that is used for the community. Their holders can vote on what to do with that liquidity. Whether that is spent on marketing purposes, parties, partnerships, or something else. Their community matters to them.
Subsequently, some successful affiliated projects such as Noodles and Pukenza were created for Doodles holders with profits added to the doodle bank
Shockingly, they did about 16.1K ETH in sales volume in the past 2 weeks. With the largest sale being Golden Ape to Pranksy for 296.69 ETH.
in February, @doodles will be able to mint Space Doodles for FREE 🚀🌈
it’s innovative & non-dilutive which means we aren’t introducing more NFTs into the circulating supply
here’s how it works👇 pic.twitter.com/06SoK5jmtr
— Poopie.eth (@Poopie_cat) January 8, 2022
On top of all that. They recently announced a companion series of Space doodles as a free mint. Another NFT airdrop to keep bringing value to their holders.
Personally, I’m not surprised their floor surged by 250% over the past 4 weeks and is now over 11 ETH.
Doodles NFT #7805
3] Clone-X
In early December 2021, everyone was hyped up about the Clone-X NFT drop. I didn’t manage to grab any whitelist spots and wasn’t able to mint. So I had to follow this one from the sidelines.
The PFP NFTs from Clone-X look very cool and are ready to be used in the metaverse. For a project that’s less than a month old, the volume of 58k ETH and high-end sales of over $1 Million are impressive, to say the least.
With approximately 18k items owned by 7.5k wallets, the NFT is widely distributed. The current floor is around 5.5 ETH, which is astonishing for any project. Let alone a young one like this. Keep a close eye on this one if you’re looking for the hottest NFTs of 2022.
Clone-X NFT # 8213
4] Alien Frens
I have to be honest on this one. With a slight embarrassment, I completely skipped it.
Several NFT collectors on my Twitter feed tweeted they were minting them, but to me, it looked like another cute PFP which there is so much of on the market right now. However, some catch on and moon on you. Like Alien Frens obviously did to me.
Looking at the price action, this is most definitely one of the hottest NFTs traded in 2022. I first saw them around X-mas at a floor price of 0.15, today that’s a floor price over 3 ETH.
Other than price action, they’re hosting an LA event for holders who want to party together. And a Merch shop is waiting to go live at the end of the month. It looks like they also have an airdrop coming of an incubator, which you can use to create an Alien Fren V2, which is a mutated variant of the Alien Fren.
Alien Frens NFT #3086
5] Alpacadabraz
Pixel Art NFTs have been popular since the Crypto Punks claimed the crown.
Which is the main reason we’ve seen hundreds of pixel PFP NFT collections mint in 2021. However, the majority is a cheap rip-off of the punks or other projects. Needless to say, they don’t all do well.
The Alpacadabraz NFTs have the same pixel art style but still managed to add originality to their collection. The funny alpaca’s will be used in their upcoming play 2 earn game.
For each 2D alpaca that you own, you will get a free 3D alpaca claim in early February 2022. These will be playable characters on their Sandbox land.
The animated alpaca’s are rarer, and I’ve seen sales between 3-8 ETH for them over the past week. Just this year, the floor price went up by 500% and is now sitting around 1.3 ETH. I flipped one in this recent surge and will keep one for the 3D alpaca airdrop.
Alpacadabraz NFT #6590
Listen to me ramble on NFTs, Airdrops and the bear market with Ruv, on episode 5 of the biggest NFT podcast of the moment.
More Trending PFP NFTs
The market is so hot right now, I can go on and on about different projects with great potential. However, let’s save some for next time.
I do want to leave you with a shortlist of projects I’m looking for an entry, or already have in my NFT portfolio.
Crypto Morries, current 1.94 ETH floor
Sappy Seals, current 0.64 ETH floor
Lazy Lions, current 1.47 ETH floor
Cool Cats, current 11 ETH floor
Gutter Cat Gang, current 6.1 ETH floor
Phanta Bears , current 7.5 ETH floor
Adidas Originals for Metaverse, current 0.9 ETH Floor.
My biggest NFT failures of 2021
This industry is like a minefield, and to be successful you have to be willing to make mistakes. Earlier last year, my biggest mistake was not by quick enough on the trigger. Trying to analyze each project in depth is time I don’t have. And waiting around to see projects do a 3-20x on you while you wanted to do research, that kinda hurts.
So I decided to be quicker on the trigger with proper risk management. I’m willing to lose it all on a bet, but I never place large bets that really hurt my portfolio. That being said here are some of my recent failures and why I lost money on them.
1] 0x Vampires – September 2021
After selling out within 7 minutes. The floor of the vampires didn’t move at all. They tried to spark it with some free mints of a second collection called 0x Hunters, which I minted and spend $200 on gas on. However, shortly after the completely rugged and abandoned the project. And I’m stuck with 5 vamps and a worthless hunter.
2] Gold Hunt Game – November 2021
After the Wolf Game hype, a bunch of similar projects popped up. One of them was The Gold Hunt Game. Eager to jump on these pixeled game-type NFTs, I bought 2 of them near the top and spend 0.5 ETH. Currently, the floor is 95% down, and I assume I will lose it all.
3] Marcel van Luit – March 2021
One of the earlier art NFTs I fully supported. While the art has its charms, the artist puts no effort in adding utility or increasing the value for his investors. Right now there have been 0 secondary sales in profit, of which I can conclude I’ll have to liquidate my NFTs on a loss as well.
4] Party Grandpa – December 2021
For a minute my Twitter feed was loaded with Party Grandpas. However, it was literally a minute. Still a small chance this will go at some point, but currently writing it off as a loss.
5] Project URS – October 2021
Had a lot of potential at the start. Sold out quickly and was on the rise. Saw lots of PFPs on Twitter showing off this NFT. However, in October the team got in a debate on their vision and it took about 4 weeks before the news came out that half the team left. The remaining ones never managed to spark the project back to life. Not completely dead yet, but slowly bleeding downwards.
Final Thoughts
While searching for the hottest NFTs on the market, you risk buying the top, and that is okay. We can’t win them all. If you’re in the NFT space today, you’re so early. Make sure to manage your risks properly. Take some profits once in a while, to create liquidity for other opportunities. Find a project with a solid team, good roadmap, vibrant community, and future utility, like staking.
Don’t FOMO into random projects or derivatives, and if you do, make sure you are willing to take a big loss on them.
Right now I’m full-time on NFTs, I’m trading and investing in NFTs personally and I’m helping Niftify.io with their marketing in this quarter. If you go sign up and complete KYC today, you can claim a free NFT (only the first 5000). They have a lot of good stuff coming up, as the first regulated NFT platform they just opened up for the USA market. With some big drops coming up and a recent token listing on BittrexGlobal, things are heating up for Niftify.
Follow me on Twitter for more NFT spam.
WAGMI.