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We hope everyone had a great weekend. Tons of news around meme coin land.

Here is the breakdown of today's newsletter:

🚀 $PEPE goes to the moon, why?
📸 Famous photographer Jeremy Cowart’s Aurus Collection (mints today)

• A former OpenSea employee has been found guilty of insider trading. (TA)

• Binance marketplace will support Bitcoin Ordinals.

• Yuga Labs announced the appointment of Mike Seavers as their new CTO.

• MEEBITS celebrate their second birthday with cool new "Living PFPs". (@MeebitsNFTs)

• New blockchain SUI is causing a stir in the market, despite bearish conditions. (DC)

• In Q4 of 2022, the auto racing league Formula One filed several crypto-related trademarks for its "F1" abbreviation. These trademarks signal a shift from NFTs to retail stores for virtual goods.

• There is a Bitcoin block that holds 535 Bitcoin DeGods. You can see the epic visual here.

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$PEPE Makes Millionaires Overnight

The NFT winter started a couple of months ago, leaving us yearning for a way to indulge in degenerate trading and late-night Discord conversations. Gone were the days when we wouldn’t sleep, just to watch the trading activity on our own NFTs. But now, the meme coin season has seemed to roar back again, attracting thousands of avid NFT traders to try out a new part of the crypto market.

⏱️ $PEPE Timeline

• April 18th, 2023 $PEPE is created

• April 30th $PEPE has its first surge to $340 Million USD market cap

• May 1st $PEPE surges again to $540 Million USD market cap

• May 5th $PEPE goes absolutely parabolic and reaches $1.8 Billion USD market cap

• Today (May 9th) $PEPE settles at $820 Million USD market cap

💡How Did This Happen?

Every couple of years, there’s a meme coin season. This all starts with a singular token, with $DOGE and $SHIB being prime examples. They start to accumulate, and people start to speculate, with many on the sidelines praying for their demise. But, as days turn into weeks, the spectators start to take notice; they realize that the coin is only going up. This causes the classic “FOMO” situation, which drives the price up even further. Then, once people exit and sell for a profit, they feel the urge to go after other tokens. This causes more tokens to be created. And there you have it, meme coin season.

🐸 What is $PEPE ?

This particular season has been orchestrated by $PEPE, a meme coin that is based on the internet’s favorite crypto frog meme. Pepe is a character that has been depicted in many parts of the cryptocurrency space, especially with OGs in the space over the past couple of years. With $PEPE came $BOB, and with $BOB came $TURBO, and with $TURBO came $BILLY, amongst many others. $PEPE started a frenzy that hopefully, lasts and progresses through the summer.

The history of Pepe the frog is expansive and would require multiple newsletters. If you are interested in knowing more you can read here. Needless to say, the frog image has taken a complete life of its own and means different things to various groups and internet circles. There is no one definition of what the Pepe meme is, heck there isn’t even 20.

🚨 Disclaimer

While meme coins are very fun and exciting, they can also be very draining and financially risky. These tokens are very volatile, with most of the meme coin market plummeting over 75% in value in the past 48 hours. That being said, if you bought at the top, you are tremendously down, which either means you sell or diamond hand. If things pan out as we anticipate, diamond handing doesn’t seem to be that much of a problem. But then you run into the issue of the drain. Looking at charts by the minute. Monitoring Telegram group chats. Checking Twitter for every latest post about your token. If you are indulging in trading this market, make sure to go outside. Get sleep. Focus on your health. You can burn years off of your life in mere months by worrying about your bags. WAGMI, and good luck to all.

Jeremy Cowart’s AURAS Minting Today

For the first time ever, artist Jeremy Cowart has let us behind the curtain and publicly revealed his process.

Once named the internet’s most influential photographer, Jeremy Cowart chases ideas in whichever direction they lead him. He has photographed Barack Obama, Taylor Swift, Gwenyth Paltrow, and many more. Past clients and publishers include Nike, Warner Brothers Records, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and CNN.

On May 2nd, Cowart created his latest NFT project, AURAS, live. It promises to be an unprecedented drop for the web3 community. With over a thousand audience members live streaming and a gallery full of IRL viewers, Cowart took 10,000 photos in 20 minutes without using AI or generative code.

He wore all white, including a mask, and used his patent-pending lighting techniques, robotics, and multiple layers of projection, including a state-of-the-art 130-foot, 5 million dollar LED volume screen to create this collection. Unlike other NFT projects, AURAS' live rarity traits are built into the process, and each PFP is a unique representation of the performance.

You don’t want to miss this historic mint.

🚨 Minting starts TODAY Tuesday, May 9th, on OpenSea:

• 9 am CST FREE for Block Queens holders

• 10 am CST .033 eth for allowlist

• 11 am CST .044 eth for public mint

Follow Cowart on Twitter for all the latest updates!

This is a must read if you are thinking of trading any meme coins…

Sponsored Content: This newsletter was sponsored by Wander.

That's all for today's issue! Thanks for reading this far and also make sure to give our Twitter a follow daily for breaking NFT/web3 news! (@TheDropNFT)

• Sotheby’s NFT Marketplace

• BLUR Launches Lending Platform

• Coinbase Is Suing The SEC

• Nike x RTFKT Air Force 1s Sell For Thousands

• Trump's Second Collection Sells Out

Follow the team:

Gannon Breslin, CryptoVonDoom, Naveed Lalani, Alex Reed, Naman Patel, Big Tuna

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Disclaimer: The Drop DOES NOT provide financial advice. All content is for informational purposes only. The Drop is not a registered investment, legal, or tax advisor or a broker/dealer. Trading any crypto-related asset is extremely risky and could result in significant capital losses.