TopshotFund: The Strategy Behind a Million Dollar+ Portfolio

In this episode, Nick interviews NFT collectibles collector SpaceCowboy of TopshotFund. He’s been super active on Twitter, documenting his experience in NFTs in public. While he has dabbled in a number of projects he has primarily been involved with Topshot, Cryptopunks, and Bored Apes. In this interview he discusses his views on the NFT market and offers tips on how to choose the right projects.

Quotables

“I like diversifying in culture and in NFTs and that’s a lot more fun for me.” (Timestamp: 9:52)

“It doesn’t matter if the bear market lasts another three weeks, three months, or three years. I’m positioned to capture that upside whenever the bull market returns.” (Timestamp: 15:27)

How SpaceCowboy Got Into Crypto

First investments: He first invested in Bitcoin in 2013, buying three for around eight hundred dollars each. He became involves throughout several ups and downs in the market. In 2017, he traded a few “shitcoins” and more recently he became involves with Topshot.

Investing in Topshot: SpaceCowboy invested the equivalent of the original three Bitcoins into the platform and he’s made over $1 Million dollars on NFTs since then. His investing has turned into a full-time hobby. He does nothing but post on Twitter and collects NFTs.

Career Background: He’s worked in consulting and in a big tech company. He had a start-up in the pipeline when NFTs started taking off. The decision to take the opportunity was because he loves and is passionate about NFTs. SpaceCowboy is unsure how the project will turn out but his goal is to eventually have a regular cash flow from it.

What’s unique about NFTs

Breaking new ground: This kind of bull run in Crypto didn’t exist in the NFT world before, so you couldn’t have a character you would play with. Now, everyone can have one. His NFT portfolio wasn’t planned based on his preferences for the art. The choices were based on how much money they could potentially make him.

Appreciation for art: SpaceCowboy has learned to appreciate art over time. Through NFTs, he’s learned to see the beauty crypto can have. This helped him understand that collecting them means you’re collecting art. He has built relationships with NFT artists he connects with on Twitter and is happy to own their art.

Long-term game: The goal is to hold his pieces for a long time. Space Cowboy’s mother was a docent at a museum. He’s found that he can engage with her in conversations about art. Before NFTs, he has never invested in physical art, but now he has a few pieces as well.

SpaceCowboy’s NFT Portfolio

Started in Sports Collecting: In terms of collectibles, SpaceCowboy had already been involved as a Sports collector. He and a friend wanted to purchase the highest rarest assets as quickly as possible. They created a list of items they wanted to acquire. They went down the list and made purchases off market.

Building a foundation: Through that list, they were able to build a portfolio. Topshot has been in a bear market for several months. The best assets have been those that retain their value. His original choices were the right moves. Some of the items he owns are players like LeBron James who is legendary and retain their value over time.

NFTs are accessible: SpaceCowboy is primarily investing in NFTs rather than crypto. He sometimes has a bit of ETH when he’s selling NFTs. People can learn about NFTs more easily and anyone can do it. With NFTs, the meme is baked in and it’s more entertaining and fun.

NFT Communities

SpaceCowboy’s Strategy: SpaceCowboy says part of the great thing about NFTs is that they have great communities. It’s easy to build a personality around that. At the moment, his strategy is to hold and trade to better pieces. There are great analytics sites out there like MomentRanks and EvaluateMarket.

Avoiding liquidity: Analytics gives you a good understanding of the current value of your collectible. It’s hit or miss depending on liquidity but higher tier pieces are much less liquid. They are willing to trade some more liquid pieces to be better positioned in the market.

Vision for future investing: Some pieces in SpaceCowboy’s portfolio will be held for years. He believes NBA Top Shot is the most successful NFT out there today. They have nearly half a million wallets from people who have owned own of their pieces at one time or another.

NBA NFTs are the Future

NBA’s NFT potential: NBA Top Shot is still in Beta and doesn’t have a full feature set. They haven’t integrated marketing with the NBA. When they do, things will blow up. When Dapper and the NBA are ready, that will also overflow to other NFT projects. They are still in the early stages and that is a good position to be in.

A diverse product: Eventually, other big brands will get into the NFT market. That will expand usership. There is never a uniform bear market in NFT. Right now Bored Apes are doing well. That shows the diversity of the product. You can hedge yourself behind a quality project that has a quality community behind them.

SpaceCowboy Substacks: The Topshot user Dingaling bought several big pieces. SpaceCowboy decided to liquidate a few collectibles to buy a Cryptopunk. He wanted one that you can tell a story around. He found what he calls the SpaceCowboy in late April. He’s written three substacks about it.

The Twitter community

Space Cowboy’s Goals: He wants to turn his sub-stack into a self-sustaining media source with skin in the game. The crypto economy allows everyone to get involved. You can hide behind the avatar but you can’t hide behind the blockchain. It’s easy to see what people buy and sell over time.

Twitter community: There are always economic experiments going on and that’s interesting to learn from. For the most part, everything is out in the open. People Tweet about what they invest in real-time. With Bored Apes, the Yacht Club created an honorary Ape for the SpaceCowboy. When he saw it, he minted one Ape. Today, he has 288 Apes.

The Bored Ape frenzy: The Twitter community members started minting them. The Bored Apes team made a few more honorary Apes. From there, they sold out a few days later. Space Cowboy’s strategy was to mint one to thank the company for making the honorary Ape. After that, he tried to figure out what was appropriate. When he saw other artists making them, he created many more.

Long term plans

Holding or selling: His goal is to find early projects he can support from the ground up. With Avatar collectibles, you can start using your identity and that’s a different kind of NFT. That’s harder to sell. Selling Cryptopunks would not be as easy. It would need to be for a large amount.

What he looks for in a project: He loves to mint. If he chooses to buy in the secondary market it’s usually the more rare pieces. SpaceCowboy looks for the right technology such as ERC721 tokens hosted on IPFS. He looks at how cool the art looks and generally reads the vibes on Twitter about the pieces.

Asking the right questions: Questions to ask when choosing a project include: How quickly are they able to execute their roadmap? Are they able to project into the future? Are they meeting your expectations? Do they have staying power and rising to the occasion when there are challenges? The Discord can answer a lot of those questions.

How to contact

You can follow SpaceCowboy on Twitter @topshotfund.