art and design geek. collector at heart. posting what i like and what catches my eye.
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calling jack butcher’s new mint ‘extractive’ fundamentally misses what makes NFTs interesting.
5k+ x accounts and 25k+ unique wallets participating in a new mint is remarkable distribution for an art experiment.
it may also be the biggest X Money use case to date and that matters. it demonstrates a compelling path for native P2P payments, creator commerce and internet native distribution.
an artist can now reach new audiences on X, authenticate access, accept payment and create an onchain record of ownership without needing to build an entire financial or distribution stack around it.
opens the door for a much broader class of artists and creators to experiment with digital commerce in ways that weren’t previously practical or tried out. and jack did it first.
not every NFT needs to be a financial product. sometimes the innovation is simply discovering a new primitive for how art, money and audiences interact online.
this is exactly the kind of experiment that expands the design space for onchain art.
creator → audience. attention → transaction. no storefront, no checkout, no intermediary. a social post becomes both distribution and commerce. GGs to @jackbutcher for showing it’s possible.
as x builds out its financial infrastructure, this is where x money gets genuinely interesting: not just moving dollars, but turning the social graph into a native marketplace for creators, digital goods and internet native commerce.
the timeline + ticker + trading feature release yesterday also feels like another piece of x’s financial stack falling into place. can’t wait try that stuff out myself.
we’re still early and the friction is coming down by the day. hope @elonmusk is also paying attention to the experiments happening on top of x’s native financial infra.
pretty cool stuff.
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Shoutout to the homie @SunwayIKZ for hooking me up with the jack butcher x money mint. I remember missing out on the checks mint in 2023. Glad I didn’t miss out on this. IKZ.
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an open edition on x money
send $8 to @jackbutcher
enter your eth address in the memo
your transaction id is the seed for your artwork
closes 8pm est tomorrow
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Realest post I’ve read today.
If you’ve ever collected an NFT, you’ll resonate hard with what Z is saying here. I think the hardest part of building on NFT native IP is that ownership creates alignment around the asset, not necessarily around the vision.
I’ve watched Azuki go through every version of that tension over the past 4+ years. FUD cycles, shifting narratives, questions around direction, selective interpretations, pvp shit, and straight up misinformation campaigns. lol. Name it and this team and community has probably lived through it.
And yet, the interesting part is what remains after all of that noise.
Azuki has gradually moved from universal nft model of ‘trying to do everything’ to being much more deliberate about what they wants to build: a real IP ecosystem anchored by characters, storytelling and products people can actually engage with.
The TCG gives the IP a physical, social and gaming layer. The manga gives the characters a narrative universe. anime(.)com creates a new layer of distribution. Studio Azuki gives the broader infra to expand. Animechain gives more options to experiment onchain.
What I find most compelling is that these aren’t isolated bets. They’re starting to reinforce one another. Azuki now has increasingly tangible ways to experience the IP beyond simply holding a PFP.
Yes, this is a very different proposition from the early days. when the possibilities were almost limitless but the destination was inherently ambiguous and pure speculation.
Of course, choosing a direction means leaving some people behind. That’s inevitable when you stop optimizing for every possible interpretation of what a project could be. But I think there’s something powerful about having the conviction to make those tough trade offs to future proof the brand and spend years compounding in the right directions.
NGL the early Azuki era was fucking special and I’m increasingly interested in what happens when the IP starts compounding across mediums, audiences and experiences rather than relying on speculation or constant announcements to keep attention.
Honestly, I don’t think Azuki gets nearly enough flowers for what they continue to build across @AzukiTCG, @animecom, @AzukiManga, @studio_azuki and @animecoin.
Four years in, through multiple market cycles, the team is still shipping, experimenting and expanding the same underlying IP that broke the market in 2022 with its art and quality.
Now the IP has a bigger addressable market. Clearer thesis. More tangible products. More IRL. More ways for people outside the original collector base to enter the universe. That’s worth paying attention to.
What a time to rally tbh. IKZ ⛩️
Some late night reflections 🍜 ...
Azuki's active holder base is probably the smallest it's ever been. And at the same time, this is the most excited I've been in a long time.
When we started yrs ago, there was abundant liquidity and huge dreams. It felt like there was no limit to what a project could become. Nike was acquiring RTFKT. It was hard not to get lost in the sauce.
During that time ppl joined Azuki for all sorts of reasons: the art, decentralized brand, tech innovation, fashion, IRL events, or the chance to make some bread. Often some combination of those things.
That was part of what made the early days so special. But it also meant people could love Azuki while having very different ideas of what it should become.
With a new clothing brand, expectations are usually clearer: you like the clothes, you buy them. With Azuki, people were imagining entirely different futures for the same project, and tbf we gave them a lot of different things to be excited about.
Over time, it became clear to me that airdrops and hype announcements could only take us so far. We needed to build something people would keep coming back to, something that could sustain itself and reach people beyond our existing community.
About a year ago, I decided to be much clearer about what that meant for Azuki. We're building a TCG and growing the IP through a manga (and hopefully one day an anime adaptation), based on the characters our community holds. That direction reflects our team's strengths, what the market is telling us, and what I personally want to spend years building. It also builds on what we've learned from making anime content over the years.
Committing to it meant saying no to other things. Some of those were the very things people joined for. I understand why someone could care deeply about Azuki and still feel disappointed by that choice. But trying to keep every possible version of Azuki alive would make it impossible to do any of them well.
Those early days does hold a special place in my heart. There was nothing quite like it. The people who were part of that chapter helped make it what it was, whether they're still here or have moved on.
And today, I've seen firsthand how much players are enjoying the TCG. They're asking about the characters in it. And now they can read the first chapter of the manga and dive deeper into the story. I've even seen a player pick up an OG Azuki because they thought it was sick that they could actually own a character and make it their identity.
Seeing that happen means a lot to me. It gives me a real reason to believe we can bring more people into this world through what we're making.
We're smaller today, and choosing this direction has come with trade-offs. But I feel really good about where we're going and the community we're building it with.
I haven't felt this much conviction in a long time. IKZ 🫡
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Azuki has built serious grassroots distribution for its TCG across the US and LatAm. Packed locals. High quality products. Sold out drops. 500+ events scheduled through EOY. Wild.
Excited to see the game enter Europe next month, and hopefully Asia next year. Big W for the space.
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I remember reading about the @AzukiTCG anniversary collection in the Q4 roadmap.
Excited to see what the team is cooking. They always drop some dope shit for the community whenever there’s a big moment like this. ⛩️
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The speed at which @azuki is growing as a brand in 2026 is kind of insane. Q4 is absolutely stacked with activations.
Oct 24: Azuki TCG Midwest Regionals
Oct 15: Azuki Manga Chapter 2
Oct 22-25: ATCG at SPIEL Essen EU
Nov 19: Manga Chapter 3
Nov 20: ATCG Set 2 launch
Dec 17: Manga Chapter 4
Dec 2026: ATCG Regional. Set 2 format.
Now-Jan 27: 500+ ATCG events scheduled
Lots of key catalysts in play.
- Azuki TCG EU debut will be a big one. SPIEL Essen sees 200K+ visitors every year. One of the biggest TCG events in Europe.
- ATCG Set 2 art teasers are already rolling out and Set 3 is already in play testing.
- New Manga chapter every 3rd Thursday of every month featuring holders and core story.
- Holder IP licensing infra in entertainment verticals like TCG, Manga and Anime. Built up.
- ATCG mobile app now live globally and international expansion is set for Q1 2027.
- ATCG advanced roadmap for the road ahead through Q2 2027 has already been published.
- Product verticals like anime․com is on a roll. mobile app is live + user base is growing hard.
- Azuki’s end to end production ‘Studio Azuki’ is currently building in stealth. Big play here.
Azuki is one of the more serious cooks in my book. The floor is currently a poor proxy for the amount of brand building happening. The interesting question is whether all of that activity eventually creates a stronger loop between fans, physical collectibles, digital collectibles and IP ownership.
I think as Azuki keeps compounding on this flywheel model. The market will eventually start pricing the underlying IP and collector network differently.
The collectibles market feels increasingly fatigued by copy paste, white label business models chasing whatever chain or narrative is hot next. Naturally seeing projects optimising for attention cycles rather than building durable products with sustained demand.
That said, I do think there’s a huge untapped opportunity for OG IP brands like Azuki to become portable across chains through gacha, games, collectibles and experiences that onboard new collectors into the ecosystem by using different chains as distribution rails for the same IP. Animechain could be a key layer here for distribution, onboarding and cross chain experiences.
A lot of tangible pieces are already in play for Azuki. Good time to take the red bean. IKZ.
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polished work from azuki
✔️ azuki holders featured in the manga
✔️ licensed IPs feature on collector profile
✔️ chapter 1 manuscript art available in shop
first chapter was such a great read. goated art by steamboy + so many easter eggs in there. can’t wait for ch 2 next month!
just in: @AzukiManga chapter 1 is now live. new chapters dropping every month. first impressions: the art looks absolutely insane.
free to read at Azuki․com/manga
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just in: @AzukiManga chapter 1 is now live. new chapters dropping every month. first impressions: the art looks absolutely insane.
free to read at Azuki․com/manga
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