This is an article that I should have written a year ago, but was too busy to do so.

This is 100% my personal opinion, and I will cover both good and bad points, starting from all the bad points. I know some of my opinions will rub the hundreds “bomb squad” the wrong way, but I don’t care, nobody wants to read your article stating 10,000 reasons to buy your NFT. The diamond is more beautiful with its impurities. So here comes my brain vomit starting with all the rough edges.

-- Caption: My brain vomit

What is everything wrong with the Adam Bomb Squad (ABS)?

1) It is a super “centralised” project.

Everything is controlled tightly in the hands of this traditional street wear company “the hundreds” which is own by Bobby hundreds and Ben hundreds.

These guys are so passionate about their work, they dropped out from a highly profitable life in law. I mean how can I trust dropouts?

And what? Now these guys are in full control of Adam Bomb Squad? I mean how can it not go wrong right?

In the web 3 world, we are so crazy about “decentralisation” that we think that the laws of physics can be bent.

I’ve personally been deep in a couple of DAOs or Decentralised Autonomous Organisations. When I first started, I thought this is utopia until I started feeling its problems in my bone. And the biggest one is this:

“When everyone is responsible, nobody is.”

-- Angyts, the DAO Punk

The biggest problem with DAOs today is we confound “paid up capital” or "share capital” with “revenue”. This is worth an essay on its own.

The TLDR (too long didn’t read) is that most DAOs just keep spending more and more money that actually belongs to every single HODLer. Without a proper revenue source that can offset this, the only thing sustaining these DAOs is the hope that more people enter than exit.

When the reverse happens, inflation paralyses the DAO and the “death spiral” occurs rapidly.

Token or floor price drops -→ market capitalisation drops -→ ability to spend money drops -→ harder to raise more funds -→ more exits than entry -→ prices drops more

-- Caption: Someone left him outside in the crypto winter and forgot about him

Balance the sheets!

And balancing the books is what bobby and ben hundreds have been doing for the longest time!

Balancing the books actually require someone to say no. The ability to say no is hard. People want to be loved and popular. The ability to say no to expenditures in a DAO is exceedingly hard. Nobody will dare to say no to spending money to donate DAO money to the Ukraine war or some expenditure that will boost the branding despite the cost.

It is hard firstly because nobody wants to be public enemy number one. Since votes are onchain, we can see who voted no.

It is also hard to see the “big picture” when all we can see is a short writeup and proposal in isolation. Someone needs to see the big picture and piece all the proposals together, but that will be hard because that is “everybody’s” job in the DAO. Which is nobody’s job.

But not at this “highly centralised” NFT project Adam Bomb Squad. Money is hard to come by, and good leaders know how to balance the income and expenses for the long run.

Brand building costs (real) money!

Maybe you say that, in this crypto world, the laws of physics can be bent. The number can keep going up, the next big thing can always be bigger. Sure. Perhaps it can be bent for some special projects and people. For the rest of the projects, brand building takes time and especially consistent and effective money spent over years.

I know the hundreds sacked a lot of people this bear market, but we can understand, it is for the long marathon.

2) Building a brand is boring stuff for the Adam Bomb Squad

The NFT space is frothy and speculative, and collectors (or consumers or speculatoors) want novelty all the time. Why would they want to buy Adam Bomb Squad that already has a branding and they are just replaying their old play book?

Shiny things come and go all the time like trends and the current “meta”. Like the wind, they will blow over and the dust will settle some day.

Ultimately, we all have to go home, fill our stomachs and wear clothing to fit the season.

What are the clothes that you and I would wear on a daily basis?

Who are the people we are going to hang out with every day?

When a brand is so deeply ingrained into our cultures and our lives, I guess it’s probably not gonna pump and dump.

So the price action is just too boring for NFT speculators sadly. If your time horizon is not in years, then sadly this project is just not for you.

3) It only gives IRL (in real life) benefits

I’ve gotten some tickets to go to a food festival where it is rumoured that we will get a chicken sandwich. However the plane tickets to fly there would have costed me $2000. So i’ve never been able to attend any of the in real life parties that are currently only held in USA. 😡

Also i’ve gotten a couple of nano ledger X which is pretty cool to give away. They do look pretty cool, but I think wearing them on my neck might make me a target for theft at knife point 🔪 .

And most importantly, why do they keep giving me vouchers to buy more Adam Bomb T-shirts? Me and my wife already have many couple T-shirts from ABS already. My wardrobe is already full of them. Not to mention the shipping to where I stay can be quite pricey.

NFT collectors generally don’t give 2 sh*ts about IRL things, honestly, given that I really cannot consume most of them.

NFT people just want more tokens: fungible or non-fungible, plain and simple.

Fortunately, I think they are learning fast. I recently did get quite a significant airdrop.

The Badam Bomb Squad is the first “derivative” collection from a subset of bomb characters called the Badam. This new collection is smaller, cheaper to enter, 3D, and features an innovative royalty model.

As a disclaimer, by the way, these benefits only apply to specific bomb characters, I do have all these benefits cos I do have quite a collection. Check out my gallery https://bit.ly/angytsbombs.

I do feel sorry for those guys who just never seem to qualify for anything though.

4) It is not CC0

Ok I get it, I love Artblocks, Xcopy and Nouns. I know they are CC0, so paying millions for one copy makes sense, because it gives you the right to issue more copies and make royalties off it.

But I’m really no expert, I think I would rather let Bobby and gang take care of this for me. I mean, I don’t want to print a crappy fake ABS T-shirt that passes off as the real one. That would totally destroy the brand. I’m happy with the high quality ABS clothing right now. Besides, I can print my NFT on my T-shirt too via “the labs”.

It can also be hard for brands to tell a coherent narrative when it’s run by a DAO, although it can be more vibrant.

Now then, tell me what do you actually like about the Adam Bomb Squad (ABS)?

1) Stories

This point is a little mind warping, so please bear with me as I try to summarise it for you.

You are of course welcome to listen to the following podcast.

And read The Network State by Balaji.

What defines our humanity is a tapestry of narratives. The micro narratives like the story of my life and the macro narratives like “money”, “governments” and “religions”. All these are stories that we tell ourselves to create some kind of order in a naturally disorderly world.

These stories help us wake up in the morning and go to work so that we can live the Singapore dream or whatever your government inspires you to do.

Imbued in each and every Adam Bomb is a story, waiting to be uncovered.

This one for example, is drawn by a then young and budding tattoo artist Jun Cha. If you stare closely at the left side, you will actually see the artist signature there, as well as a distressed lady staring right into your soul.

As I interpret, she is trying to make a direct connection with you and share with you the suffering that she endured during a financial crisis that hit her city Los Angeles. It seems that banks made all the money, made all the mistakes and left the people to suffer the consequences. I guess, that’s why we have Bitcoin, Ethereum and NFTs.

Source:

Let us now have a look at this guy, you will notice that he has a really long nose and this distinct look. You will feel a kind of familiarity with him if you are around my age or older. This nosey adam is the work of Kenny Scharf, who is contemporaries of Keith Haring and Basquiat.

He is a super prolific artist, and you definitely would have seen his art around you or on the TV which is why we would feel this “familiarity” in his art work. He feels that art should be a part of our lives, he is part of the “lowbrow” movement and he draws on walls, cars, bags and all sorts of different mediums.

See how much you learn just by studying 2 adam bombs? I think I will reserve the other stories for another day.

2) Emotions

This is what really stood out for me with I first bought into ABS. Adam Bombs actually have real emotions that are actually nuanced and varied.

Most of us think that we make decisions rationally, but the truth is that most decisions are made emotionally. And once we make an emotional connection to a Bomb, we will then try to rationalise our purchase decisions.

With a full range of emotions, it’s not that hard to find one that resonates with you.

This is the original Adam Bomb that made the Hundreds what they are today. I think that why it is so popular is that Adam looks like a young boy. He just looks like he’s about to blow up, the moment right before. It’s so dynamic and easy to identify with.

Of course time changes, and the different generations might find other emotions to identify with.

When you got cancelled.

The time you discovered that making more money will not make you happier.

WHAT?? You just swept 25,000 Adam Bombs after reading this???

OK @angyts, stop joking with us, please give us the REAL article.

Ok I’m happy to share more with you now.

3) Art

Supporting Adam Bomb Squad is supporting artists. Without artists, we will lose our sense of reality and imagination.

The hundreds have a long history of supporting artists.

Even in the recent Badam Bomb Squad drop, some of it was drawn by our community members.

-- Contributed by @shiyun from Singapore ABS

4) “Unruggable”

If you have never been “rugged”, you are not an NFT degen.

I’ve had many projects where the founders develop “mental health issues”, become stuck in war, "pass the project to the community”, or sometimes, I wake up and cannot find the discord.

I don’t blame them, they don’t understand a lifetime of earning royalties equates to a lifetime of liabilities. So no, becoming an NFT founder is definitely not in my league.

Not possible in this case though. The hundreds have a physical store, office and a printing factory. It just costs too much to close all those infrastructure just to rug you.

If a project can’t be rugged, it is less likely to go to zero. In a sense, it is “antifragile” like Bitcoin, and the longer it stays around, the more “legitimate” it becomes.

Check out this big brained article.

5) Community

Last but not least and the most important, and most overstated thing.

But I still have to state it.

The Adam Bomb Squad.

We exist everywhere. There are clusters in LA, USA and Singapore. We congregate mostly on discord and telegram. Recently we are starting to retake twitter again.

And sometimes we hang out IRL.

The vibe is just different, the people just feels more down to earth and more approachable.

Most of us are happy to share what we know and bounce off ideas.

Definitely things have cooled a lot since the bull market, but right now things are just starting to heat up. Join our discord to feel the !vibes.

We just recently minted out the 100th Whale Adam. It is no longer available to mint even if you have 30 Adam Bombs.

There are still Dolphin Adams to mint though, it requires 10 Adam Bombs.

All these are just for fun, but it’s just one of the small initiatives by the BombDAO community. The BombDAO is a little Adam Bomb vault started by a small group of ABS fanatics. Check out what in its wallet.

The thing I hate most about the Adam Bomb Squad

I have to leave this here for those patient enough to read till the end.

The most irritating thing is that ABS is never ever spoken about in alpha groups and NFT groups. It is never ever considered to be a blue chip or as an important part of a NFT portfolio.

But you see, that is my alpha for you today. If something is already well known, for example, “Apple is a great company, go buy it because it makes great phones”. There is already no money to be made, because the market has already priced in this information.

However, today, for some reason, Adam Bomb Squad has not been priced it yet. (This is NOT financial advise, NFTs are risky and you can lose all your money, blah blah) So I’m going to leave it as that. It is up to you to act on this piece of alpha and to share it with people you like.

Alright! We have reached the end of this article. I hope you will feel more confident with that jpeg in your wallet. (I pray that it’s a cold wallet)

Until next time!

Do subscribe, although I don’t know when I will write again!

And if you feel that this writing is good and you would like to collect this article NFT, and give me a little happiness. Please do so right here. Disclaimers: It absolutely is useless and gives absolutely no utility, like I write above, I am not cut out to be an NFT founder.

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