It's not my typical essay, but I have spent a lot of time among people heavily interested and vested in this bull run ride, and many of my new artist friends seem to miss the basic understanding of the game. Hence this short primer on - what to think about. I hope there's not much trading jargon.

TLDR

• Let's get this out of the way: Even after all the reading, listening and discussions, I can't tell you what you should buy to get rich (no one can!). But I can point out factors that may have material or non-material influence on prices and direction.

• It's up to you how you handle such information. As one prominent investor aptly mentioned in one of the private chats, market psychology is not necessarily rational in the short term. And we're talking short-term here.

• Also, we have the whole "meme/shit coins" category that only depends on hoard psychology. So let's have a look at it all!

Factors I will mention:

1. Macro environment

2. BTC price pull from ETF inflows

3. Crypto echo-chamber sentiment

4. meme coins hype-cycle

5. potential ETH price pull because of expected ETF inflows

1/ Macro

The macro situation in the US is off the charts—so good now. And just to be clear, the US is still the only place whose macro situation really matters for crypto. Low inflation, low unemployment, and a ripping stock market. There's a lot of 💰mooney looking for returns (see ETF inflows below). No matter the wars and the rest of the world's kind of not doing so great, nobody's economy is really falling off the cliff right now, so it all seems legit great for crypto on the macro side.

2/ BTC ETF and unexpected size of $$ inflows

ETF was long-awaited, so it was not really material news for BTC price action. The real news came after—when everyone was betting on how much money the first BTC ETF would attract.

The amount of money attracted to a new product (like an ETF) is best measured by daily/weekly $$ inflows because those inflows need to be converted into BTC.

Hmm 🤔 So, the size of the inflows was and still is the biggest surprise. Even the most optimistic analysts were of like 10-20x on initial numbers. That's what created a bit of euphoria. And rightly so.

We are talking about relatively large amounts of money flowing into BTC even though:

• a/ most institutional investors haven't activated their sales force to promote it actively

• b/ the largest investors haven't really adopted it

• c/ most people still ignore or don't believe in BTC that means a lot can be possibly playing for BTC price going ⤴️ once all TredFi machinery starts moving.

Now, my feeling is that the BTC market (well, all crypto markets) is still relatively small for big players, so we'll see a lot of pump & dump & buy-back into pump kinda waves, but my wild guess is they should be within +/- 30% range. You won't make life-changing money trying to time it - so don't!

3/ Our crypto echo-chamber sentiment

We're on fire 🔥baby, right! Yes, we are Everything new is pumping on all sides - DeFi, NFTs, funding for new projects, new project tokens launching, and new meme coins appearing out of nowhere.

It's all fine. I think we were all bored and missed some adrenalin. But if you are new to this game - please understand that there's nothing rational about the price of 99% of these things we buy and sell here.

You may grind (as degens like to say) for an airdrop and earn some money. That's good for you, but only if your griding and the project make sense to you! Otherwise, I'd recommend spending your time on something sensible.

"Grinding" is mostly promoted by self-called influencers who get their money without really grinding—but they need you to do the work.

To conclude, it feels to me (and some other folks) that our echo chamber sentiment is at its highest since the top of 2021, and that means it may be too late to ape into a life-changing money situation. But if you held something until now, it might be your time to stay with conviction or try to sell (within the next few months) and buy lower (after that time). See I'm also enticing action 😉

4/ Meme coins hype-cycle

I had to include this I see some people believing in "magic internet money." But because of what I said above about our crypto folks sentiment running high, be aware when you degen into next meme-coin. It might just be a scam or dump, and not a thoughtful meme culture supported gambling experience

I talk about meme coins here as a factor, because they're the most visible and most cited sentiment predictor, right after $BTC all time highs.

I like occasional meme coin fun - especially when connected with an interesting community- but I also know that every meme coin is a zero-sum game! Read that again -> Every meme coin is a zero-sum game!

You (we) are usually on that zero side, and the team that created it (+ influencers promoting it) are on the other side. I like gambling - no problem. Maybe you like gambling - no problem. If we gamble under equal conditions, and one of us will come on top - no problem. Except 🚨that's not how meme coins work.

Hopefully, it is clear by now that there's usually a large pre-farming and big group of people (team, influencers who helped hype it, maybe even some early grinders) waiting to dump their coins and move on.

Again, meme coins are a big part of the fun and culture. I just want everyone to understand the unequal game we're all playing there. That's why the saying "House always wins" exists. It's true in Vegas and here as well.

To end on a positive note -> I love number of meme coins like $doge, $degen, and even $pepe and the up'n'coming Zora-related thing called $enjoy.

Still, I would not recommend to any of my friends to buy them 🙌

5/ Expected ETH ETF influence

There are a lot of opinions and influences on this one. Some really smart people think there's already "a lot of" pre-buying going on now, before approval happens, trying to capitalize on assumed big inflows. Basically, people project BTC ETF inflows to ETH, with (not guaranteed) assumption that it was inflows that caused BTC pump and not halving or broader market sentiment pickup.

Others say that ETH doesn't have the same attractive proposition as BTC, and there's nothing attractive for institutional investors. ETH brings more risks to the table with L1, sprawling L2s and L3s ecosystems, and always rising fees that will prevent real mass adoption in the long run. I disagree with this notion, but I'm obviously biased.

Then there's the angle that I like—ETH has a lot of DeFi uses, which will give those who run ETH ETFs a chance to produce extra profits from potentially staking. This would lead me to believe that there will be demand for ETH ETFs at least at the 50-80% level of BTC ETFs, and that can be a lot of money. What do decentralization and governance folks say to this, I don't know. We'll have to wait and see.

The reality is that rising ETH price is not good for Ethereum and its broad adoption curve. It's crazy to do anything on L1 even now, wait when there're billion people on L2s 🙃

And this is the end of this train of thought. It was supposed to be short. Sorry

One last thing 🫵- if you are not a trader, you should not trade. You should invest - i.e. pick what you are interested in, learn about it, about the team behind it - and then invest time, money, or both with conviction. Hodl!