YTD: +56%
$BTC YTD: +36%
MoM: -16%
$BTC MoM: -18%
All things considered, I’m pretty happy with how I’ve performed over the last month. Think my bias towards defending against downside helped me ride this dip better than I otherwise would. This move definitely felt more painful than it actually was (more pain incoming?) probably due to having not mentally adjusted to new size.
BTC’s recent correction revealed how fragile alts are in our current environment. Alt prices are like a house of cards build on top of “forced” narratives used to justify participants’ desire for speculation.
Feels like there are no longer any true believers left around. Everyone knows it’s all vapourware. Everyone knows the game now. Everyone is here to make money. It’s not just participants but also teams and investors.
Shills are based on comps & not hope (for a better future)
Tickers that make it to the TL mark tops
Rotations are lightning fast
Points programmes to farm farmers
Low float, high FDV
Memes are “legitimised” as a counter-meta
When most of the participants are purely financially motivated, it creates a really nasty environment when prices go down.
Personally also feeling tired, bored, & jaded with the space. Narratives feel forced and rotations feel tiresome.
Everyone’s situation is different but I’ve personally taken out some profit into the real world while I’m still up around 5x from where I began.
I started this journey ape-ing 80+% of my net worth (read hard-earned money) into the markets and have been fortunate to find some sort of success. I’ve taken out my initials for now to reduce mental pressure of riding everything on these markets.
Crypto is not my end-game, perhaps one day when the tech is more mature. But for now, I’m perfectly ok with giving up “extra potential gains” to set myself up to be able to pursue other things after it all ends, no matter how it ends.
It makes the money feel real
It allows me to tangibly recognise why I’m spending almost every waking in this industry
Helps ease the cognitive dissonance of sacrificing meaning for being purely profit-driven
It’s also pretty clear by now that it’s still PvP season for the time being. Given that I’m relatively new to being a full-time degen, it’s better for me to humbly recognise that I’m unlikely to have insane outsized returns by being the earliest or the most skilled.
This is by no means being defeatist. It’s about understanding my own inadequacies which can set me up to operate within my circle of competence instead of overreaching and getting burnt.
I’m still getting better at research, TA, timing rotations, finding low-caps, portfolio management, spotting memes, and learning how to put it all together. While less is more, without knowing what I’m good at, it’s the best to continually try as many things as possible until something presents itself as an edge.
It’s difficult to balance this with having personal conviction, but I suppose it’s simply a rite of passage.
Which brings me to…
One thing that I’m confident in is my ability to think -- to be able to see the big picture and draw conclusions.
It’s my view that crypto has always been about novel innovations. Last cycle we had big fundamental unlocks that got blown out of proportion which caused a massive speculative bubble.
DeFi unlocked on-chain liquidity and the ability for anyone to launch on-chain trade-able tokens
NFTs created provenance for digital objects; a massive unlock for an increasingly digital species
Axie showed how gamification and the right financial incentives can onboard nations overnight
Luna was evidence that a high enough “risk-free” yield is an irresistible temptation for many
This is the same instinct that led me to going heavy into Solana and Friend.tech early last year. Consumer chain thesis + social as a new primitive for crypto. Novel, well-designed apps that solves problems and/or induce speculation always do well. Study Unibot, pump.fun, etc
This year I’ve been trying to force myself into playing the rotation game with degens that are much more skilled than me. To which I have found some sort of success but not a glimmer of outperformance. Maybe all narratives feel forced because they are.
Read somewhere that the best trades should always scream at you to be taken. Still figuring out how to put all this together but it might be best for me to take less trades, but better trades. This might mean sitting in majors/stables until the opportunity arises.