Crypto can be brutal.
My Birthday is May 11. For 2022, I enjoyed an epic birthday surf trip in Bali, while holding leveraged long ETH positions.
I came in from the water, ready to go to dinner only to discover that UST collapsed - and with it, the entire crypto market.
Too much of my ETH to mention got liquidated on a decentralized perpetual exchange as a result. My UST holdings turned basically worthless. (Luckily I “only” held like $7k UST. I was always skeptical of UST/Luna.)
In the weeks that followed I watched as my stETH, makerdao CDP approached liquidation. I opened it when ETH was $4.5k. I never thought I’d have to defend a $1k liquidation price. I did, and sadly was forced to sell. My “nut” was now basically nuthing.
Breath. Accept the lessons. Maintain faith. Stay happy.
I’m writing this post for 2 reasons.
About an hour ago, but a few months late, I noticed that shortly after the Luna collapse I also lost roughly 85 AVAX in a single sided staking vault with Beefy and Blizz.
For those curious what happened, I deposited AVAX into Beefy for some yield (I think I was getting like 9% on AVAX). Beefy is a yield aggregator, so the vault was maintained by Blizz finance. I wasn’t checking on it, because I had no plans to sell my AVAX in the bear market, and there was no Impermanent Loss risk or “real need to worry.”
Wrong.
Chainlink’s oracles didn’t support such a low price for LUNA. So I guess the oracle feed kind of stopped the price descent and the oracle rounded up the Luna price to .10, throwing off calculations for defi platforms.
Hackers noticed this faster than the Blizz team. They bought a bunch of LUNA at the actual, far lower price. Deposited that LUNA as collateral into Blizz and drained all the lendable assets (aka my AVAX) on Blizz using their mispriced, but actually worthless LUNA collateral.
Touché hackers. Smart. A bit of a sting though. When I found out today it reopened some old wounds. Writing helps me process. That said, the other reason I’m writing…
I’ve been in Crypto since 2016. I find it intellectually fascinating, and creatively inspiring.
I first got a job at ConsenSys starting and leading their video marketing efforts. I sold an NFT in early 2018, I created an NFT collection of my own shortly after buying a BAYC for a few ETH.
Exploring dapps and blockchain trends always feels like I’m “just playing around.” Pushing buttons, making random things, learning new stuff.
Sometimes these new things are insanely profitable. Buying apes, getting a large airdrop of optimism, Looks, UNI and more.
Sometimes these things are insanely unprofitable. The hacks mentioned above, minting scams, having a CDP liquidated in 2018 and more.
In the emotional equation, despite the downs, it’s been a net positive. I appreciate the stimulation and enjoy riding the crypto wave for the most part.
In monetary terms, it’s getting close, but the good still out weighs the bad. I should probably be more careful, but there is still so much opportunity out there.
I don’t know the answer, but to me, it feels like the key is to just keep paddling and exploring. Follow what interests you.
I’ve never posted on Mirror before, but I figured now’s the time. Rabbithole has it as a step in their “Intro to NFTs” quest. So I figured rather than dwell on the lost 85 AVAX, let’s write a post. Who knows, maybe this post will earn me an airdrop in the future.
More importantly, I hope it helps others who got rekt to keep on keeping on.
Thanks for reading.
<3 Mark
PS. Another part of the rabbithole quest was to create an NFT on Zora:
https://create.zora.co/editions/0xa1719cd4b6ac18fe5ed696c2a22119cacfb0d16f