Hello world

It’s always difficult to explain to my friends how I’m positioning myself in this massive player versus player (PVP) game that we call crypto.

There are several technical and financial nuances that are difficult to explain unless you actually take part in the technology itself. However, the more people ask, the more I realize that if I take a second to think and put my thoughts together, I can start qualifying some of the trades I’m making with words.

I’ve done everything from decentralized finance, NFTs, and even some form of MEV searching. Going forward, I will try to reflect some of my journeys in the deep dark forest. I’m inspired by some of the founding members of Remilia Corporation and their deep desire to create art, write, and embrace freedom in ways I could not imagine before I found them.

https://twitter.com/mehranhydary/status/1656024695517446144?s=20

Today, I want to talk about Blend. Blend is a peer-to-peer perpetual lending protocol for NFTs. Blend allows users to do two things:

1. Borrow ETH against an NFT that they own

2. Buy an NFT without paying the entire cost up front

Blend has become a very powerful tool for me because I own a lot of Miladys. I am 100% certain that if I did not own one of the collections that Blend launched with, then I don’t think I would have resonated / understood how powerful the tool actually is.

I played around with both products, and I wanted to share my experience. I firmly believe that the best way to learn is by doing and so I did a lot of careless things while figuring out how the two things work. I suggest that you do the same but in case you don’t feel like doing that, here are some of my takeaways.

There are three things that I’ve been doing with Blend that has allowed me to enhance how I trade / jump deeper into the crypto rabbit hole. These are now things that I can do without compromising my existing positions in the Miladys that I have collected.

Stacking Bonkler Bids

Bonkler is an NFT that is being sold in auctions that last 23 hours. The NFT has a fixed supply of 400 and the collection is looking to answer the question of finance art. The collections currently captures bids that range between 0.1 ETH and 60.0 ETH.

When placing a bid, you have a chance of owning a Bonkler NFT and for each bid you place you will be airdropped a companion NFT collection called Auctioncore.

With Blend, I can borrow ETH against my Miladys. For each Milady, you can borrow between 0 and 3 ETH (sometimes more). The ETH can be borrowed with a daily interest rate of 0%. After 24 hours, the lender can put your loan up for auction. Once this happens, you must pay back your loan or the lender will get your NFT and you get stuck with the ETH you borrowed. Your loan may also be refinanced but I haven’t seen that happening as much.

The strategy I’ve been running here is:

1. Borrow 2-3 ETH against a few Miladys

2. Once you have between 5 and 10 ETH, you wait until a Bonkler auction restarts

3. Place individual bids:

   1. Bid 1: 1 ETH

   2. Bid 2: 1.1 ETH

   3. Bid 3: 1.2 ETH (and so on…)

4. Obviously, if someone bids 1.3 ETH or more, you’ll have to change your bid amounts

5. The ideal spot is to bid low and then replace your own bid with another bid and keep doing this until the bid for the Bonkler is around 8 ETH (as of May 10; if final Bonkler prices go up or down, then the 8 ETH target would obviously change lmao)

Risk:

1. You end up with a Bonkler NFT

2. Your ETH is locked up in a Bonkler NFT and your Miladys get liquidated (lender seizes your NFTs)

Leverage Long Remilia

Do you ever feel like the number of Miladys, Remilios, etc. that you own is not enough? I feel like this all the time. The strategy here is simple, you can do one of two things to really dive deep into the Remilia ecosystem:

1. Borrow 1-2 ETH against all of your Miladys

2. For the ETH you accumulate, buy more Miladys (or Remilios)

   1. If you buy Miladys, you can use them to borrow more ETH later on

3. Examples below:

   1. You own 5 Miladys, borrow 10 ETH, buy 3 Miladys

   2. You own 5 Miladys, borrow 5 ETH, buy 5 Remilios

Risk:

1. You can get liquidated if prices go crazy

2. You have to pay back the loan of the lender calls for their lended ETH back (so don’t get caught up in an extremely leveraged position (e.g. You own 5 Miladys, borrow 10 ETH, buy 3 more Miladys, borrow 6 ETH, buy 1-2 more Miladys, borrow… and so on)

Buy low, sell high

If you place close attention to the market, you know when things are going up and down. This strategy requires you to pay attention to things when they are swinging in either direction by at least 5-10%.

This week, Miladys went from 4 ETH to around 3.1-3.2 ETH. The simple play here would be to use the “buy now, pay later” feature by Blend and scoop up NFTs at a low price (and liquidity). Once the price goes back up, you can realize decent profits without putting down much collateral.

1. Use your ETH to buy Miladys at < 3.5 ETH with the “buy now, pay later” feature (for week of May 8, 2023)

2. When Miladys go back to > 3.5 ETH, sell the NFTs

Risk:

1. If it takes a long time for the price to go up, might not be ideal to hold the “rented” NFT because you may accrue interest for the borrowed ETH that you used to buy the NFT

Closing thoughts

Obviously, the strategies and risks listed here are not comprehensive. I wanted to highlight my journey as a crypto explorer and I hope that I helped you discover some of the simple ways that I’ve been using Blend to enjoy / enhance my on-chain activities.

After a week or so, I’ve ended up with a Bonkler, swapped a few of my Miladys for ones that are a bit rarer (or aesthetically pleasing), and also taken positions in Radbros and Pixelladys. All of this would not have been possible if I just held Miladys.

Thank you Remilia and thank you Blur for pushing the space forward!