After my partner and I were invited to his house for dinner (which was really nice btw), I decided to ask him a few questions about his initial interest in crypto investing.

Me: "So (GIRLFRIEND NAME) mentioned you were trying to figure out what you wanted to do with some of your savings?"

Him: “Yeah, I’m thinking of leaving 1/3 in savings, another 1/3 into travelling, and the other 1/3 into investments.”

Yeah, honestly not bad, pretty reasonable, better and more practical than most.

Me: “What type of things do you want to invest in?”

Him: “I dunno. I just heard that’s what smart people should do.”

Me: “Like any stocks you like?”

Him: “Nah not really.”

Me: “What goals do you have with investing?”

Him: “Not sure what you mean. I just think investing is something smart people do.”

Me: “Is there anything that excites you about the future?”

Him: “I mean… I like culture and arts.”
(NFTs, surely?)

Me: “Nah, I mean is there anything you think could actually become more valuable in the future?”

Him: “Money?”

Me: “No like investment-wise. Anything you think, if you bought now, would be worth more later?”

Him: “Oil. Probably should buy that, it’s gone up a lot.”
(I had no idea how to answer this so I just pivoted.)

Me: “Why did you want to invest in crypto?”

Him: “I think it’s just what people do now. My uncle owns some crypto I think. He’s a successful businessman investor who lives overseas.”
(Then why are you asking me..)

Me: “Okay, another way to look at it is, fast forward 10 years into the future. What would you actually want your investments to do?”

Him: “I think I’d like to outperform everyone else.”

Okay maybe we are getting somewhere.

As I’m writing this, I genuinely didn’t expect to have so little to work with when it came to what he actually wanted to do with his money. The kid is fairly oblivious, but also extremely unemotional about the idea of investing.

Which made me think, is this just what 80% of people are actually like when it comes to investing? Is that a bad thing? Or does that type of emotional detachment end up being a more favourable long-term position anyway?

Let's just say, if this guy dollar-cost-averages into ETFs at his age and never thinks about markets again, does he accidentally end up “made it” status by 35 while the rest of us mentally and emotionally nuke ourselves trying to outperform the rest of the world?

Quite obvious, but it's interesting to me that you can't really recommend curiosity. You can't force someone to care about markets, investing, crypto, business, or upside. Maybe that's the point.

To come back a bit, the idea of suggesting crypto to him felt kind of weird honestly. Suggesting he skip compound interest, basic finance, and good money habits to go straight into hyper-gambling on crypto was not going to be my next step (sorry readers).

To add to the background this guy, his peers are mostly college/uni kids, actors, creative of sorts people in a similar sort of life position. I decided to conclude that his unemotional attachment to markets could be a super power. Regrettably, as I asked these questions, I actually felt like I could’ve done a better job meeting him where he was at instead of projecting my own framework onto him or "fishing" for an answer in the direction I wanted the conversation to go.

The conversation eventually pivoted into AI. A friend of his who was already joining us for dinner of a similar age is studying AI at university. A bit of background around this guy, completely different personality. Always busy, more switched on, already slightly further down the investing rabbit hole. He liked poker, understood there were people out there making money day trading, buying crypto, trading stocks etc.

He mentioned that he recently bought AMD stock because a friend told him to. After his purchase he was currently up in profit on the position. The conversation flowed a little bit easier around the topic of investing. We discussed how he ended up owning the stock and how to factor that into the investing psychology and understanding.

To save time, I basically went down a path explaining the difference between owning a stock like AMD and owning an Index ETF.

My argument was:

Individual Stock = emotional attachment.

Index ETF = emotional indifference.

I explained that once you own a stock, you naturally start paying attention to the company more. What the CEO says or does, how the earnings calls go, assessing the quarterly reports, product launches, the brand itself, the list goes on and you get the idea. You essentially have skin in the game, so your attention follows.

An index is emotionally boring. Once you own it, there isn't really much to do. Stocks enter and leave, markets go up and down, but you maintain exposure to a broad representation of the market without needing to think about it very much.

While the dinner and conversation progressed, what I genuinely wanted to know, for my own personal interest was. Is there anything that they are excited about for the future that could indicate some idea of what to invest in now. (highly drawn out thought provoking exercise but I entertain these sometimes).

So I asked both of them if they felt optimistic or excited about the future. The actor guy said he was nervous about what Trump might do - sure. And the AI guy thought there was going to be a massive crash in the markets. This caught me off guard a little bit if I'm honest. When i asked more about this impeding market correction, he mentioned that it was to do with the war, uncertainty(broad), fear mongering, economic instability etc. But what stood out to me was that neither of them were actually optimistic about financial markets at all. They were both excited about AI, the actor guy less so because of how it might reduce the need for script writers potentially.

I became increasingly interested in whether this level of financial pessimism is genuinely real, or whether it's simply another form of collective doomerism.

I genuinely don’t know. But it was interesting to observe.

To summarise, I basically just went down the path of helping them understand ETFs, individual stocks, compound interest, and Bitcoin as an alternative form of capital allocation, and not even that in-depth just super simple. Unfortunately the conversation never reached the hypergamble-maxxing arch or stories that might entice them to try their luck in crypto. Maybe that’s actually a good thing. Maybe I don’t need to burden random 21-year-olds with my atrociously overthought investment frameworks and market psychosis that i have gained over the years of being in crypto.

But the biggest takeaway for me is that maybe this genuinely represents most financial market participants. They understand that putting money away is probably a good idea, but there’s no deep emotional attachment to investing itself. No obsession. No curiosity. No overwhelming desire to understand markets just a simple 0-1 action that puts their mind at ease for their future.

Which honestly is fascinating to me because my immediate instinct is to think: “there’s no way these people end up in crypto". Not unless the perception of crypto changes dramatically, or they personally experience some financial catalyst that pulls them in to seek higher returns (which we don't even have at the moment; Bitcoin at $61,500 in June 2026).

A few days later...

To end one story, the 21-year-old actor. To start another, the 23-year-old AI student.

I bumped into the AI student while I was visiting my partner's work. I was there to see my partner and he had a few minutes to chat.

Him: "I wanted to ask you about Nvidia."

(Okay, this isn't crypto, how does this help me).

What interested me though was that this was the first time he had approached me with an actual investment idea. More importantly, he seemed open to changing his mind.

Him: "How much Nvidia should I buy?"

Me: "What do you like about the stock?"

Him: "I think it'll do really well with earnings coming up. The chips are in demand. But I dunno bro, it seems risky. What if it goes down because it's an individual stock and not an index?"

My answer was basically that you can approach investing from almost any angle and arrive at a different conclusion. But given he's literally studying AI, I asked him a couple of simple questions.

Do you think the trend of AI and compute continues?

Yes.

Do you believe Nvidia remains an important company if that trend continues?

Yes.

My unsolicited non-financial financial advice was to buy a little first. Get some exposure. See how it feels. Then decide over time whether you'd like to own more.

He then asked how he should think about Nvidia relative to the S&P 500.

My answer was super simple: how much do you believe Nvidia will outperform the index?

If the answer is "a lot", maybe the allocation looks more aggressive.

If you're less certain, maybe it looks more conservative.

There isn't really a perfect science to it.

What I leaned into more was something he may not have been aware of, his youth. I basically explained to him that he is young and that he has time. Someone in their 60s doesn't have the same luxury to recover from mistakes, learn lessons, or take risk.

I don't know if that part really sunk in.

But he seemed genuinely excited by the conversation, and honestly, I'm interested to see how it plays out.

Again, I feel like I owe an apology because this ending isn't particularly exciting, nor is it likely helpful for our crypto bags.

To summarise:

The 21-year-old actor will probably buy ETFs.

The 23-year-old AI student is reading Nvidia quarterly reports and investing in the S&P 500.

Me?

I have yet again watched the crypto market take another leg lower.

Thank you for reading.

Swiss,

Disclaimer

The content contained within this publication is intended for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only.

Nothing contained within this article should be construed as financial, investment, legal, tax, or professional advice of any kind. Any opinions expressed are solely my own and reflect my personal experiences, observations, frameworks, and thought processes at the time of writing.

Any references to stocks, cryptocurrencies, digital assets, financial products, companies, or investment strategies are provided for illustrative purposes only and should not be interpreted as recommendations to buy, sell, or hold any asset.

Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of capital. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and there is every chance I am completely wrong about everything discussed here.

Please conduct your own research, seek professional advice where appropriate, and make financial decisions based on your own circumstances.

This publication is best consumed as a collection of ideas, observations, market psychosis, and occasional mental gymnastics rather than investment advice.

However, I had a moment playing poker recently that genuinely changed how I think about trading, investing, market psychology, and navigating crypto overall, so I’m excited to share it here with you.

And if you’re relatively new to markets, you have more questions than answers, and are still trying to figure out why your PnL moves the way it does, this read might actually be worth your time. (Maybe even downloading the app and playing for yourself - not endorsing gambling)

For context, Offsuit Texas Poker is a free poker app with a clean and minimalist interface, that you can download and start playing immediately against real people or a computer.

PnL Meaning:
(Profit not Likely)

The app lets you customise tables, buy-ins, stakes, and whether you play against AI or real people, all with play money. What I like, is that it’s extremely minimalist and doesn’t feel like one of those hyper-engineered gambling apps designed to give you a seizure.

There are probably plenty of poker apps that do something similar (I haven’t really played many others), but the feature I value most with this app is that it shows you the probability percentage of your hand winning the pot as soon as the cards are dealt. (as shown above in the bottom right)

Why this became beneficial to me was, after repeatedly seeing hands come through with changing probabilities, I naturally started applying some very basic rules and frameworks that I found successful. I’m not goingto pretend this is some wizard-level poker formula, but what I realised pretty quickly was that a lot of the decision making was already done before the hand even fully played out.

I genuinely stopped applying mental energy to most flops, turns, rivers. I just learned to see out the strategy and grew to care less and less about the outcomes over short durations of time.

What followed was probably one of the most hyper-engaging exercises I’ve done in a while. I locked in for almost 6 hours straight and ended up tripling my stack over that time. (Is that a low amount, high amount - who knows.) But what fascinated me was that I felt like I was consistently winning through some level of edge, while newer players would come in, get impatient, blow up their stack, and leave. The cycle would repeat again and again. I was often asking myself (surely they won't try and keeping calling on bad hands over again, but alas it kept happening to my amusement and increase in stack)

And obviously, whenever I became impatient or sloppy with my own rules, I felt the consequences of those decisions almost immediately as well, which created a pretty effective feedback loop.

This style of play is generally referred to as playing “tight” versus “loose”. Tight meaning you rarely bet unless the probabilities are strongly in your favour, whereas loose players tend to throw money at almost any hand and hope something sticks.

Where this unlocked a different level of thinking for me was in relation to investing, especially within the volatile and often unsophisticated nature of crypto markets. I started thinking more about markets as a whole through this framework of probability, positioning, patience, and understanding the behaviour of the other players at the table.

A couple of recent examples where I’ve consciously applied this framework are:

• $HYPE (Hyperliquid - Perpetual Futures Exchange)

• $BNKR (Bankr Bot - Base, Ethereum Layer-2, ecosystem token & App)

Let’s discuss $HYPE.

Hyperliquid is a perpetual futures exchange that allows for 24/7 leverage and spot trading across crypto, tokenised stocks, commodities, and soon prediction markets.

The Hyperliquid protocol has a large number of users actively trading on the platform, meaning the protocol generates substantial revenue from trading activity. That revenue is then used to buy back the $HYPE token on the open market, creating sustained buy pressure for the asset itself.

These factors alone already set Hyperliquid apart from 99% of the tokens currently in crypto. As a result, HYPE has become one of the best-performing large crypto assets over the last 12–24 months, outperforming even Bitcoin and Ethereum.

My old framework for looking at something like this was heavily distorted by the echo chamber that is CT (Crypto Twitter). If too many people were talking about a token, celebrating gains, or posting profits, I’d almost view that as a reason not to own it. I’d see it as a crowded trade and think: “if this many people are already making money, who is left to buy besides me? Am I just becoming exit liquidity for people already in profit?”

That line of thinking made the trade feel psychologically less desirable to hold.

Looking back, yeah I definitely got that framework wrong.

Here’s the newer framework that I am starting to actively apply:

• How new is Hyperliquid relative to the rest of crypto?

• Is it actually possible for “everyone” to already own this relative to the total size of the crypto market?

• Is the product desirable across multiple types of users?

• Are there any major negative changes to revenue, buybacks, or platform activity?

• Does the product continue to improve over time?

• Is there prior market data suggesting the token can continue to perform well despite changing conditions across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the broader market?

Once I started asking these questions, the investment decision began to feel far more favourable despite the trade appearing crowded psychologically.

Instead of focusing on how much the token had already gone up, I started asking: what is the probability that the fundamentals meaningfully deteriorate in the short term? Are people actually positioned in this trade as heavily as CT makes it feel? Is there still enough room for further demand, improvement, and eventual fomo from market participants later on?

The more I asked those questions, the more owning some HYPE started to make sense, from the perspective of having a good environment (a good hand) to make profits later on if I was blessed with higher prices (a good flop).

I then looked at the trade differently and realised that while my entry into HYPE might not have been perfect ($40-$41) the actual “hand” still felt favourable. The upside may not be as extreme as some higher-risk plays, but the probability of the trade continuing to work still felt relatively high (in my opinion).

What matters more to me now, and where my focus shifts towards, is understanding what the other players at the table might also be doing at this period of time. Most market participants are probably stuck in positions that aren’t performing very well. So if HYPE continues appreciating aggressively, eventually that price action alone as a factor could induce enough fomo for people to disregard their own frameworks and start chasing the move. That moment, where people start emotionally shoving “all-in” because they feel late, is probably closer to where I become interested in selling into strength. 

And while selling something that continues going up will probably feel uncomfortable, I’m starting to understand that there will always be another hand (another trade) to participate in. The important thing is simply being comfortable with my level of exposure as the trade develops.

Now let’s look at $BNKR, which is a little different because this is more of a trade unfolding in real time rather than a post-mortem on the HYPE position.

If you don’t know what Bankr Bot is, in short it’s essentially an AI-powered crypto interface with access to a wide range of onchain functionality, as described here from the X account "Building financial infra for agents to fund themselves. Launch a token, trading fees pay for API costs. Wallets, tools, treasury automation."

I’ve held $BNKR for a while already as I believe in the success of the protocol long term. However, I recently increased the size of my position again for a few different reasons. In poker terms: I decided to increase the size of the bet because I think the hand still has favourable odds despite the volatility and uncertainty attached to it.

This trade is definitely more nuanced and speculative than the HYPE example. In poker terms, this is a much “looser” hand with significantly higher uncertainty attached to it. But despite that, I still think the hand dealt for BNKR is interesting enough to justify taking the trade, and more recent data has started to make me feel like increasing the size of the bet may actually be the more favourable play.

Looking at the current setup for BNKR, the token recently pulled back while attempting to break into new ATH territory for roughly the third time. With a fully distributed supply already in circulation, I believe (and could be wrong) the probability of large waves of sellers continuously stepping in at these levels starts to feel somewhat diminished. Not impossible, just less likely over time.

At the same time, the protocol has entered a second wave of revenue & fee generation following a large number of updates focused around AI functionality and token launches. Revenue is now approaching previous ATH levels again:

The token also sits directly within the AI narrative, which remains one of the strongest areas of market attention currently. On some fee estimates, the annualised fees even exceeds the current market cap, although I don’t necessarily think that level of growth is permanently sustainable.

So the question I end up asking myself is: if a token keeps returning to relevance, ecosystem support, talks of Bankr team doing token buy backs, strong usage metrics, and narrative attention despite volatility, what is the probability that it continues moving higher from here?

Time will tell..

So even after all this thought process, what if I bought some here and there without any meaningful exposure? Realistically that alone isn’t really the framework I learnt from the poker app. The actual lesson was understanding when the probabilities and conditions justify increasing the size of the bet despite the discomfort attached to it.

So begrudgingly, that’s what I’m attempting to do here. (And if I’m honest, it feels pretty uncomfortable.)

I still think this is a high-risk trade with significant volatility attached to it, especially given the relatively small $50m market cap and its dependence on broader market conditions. But if I genuinely believe the hand has favourable odds, improving fundamentals, strong narrative tailwinds, and enough potential for future market attention, then increasing the position on weakness starts to feel like the more rational play despite the emotional discomfort attached to the exposure.

To summarise, the biggest takeaway from all of this is that I’m starting to think about trades more broadly in relation to what the market is actually signalling, what position it puts me in relative to other players, and how likely market participants are to abandon their own frameworks under pressure.

If 80%+ of traders and investors lose money in crypto, is it really that hard to believe that people eventually start bidding/buying into tokens already up 100% purely through fomo, narrative momentum, or the same type of mental gymnastics a beginner poker player might use to convince themselves they’re holding a winning hand before calling into a larger pot?

That’s the part I’ve become increasingly aware of after spending an embarrassingly addictive amount of time grinding this poker app over the last few days.

There’s every chance I lose money on these trades and end up completely wrong about all of this by the way (not financial advice). Regardless, I genuinely feel pretty stoked that I’m having this much fun learning poker and thinking about markets through a different lens over the last couple of days.

What is interesting is that I read Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke a while ago, which talks about how poker is often a far better framework for understanding everyday life than something like chess because of the uncertainty and incomplete information involved. The ideas made sense conceptually at the time, but they never really clicked for me the same way actually playing the game did and learning through the feedback loop in real time.

Thank you for reading,
Swiss,

Disclaimer: None of this is financial advice. I’m simply sharing my own thoughts, frameworks, observations, and experiences navigating markets, crypto, poker-induced market psychosis, and investing in real time. There’s every chance I’m completely wrong, lose money, or both.

The premise of what i would do in his situation actually had me question a lot of things about my previous investing decisions at that age, basically when i was 21 years old i had just purchased my first house, of which i rented out...

Context: Housing in Australia

(If you aren’t Australian and are reading this: for the last 20–30 years, this was how you escaped the permanent underclass; Buying and renting properties out, doing this had pretty decent tax advantages and the levers of which the governments used to inflate property, for good or bad reasons, were still plentiful. Meaning if you owned housing or land you caught some incredible upside at an advantage to Australians)

Context: Permanent Underclass?

( if you don’t know what that means , it’s basically the idea that no matter how much you cut costs or invest traditionally, you never accumulate enough capital growth to break into a different tier of wealth, because cost-of-living inflation and being priced out of investment opportunities means you’re constantly falling behind.)

Back to it..

..when I unpack the decision to buy a house at 21, it really came down to a few factors that weren’t sophisticated at all. The first was just fomo. I bought a shitbox house (wasn’t even that bad) in the middle of nowhere (up-and-coming suburb, actually) because a bunch of people I worked with, constantly talked about investment properties. Sales industry type environment, so everyone brushes shoulders with people making money and property often came up in conversation.

To unpack this even further: there was no curated list of who I should actually listen to, no quantified data analysis helping me understand what or where to buy. I looked at a few metrics and, like most Australians, basically assumed housing only goes up.

So because some people at work helped me understand the value of buying property, I just saved hard and aped into the housing market without really knowing if it was the best decision. Luckily, when I sold, I made money. But I’m not attached to this idea that I was some seasoned investment guy who knew exactly how to flip houses for profit.

I’ve said this before: the decision to buy, was driven by fomo, and wasn’t really mine. The decision to sell, was. Turning a profit, and eventually moving into crypto, was the first investment decision that actually felt like mine. Bitcoin.

Context: Fomo
(Financially Overextending Myself Obviously)

Fast forwarding a few years later, I already had a small amount of Bitcoin at the time, but deciding to go significantly heavier in September 2020 basically deploying most of my cash reserves ended up being a pretty good decision. (Selling at the wrong times, rotating into other opportunities, and generally trying to get too smart was not ideal.)

However, unpacking the decision to buy Bitcoin at the time, it actually wasn’t that different to the house purchase a year or so prior. During covid I suddenly had all this free time to watch content and learn about Bitcoin, so the decision to purchase more felt far more substantiated and thought-out. But in reality, I was still blind to a heap of things.

I had no PTSD from previous crypto market cycles. I didn’t know what it felt like to lose money on a trade, get hacked, lose funds on a hot wallet, or watch a portfolio nuke 40% in a couple of days. I had no prior emotional baggage attached to the asset class. I only knew the theoretical side of Bitcoin and a bit of the technicals. Things that we hear now, store of value, inflation hedge, decentralisation, all the big ideas that sounded nuanced and unique compared to traditional markets. At the time, those ideas associated with Bitcoin felt incredibly convincing to me because my understanding was still so new.

But again, it’s the same principle of thought as the house purchase, just on a much larger thought plane. I WAS NOT BURDENED BY WHAT HAS BEEN. I didn’t have some horror story property investment. I hadn’t been financially rugged by markets before. I was operating from a completely fresh perspective, optimistic about what these assets could become, without fully understanding market caps, liquidity, cycles, risk management, or even how brutal volatility could be psychologically.

What did carry over though were the first principles that got me into both opportunities in the first place: saving money, sacrificing, cutting costs, learning, and trying to just position myself for upside I guess. Looking back now, I almost think the environment I placed myself in mattered more than the sophistication of the decision itself.

The more experience I gained in crypto, the more I realised how “happy-go-lucky” I actually was in the beginning. Fewer pieces of information, fewer scars, fewer reasons to hesitate. And to be clear, this only applies to the buying side of the equation, risk management, securing profits, and navigating downside are completely different skill sets. But at the time, I was optimistic and hopeful. And weirdly enough, that naïve optimism was probably part of what allowed me to act in the first place.

So to come full circle, I’m basically at a crossroads with this kid and his desire to know more about crypto and what to invest in. Like bro, I have PTSD from this space and the hundreds of investment decisions I’ve made.

The question I keep asking myself before going back to him is: how much do I lean into my previous experience of market cycles, portfolio structures, risk-adjusted returns, or even the reality that a small few in crypto made their biggest gains simply by being young, hyper-online, and willing to take risks before life got more serious? The flip side of this, is that I just let him lean into his own perspective of the world, his optimism, both perspectives probably have merit.

The Christopher-Nolan-Inception layer to all of this is that the more time I spend deliberating what advice to give him, the more I realise there are probably areas of investing, and an overall approach to the world, where I have more to learn from him than he does from me.

Another angle to approach it from: If you put both of us in a room and said “here’s $26k each, have at it - in the financial markets”, I'd envy the uniquely naïve, unburdened-by-what-has-been perspective he has. Part of me thinks he’ll probably do well anyway really.

I think as you get older, it becomes easier to brush shoulders with increasingly flavourful cut-outs of the world’s problems. all that, cynicism, market trauma, doomerism, whatever you want to call it, I feel like it accumulates. Meanwhile this kid might just be hopeful and has a fresh perspective unburdened by what has been.

Now that the exertion of my mental gymnastics is out of the way, I’ll attempt to help him. I have some idea of what I think could be worth his time, but first I need to ask more questions. Finding out what he actually wants to achieve, what risk appetite he has, and whether he’s mentally built for hyper-online 24/7 markets that often blur the line between investing and gambling. A deeper understanding of how he responds will probably tell me more about my own method of thinking than his but would genuinely help me point this guy in the right direction.

(Truthfully, I’m hoping he tells me he’s perfectly happy with a savings account so I can do my best to stop him from losing money in crypto lol )

To be continued..

For those who don't know, here’s the setup:

You’re on a game show. There are three doors. Behind one door is a car (a prize), behind the other two are goats (worthless). You pick a door. Then the host, who knows what’s behind each, opens one of the remaining doors to reveal a goat. Now, you’re given a choice: stick with your original pick, or switch.

Mathematically, you should always switch. Your odds go from 1/3 to 2/3. But most people don’t. Why? Because they trust their original decision, or don’t fully understand the implications of the new information and they could actually perceive their odds still being 50/50 chance of receiving the prize.

To bring this back to crypto investor psychology, we are specifically assessing the game show host 'the markets' decision to reveal one door that does not have the prize 'something of value' behind it.

For years, as narratives and ecosystems have come and gone, people, including myself, have picked 'A-Door' in the form of altcoins and native chain tokens. Sometimes we had good reasons for choosing those doors, but more often than not, the prize behind them wasn’t clear. With all the noise from market participants and shifting narratives, it’s easy to end up having chosen the wrong door, only to find a goat instead of 'the prize'. Even as ecosystems mature, they rarely make it obvious where the real value lies.

But now, Stacks ($STX) is doing something few others haven't: it’s opening the door and showing you the goat (the $STX token). For those who don't know Stacks is a 'layer 2-sidechain-anchored-chain' blockchain built on top of Bitcoin. Stacks ecosystem as of 10.06.2025 is comprised of three major options of value for market participants to invest/participate in, sBtc (decentralised bitcoin 1-1 peg within the stacks ecosystem), $STX token, and the Stacks Ecosystem (Users, Apps, blockchain security/decentralisation)

Stacks is proposing to increase its native token supply to use the excess cash to help fund ecosystem growth for a sustainable and hopefully a long-term future. This hard fork in tokenomics is diverting away from its Bitcoin-inspired halving model, and with this new change will hopefully provide more growth specifically for sBTC (a native, programmable Bitcoin asset), for developers, users, and apps in the Stacks ecosystem (Sacrificing Door 1 - $STX token for, Door 2 - sBtc & Door 3 - Stacks ecosystem)

As summarised here, "Through minimal tweaks to overall inflation, SIP-031 will create 500m STX over five years for the Stacks Endowment, which will enable further investment in marketing, integrations, DeFi incentives, developer and founder incentives, and much more. Stacks will remain well below the median inflation rate for Top 50 projects by market cap and be able to build a treasury that is better suited for the caliber of the project, the current landscape, and the scope of its mission to unlock the Bitcoin economy." - you can read more on this here.

This might look like a dilution. But using the Monty Hall framework, it could be a signal. The game show host(the market) is opening a door and giving you valuable information: $STX may have been your initial choice, but it’s no longer the optimal one. The value has shifted within the stacks ecosystem.

The decision to increase $STX emissions resembles more of a deliberate reallocation of resources. The Stacks Foundation and core ecosystem players are signaling that they care more about building lasting infrastructure, real utility, and Bitcoin-native programmability than about propping up a token price.

While i can't speak for other ecosystems, however it is easy to argue that other blockchains pretend their token is the final prize, or that their token will accrue value. Ethereum might be the only one where $ETH truly represents productive capital and genuine value accrual back to the token. But outside of that? It’s mostly up for debate as to what you, I, and the market perceive as investable value.

Stacks is basically saying:

“We're going to be honest. The value isn't in holding $STX and hoping. It’s in building a strong ecosystem around sBTC. And to do that, we’re showing you the goat, so you know where to look.”

It’s a noble admission in an industry full of (Insert everything wrong with crypto). And for those who understand the Monty Hall Problem , it's an invitation: switch doors. Align your time, capital, and attention with where the value is moving, not where it once pretended to be.

In terms of actionable insights and personal investment strategy, I’ve been heavily invested in the Stacks ecosystem primarily through the $STX token for the past three years. At various points, it’s been my largest position. However, through the lens of the Monty Hall problem, I’ve begun gradually divesting my remaining $STX holdings.

That said, my alignment with the ethos of the Stacks ecosystem hasn’t changed. The Stacks Foundation has built something truly remarkable: a smart contract layer anchored to Bitcoin, bringing programmability to BTC in a way that doesn’t rely on Ethereum as the only smart contract platform.

This recent "door reveal" has prompted a shift in strategy toward a more ecosystem-risk-aware approach. I’m now focused on building exposure to sBTC and deploying it across the ecosystem. Given that sBTC is one of the more robust decentralised Bitcoin pegs (5,000 sBTC in stacks eco), and considering Stacks had real users even when the chain's performance was poor, this feels like a more efficient use of both capital and attention.

Caveat: acknowledging the obvious that many of these protocols haven’t launched a token yet. While there's potential for an airdrop, it doesn’t guarantee a worthwhile return on time or capital. The eventual token, if they come, may end up being low in value and not justify the risk taken.

Actionable alpha within the stacks ecosystem as a use of capital and time (Not Financial Advice):

• sBTC (bitcoin 1-1 peg)

• Hermetica / $USDH (stablecoin project on Runes & Stacks)

• Zest Protocol (yield

• Granite (yield)

• Liquidium (if sBTC support is added)

Looking at the Stacks chart, $STX is currently trading around $0.80, down roughly 79% from its all-time high of $3.80. While it’ll be interesting to see where the price heads from here, I anticipate user growth will continue, driven by sBTC and the pre-TGE protocols emerging in the ecosystem. I also believe that Stacks recent SIP-031 could set a precedent for ecosystems in the future.

Swiss,

Swiss,

**images are rough depictions of a high level view of each ecosystem - this summary may not account for each individual nuance protocol/scaling solution/user infra being built in each ecosystem of each chain that is wildly consensus or in use.