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Last night I was mad at myself. You would think it was the fact that I had 0 words written down for this post. But it was actually because I was looking at a chart of a token that had gone up 70x since my friend told me I should buy it.
I wish I was being dramatic here...but I was in literal pain. In these kinds of situations, you have to try really hard to shut down thoughts like "if I had put in ___ eth at ____ market cap, then I would have ____".
In a bull market, everyone's mind becomes a missed gains calculator.
All of Wednesday and Thursday I spent glued to my computer staring at the charts and reassessing my portfolio strategy. I know that I'm not a trader. But it's so tough to not join in all the craziness. Especially when you see bizarre screenshots of people turning $17 into $3 million 🤯
I keep on thinking to myself that I just need one lucky break with a shitcoin I buy under $5m market cap to moon and I'll be good to go. And the worst part is that I know from the last cycle it's not as simple as that!
The reality is that for the majority of you reading this, it's best to think of your trading portfolio as an opportunity to be part of fun experiments with the expectations of zero returns.
Participating in crypto markets during the thrill stages of a bull-run is isomorphically more similar to playing a modern video game than it is to investing. - Cobie
To be clear, I think playing a little bit of video games is actually important. It's what helps you form a thesis on the next big meta. Something something skin in the game 😂
My opinion is that if you're in the crypto trenches, then take a small % of your portfolio (if it's financially responsible for you) and allocate it for experimentation. For example, it might be that 90% of your crypto holdings are in majors (BTC, ETH, SOL) and you're using the remaining 10% in the bull market to FAFO (fuck around and find out). Try understanding the dynamics of what's happening, where attention and capital are flowing, and how the new projects will look like in two years.
Winning in crypto means having a healthy balance of skepticism and curiosity - Cobie
Skepticism = primarily holding majors over new projects. Curiosity = giving yourself a chance to explore new small cap projects our of your comfort zone.
And here's the thing...I'm willing to bet that the minute you start having fun with "trading" and have a curious-first mindset, you'll probably start doing well because your brain isn't fogged up with greed and profits.
As all of you know by now, I've been talking non-stop about the Onchain AI meta. Initially, I wasn't sure what to be investing in and was just spraying cash at every next sentient coin that came my way. Then this week I realized that was unsustainable and only a route professional day traders could take.
So I sat down and decided to actually go through the project websites, papers, github, etc. and treat the investments like venture investing rather than memecoin trading.
For example, when I started going deeper into Zerebro (Tuesday's post), I was hooked by the ideas presented in the paper and felt like it was a project I wanted to rally around. And since then, I haven't stressed about the price once because I know it's a token I want to hold for at least a couple of months to see how the team executes. If anyone asks for my reasoning, I point them back to my thesis.
The key takeaway here is to not be a midwit and waste your time pretending to be a Wolf of Crypto Twitter.
Either take the left side and invest your trading portfolio in things that look cool and have fun with it. Or spend the time to research the projects deeply and form sizable positions in them. If you find yourself checking charts, investing in every dexscreener link that gets texted to you, and engaging with random anons on X....then you're probably going down an unhealthy route that will lead to frustration and an empty Phantom wallet.
With all that being said, just remember that even if you think your trading portolfio research and positions are spot on, there's a solid chance it may fail just because of how fickle attention is in the crypto space.
For example, you may have researched a fascinating new DePin project and feel confident that the token will succeed. So you invest and sit there patiently hoping your net worth doubles overnight. But your timeline is full of people making six figures on...Fartcoin??
This is what Cobie means by paying attention to the metagame. For those of you that were around after the Covid crash in crypto, you'll probably remember the number of phases the ecosystem had from June 2020 to November 2021.
It's essential that you take the time to make sure you know what sector has the overall momentum. And you also take the efforts to follow up and make sure you're still playing the right game.
Note: this goes without saying, but none of the above is financial advice or suggestions to buy. I'm simply your local onchain idiot sharing my thoughts. DYOR.
With that being said, as weird as this week was, I think it helped me gain a lot of clarity on where I stand in this bull market. I'm taking a barbell approach:
I'm going to hold the majority of my portfolio in BTC & ETH and slowly DCA some of it out as prices start to feel like they're getting out of control (aka toppy vibes). 10% sell anytime you're taking a screenshot of your portfolio.
My Solana & Base small cap plays will be centered specifically around the Agentic Coin meta. Sticking to a niche vertical will help me go deeper and have full context around what's happening to form better decisions for these volatile plays.
meta: goat, fartcoin as OG plays
execution: zerebro, @luna_virtuals
launchpad: @ai16zdao, @virtuals_io
farcaster: @higheronchain (aethernet), lum (bot to bot launch)
and for the middleware and compute side of decAI, just DCA into TAO
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This means that I'm okay missing out on any coins that are centered around culture such as Moodeng and Pnut. It's important to have self control (especially if you're a psycho terminally onchain person like me). There can't be a "oh just let me try this coin" mentality as that leads down a slippery slope. Form a strategy you think will work for you and stick to it.
I know today's post wasn't a normal deep dive but I hope that it effectively serves as an example of what not to do as things only get crazier in this bull market. My attention got diverted to the charts and I wasn't able to lock in on the work I was supposed to do.
If you are running a company, have a full time role, etc. then the expectation is to have fun with these novel tools and ideas in your "FAFO fund". If you make some money, great! If you don't make any money, then also fine! But don't let the hours go by with you thinking about "what if I had made that trade". It's simply not worth it.
There were a couple of posts I came by this week from the trading side of Twitter that had a few gold nuggets I thought would be worth sharing. If you're feeling all worked up about your portfolio and the fomo, definitely take some time this weekend to read through the content below. Learn from other people's mistakes.
I'll see you all next Tuesday, hope everyone has a great weekend!
- YB
From Cobie's Substack:
Some examples
1) Sold bored ape + mutants for 240 ETH, rolled it all into an XCOPY 1/1 which ended up being $900k~, sold the 1/1 for $300k in the same year for tax…
- Don’t flaunt your wealth.
- Don’t use leverage.
- Don’t tell normies; let them find out on their own.
- Diamond hands.
- But sell if it will change your life.
- Prioritize decentralization.
- Cute NFTs only.
- Ape responsibly.
- Have fun.
people think I'm joking, bantering here with a homie
you're unequivocally LATE. bear bottom was Summer 2022 into FTX collapse. Q1 2023 at the latest. that's 2 years ago
while yes, most alts still have gigantic gains in…
24/7 euphoria on here, even seeing pnl’s 100x your entire networth
you’ll feel like you aren’t ‘doing enough’. this is when ppl overdo leverage & blow up
fight the urge - the hard part is over, now you simply need to survive
