At the greatest inflection point in crypto since its infancy, the crypto natives gave up on the industry. Called it worthless and claimed that the effort builders have put in for years is a waste of time. Nothing is investable, and the only thing that matters is memes because “they will outperform.” Then they get surprised when they struggle to get new people interested in the crypto industry to participate in the same type of degenerate behavior as they do because some people actually do live good lives and are happy to put capital into things long term and go on with their lives without staring at the 1-minute chart all day.
There has never been a better time to focus, cut through the noise, and attempt to find interesting things that can pay off in the coming months.
Delayed gratification has never been more important, and those who can practice this without the need to chase instant dopamine will profit massively.
Institutional cycle
With DeFi being the new hot thing on the block last cycle, it was new to everybody, including our institutional counterparts, who kept it at arm's length but remained relatively interested in its potential. It brought many people to the industry today as they wanted a permissionless way to trade financial assets, being incredibly annoyed with the constant “trading halts” prevalent in traditional financial markets when volatility gets too large by their standards.
I can tell you right now that institutions are much smarter this cycle and actually consume our tweets and content. Some of them are even reading this Substack alongside you.
It’s been quite clear for a while that this would be a cycle with more institutional focus as ETFs have been playing a key part in it. Expecting a 2021 type of cycle with money printing and people being forced inside due to Covid isn’t unlikely unless something incredible happens. Either way, this is not important, but I do think people on CT get confused about how tradFi operates and the timeframes involved while people in our industry get worried about intraday moves due to less patience.
There is a clear interest from institutions in things that have been built in this industry and how they can profit from those rails, which is why tokenization is such a hot topic for them.
Adjusting Expectations
Let’s make this very clear: we all love the dopamine a 100x would give us, but there is no doubt that a liquid 5-10x is better and more ideal to optimize for than trying to find illiquid 100x’s that are as much about clout as making money. Thinking in terms of probabilities will do you much better.
You’re better off optimizing for finding solid protocols that you genuinely believe in and buying with conviction. DeFi and RWA have already given signals that they will have a big part to play this cycle while remaining overlooked by most. Will they 100x in the short term? Probably not. But being able to put a large part of your portfolio into good ones and watch them perform well is definitely underrated instead of having to find continuous rotations.
People have been gaslighted enough about this already.
Memecoins outperformance
Don’t get me wrong, memecoins will likely continue to outperform, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The whole “sector” doesn’t continue to outperform because there are new ones created every day, and they are more susceptible to dispersion than any other sector. You need to know when it’s time to get out as they play out in mini cycles.
Playing this game, you’re better off finding established cults that have survived hardships already and are relatively established because the majority will bleed. Good memecoins are those that can both trascend culture and maintain attention throughout different events taking place. Also, a good time to lower your expectations here until we reach a peak mania stage again.
If 2 meme coins out of 100 outperform, it isn’t “meme coin outperformance” – it’s focused outperformance while they suck capital from the rest of the other meme coins. They are in direct competition with each other for attention. Keep this in mind and adjust accordingly.