Quarter IV 2021

wgmi

Quarter IV 2021 Outlook

General Market / Layer 1s

• This cycle we are seeing the crypto market mature much more than previous cycles. Narratives and underlying fundamentals are playing a much bigger role in which networks and protocols do well. Because of this, it’s increasingly more important to be an active early user so you can experience each of the platforms & develop an intelligent thesis on which you think is better or worse than the others. In addition, you are often rewarded for being an active participant in each network. Many airdrops over the past year have been various amounts ranging from 4-6 figures depending on the individual’s contribution, UNI / 1INCH / dYdX come to mind. This year more than any other years we’ve seen crypto be legitimized by traditional finance players, which has led to a large influx of money entering crypto. These investors previously external to crypto are also being selective with their capital and have to decide which long term bets they are going to make. When these people are allocating money to anything other than Bitcoin they need a process for evaluating the network and determining which has the most upside moving forwards.

• One of the reasons I believe the L1 [Layer 1] networks have outperformed all of the other altcoins on the year is because they are one of the easiest ways to make a bet on the decentralized future of smart contract systems. It is much harder to pick an individual lending protocol or decentralized exchange to invest in vs. betting on the underlying networks that all of these dApps will run on. You could argue that the overall future prospective value for these networks is much higher than it is for Bitcoin, which just functions primarily as a store of value. From a technical perspective, the rounded top aligning with the multi-year range breakout on the ETHBTC pair is the prevailing trend this year in my opinion, as the market is showing where the future is headed. This is the only cycle thus far where BTC hasn’t had a blowoff top, instead it was a slow macro distribution. As ETH has outperformed BTC on the year, other L1 networks like Solana, Avalanche, Terra Luna, Fantom, & Harmony have also outperformed Ethereum by a large margin. These networks are newer and less battle tested, but they all are currently functioning as much faster & cheaper smart contract platforms that are receiving large amounts of capital from HFs & others betting on their success in the future. SBF leads this w/ his advisory role for Solana. Because of his prior connections to traditional finance & major influence as CEO of FTX / Alameda Research, his name pulls a lot of weight w/ influencing HNW individuals + traditional funds on where to place their bets. The list of partners with PYTH alone demonstrates a staggering shift in public opinion when you compare it to the widely shared negative view most traditional finance firms had towards crypto in 2017. One of the biggest examples of tradFi -> crypto is Jump Capital, who has established their own separate crypto fund recently. They’ve even stated that they have been heavily involved with PYTH and also governance with other blockchains like LUNA. It’s likely that there are many other funds similar to Jump Capital who are either sidelined waiting for the right opportunity to get involved or are quietly doing so behind the scenes. Each Layer 1 has their own respective early investors & strong founders who are working on building their ecosystems: Emin + 3AC w/ AVAX, Do Kwon + Novo w/ Terra Luna. I think we will continue to see new capital + new competent developers enter crypto over the next few years & as that pool of $$$ & talent grows we’ll see a thriving ecosystem of differing smart contract platforms that users will be able to choose from.

• With this in mind, I believe your base currency should be ETH and your trading should focus on outperforming ETH. If you’re doing anything on chain, which should be the majority of your trading, you need Ethereum as your starting point. When buying NFTs, alts, bridging elsewhere you should make sure you’re outperforming just holding Ethereum. Comparing the altcoin space in 2021 to the altcoin space in 2017 doesn’t make much sense to me because of how little value existed back then versus now. Previously you needed Bitcoin to buy any altcoins on any exchanges, and the only dex that we had back then to use was etherdelta. The altcoin ecosystem now is way more complex than it was 4-5 years ago, which is why ALT/ETH charts are more important to me than ALT/BTC. In my mind, Bitcoin is now the most risk-off portion of my portfolio because I think its volatility continues to trend down as it grows in size and gets closer in market cap to things like Gold. Also because of the players involved that are trying to accumulate bitcoin for the long term, it is in their best interest that we have a slow move up instead of parabolic like 2017. We will continue to see the market pullback whenever retail derivatives traders are out of position. ETH and others I still view as a trade, holding BTC serves its’ role in my portfolio when I want to reduce risk and take profit from longs. BTC is also great for gauging market-wide pullbacks because it is the easiest asset to use as a hedge, and whenever it sells off heavy alts selloff much harder. BTC doesn’t have any competitors in its’ role of being hard money so it’ll always continue to grow as crypto grows, even if it isn’t leading crypto in innovation. You should always keep a BTC stack separate from your active trading stack that you never touch. Depending on how risk averse you are I’d argue you could also trade with the intention of accumulating the currency of your favorite L1. This is riskier because there have been many ETH competitors in previous years that are not nearly as important now as they were four years ago, e.g. Tron / DRGN / EOS. Solana is the best suited after ETH in my opinion because of the staying power of FTX / SBF / Alameda but I think that’s subjective. Your primary focus with alt charts should be looking at their ALT/ETH pairings, & when you are trading the altcoins within each L1 ecosystem you should be looking at those ALT/L1 charts. For example, many of the SPL tokens in Solana’s ecosystem have underperformed SOL for the entire year.

• In the upcoming quarter, I expect this main trend to continue as these other smart contract platforms close the gap with regards to users and the amount of funds stored on their networks. Currently these market leaders [SOL / AVAX / LUNA / FTM / ONE] are up varying multiples 5-10x from the July lows, while ETH hasn’t broken ATHs yet. In the short term I think SOL is a bit overextended while LUNA has been ranging for about ~40 days over its’ previous all time high from earlier in the year. Expecting Solana to form a new consolidation base in this area while others start new trends. If we do get a period of sideways in the alt L1s w/ ETH outperformance I’d expect developer activity / user activity / TVL on the alt L1s to continue to trend up. If that stops for any reason, I’d re-evaluate the thesis on them outperforming in the medium-longer term. Out of the existing L1s, Terra Luna and ONE have the most upside in the short term, and AVAX is the strongest EVM-based competitor for Ethereum.

Majors [BTC / ETH]

• I’m bullish on both Bitcoin & Ethereum for the upcoming quarter, after ranging for the majority of the summer both rallied off the lows of June / July in Q3 to breakout to the upside. In the past month we’ve seen our first major pullback since the rally from late June, expecting us to form a macro higher low here before pushing to new highs towards the end of the year.

• Bitcoin has potential catalysts upcoming with the ETF approval, but its’ value proposition has already been validated by various large players at this point that I don’t think the impact will be as major as it would’ve been in 2017. If we were going to breakdown further, I don’t think we would’ve held the $30k lows in the summer when we had peak fear and real fundamental events from nation states that caused forced selling and exodus, with regards to China & their crackdown on bitcoin mining / trading. The repositioning of miners for btc should be bullish longer term as hopefully it is more decentralized to areas that won’t be as restrictive with their regulations. If we see more developments similar to what El Salvador has decided to do then that could be a major bullish catalyst. From a technical perspective, it’s holding the ~38-40k area that preempted the breakout over range highs, ~40.7k was the highest daily close of the three month range over the summer. I think the lows are in already here, but a deeper dip to 36-37k to start the quarter wouldn’t surprise me. As long as we aren’t closing weeklies below the range highs ~42-43k I’m betting on continuation upwards and all time highs over the next few months.

• Ethereum has already implemented eip-1559 and its next major catalyst which is the merge and shift to PoS isn’t scheduled until Q2 2022, but it is increasingly becoming clear that ETH is the main currency of the internet. You need ETH to buy NFTs, trade on DEXes, deposit w/ all of the lending protocols, etc. etc. Although it is facing competition from other L1s, we’re seeing more growth of crypto as a whole rather than ETH users leaving the network. The bottleneck with high fees is a significant hindrance for retail, but developments in L2 solutions are quickly resolving this problem, and even without those issues most of the long term ETH users have already accumulated so much that the fees are minimal. From an investing perspective, the other L1s do have more upside just because they’re smaller in size and less battle-tested so you’re taking on more risk to get more reward, but Ethereum is definitely not going anywhere anytime soon. I’m bullish on ETHBTC in the medium & long term because I think the ceiling for smart contract platforms is higher than the ceiling for BTC as a store of value comparable to digital gold. I use ETH every day and I rarely use BTC.

ETH-DEFI

• All of the major DEFI blue chips have been steadily in a downtrend against ETH since the beginning of March when ETH retested its’ all time high from 2017. Market has decidedly shown that these networks valuations were not representative of their current usage & the underlying network [ETH] was undervalued in comparison. Many specific eth-defi alts and other laggards have failed to make all time highs or even break above their highs from the summer in June. Last year we had the first “DeFi Summer” which was when platforms like AAVE, COMP, Uniswap, and others really became popular. At the time they were the newest alts in the market which is why they outperformed dinos & others by such a large margin. DeFi on other smart contract platforms outside of ETH was nonexistent whereas now we have DeFi on multiple different chains and in many cases, we have EVM-compatibility on these other L1s. This could be the narrative for reversing the downtrend in these defi/eth pairs since they could see increased usage as new capital enters the space. These pairings are currently back near their lows from the beginning of the year. Outside of the DeFi blue chips, there has also been plenty of new innovations in DeFi that have come from completely new protocols altogether, e.g. OHM / SPELL. I think the most upside in eth-defi lies in opportunities like these and then also in the decentralized derivatives space. Since China is cracking down hard on crypto trading & many other non-kyc exchanges are reducing their withdrawal limits / forcing kyc, we will see an exodus of users from CEXes to trading on-chain. dYdX has shown the emergence of this trend with decentralized perp volumes rivaling certain CEXes with good liquidity. DPX is another decentralized alternative that is working on building an options platform. On Solana, we have platforms like Mango Markets and PsyOptions. All of these platforms should see increased user growth over the next few months and into 2022. The DeFi tokens have been better served as hedges against other longs / spot positions, but that trend may be ending soon as we enter this new multi-chain phase that allows EVM dApps to deploy across blockchains. As I said earlier I think the trend is: new institutional capital entering crypto betting on long-term success of DeFi + smart contracts, out of the available options the best R/R bet is in alternative L1s which are much smaller in market cap & currently more performative, albeit less secure, than ETH. For hedges now it’s probably better to look for the weaker L1s that don’t have as much capital entering + smaller communities rather than eth-defi. While alt L1s capture market share of new crypto entrants & gain on ETH’s market dominance, I think this will continue to be the best trade. If playing eth-defi, I think it’s best to focus on the newer protocols delivering value to users that previously didn’t exist + to focus on the current market trends, which right now for the EVM is multi-chain / bridge plays & decentralized derivatives, instead of just blindly buying the designated “blue chips”.

NFTs

• NFTs are the most interesting market segment in my opinion because they capture so much interest from people with no crypto background at all. It is much easier to onboard non-crypto people to cute digital pictures + blockchain gaming than it is to explain the advantages of peer-to-peer lending and other iterations of existing systems from traditional finance. There are four main trends that I see here: on-chain & generative art with historical value, profile-pic NFT communities + companies entering the space, traditional artists & photographers selling individual pieces, and blockchain gaming.

• The primarily historical aspect where crypto-natives are valuing the earliest and most influential works on-chain, e.g. Punks / ArtBlocks & others, was the springboard for the interest in NFTs towards the end of last year. Because Ethereum is the first smart contract platform, it follows that the first NFTs on its network will hold value as crypto grows over time, both from a perspective of provenance & also early community. I’m curious to see if this trend follows to other alt L1s, who are just now launching the first set of NFTs on their platforms. Solana, Fantom, AVAX, Harmony, and others all now have some NFTs and associated NFT marketplaces. Early users who have been using these platforms as their preferred ecosystem may value these projects similarly to how .eths value Punks and others. Looking at generative art, it’s clear that Art Blocks is still the dominant platform even with their raised costs of minting. There will be other artworks like the Fidenzas that gain a lot of popularity, especially as the sheer amount of generative artists increases as time passes.

• Probably the most popular trend are the retail-focused profile-pic NFT projects. We have seen the success of projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club with how it has captured the attention of many high profile athletes and other people previously external to crypto and we’ve also seen many traditional companies attempt to utilize NFTs for their own marketing. Occurrences like Visa buying a Punk and Neopets launching a collection on Solana are only the beginning of this trend as more companies eventually see value in building their online communities. NFT collections are by far the best way to bootstrap a community of users in my opinion, as it is more involved than just sending out an email list to people or getting people to buy merchandise. When you build a community of people that all hold an NFT it’s much easier to distribute value to those people and they are also much more invested in the community. We’ve seen the iterations of 10,000 mint sets of NFTs, but companies are going to get much more creative with how they use NFTs for marketing going forward. The major blocker for this trend is onboarding new users to crypto wallets, which is an easily solvable UX issue. In this upcoming quarter, I think that the leading PFP projects [Punks / BAYC / Cool Cats / SMBs] and others will continue to do well, but the most value is probably in finding the projects in the ~middle~ tier that have the possibility of getting re-rated higher. I am most bullish on Creatures because of the nyc artist Danny Cole and how much effort they’ve put into developing the experience for holders so far, seems like he has a long term vision for the project as this is just the extension of his artwork into the digital world. 0N1 Forces are still my favorite from a visual perspective, from looking at the discord also appears the team is planning on building the community from in-person events also to airdrops to holders. Generally, how well these pfp projects do is really dependent on how these projects deliver value to holders and keep their communities engaged. On the flip side, there is consistently a lot of chaff within the NFT space that are solely cash grabs because of how easy it is to get people to fomo mint anything. Participating actively in discords and other spaces should be helpful in determining quality, but to be the most careful it’s probably best to wait & see how the project develops on the market the first week or so. I am really curious to see how these metaverse worlds get built and the possible collaborations between teams, the projects that do a good job with these and create a cohesive experience will have a huge advantage. Currently I’ve only seen roadmaps with plans but over the next year or so we should see who is able to deliver value there.

• Blockchain gaming that incorporates NFTs and play-to-earn ecosystems will also onboard a lot of new users to crypto. The first team to successfully recreate the hype that surrounds games like Roblox or Fortnite, while also incorporating a system that allows users to earn money while playing will be one of the most successful crypto dApps to date. Platforms like Solana & AVAX that allow for many cheap micro transactions and high TPS should have an advantage here as game developers enter the space. Funds are providing nine figure incentives for hackathons to entice developers to build, which should accelerate that transition of high quality SDEs into crypto. Axie Infinity has had great success in the Phillipines and is currently the most profitable altcoin in the space. It is definitely the market leader for the metaverse trend and should be keyed on to see when that sector is trending or consolidating. In October I think you’ll see the metaverse ecosystem start to pickup again pretty quickly, AXS staking is a huge catalyst. The Parallel NFT card game is another one of the frontrunners here even though their game isn’t out yet. Their art is really well put together and they’ve done a good job of fostering community so far. A system of different factions is really good for engagement and competition between users. Also, they have notable investors with them on their team like Chad Hurley from Youtube and others. Other possible early winners here could be games like Star Atlas & Aurory, but no gameplay has been delivered yet to really see how things may play out. I have a list of low caps that I need to do more research on before I can say anything about my opinion on them long term [ILV / PYR / RAINI / YGG & some others]. To get most value out of these plays I think you have to get exposure *before* the market is convinced they’ll be successful, when people are doubtful is when you’ll get the best discounts.

• Traditional artists making their own NFT project is also a major trend to watch. I already mentioned Creatures by Danny Cole, but there will be a lot more transitions similar to this. Selling artwork via print is much more difficult than selling NFTs because of how easily accessible everything is digitally. I don’t have many predictions with regards to this trend as I don’t know much about traditional art, but I do think the anti-environment schtick will fade away as time passes. That seems like a knee-jerk reaction from people who are seeing something for the first time that they just don’t understand

Q4 Portfolio Allocations

Core position focus for me in October will be LUNA with their Columbus-5 network upgrade catalyst and Axie as the leader in the metaverse / gaming space. L1 outperformance and NFTs have been the two leading trends this year so want to be allocated there more than anything else. Other than that, sitting mostly in LP farms and some specific market sector plays. Bitcoin & ETH will move slow, so mostly scalping those instead of holding longer term swings until I think there’s no higher beta returns elsewhere. Once ETH reclaims ~3.6k, I think it goes to all time highs pretty quickly. BTC still has significant resistance in the 55-58k area it needs to work through so thats where I’d look for the next set of local highs to be put in. I will be concerned with alt/btc underperformance once we get above that ~58k level and start pushing towards price discovery. From a technical perspective, LUNA has been consolidating for about ~40 days above its’ previous all time highs from march, after moving up ~6x off the bottom from the summer lows. Once Columbus-5 goes live and all of the other projects within the ecosystem launch, I’m expecting it to breakout to the upside. Axie is in a similar situation and has been consolidating for a couple months after its initial run-up. During the pullback a week or so ago, it retested its highs from July and bounced hard. My LP farms / single-sided staking is spread out amongst multiple chains, one of the reasons its important to be liquid so easily can move on the best new plays when they come up. Two major examples of this recently are $TEDDY on AVAX & $JEWEL on Harmony that were much easier to find if you already had eyes on those respective ecosystems. For BTC and ETH, stronger confirmation of bottom being in would be breakout above $45k / $3.1k.

General thoughts on the market: expecting slow uptrend in majors, outperformance from alts with strong fundamental catalysts, and continued underperformance from dino alts and others failing to deliver value. Ideal rotation would be to play LUNA / Axie into price discovery in October, rotate back towards majors after and then look to reposition into Solana as main holding before Q1. I’m not as good with timing market cycles for NFTs as I am with majors & alts, so really just holding the ones I think are undervalued until market reprices them. Will be keeping ETH’s merge on the radar as possible catalyst for ETH outperformance over other L1s similarly to its’ move in april-may 2021.

• Layer 1s

  • LUNA

    • Columbus-5 Network Upgrade: Estimated ~September 29th-30th

      • will allow integration with IBC & all other blockchains in Cosmos ecosystem

      • Ozone Insurance integration

      • Wormhole integration to enable bridge between Solana & Luna

      • All LUNA used to mint $UST will be burned

    • General thesis is that UST will be used more across multiple chains, which will be deflationary for LUNA + after Col-5 upgrade a lot of new projects are launching in the Terra LUNA ecosystem that should attract new users and they’ll be able to bridge easily over using the terra & wormhole bridges. It is also less popular on the West side of the globe in my opinion as its main community is on the east, but that should change over the next few months.

  • SOL

    • Not one of my main holdings at the moment as I think there is more upside elsewhere, but my general trading measure is to outperform Solana as its’ been the market leader all year and I think that continues once it’s done consolidating from its' most recent run-up. Possible catalysts on the horizon are the integration of the EVM and also the completion of the current Hackathon.

    • Solana NFTs have also been doing really well. Most of the recent run ups happened after the SOL local top, which I think is good to see people recycling gains back into the ecosystem. Solana Monkey Business is definitely the market leader at the moment, but there are many other projects launching all the time. I haven’t kept up with most of the new ones but tracking growth on twitter and the most popular trending ones on the marketplaces is a good place to start with identifying which are most promising. This is extremely bullish for blockchain games developing on Solana, which is why I think the Aurorians are one of the best bets you can make.

    • From a technical perspective, it still hasn’t broken down further while BTC is holding, want to see strength above ~150 before looking for any longs. If we see an extended breakdown that would be a great opportunity to scale into spot for long term but not sure we get it with so many eyes on it.

    • think we consolidate for the next month or so but will keep eyes here because don’t want to be left behind when it starts moving again

  • AVAX

    • AVAX & AVAX ecosystem micro caps have been really strong since mid-August. JOE has been the top performer and is up ~100x from its lows around that time. AVAX & JOE should continue to trend up as their liquidity mining program is rolled out w/ AAVE but I think there’s more upside with LUNA than with AVAX at the moment. AVAX is definitely the premier chain for EVM dApps right now in my opinion, so that ease of use for users and also portability for devs is a really strong ongoing bull case. Even with the launch of Arbitrum I haven’t seen any major exodus away from AVAX. It will be interesting to see whether this changes with the zk rollups, but if the user experience is not significantly different on an ETH L2 vs. AVAX then I don’t believe the rollups will be bear cases for AVAX. Still have a small bag here to use for new eco launches.

    • Teddy Cash is one of the new lending protocols on AVAX that’s been doing well the past week or so, think its still mostly under the radar as its only ~25M cap or so. They allow you to use AVAX as collateral for borrowing their stablecoin TSD and also have some LP farms ongoing currently.

  • Harmony / $ONE

    • Just as performant and fast as AVAX / SOL / FTM, but with little to no recognition. Functioning crosschain bridge and EVM compatible, all they’re lacking is community development and project development. It reminds me a lot of SOL in early February when the chain was just fast but the only dApp that existed was Raydium. They launched a $300M ecosystem fund a few weeks ago to spur development and encourage builders, so should hopefully see more projects pop up soon. The DeFi Kingdoms dex was one of my best plays in September, team is communicative about future goals and has been efficiently putting out updates. It is the only dex I’ve seen that has done a great job of creating a baseline metaverse world for users in addition to the swap / farming utility. I don’t plan on leaving the Jewel / ONE farm for awhile, want to see how they do with developing their game and how the NFTs interact with the entire ecosystem.

• Layer 0s

  • ATOM

    • Cosmos has a lot of upside long term if they’re able to generate value from all the projects built with the Cosmos SDK. There is a ton of great projects already built with their architecture but now the focus is on connecting them all through IBC with Cosmos Hub as the centerpiece. Until recently there was very little, if any, value going towards Atom for token holders. Now, the Cosmos SDK chains are becoming more integrated through IBC and it will be interesting to see how that affects Atom or which proposals get passed in governance to change the structure. Cosmos Proposal #56 discusses utilizing the Cosmos Hub as a router for all of the chains connected to IBC should be a major catalyst next few months. Have a position in the Atom/Osmo LP atm and have a bag of Atom, but will look to add from other positions as that proposal gets closer to getting passed.

• DEXES

  • dYdX

    • very simple thesis here with migration away from CEXes, most profitable derivatives dex

  • JOE

    • has solidified itself as one of the best AMMs imo, will be valued closer to UNI & SUSHI in a short period of time

  • OSMO

    • more under the radar but the primary AMM on Cosmos, functions well and should see more usage as people learn more about IBC

  • NINJA

    • micro cap solana dex / nft / gaming play w/ very high ceiling if team executes

  • DPX

    • decentralized options protocol, currently in testnet but don’t think they have much competition in this space atm

    • good R/R bet to make while market cap is still ~100-200M

  • Astroport [upcoming]

    • will be the primary AMM for LUNA after Columbus-5, still isn’t out yet

• Multi-chain / Bridge Plays

  • SYN

    • in a space where users are currently chasing the best opportunities on different chains, a fast and easily usable bridge is extremely helpful

    • synapse is one of the only ways to get funds back over from arbitrum quickly atm, and they have functionality with other chains as well + building out more

  • SCRT

    • Secret Network is the first privacy focused smart-contract protocol that I’ve seen working on mainnet. Their upcoming Supernova protocol update will enable IBC-integration, similar to the Columbus-5 update for LUNA. This chart is near its range lows of accumulation so have started building position here, should have some time until people start talking about this one. Have tested the bridge from eth→scrt and it works fine but they dont provide any of the base currency when bridging so you have to get it from somewhere to unhide your assets afterwards.

  • REN

    • another bridge play, same thesis as SYN

• Hedges / Shorts

  • DOGE

    • has been one of the weakest majors, retail focus has shifted away from meme coins & more towards NFTs, can also see this weakness in the dog coins on other chains

  • BNB

    • rise of other Layer 1s has taken a lot of mindshare away from BSC, still ppl actively trading on pancake swap / bakery swap but not nearly as much as before when BSC was the only cheap alternative

    • have high confidence this continues to underperform alts like SOL / LUNA / AVAX for the rest of the year

  • MATIC

    • similar thesis to BNB shorts, + also development of ETH L2s like Arbitrum & others coming soon

• LP Farms

  • JEWEL / ONE

    • primary DEX on Harmony which hasn’t received a lot of attention yet, they also plan on releasing NFTs & building out a game that uses them

    • most of rewards locked until next July to counter the high APR

    • APR decreases with each epoch, still in early stages

    • one of the most creative dexes that I’ve seen, has edge in being first mover + different experience from others

  • OSMO / ATOM

    • Osmosis is one of the first chains to connect to the rest of IBC, Gravity DEX / Bridge will be able to connect IBC to ETH and other ecosystems by end of Q4

    • first major AMM on Cosmos and will likely be the primary beneficiary of the Luna IBC connection out of the existing chains in the Cosmos ecosystem

  • NINJA / SOL

    • bullish on Ninja team as they’ve built a functioning dex and are working towards building out an NFT marketplace + integrated game

    • team definitely has a packed roadmap but as a lowcap I think it has a lot of potential upside

    • getting double rewards in Orca & Ninja and pool is supposed to last for the next ~365 days, not concerned with IL here since the pairing is ninja/sol instead of ninja/usdc

• Stable Farms

  • Rari Capital USDC Pool

    • 23% APR

    • Deposit $USDC & earn based on their yield aggregation strategies

  • Anchor on Luna

    • ~20% APR

    • Deposit $UST

  • OHM

    • was really late to understanding this project but they’ve effectively bootstrapped ~$150M into their treasury with a community of people dedicated to the long term

    • Since its over $1B market cap now I think it’ll be hard for most ppl [like me] to ignore its continued growth so should accelerate from here

    • will be interesting to see how well Olympus Pro works once its rolled out but honestly think this project goes a lot higher

      • https://olympusdao.medium.com/introducing-olympus-pro-d8db3052fca5

    • only downside here is the premium over the total assets in treasury is pretty wide now

• Single-Sided Staking

  • xJewel

  • DPX

• NFTs

  • Punks

    • should continue to rise as ETH does well, you won’t get a 100x out of buying these anymore but they’re essentially like buying real estate on Ethereum

    • if buying these at this point you should be planning to hold for multiple years imo

  • BAYC

    • very clearly in the 2nd place spot to Punks, kinda in a similar spot from an roi perspective as you’ll likely get more from taking risks on middle tier projects but these will hold value without issue

  • SMBs

    • most popular NFT on Solana atm, think these eventually get priced similarly to the Bored Apes

    • from here I think we see them slow down a bit in the short term, as they just went from 50 → 250 sol floor, but out of the major NFT plays this is most solid pick

    • as primary PFP NFT on Solana underpriced compared to the leaders on ETH, just newer

  • Creatures

    • strong community + connection to known artist irl

    • distribution of holders ~55% + notable people joining community like SHAQ and others

    • still priced relatively cheaply to other projects of the same quality floor around ~3Eth

    • holding a few of these of different rarities and don’t plan on selling anytime soon really, think these have the most upside out of the pfp projects out at this point

  • Loomlock NFT

    • Loom’s wassie project

    • expect this to have staying power & there to be much more built out than just the jpegs, think Loom & co will do a good job fostering community & adding value

    • got some @ mint & will likely buy more on secondary

  • 0N1 Forces

    • these are my favorite NFT project aesthetically, one of the few profile pics that I’ll probably keep for awhile

    • not really interested in trading these but have some others outside of my pfp that I’ll likely roll into other smaller projects if they have a big runup

    • first in-person meetup for 0N1 holders in LA first week of October

    • airdrop in the works for Q4

  • Bit Umans / Ancestral Umans / Portalheads on FTM

    • cheap bet on one of the first NFT launches on Fantom, not high conviction here but think r/r is decent considering there isn’t much competition there

  • Crypto Seals on AVAX

    • minted these awhile back when ppl were first starting to bridge over, same thesis as FTM, one of the earliest generative projects on AVAX & costed barely anything to mint

  • Gen 0 Heroes on Harmony

    • these are launching w/ the DeFi Kingdoms dex, want to mint these when they come out as they’ll also allow you to unlock farming rewards earlier and will be the first notable NFTs on Harmony

  • Arweave

    • AR is the best NFT infrastructure play. Its decentralized data storage architecture will underpin many of the NFT projects going forward who want to store their data somewhere other than AWS or other centralized services. It is still very undervalued compared to other data storage plays like Filecoin that aren’t nearly as important to this budding ecosystem.

  • holding a lot of other projects but these are the main concentrated bets, there’s consistently a new project trending each week w/ NFTs so probably will continue tracking vol + sales trends just to play those

  • Misc.

    • not as knowledgeable on most of the NFT projects as I am w/ the altcoin ecosystems so need to do more research there, want to look more closely into how projects do their airdrops to users and launch the new iterations

      • for ex. https://cyberkongz.medium.com/the-next-leap-in-cyberkongz-evolution-e8ea8a064b26

• Metaverse Plays

  • Axie Infinity

    • AXS is the clear leader here for gaming. It was the first altcoin to react off the lows in June before the rest of the market bottomed and has been consolidating for a couple of months now. Their game is still delivering value to users and they are still the most profitable protocol even including all of the DeFi alts. Upcoming staking should be a good catalyst setting it up for the next trending move. The major risks here are how it handles scaling up to a lot more users as it becomes more popular, want to look into more what their plan is for that

  • Vulcan

    • PYR is one of the low cap gaming plays that I’ve looked at. Honestly haven’t dug deep into this one yet as I have with other plays, but they are building an entire NFT dApp ecosystem and NFT marketplace. I’ve played some of the games and the chart looks great from a technical perspective.

General Thoughts for next year

• What is the likelihood of a multi year bear market where everything goes -90%?

  • I believe that this scenario is increasingly unlikely the more popular crypto becomes as we’re seeing more funds / users enter the space than any other period. IMO, there’s just too much sidelined money & active development for prices to dwindle without any interest for multiple years.

  • We saw this year when derivative premiums / OI got overheated + bubble popped everything dropped ~70+%, but we just went sideways afterwards for three months before going back up. Since alts go parabolic at such a rapid rate the retraces are usually very steep.

    • This has not happened during any other stage of crypto’s nascency with the amount of public attention that crypto is getting now, so I believe that the lows we set in 2021 will not be touched in 2022. There would have to be a generational event [»what could cause this?«] similar to covid across all markets to cause a crash that significant to happen. I believe -70% drawdown + sideways again is possible if we get overheated again but I don’t think that would be before much more upside. FTX at the center of conversation & in public eye is a huge boon for crypto in general because of image of SBF & how he actively wants to cooperate with regulatory bodies, another one of the reasons why I think SOL has an advantage over other L1s. Comparing 2017 to 2021 does not make sense from a developmental perspective, public perception perspective, institutional perspective, or regulatory perspective.

    • Maturation of crypto as an asset class means that eventually we should start to trend up alongside the SPX as long as economy is healthy, upside for crypto is much greater than any other asset class currently, but even once it has caught up in size it should be steady growth as we see with companies like FAANG. I believe we will have increased institutional / HF involvement as people look to outperform traditional markets, convos from HNW individuals have to be asking why they don’t have any crypto allocations, meaning that volatility should start getting dampened over the next few years.

• What is going to be the killer app of the 2020s? For the 2010s it was Amazon, for early 2000s it was Facebook, what does this look like in the metaverse space & how do you onboard millions of non-crypto users?

  • This is one of the questions I revisit frequently because it helps me frame ideas on a longer time frame, I’m betting the influx of users into crypto over the next decade is going to be a major shift in how users interact w/ tech.

  • Example: A metaverse world / social network where people have a public address that contains all of their NFTs / Art / Digital Land / Flex Materials. A private address that they can easily use as a savings account generating yield on stables like USDC / UST. A private address for dex trading / other transactions. All connected within the same user experience where ppl can message back and forth with one another.

    • How do you create that seamless experience that comprises social networking / banking / gaming all in one place?

    • What platform would you be able to build this on?

    • How would you market this app to new users and onboard millions of people? Gamification? NFTs?

• What market segment isn’t being discussed now that will be more popular over the next few months / next year?

  • answer to this in ~2018 would’ve been DeFi

  • answer to this in ~2019 would’ve been NFTs

  • not really sure what the next major trend will be but revisit this Q a lot also

• More generally, want to spend time understanding the difference between the Layer 1 tech stacks at a lower level. Have spent majority of time in crypto trading vs. developing so want to balance that out more when I find time