Q2 OPEN 2024

I wanted to write this freely without really caring about the response or feedback of what others might think or perceive from this non-formal essay. I am writing this to have a point of reference to where I am now and where I will be from 30, 60, 90 days and beyond that to see my growth over the course of 2024. I think it’s going to be a great year.. I have said this to many of my co-workers, plenty of my friends and family, and hell I’ve even shouted this to many random people on the internet in 2023. I am very confident that this will be a year to remember and we’re only 3 months in. Expecting to do this type of thing more regularly, it’s been a while since I wrote something on my Medium page. I am not sure if I want to continue it there, or start on other platforms such as Paragraph or Mirror, but I plan to be a little more consistent with this.

What Happened Last Year?

Honestly, too much to write down on paper but here’s a few notable news and events:

• Spot Bitcoin ETF applications from ARK Invest, Blackrock and many others.
• USDC depeg.
• SEC files lawsuits against Binance, CZ and Coinbase.
• XRP is not a security.
• Airdrops from Arbitrum, Blur and Sei.
• Changpeng Zhao steps down from role as CEO.
• Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on charges of fraud and conspiracy.
• Blackrock files for a Spot Ethereum ETF.

With a bunch of other events and highlights, I wanted to note just a few general headlines while there’s many more I can elaborate on, at a different time.

A lot of pain and a lot of heartache from people who either lost it all by reckless actions, betting against the market or unfortunately losing their funds to centralized exchanges, third parties or scammers. I think that 2023 was a revival for the crypto economy, rising from the ashes and choas in 2022. Though I always felt like it was difficult to keep up with things in crypto with things moving at a extremely fast pace, the narratives and developments in 2023 showed how overwhelmingly intense every single day can get.. especially in bullish market conditions. For myself included, it kinda sucked… I felt like I lost most of my money in the beginning of the 2022 bear market by shorting the market too early and aping / gambling into complete garbage crypto projects or shills, when I could’ve just DCA’ed and chilled. Most notably, I had a thesis forming for LUNA being the one to short for 2022.. but being over-leveraged and not using proper risk management, I shorted too early and revenge traded my account to 0 when the idea was correct and laid out right there. Went from a moment of unemployment, down on bills, no money to go out, just sidelined observing opportunities slip in front of me because of PTSD and bear market trauma essentially throughout 2023, especially in the first half of the year. Though I did do a lot of learning throughout this time, I felt a low in 2023 for quite some time… trying to stay optimistic but my personal life was quite bad.

How I Do I Feel In This Moment Now?

I am so optimistic I think it hurts, lmao. To be quite frank, I always kept the reservation that crypto would be one of the best asset classes to invest in when I first got Bitcoin-pilled back in the day… but to think things like this would happen this fast? Nah, I did not see this coming.

It is truly remarkable to see crypto’s resiliency.. and it’s been a LONG time coming but man, just a loss of words.

I think that in these situations nobody wants to make comparisons, but I feel as this moment is reminiscent of the Bitcoin bull market of 2020, with price action, sentiment and narratives heading into the new year of 2021. I always remember thinking of how I completely forgot about my Bitcoin purchase in 2017 and realizing that I was in profit, being able to navigate the market further for the next 9 months.

Bitcoin ($BTC)

I am not trying to over think this… we are sitting at all-time highs with participants who are either sidelined, one foot in or one foot out, or completely allocated with an appetite for risk-on markets… another thing to note is that many Bitcoin holders are sitting at breakeven or slight profit! I think weak hands will sell and strong hands will buy. I would like to believe Bitcoin rallies until the date of the halving and then it finally calms down. I would like to believe that I can have a bullish mindset for the rest of the year, even if Bitcoin retraces drastically, not every market can go up forever and healthy corrections are needed for higher prices.

Ethereum ($ETH)

I think that ETH is still solid value, though it is not a major part of my portfolio, I think that Ethereum goes up over time and will have great returns nonetheless. Only thing to question really for ETH is what will be the appeal for one person to buy Ethereum over Solana this year, while Solana has been gaining more and more of market share with decentralize exchange volume, smart contract deployments and daily active users. In a simple portfolio, I would still hold and allocate Ethereum, though not physically having any Ethereum holdings in my portfolio right now besides ETH related beta such as on-chain markets that are available on Base, Optimism, Arbitrum or zkSync. I think the BTC pair will lead the way on how to maneuver trading or allocating to ETH.

Solana ($SOL)

So yes, it’s obvious that I have most of my net worth inside Solana and it’s ecosystem. When it comes to opportunity, I just felt that out of all major assets there was a plain and obvious bet that Solana would go up and out perform Bitcoin and Ethereum. Though hesitation got the best of me at the lows, I finally started putting some money into the ecosystem around $30-40, dollar cost-averaging in and airdrop farming. I didn’t put enough money during Q3 of 2023 because of how my mindset and how I felt around that time.. I wasn’t really able to fully allocate to it, but I am glad I finally did when I felt able to. I have been developing a 3D portfolio (well at least I think I have), as noted by Su Zhu in a Steady Lads Podcast. I really liked how Su Zhu explained the idea of a ‘3D Portfolio’ and that one should be taking advantage of DeFi, CeFi and derivatives trading.

And while this 3D portfolio may be based off of a SOL denomination this could apply to other chains or other projects from example:

• BTC denomination (Stacks, Ordinals, BRC-20s)
• ETH denomination (Base, Optimism, Arbitrum)

How Do I Plan To Move Forward?

There’s a few ideas that I have laid out for myself, how to approach it and what to do but sometimes it’s hard to put it to paper sometimes, but bluntly… staying optimistic and aiming for higher prices. I told a friend recently we are closer to finding new all-time highs rather than looking for a time to short and exit markets.

I don’t think we’re at a top and there’s no way I am going to try and time one, maybe trade it but not declare it on anything, but here I will elaborate on a few ideas.

Boomer Narrative

The Boomer Narrative is the idea of the old ‘dino coins’ that have some type of attention when it comes to mainstream media, people who aren’t crypto savvy or people who deem to look for “safe” crypto investments by going down their first rabbit hole and doing some research. I have always thought to myself how this will play out and I think that there’s some significance to these old coins. This idea was based off the listed names of tickers being associated with EDX for spot trading. Effectively being the beta for boomers since at the time there was no Bitcoin ETF.

Until writing this journal, I have laid this out to be Bitcoin ($BTC), Ethereum ($ETH), Litecoin ($LTC) and Bitcoin Cash ($BCH)… but have now added Dogecoin ($DOGE), Ethereum Classic ($ETC) and XRP ($XRP).

Artificial Intelligence

Depending on who you ask you may get different answers as who will win or be the best performer, but there’s a no brainer that artificial intelligence and crypto go hand in hand. There is tremendous amount of opportunity when it comes to exposure in artificial intelligence in crypto with the total crypto valuation totaling under $30 billion, with many speculating that AI alone is potentially a multi-trillion dollar opportunity.

For me, my focus is solely 0x0 Exchange ($0X0) and Bittensor ($TAO), just because these are the two that I know the most on and my bias is aligned with these performing well.

Layer 1s

In the last cycle, the idea of smart contracts, high transactions per second and finality were the talk of almost every new blockchain that was a Layer 1 and dubbed the new ‘Ethereum Killer’. Though many have faded into oblivion, there’s some that are still alive and also some that look very interesting from a chart perspective.

My main focus, besides Solana of course, are some of the newer chains like Sui Network ($SUI), Sei Network ($SEI) and Aptos ($APT) that just dropped and of course some old ones who have recently caught steam once again such as Avalanche ($AVAX), Fantom ($FTM), Injective Protocol ($INJ) and Near Protocol ($NEAR).

I think these are also opportunities on-chain.. having some funds spread across many networks and chains boasts positive activity and growth for these networks and helps build that 3D portfolio idea. I can build positions around certain ones and airdrop farm new protocols and test out dapps on-chain, which I could be rewarded for.

EIP-4844

The Dencun upgrade that took place in early to mid March this year was an improvement to Ethereum by aiming to improve the network’s scalability by significantly lowering gas fees and making them more affordable by using proto-danksharding. I think that naturally this will bode well for Ethereum and ecosystem Layer 2s that are built on top, such Optimism ($OP), Arbitrum ($ARB), Polygon ($MATIC) and for other networks with no tokens such as Scroll, zkSync and Linea. Not sure why I had Sui Network listed on the EIP-4844 thesis but I have removed it and added Mantle Network ($MNT).

Memecoins

Probably the most hottest topic in all of crypto is memecoins, and it makes sense.. There are individuals making life changing wealth trading memecoins, having fun making memes and sharing with friends online while understanding that taking risks on memecoins is one of the ultimate ways to make it.

There are so many memecoins that exsist and without a doubt some are being created right now as I am writing this and even more being created while you’re reading this lol. I like memecoins, I think I always have because it’s a rollercoaster of emotions.. but I did refrain from it for most of the bear market due to not having much money and also bear market PTSD and thinking to myself, “Why would I risk my money on memecoins?”. I would also say losing a lot on memecoins definitely has it’s L moments too, but now I find myself getting more and more involved in memecoins as the days pass on.

For me, it’s simple.. there’s a holy trinity of tokens.. that is Pepe ($PEPE), Bonk ($BONK) and dogwifhat ($WIF). I just think these three are 3 tokens that I don’t mind batting an eye, taking the risk and holding any of them… yes there’s many memecoins, but my safest bets are with these 3. I have also shown Dogecoin ($DOGE) in this chart because I think it should be referred to as a benchmark for these 3 assets, as some would like to say Dogecoin is the ‘King of Memes’ or the ‘Bitcoin of Memes’

Though only listed a few here in this essay, I think that there will be more and more memes that catch the attention of many as new trends and narratives arrive and there is many to discuss right now, but that could be saved for a dedicated write up on memecoins only.

All in All

Just keep clicking, I think there’s no reason you shouldn’t be.. there’s so much opportunity and I’ve been saying this to myself for months now, so you just gotta go hunting for it… and have fun with it.. you win some you lose some. Just try to win a little more than you lose and stay positive.

look black talk white

@lbtwxbt