In the 4 years that I’ve been writing this, the crypto market has changed greatly. Bitcoin went from $16,000 at the bottom, to $120,000 at the top; Alt seasons are a thing of the past, and the industry went from being scorned post-FTX, to adopted by institutions worldwide ;

In the midst of all this, my strategy to making money has largely stayed the same. I don’t try to do anything sophisticated - at its core, my strategy can be broken down into two parts - the first, trend-following of a larger macro bull market; and the second, generating alpha by being an asset picker, and sizing it correctly. My strategy represents “peak retail investing” because I try to step away when the bull market starts to dissipate, and only believe in generating alpha in “easy mode”, and turning it off during “hard mode”. In other words, I am a Jesse Livermore Rule #2 enjoyer (except the shorting part, I don’t do that).

Being ok with “average, or slightly above average” returns has allowed me to enjoy year on year compounding while not sacrificing leisure time. It is another reason why I believe it’s the optimum strategy for a lazy retailer like myself, akin to “sleep-adjusted returns”.

This strategy has had added benefits too - and been immensely helpful in navigating the crypto market this year. Why? Well, the average return for this year is in the dumps - BTC’s YTD is -6.6%, and TOTAL3ES sits at -26.9%, OTHERS at -39.4%. The average YTD return for a top 500 altcoin, is almost definitely negative. Thus, learning to step away in down-swings has allowed me to save a good chunk of my P&L that would have otherwise been donated away.

I enter 2026 largely keeping to the same strategy - and here I will explore what I believe to be the overarching themes for 2026.

Crypto Will Be A Traders Market For The Foreseeable Future

Crypto is in a secular bear market with booms in between: January 2025 (AI Season), May 2025 (ICM Meta), July - Oct 2025 (DATs). 2025 has been a gradual realisation and subsequent grappling with the simple fact that crypto’s long-term risk-adjusted returns do not exist anymore, and that this industry is more akin to an “Emerging Market” due to structural disconnects between capital formation and shareholder value.

The chart of Solana, a top 10 market cap coin, depicts all the problems with investing in crypto assets. Firstly, these assets aren’t long-term compounders. They don’t grow year on year, unlike the Mag 7. The chart is more akin to a “rollercoaster ride”. And while they have demonstrated monumental gains (from $8 in the depths of post-FTX crash to $296 just a couple months ago), the fact that Solana has drawn down 50% from those highs only drives home the point that these assets have to be traded around, and not held.

I still remain firm in the view that crypto will continue to remain the only market to offer such magnificent returns in a short (ish) span of time. But in the same vein, it will also come crashing down. I am highly skeptical about 99% of these assets reaching prior ATHs ever again.

I quite like this mental model provided by Howard Marks in his latest memo. Crypto has a lot of these “mean-reverting” bubbles that have no expectations in the underlying developments. Memecoins are a classic example of these - assets that exist purely to drive returns. What value does Fartcoin or SPX6900 bring to the world? And every other narrative in crypto is a wrapper around a memecoin, trying to pretend it has value - see AI Agents.

On top of that, many of these tokens dug their own graves and paved the way for their own charts to look like “rollercoaster rides”, by having 1) egregious tokenomics that lead to massive supply dumping on a monthly basis, 2) having little to no value accrual to the token, 3) not even making revenue in the first place for people to consider it as a legitimate product they’d invest in.

The resulting current state of market is just an amalgamation of all of these structural issues that came crashing down on 10/10, which took the spot to be the top crypto liquidation event of all time at $19.61B (2021 April’s liquidation of $9.94B sits 2nd). As a result, what we’re seeing now is basically the “end of the cycle”, where prices face downward move after downward move.

As a result, I have started to pivot away from the crypto markets and investing in equities. And I believe that most of what 2026 will have to offer lies in becoming a generalist more than a specialist, being flexible rather than tied down to a specific sector of the market. Looking at the returns of different indices in 2025, it proves my point - this has been the year of ex-US equities, and it paid to have more breadth.

Retail Investing Is A Long Term Trend And Is Causing Traditional Market Structure To Shift

I believe that this trend of retail investing will only continue to grow because investing has become so democratized that retailers from all over the world are starting to do it. Lower barriers to entry to this “sport” mean that the investable asset class is starting to “go global”. The world is now accessible to capital flows from, well, everywhere. A retailer in the US speculating on Korean stocks that have its fundamentals rooted in the AI narrative. A Grab driver in Singapore investing in Polish stocks. Etcetera.

This is another bearish point for crypto, because for the longest time crypto was thought to be the “Internet Layer” that anyone in the world could invest in. But now that investing has become so accessible, why would retailers choose to invest in low-value, speculative digital assets when they could buy literally anything else?

I digress. Retail investing growing is a pretty obvious thesis, and at this point, it’s hard to argue against the data. But what I want to point out is the scale of things. Anecdotally, it feels like many people do agree that retail is investing at scale, but fail to grasp the consequence of more retailers entering the market.

As a result of retail inflow, equity markets in general are becoming more crypto-like. The one thing I’ve always loved about crypto is how it managed to speedrun market cycles in a much shorter span of time. We got to experience the entire stage of investing in the span of months, even weeks - from accumulation to distribution. And now I’m seeing similar signs in the stock market. Can you guess which one is a token and which one is a stock in the image below?

That’s right - they’re both stocks. And while not all stocks exhibit said properties, it cannot be denied that there are more and more aspects of the equity markets that are becoming more “crypto-esque”.

The world of equities is broad. This is just one small trend-shift I’m noticing.

If You’re In Crypto, Pivot To Equities

As a result of low volatiliy crypto markets, many have pivoted to equities - and there has been a lot of chatter on the timeline about whether said crypto traders have an edge in equities. My take is: I don’t think anyone has an edge in equities just because they were “from crypto”. However, there are certain skillsets that could make prove beneficial (e.g handling volatility), but ultimately, you’d still have to adapt.

I am in the same boat. I don’t proclaim to be good at stocks. In fact, quite the opposite. I am having massive imposter syndrome writing this on a Substack which I know for a fact, is read by hedgefund managers with dozens of years more experience than myself in traditional markets.

But it’s not completely disregardable. Because I believe that the markets will behave more erratically due to an increase in retail participation, I subsequently think that the experienced crypto trader who spends most of their lives trading against retail, will be able to find some sort of edge. Take narrative trading, for example. I’d say that if you were sharp enough, you could catch many of the themes that drove returns this year - Hyperscalers / Space / Memory / FinTech / etc.

And alas, what alternative do I have? I don’t expect crypto to be as lucrative as it once was, and so, I can either pidgeonhole myself into catching those 1 - 2 trades that generate multiples in a year (if they do happen), or I can expand my existing skillset. TLDR: Adapt, or die.

Anyways, by my standards, I’d say I’m doing well so far. Above are the YTD returns for my portfolios. And at the expense of sounding stupid, I would actually like to elaborate on why I believe I, as a crypto trader have been doing well.

1. Identifying strong themes juice a lot of returns

Back to my point above - this is something I actually believe “crypto traders” are good at - identifiying core narratives and positioning themselves around it. More examples are: Hyperscalers (IREN / HUT), Space (ASTS / RKLB / PL), Financialization (HOOD / SOFI), Memory (SNDK / SK HYNIX), Robotics (TER), Nuclear (OKLO), Quantum (IONQ / QBTS), Metals (SILVER / GOLD), etc.

I’m still trying to get better at pre-identifying themes, but a lot of it is just second-ordered thinking. Stock selection comes later, but with AI, much of the informational edge has been flattened. Again, it helps that with more and more retail investing coming in, narrative trading will once again become a huge theme in the markets.

2. Learning what to trade

I do recognise that I have no edge trading “news” or earnings. But truth be told, there is a lot of edge to be captured if you play at the right tables in this game. For 10 years, crypto was one such table - overlooked by everyone else, giving outsized returns. Now, with the dominance of retail, we’re starting to see the same type of table appear in equities - the small-ish cap (sub 10 billion) space. I’ve been getting my hands dirty here, and boy is it fun. You’re seeing similar return profiles - e.g DAVE (35x since 2023), RKLB (12x since Sep 2024), etc.

The process of finding one such stock is being refined - I’m very much in the early stages when it comes to my workflow. But so far, I think it’s the table that I’m most suited to be playing at.

3. Handling volatility

The most commonly cited trait of crypto traders does help a bunch here. Unlike our coins, these things do have fundamentals - and if you can hold a “pre revenue” coin through a 40% drawdown, you sure as well can do the same for a stock that actually does something.

My Biggest Weakness Thus Far

But the irony is that crypto teaches us to “not hold” - and that’s where it becomes a double edged sword. With TRUMP, LUNA, and all the events that the typical crypto trader has been through, I’ve found that my biggest weakness is selling at the first sign of trouble. Akin to PTSD, the moment I feel like it’s toppish, I instantly start selling - expecting some sort of market wide drawdown like we saw earlier in February this year.

It’s still something I’m trying to unlearn.

Some Predictions

Not to be taken too seriously, but just stuff I think have a good chance of happening.

1. Gold hits $5,000

I believe Gold is in a structural bull market of its own. In the past few weeks, the shiny metals (Gold, Silver, Platinum) have done fantastically well, and I see no reason for this to stop.

2. Unitree IPO does multiples on opening (2-4x)

Robotics seems to me to be deeply underrated despite being one of the most life-changing applications of AI. Many in the AI space are constantly hyping up new models, new applications, but I’ve seen very little love for robotics despite it being so adjacent. Sure, the Figure Robot launch was highly covered, but when I compare it to the hype around general SF AI Tech? It’s not even close. I do believe Rewkang is on to something with his robots thesis.

3. BTC bottoms at 70k

It is quite possible to me that BTC will bottom soon - whether it makes a new ATH is another question entirely. The downside risk is minimal based on how it’s been trading, but I have no understanding of where the upside will come from.

3. HYPE hits a new ATH, while all other alts continue to grind / chop

FWIW, my holdings right now are a sub-10m microcap, and Shuffle. I no longer hold HYPE, but I am looking to get an entry to it in the near future. That being said, Hyperliquid is one of the few products that have exhibited properties of being a great altcoin:

1. It doesn’t have high inflation

2. It has some sort of value accrual / alignment

3. It has a product that has continued to grow QoQ & isn’t just a flash in the pan

When 99% of the altcoin complex is uninvestable, I expect inflows into one of the most pristine assets that have come out of this past cycle.

4. There will be an on-chain / alt season - and it will be AI Video related

This may seem counter intuitive to my prediction above, but like I said - I believe crypto is still the best space for “mean-reverting bubbles” that happen in the short span of time - i.e an alt season of 1-2 months, like what we saw with ICM in May. I believe there will always be pops, you just have to get out before everything collapses (again).

5. Stablecoin adoption gets massive implementation, and CRCL goes above $200

While there’s a lot of talk on stablecoins and work in progress, we’ve yet to see the boots on the ground moment by all of these major banks and players. Tempo is still under construction, the big banks are all gearing up to enable it (but not here yet) - I believe 2026 will be a continuation of a clear stablecoin dominance. The problem I’m wrestling with is the simple fact that Trump and the rest of the world is in a rate-cutting cycle, which is bad for stablecoin companies, but perhaps good for money velocity.

6. Ex-US indices continue outperforming US indices

Pretty self explanatory.

Continuing below are a continued lists of predictions that I

7. Chinese luxury consumer stocks make a revival (Popmart, Laopu Gold, etc.)

8. The AI bubble slows down and takes a back seat, with more returns being seen in other sectors

9. Nuclear energy continues doing well

10. ETH doesn’t go back to ATHs

11. Pokemon cards are out, One Piece cards are in (especially given it’s the Pokemon 30th anniversary)

12. The only DATs to survive will be MSTR and BMNR

13. We see a lot more crypto M&A of tokens

14. Crypto looks to find a way to turn stocks into tokens after spending 2025 realising the other way around (tokens into stocks through DATs) don’t work

15. Crypto gambling takes off (Disclaimer: I have Shuffle bags)

16. The crypto bear market continues into 2026

2025 Gameplan Review

And to close it off, we’ll review my previous years’ memo, to see how they played out.

1. My Macro Scenario

I drew that picture & wrote the following:

Conclusion:

• BTC up, and up more than 2024

• Alts - play offense, know when to switch to defence, but less defensive than 2024.

Well, I’d say it came partially came true but overall, a pretty bad prediction because it didn’t account for the path dependency - we made new ATHs in September, but look where we are now. This sort of passes.

2. AI

Yes, this is still here. But as the tweet above shows - we’ve gone through a few waves already. If you read my thesis on AI tokens (link here), I believe the next wave is coming soon.

To be fair, this seemed like a more short term prediction than anything. I’d say what I said came true - before they all went -99%. My picks of ALCH / DIGIMON / AI16Z all did fantastically well, again, before they went -99%. This passes.

3. DeFi

Top Picks: AAVE / ENA / Morpho / Euler / USUAL

Side Picks: Stablecoins / Payment related tokens

Meh. Some of these names did not make a new ATH ever since January 25 - so this was a pretty bad basket to play. AAVE briefly made a new ATH, but it was pretty short lived. ENA & Euler basically topped on a YTD basis in January 25. USUAL collapsed; the only winner here is Morpho. This fails.

4. L1 Trade

I’m going to get so much hate for this, but I believe the L1 trade comes back in size. Hype is a no brainer, but Sui has been massively hated at $1, then at $2, and now at $4. The L1 trade in itself is something I believe the market has been missing though - it stands out as one of the areas that no one is looking at, yet massive opportunity lies (as seen in how Hype has 10x’ed).

Top Picks: SUI / Hype

Side Picks: Abstract

This absolutely fails. SUI pico topped at $4. As for Hype, well… while it did run up, its current price is close to where we were in January 2025. Also, it’s kind of a cop-out pick - it’s less of a L1 than a Perp Dex. In hindsight, I’m not sure what I was talking about.

5. NFT Tokens & Gaming Coins

Top Picks: Pengu / Anime (Azuki) / Spellborne / Treeverse

Side Picks: Prime / Off the grid (if token comes out) / Overworld

Well I’d say Pengu is the only winner here, even though it went -90% in January. It proceeded to rip 8x, and above all, Pengu has been the only NFT project that has garnered mainstream attention. The basket overall fails though.

6. Other Narratives

These are on my list, I don’t LOVE them, but they’re interesting

• Data tokens - Kaito / Arkm

• Memes - really only like PEPE. Everything else… looks cooked

• DePIN - PEAQ / HNT

• Ordinals

• Dino Alts - XRP, etc.

• Old DeFi - CRV / CVX

I didn’t really write a view on these, so they don’t matter.

7. Predictions

• Prediction: DePIN gets implemented by a serious company in a serious manner, somehow. Maybe an acquisition.

I’m not sure if this came true. Maybe someone in the replies can help? Combing through my memories I don’t think it happened.

• Prediction: Binance loses market share as the top exchange. Not to Hyperliquid, but either Bybit / OKX

This didn’t come true fully, but I will say that Binance’s reputation and market share has definitely taken a turn for the worse, especially after 10/10.

• Prediction: Metaverse coins get new life as VR hits new strides

Nah.

• Prediction: ICOs are great again

Oh this turned out fantastically well. Cobie’s ICO Platform got acquired by Coinbase for $375M, which goes to show how ICOs are the new in-thing again.

• Prediction: ETH On-Chain szn never happens

I was right on this.

• Prediction: Sui hits double digits ($10 min)

LOL. No.

• Prediction: ETH yield gets approved in ETF, thus spawning more yield products for staking other tokens, and yield aggregators like what we had in 2021

Oh this turned out to be correct!

• Prediction: A major artist uses NFTs & tokens in a way to keep tabs on his / her fandom and reward them

Nope, didn’t come true.

• Prediction: Bitcoin hits 200k

I wish.

• Prediction: More L1s see their CEOs / founders leave after seeing Aptos

This sadly came true. Nowadays we’re seeing more and more exits, with the typical “vesting cliff reached” meme attached to them.

• Prediction: Base loses the on-chain race as another L1 takes over. Solana retains.

I’d say Base is still the winner alongside Solana so far.

Concluding Thoughts

This about sums up how I will be positioned going into 2026. I expect that a lot of what I’ve said here will probably change greatly, as with my 2025 Gameplan.

Good luck, godspeed, and see you on the other side, ladies and gentleman. If you make life changing profits on the way, remember - change your life.

Yours Truly,

0xKyle

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Let me start by reviewing my 2024 gameplan. If you’re not interested, just skip ahead!

The 2024 Gameplan Review

Oh god. I got a pretty meaty part of my 2024 gameplan wrong ; let’s look at it prediction by prediction:

1. BTC Halving is a non-event

I remember so many people debating this - was halving sell the news, despite it being buy the news historically? At the end of the day, it was just a non-event that heralded a bull market.

2. Rate cuts are bearish

This was obviously wrong, but in my defence, I shifted my stance on this publicly leading up to the cut, because the initial thesis was “Inflation was sticky and a rate cut would happen after economic data has already weakened significantly, making them a response rather than a preventative measure.”

The Fed proved it wrong, and the right stance to take mostly for the entirety of 2024 was to take the Fed at face value.

3. Scenario Planning

The crux of my 2024 Gameplan was, I quote: “Derisking my portfolio by a certain percentage before rate cuts to buy back lower, while leaving the rest of my positions untouched.”

I don’t know what I was talking about, because I did not do any of that. LMAO.

In the end, 2024 was a different beast in its own - with a post-ETF initial sell-off, into a Q1 rally, summer lull, and a non-event rate cuts that stimulated stocks but had the crypto-world in absolute shambles as we continued muddling about the 50s-60s, into the eventual election that was the real banger.

My main weakness here was not talking about how 2024 was a year of banking Bitcoin to the traditional institutions. What was I thinking? That was probably THE main thing of 2024 - the slow but steady onboarding of traditional finance to Bitcoin.

4. Narratives I mentioned:

• ETF Benficiaries: COIN (stock) / BTC / ETH

I also mentioned tokens like STX / TRAC, but those have not been doing well at all. COIN was a great call though. As of writing that article, it was somewhere at $120ish.

Side narratives of BRC-20s and LSTs have not lasted long, but were great to play in Q1’24.

• SOL

SOL was $60 at the time of writing! Jeez. Yea this is one of my proudest trade ideas - my very first huge banger that I wrote at $20. The caption is pretty funny: "SOL will be triple digits next cycle" - Ansem, probably. Really hit the nail on the head for that one.

Side Narratives of TIA / Aptos / Layer 2s have not done well for most of 2024.

• Regulation & Product-Market Fit

I got the narrative right, but the tokens horribly wrong. The idea was “products that pass the regulation bar for DeFi, but haven’t shown clear PMF”.

WHAT was I thinking? I had MMX (Oh God) and dYdX (lmaooo).

Side Narratives of HYPERLIQUID was mentioned. Yea damn I wish I took my own advice and farmed it way more, huh. I was a pretty early user of Hyperliquid, but its significance was not shown to me until too late.

• Decentralized AI

This one’s a doozy. I remember being bullish on it, then omega bearish at Q1 top as I realised what I had envisioned versus what was being built were worlds apart. Products like Render and Akash had very little actual use-case, and it just seemed like massive vaporware. I’m of course a huge fan of the current AI narrative, but yea.

Top picks of TAO / OLAS… well TAO was 300 at the time of writing so I guess it 2x’ed? OLAS… let’s not talk about that.

Side Narratives didn’t do well. (AKASH / RNDR / TAO Subnet coins)

• GameFi v2

I like this one. This was a trade I took that actually paid off. There was a small window in Q1 2024 where BEAM heavily repriced upwards, and alot of GameFi stuff sent (e.g Pirate NFTs); Prime was also big

Of course, you had to sell the top, if not now you’d be down alot. I didn’t sell as much as I wanted to, but I think at the end of the day it was a profitable trade.

Top Picks: Overworld / Treeverse / Prime / L3E7 - Overworld keys went from 5e → 15e, Treeverse plots went from .2e → 1e (I think), L3E7 went from like 3e to 14e (this I roundtripped);

Side narrative of BLUR didn’t do too hot.

• Other potential narratives

dePIN / RWAs
deSci
Memes (BONK / DOGE / PEPE / HPOS10INU)
RUNE / CACAO
GambleFi
Airdrops (LayerZero / Starknet / ZKSync)]

Nothing super good here, other than memes - they popped off hard in Q1 2024, and Bonk basically 2-3’xed from where I wrote it. dePIN also had their time to shine (Geodenet / Helium); but I didn’t focus too much on it. DeSci popped off a few months back, and with BIO on Binance… but I don’t like it that much tbh.

5. Cycle top

I ended the article with: “The one thing I haven’t talked about is how I think we this cycle ends - and lately, I’ve been giving more and more thought to the GCR idea that "the last pico-top were funds getting in, the next pico-top is when countries start buying.””

Reading this NOW, with the benefit of hindsight - boy, I think I’m gonna steal that one for my 2025 Gameplan. That is on my list of “top signals for this cycle”, definitely. It makes alot of sense.

The 2025 Gameplan

Now that the 2024 review is out of the way, let’s jump straight into it. As usual, first I’ll talk macro / scenarios, then move on to thematic narratives.

Scenarios

The 2024 - ?? cycle has begun. I’d say it begun in late 2023, but we’re splitting hairs here. The cycle so far was: Jan 10th - BTC ETF launched → a move to ATHs which caused altszn, into choppy Q2/Q3 2024 where we bounced around the 50s and 60s. And on election day, we breached ATHs and went all the way to 100k, which we’ve failed to breach, and have been chopping around the 90s.

It’s important to note that altszn or the “fun times” all started during BTC highs, with the first one being the move towards 69k, in which BTC failed to break appropriately, and the next one being the move towards 100k.

The next alt cycle will likely be when BTC convincingly breaks 100k. I have no crystal ball, and while I would like it to be Q1 2025, the fact of the matter is that we could honestly see a repeat of Q2/3 2024 for the next few months - it is something I have to be prepared for. Thus, here are all the scenarios I’ve drawn out:

• Scenario 1: BTC + alts up. 2025 becomes upOnly, and then we enter another alt szn as BTC continues to go up up up, and all coins do well, and we get a repeat of what we just saw, the last 2 months where everything goes up (30-40% chance)

  • Action: BTFD here, on strong alts

• Scenario 2: BTC up, alts less up; This becomes a repeat of 2024, where we see choppi szn for the next few months ; but more bullish than 2024 (because BTC upOnly); so select areas do well (50-60% chance)

  • Action: BTFD here, on select alts. Avoid areas with high attention, figure out the next “where the puck will skate to”

• Scenario 3: BTC up, alts downOnly. This is an alt-top; while BTC continues chadding well (20-30% chance)

  • Sell all alts. Will have to eat drawdown on this; but given enough time, if alts don’t pump, we might have to sell it all.

• Scenario 4: BTC down, alts down. Everything tops (10-20% chance)

I believe in a few things. I believe that the new BTC ATH break will not take as long as it did in 2024, because the macro tailwinds are appropriately positioned. In summer hell, the ETF had just launched, and TradFi was still trying to sell the story of BTC to their clients. Most importantly, however, the world was not convinced of the importance of Bitcoin.

Now that Trump is in power and talks of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) are being thrown around, the rhetoric has changed. I’m not going to speculate on the probability of a SBR being set up - I have 0 experience in the intertwine of politics and finance.

What I care about is the narrative - and it is a fact that this new regime that we’re under brings new attention on the digital asset sector, and that it is much easier to convince people to buy Bitcoin now that you the President of the world’s largest global power is talking about it so much.

This regime change is extremely important to recognise. As such, I believe in a scenario where BTC will just continue to have tailwinds for 2025. For alts - a similar but different story.

Total3 went to 2021 ATHs in Q1‘24, and then cycle highs in Q4’24. It more or less follows the same pattern - and to be honest, my Scenario 1 & Scenario 2 aren’t too different from each other.

The key will be in positioning, and timing. I’m bullish 2025, but I don’t know how long this will take - while I do think the upOnly price action will come sooner than it did in 2024, alts still very much bleed in periods with no catalysts.

The plan is always remain net long as long as the cycle hasn’t topped, whether in Bitcoin or others. I don’t think 2025 will see a repeat of summer ‘24, but I do think we’ll get similar periods like now - just a lull, but prices still hold up decently well.

On-chain is different - on-chain is prone to -70% swings when the tide washes out. As such, the goal is always to sell peak attention on-chain, revert back to large alts (Top 20) and then slowly start deploying again.

I don’t think alts top here simply because I cannot see how BTC continues to go up while alts die. And I cannot see BTC topping here.

Conclusion:

• BTC up, and up more than 2024

• Alts - play offense, know when to switch to defence, but less defensive than 2024.

Risks

1. Cycle Top

Cycle top is a self-fulfilling prophecy. While I don’t think we’re anywhere near a cycle top, this has to be constantly re-evaluated on a weekly basis. Cycle top is not necessarily an “event”, but more-so of a spectrum that we slowly approach as time goes on.

2. SBR Risk

With the start of a new Presidency, everyone will be looking at what he does. I admit that while BTC tailwinds are there, it would be pretty bearish if the President forgets about it entirely. IMO the risk is either - the SBR gets forgotten, or the more likely scenario where the SBR doesn’t happen / something different gets drawn out.

In the latter case of (something different) - it’s an initially bearish, but ultimately bullish event as long as its pro-Bitcoin.

TLDR: Bullish signalling = cycle continues. Bearish signalling = have to revise plan. Cycle may continue, but lower chances.

3. Supply Risk

In 2024, we had insane macro conditions during the summer that saw ATH after ATH for stocks. Instead, we had none of the upside and all of the downside as the supply overlords of Gox, Germany, Grayscale GBTC, and many more battered us again and again.

Supply risk can never be mitigated. There is always someone out there with tons of Bitcoin - the UK government, Silk Road, FTX distribution, or whatever. It’s just something you have to keep tabs on, but imo if all goes well, these events are nice dip-buying events.

4. Macro

I believe that smaller # of rate cuts are still rate cuts. While it is *less bullish*, the fact of the matter is that as long as rates keep going down, liquidity improves. Again, bullish signalling = cycle continues. Barring a hike / no cuts, macro should be good for digital assets.

Bearish signalling would be inflation rearing its ugly head again, and a world where the Fed may have to raise rates to lower it.

Themes & Tokens

Now for the fun part everyone has been waiting for. But before I talk about this, I want to really, REALLY emphasise the part I was saying about “play offense, but know when to switch to defence.” Active portfolio management will trump passive portfolio management this cycle.

Gone are the days you can buy and hold something forever. Solana has barely performed par with BTC for the entirety of 2024, despite gunning up 10x in 2023. Top picks like TAO have not benefited from the AI boon that we’ve seen in recent months. And for memes - The dog does not have a hat anymore, Chill guy lost his chill, the pygmy hippo looks like its on it’s last legs, etc.

Nothing on this list will likely be something you can “buy and hold”.

On top of that, I like to think - who is the marginal buyer? There’s basically 3 overarching marginal buyers in this space - Institutions (Trad), Funds (Liquid / Crypto-native), and degens (perp traders, on-chainoors, etc.)

For a narrative to be good, it has to be bought by at least one of these parties. With that being said, let’s dive right in:

1. AI

Yes, this is still here. But as the tweet above shows - we’ve gone through a few waves already. If you read my thesis on AI tokens (link here), I believe the next wave is coming soon.

Macro: Hype -> Fundamental -> Utility;

Micro: Reply guy -> Fundamental-ish -> Applications / Avatars

Buying and holding will not do well. Goat, the one that spawned it all, is down 60% from the highs and will likely continue to underperform.

Top Picks: Application Tech / Swarms / Games / Consumer focused AI

Stuff like ALCH (game dev), Griffain (Agent to help control your wallet), Digimon, Ai16z (king of all AI), are top picks in my opinion. Probably a ton I’m missing out on, but you get the point.

2. DeFi

This one needs no elaboration as well. DeFi will continue to be a great narrative, however, it is incredibly hard to invest in as there are really few tokens that will benefit from it. And even if they do, they may not pump (see the LST space).

It is, frankly, not my top choice in terms of risk-reward as well. But it’s a narrative that I think will continue growing into 2025.

Top Picks: AAVE / ENA / Morpho / Euler / USUAL

Side Picks: Stablecoins / Payment related tokens

3. The L1 Trade

I’m going to get so much hate for this, but I believe the L1 trade comes back in size. Hype is a no brainer, but Sui has been massively hated at $1, then at $2, and now at $4. The L1 trade in itself is something I believe the market has been missing though - it stands out as one of the areas that no one is looking at, yet massive opportunity lies (as seen in how Hype has 10x’ed).

Top Picks: SUI / Hype

Side Picks: Abstract

I don’t know how much I like Monad and Berachain. I’m pretty excited for Abstract, though - I think it might be a banger.

4. NFT Tokens & Gaming Coins (Round 2)

I like this one a lot too. I’ve been buying some gaming projects recently, and I think that the NFT token space is something to watch. Pengu has slowly creeped back up, and Azuki has $ANIME, Doodles has.. whatever it is. I don’t think NFTs come back, but I think their tokens do.

Gaming coins are also interesting because Off-The-Grid has shown us that it is possible to make a fun game. With how it’s so hated, I believe that it’d be good to dig deep into the weeds to find genuinely fun games who have tokens coming soon.

Top Picks: Pengu / Anime (Azuki) / Spellborne / Treeverse

Side Picks: Prime / Off the grid (if token comes out) / Overworld

5. Other Narratives

These are on my list, I don’t LOVE them, but they’re interesting

• Data tokens - Kaito / Arkm

• Memes - really only like PEPE. Everything else… looks cooked

• DePIN - PEAQ / HNT

• Ordinals

• Dino Alts - XRP, etc.

• Old DeFi - CRV / CVX

2025 Predictions

This one’s for fun, really. Just stuff I’m thinking about that sounds kinda incredulous, but not really.

1. DePIN gets implemented by a serious company in a serious manner, somehow. Maybe an acquisition.

2. Binance loses market share as the top exchange. Not to Hyperliquid, but either Bybit / OKX

3. Metaverse coins get new life as VR hits new strides

4. ICOs are great again

5. ETH On-Chain szn never happens

6. Sui hits double digits ($10 min)

7. ETH yield gets approved in ETF, thus spawning more yield products for staking other tokens, and yield aggregators like what we had in 2021

8. A major artist uses NFTs & tokens in a way to keep tabs on his / her fandom and reward them

9. Bitcoin hits 200k

10. More L1s see their CEOs / founders leave after seeing Aptos

11. Base loses the on-chain race as another L1 takes over. Solana retains.

Concluding Thoughts

Congratulations if you’ve made it this far! This about sums up how I will be positioned going into 2025. I expect that a lot of what I’ve said here will probably change greatly, as with my 2024 Gameplan.

The best advice and takeaway here is really: Be flexible, be like water. Enjoy the ride. The market will continue to change, but that’s just part of the game. As the saying goes:

No man ever steps in the same trade twice. For it’s not the same trade and he’s not the same man”

Good luck, Godspeed, and see you on the other side, ladies and gentleman. If you make life changing profits on the way, remember - change your life.

Yours Truly,

0xKyle

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DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

But I’m not too mad about it - I’m actually pretty glad, tbh. Lower prices just means a perfect time to chill and do research on coins to buy when liquidity inevitably comes back - but will it?

So today, I just want to pen down my thoughts.

HTF Thoughts

I’m still uber bullish on crypto on a generational timeframe; I don’t want to repeat the whole shtick of “it’s revolutionary finance” etc. but I did write a pretty good tweet explaining my thoughts - but yes, I think that if you’re in this industry, it pays to be bullish from not just a “market cap” point of view, but from a career point of view as well.

Zooming down, I’m on the fence as to how markets will continue playing out into 2025. This is where my weakness in macro comes in, because I have no real grasp as to how the puzzle fits. I know the basics, but I have no concrete data as to whether rate cuts are bullish or bearish (long term bullish, short term bearish were my initial thoughts), nor do I have any real experience in similar macroeconomic situations that I can refer to.

I want to say that I’m bullish, but this is more of a prayer than a thesis, tbh. 2025 LOOKS to be a good year - given the current Republican’s presidents odds, we can assume that Trump becomes president - and if we follow that line of thinking, it seems to mean looser credit, a more risk-on environment, and most importantly, loose crypto policy (Trump recently said he wants “Bitcoin to be made in the USA!”)

Well, the risk here is 1) If the Democrat nominee wins - they don’t seem to be AS bullish on crypto; and 2) If Trump wins, it doesn’t mean all is good - we could very much have a bad macro situation because currently stocks are at ATHs and there are some very, very bad indicators flashing that haven’t been since 2008 (go watch Game Of Trades);

Unfortunately, this long spiel has just one conclusion: I have no idea! My base case is that I’m bullish 2025, and this is what I’ve planned around - a Republican president, looser financial policy, and a general continuation in the uptrend with some hiccups in between.

LTF Thoughts

So given the base case of bullishness in 2025, what do I think on the LTFs (monthly and weekly?) Well, I believe that Q4 into 2025 will be very bullish for risk assets, and thus crypto - but I don’t think crypto will continue doing well right now.

In fact, I’m still very much bearish despite this move from 53k → 58k. I’ve actually been pretty bearish ever since that FOMC move a few weeks ago, where BTC into 72k couldn’t break while stocks broke higher ; Obviously, the time to be maximally bearish has since faded ; as the old GCR adage goes:

Maximally bearish at the top, less bearish at the bottoms. I’m still bearish, but cautiously so - I’ve bought a good amount of spot at the 53k level, just because they are *generally* good levels to get spot exposure in. On the perps account, I’m still short some of these high FDV tokens, hedged with some longs on ETH.

Where do I think this ends? Well, I like to think that we’re closer to anger now (the tweet above was before the move to 53k) ; 53k is the part where people seem to be getting angry, so one more leg down to 40s would make a lot of sense to me.

I do think that we’re going to see a relief rally at these levels of 53k - 60k; but I think that you sell any tap of 60k ; I can already see people getting maximally bullish when 60k is reclaimed, calls of “i told you so” and “it was just a deviation”.

Where Am I Wrong?

I’m wrong if BTC goes up, of course. But I say that half jokingly. I will turn technically bullish if BTC manages to reclaim the range lows of 60-62s and hold; but more importantly will be how alts react to such a situation - I want to feel the risk-on sensation in myself before I turn fully bullish. So far, these bounces (e.g 53k → 57k) aren’t a “risk-on” scenario similar to Jan / Mar, but more akin to just dead cat bounces / liquidation buys.

I’m not too concerned if I’m wrong though - again, that’s what those spot buys at 53k were for! I would be less allocated than I’d like to be, but that’s something that can be easily changed ; I’d much rather be wrong and miss the bottom, just to catch it later, than to be right yet be long here.

So… What Next?

Well, so to recap:

HTF: Bullish

Now: Bearish

I have no idea where it ends, but I’d like to say Q3/Q4 just because of the whole “summer lull” shtick (that has a lot of credibility, I’m just not elaborating on it); the tldr is; summer lull, books are thin, lots of asks (Mt Gox / German government), but come Q3/4 - FTX reclaims (16bn apparently?), ETH ETF, and a potential bullish Q4 (which is what we saw in 2023).

So what next? Well, preparing for the time when risk-on conditions come! I’ll cut you some slack and just get straight to it - here are the themes I think perform really well once we get risk-on again:

1. ETH ETF & DEFI

Scroll on Twitter for 5 minutes and you’re bound to hit a post that tries to gauge the “impact of the ETH ETF”; so I don’t think I need to explain to you why an ETH ETF is bullish. Some people believe that ETH ETF will be bearish because of how ETH has been acting the whole year - I think past performance doesn’t replicate future returns.

If we get risk on conditions again, the tailwinds of an ETF just seems omega bullish to me - it’s really that simple

2. RWA

Combining with the ETH narrative is the narrative that “institutions are coming” - thus, coins with some relation to this narrative will do very well. Expect speculators to come in, guns blazing, asking for the next “RWA with connections to BlackRock”.

3. Fundamentals

I will again spare you my long-form thoughts on this subject - but I do tweet about it semi frequently. In essence, I think coins that do things will send the hardest. We’ve already had some on-chain mooners (BANANA and ACX); and we’ve yet to see the rest of the market move on the rest;

Coin Selection

This is probably the part that I’m most excited about - getting to accumulate cheap coins! Although I do like the Jason Choi Tweet - asset selection gets you 20% of returns, while trying to time inflection point gets you 80%. I still love to asset select though, and I think if you pick the good small caps, it really gets you more than 20% (20% is a number meant for the big boys who can only long like top 50 alts I think).

ETH DEFI:

• BTRFLY

• MKR

• AAVE

• UNI

RWA:

• CANTO

• MKR

• LINK

• JASMY

• DUSK

Fundamentals:

• BANANA

• ACX

• TON

• TAP

Depin:

• Grass NFTs

• PEAQ/KREST

• Heurist NFTs

Others:

• SHFL

• AZURO

• OM

• BILLY

I do think DePin has a chance to be an evergreen narrative - it sits nicely between being entirely faded because people think it’s useless, and actually having some real use-case. Depending on the DePin project, there is a good chance that DePIN does have good fundamentals - Grass already has 2m users, and just launched a hugginface data set of over 600 million posts - more can be done to research whether this is useful, but it seems pretty legit to me compared to some of the existing decentralized AI projects and what they’re doing, tbh.

Anyways, that’s it for today! As usual, stay safe, and stay healthy!

<3,

Kyle

Executive Summary 📝

So this week was an interesting one. Last week I wrote that the sell-off pre-CPI was overly bearish - in my words: “ NFP → people hawk → but rates cut by ECB → good chance that people are overly bearish. Idk tho. NFA” was what I wrote in the previous article.

The interesting thing was - I was half right. CPI came in cooler than expected, which caused markets to rally - any long pre-CPI was essentially deep in profit, just like the previous FOMCs. Husslin very kindly explains the technicals behind the trade here:

But what caught the entire crypto market offside was its reaction to the FOMC news. The Fed raised its 2024 inflation Forecast to 2.6% from 2.4%, and only showed one rate cut in 2024 vs 3. While seemingly bearish, QQQ found itself ending the week up 3.75%

The trouble that plagued crypto investors wasn’t so much the news itself, but the reaction of the crypto market to the news - while tech stocks found themselves ending the week higher, Bitcoin couldn’t break its range highs of 72k, and market dumped on FOMC itself, ending the week down 4.7%.

This dispersion in performance has caused the entirety of CT to go into a frenzy. The sentiment in Crypto Twitter is extremely bearish, and I can’t blame them - as the most “risk-on” asset in the world, the fact that BTC pretty much went in the opposite direction of tech stocks this week is pretty concerning.

Some people are speculating BTC miner capitulation for this dump, while others are talking about how Terraform may be selling BTC to pay for its settlement - whatever the case, it has caused many traders to flip bearish on what was supposed to be a potential range breakout of ATHs.

I personally flipped bearish post FOMC upon seeing BTC’s reaction to the news versus QQQ’s price action - but I’ve written this in my telegram channel:

Essentially, I am a LTF bear, but mostly on alts; and I’m looking to still re-take the long BTC/ETH trade. The way I see it, BTC (and soon ETH) have structural bids which set it up for price appreciation on higher time-frames. I can’t make the case for many alts though - and whilst some may argue “scams pump the hardest”, or “this is such a late trade to take” - the fact of the matter is, there’s too little liquidity in the system to sustain many current alt prices still, and as the summer chop continues, I see liquidity continuing to go down - and thus, alt prices as well.

The other salient point to remember is that - being a flows-driven cycle through the BTC ETF, trad-fi institutions don’t actually care about alts ; the trad-fi people I’ve talked to do show an interest in accumulating BTC for their long term portfolios / as a way to get that assymetric upside, but no legitimate trad-fi institution is here to buy your alts.

The liquidity in alts pretty much sit atop on a large group of degenerates, bubbled further by leverage - and what goes up must come down. No one admits it, but the time of reflexive upward returns were Jan - March: most CEX alts repriced upwards, with many of them doing 3-5x’es or more.

And now, we’re beginning to see the other side of the trade - as perp traders unwind, many alt prices will crash without a sustain bid to catch the knife. “Retail is coming” is entirely cope - retail came and went. If 100 D-tier celebrities coming to shill Solana shitcoins can’t pump our coins, I’m not sure what will. The usual retail top-signals are flashing across the board, but people are just too blinded to see it.

There will be a time to bid alts though - when it’s oversold. I look forward to that time. To wrap up, I will re-iterate the strategy I’m looking at:

1. Bid BTC / ETH (insti flows)

2. Try to find on-chain opps

3. Short alts

Market Narratives 🎙️

I’m sorry but market narratives really only work on the way up - nothing comes to mind on the way down. Outperformers often get sold off (see ONDO), and so… this section is kinda empty.

On-Chain ⛓️

On-chain is also pretty bad - but there were some good individual pumps:

• $PIRATE - piratenation’s token

• $RCH

• $BANANA

• $ACX

Issue is, many of these tokens sold off as people move to defensive positions to not lose too much money.

Concluding Thoughts

Touch grass, guys. The market is pretty bad right now. There’s a time to be risk-on, but if you’re risk-on 100% of the time, that’s how you lose it all. As a very good trader friend of mine told me once: Don’t look at the peak to trough, look at the trough to trough - as long as it’s up, you’re on an uptrend. (h/t Ernest)

There are always opportunities in the market. Chill, reset, and come back stronger.

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Executive Summary 📝

If you read my old posts, you’ll probably see the exact same sentiment right now as we saw when BTC climbed from 49k → 59k → 69k: People being bearish despite all the bullish signals etcetc.

We didn’t get the ideal NFP this week; I’m no macro guru, but we might see the same things we saw last month with FOMC - people start pricing in a bearish FED, Mr Powell comes out and says “all is fine guys” and then everyone starts being bullish again.

This time is slightly different though - Banks all around the world have been announcing rate cuts, in a startling move by the European Central Bank (ECB) & Bank Of Canada. People are thus speculating that the Fed will cut rates.

In general, I remain bullish. I think Chris Burniske has said it well - and with all the recent talks about how ALT/BTC has been downonly, I believe that this cycle has been dominated by longer time-horizon views on majors, and high rates of profit-taking on alts.

This cycle is definitely not a “hold my alt to infinity or zero” kind of cycle - the only thing you should be holding is BTC; but that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for outperformance so far. You just have to religiously take profits - something I’m trying to work on.

But to recap - plan this week is to either:

A) Take a position pre-fomc if you think you have edge (most risk, most reward)

B) Take a position post-fomc (least risk, least reward).

Expect most people to go with option B - in which case, you’ll have to evaluate the three possible outcomes:

1. Rates cut - probably bullish (?). I’d think so.

2. Rates same - again, last month - people priced in hawkish, thus when JPow came out and said it was unchanged, it was acutally bullish. Sort of like if you thought you failed a test, but you only barely passed. Despite the still-low score, you’ll be ecastatic because you expected something even worse.

   Again - I’m no macro guru. But NFP → people hawk → but rates cut by ECB → good chance that people are overly bearish. Idk tho. NFA.

3. Rates hike - probably bearish.

Market Narratives 🎙️

Narratives have quietened down since two weeks ago, with many meme coins and AI coins off their highs by 10-20%. This may be an attractive area to pick up your favourite alt, though. Personally, my favourite coins are:

• ONDO

• TON

• PEOPLE

With idiosyncratic pumps across the board (STX, INJ) - it’s hard to outperform. My best advice is to allocate into fundamental tokens that you can build a thesis around. The lack of narratives makes this market extremely dry, but BTC allocation is always a good choice

On-Chain ⛓️

Onchain is actually doing a lot better than CEX (well, depending on who you ask and what you look at)

• Celebrity memecoins on SOL - Recently, MOTHER (Iggy azalea’s coin) 10xed, and Andrew Tate’s coin seems to be doing really well (I’m not in either of this). Base coin BRETT also hit 1bn this week (crazy shit) and you’re not seeing anyone talk about this

• RUNES on Bitcoin had a mini pump this week, and are now selling off

• PURR - Hyperliquid’s main coin, 2x’ed as HL announces that their L1 is in testnet

• BANANA is doing extremely well as it continues to maintain market dominance

• Bunch of Chinese names doing well:

  • Chinese memes (PEIPEI did well recently, BIAO)

  • RCH - apparently chinese money

• SHFL announcing tokenomics change

To conclude, I shall repeat what I’ve been saying for the past weeks since 57k - I believe the worst is behind us.

• Phase 1: Oct 2023 - Mar 2024, slow grind up

• Phase 2: Mar 2024 - Hopefully end of summer 2024 (July / etc.): Consolidation

• Phase 3: Higher

I don’t think this is the macro top, but there’s some chance of it being the range top if it fails to breakout - in which case, worst case is probably 57k. But again, a range is a range.

Don’t chop yourself up, and chill. Cheers!

I hope you guys stay safe, healthy, and happy!

<3, Kyle

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Executive Summary 📝

Once again, we are back in chop-suey season as BTC ping-pongs between 60k and 64k. At 60k, everyone goes to touch grass, and at 64k, everyone shouts to reclaim ATHs. The truth is neither here nor there, but I’m obviously more bullish than bearish here, given that such a large downside move has already happened / been happening for the past few months.

Cobie’s tweet seems to have gotten people on edge, but this is one data point in the sea of many. I will agree with his more salient point on forming your own convictions instead of bandwagoning on the latest CT influencer that takes centre stage.

Looking at what I wrote last week, I was probably a bit too hasty to call it “a bull market” - I feel like I gave off the impression that we’d send to 72k in a heartbeat. I do not think so. Neither do I think we go to 50k, barring some insane macro action. Given that CPI is this Wednesday, I’d say that the game plan will be the same as always - market de-risks into CPI, and depending on the numbers, it’ll either spike up or down (what a surprise!).

The only difference might be that JPow has allayed the markets’ fears of a rate hike in the latest FOMC, which prompted the move up from 57k.

I believe in the Fed, in the sense that I take whatever JPow says at face value. If CPI comes in hot, the markets might start pricing in another hike, but I will continue believing in his statements that the current rates are enough to bring inflation down to the Fed’s targets.

This means that I believe the CPI numbers to be a non-event in the medium term, since it wouldn’t lead to a rate hike, and would just lead to short-term downside volatility but no real “impact” on Fed policy (CPI is just a proxy to rate hikes / cuts, really).

Spelling this out: CPI comes in hot → markets might spike down → but I believe that rate hikes aren’t in the cards, and thus this spike down is a short term move but in the long term CPI will eventually come down → buy opportunity’

And if CPI comes in cooler than expected → bullish

All that is to say, I’m long even before CPI. Well, if I were to be honest, I’ve been long way before CPI, so you should take me talking about my positions with a pinch of salt.

I will say though, taking a position pre-CPI goes against every traditional benchmark in the book - We’re now sort of in no man’s land right now - markets hate uncertainty, and many people are waiting to take a position after CPI, which would be the “common-sensical” thing to do.

But no risk, no reward, right? On higher time-frames, as I’m sure you can tell, I continue to lean bullish on the crypto markets - that this is an incredible value opportunity to start dollar-cost averaging your favourite tokens.

All in all, I don’t see a reason to be very spooked - especially given how alts are performing. I talk more about this down below, but many of the stronger alts are actually in an uptrend, with certain alts slightly below January ATHs!

It’s why I sub-titled this post with “Don’t touch grass” - because while BTC prices may be chopping around, many alts have been doing spectacularly well.

TLDR: We are still at 60k, alt prices are way higher than what they were the last time we were at 60k, and I think this trend continues grinding higher.

Market Narratives 🎙️

There have been not many changes to the two main core narratives: AI x Memes. For the sake of brevity, I will just list the tokens in each sector without elaboration. This is because they are literally the same narratives as last week - you can just refer to last week’s newsletter for a breakdown.

1. AI: RNDR / NEAR / TAO / WLD / AR

2. Memes: WIF / PEPE

3. Social Fi: TON

4. SOLANA Summer: SOL / JTO / JUP

Instead, I would like to examine a few alt-coin structures that we’re seeing across the board for strong tokens:

Like I said - many of the stronger alts have been in an uptrend eveer since the FOMC dip, with their pico bottoms being somewhere near the war dip (13th April). I point this out to once again re-emphasize that touching grass seems very psy-oppy to me ; these have been incredible HTF trade opportunities that CT seems to gloss over just because they don’t do a 2x overnight.

To the average CT-er, for a bull market we’d have to see 10% candles everyday for a month (i.e Jan / Feb 2024); unfortunately, I do not think we get such opportunities till late Q3 / Q4 2024. But fortunately, there are still many good trades to take.

Once again, I would like to say that we’re closer to a bottom than we are a top, and I think Tim really describes it well:

Anyways, I hope that has been slightly more informative, and a good Monday / Tuesday read. I’m 60 subscribers away from hitting 10,000 readers, so please do share this with people (if you want!);

I hope you guys stay safe, and stay healthy, and stay happy!

<3, Kyle

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Executive Summary 📝

This past week we saw people talk about how this cycle was over, how the VC/ high FDV scams were not pumping, and literal talks about how crypto was doomed as an industry. I posted a response that went semi-viral, you can read it here

These have been my thoughts on the general 2024 cycle for a while. Cycle-long holds seem to be an extremely -EV way to play the game; just a few months ago, the “cycle long hold” of 2024 were UNIBOT and ROLLBIT. Then it was TAO and PRIME.

As for the markets themselves, we had a one day bear market where price went down to 57k and then today we find ourselves at 64k! Truly incredible lmfao. I wrote this tweet a week ago, that when visited in hindsight, looks amazing.

But anyways, some thoughts on the general market - at first, I thought that this would be a relief rally with no continuation, but the signs to flip bullish are there:

• Emotional sentiment bottom

• Prices going incredibly high with low funding / very healthy market uptrend

• ETFs are actually buying again! Positive Grayscale inflow day. The -500m outflow day (first day of outflows for IBIT) marked the bottom ; and something has to be said about how at 72k, 1 billion in inflows couldn’t push past it; at 57k, 500m of outflows couldn’t knock it lower

• Macro fears are allayed - the move lower could have been said to be caused by the market’s overly bearish pricing of a rate hike - and in FOMC minutes this week, Powell clearly re-iterated that hikes were off the table ; which prompted a rally of risk assets

• Deviation of the 60k range breakdown - BTC on technicals look extremely good

The case for being bullish does seem to be extremely enticing. Now is the case for being bearish:

• ETF flows will have to be monitored closely; one day of positive inflows doesn’t mean anything

• The move getting resolved in one day is kindaaa sus. this is a shitty argument, but I can understad where it comes from - people were expecting some chopsolidation and then we go higher but it was just an impulse straight to 64k

The case for being bearish does seem (to me) to be way weaker than being bullish. Of course, when the trend first shifts, you should be risk-on all the way and then protect capital as time goes by - as such, I myself am positioned max long… but with the caution in mind to cut if things go south.

I expect 65k to act as a major level of resistance - and it’ll be a good point to buy alts on a slow down. But if we break right through it… then I think a bull market on par with Jan / Feb will be ripe for the taking.

Market Narratives 🎙️

Everything’s up. What did you expect?

1. Eigenlayer

While Eigen’s whitepaper being released on Github stirred much unhappiness in the community regarding its tokenomics, it could see a revival of the ETHBTC narrative especially with how ETH ETF is expected to either be approved (or denied) in May.

• CEX Coins: ETH / LSDs / ENA / OP

2. SocialFi

Friendtech’s horrendous airdrop caused quite the show on CT the past few days, but perhaps the underlying current no one is talking about is how Social Fi may be the narrative of the future. Why?

Well, my logic is simple - memes are what makes this cycle, and memes are basically powered by community/socials - making socialfi meme beta in a way. I believe that TON is an excellent bet because of this, and I look to build a position in it.

• CEX Coins: TON / KLAY

• On-chain: FRIEND / DEGEN

3. AI

Apple’s WWDC, alongside expectations of GPT-5 in the summer, is creating quite a buzz in the AI community. AI tokens are experiencing outperformance because of this

• CEX Coins: RNDR / NEAR / TAO / WLD / AR

• On-chain: No idea what’s good these days for AI on-chain… many of them (or maybe all of em) are vaporware projects

4. Memes

Of course, memes take the crown for being the best performer on this rally upwards.

• CEX: WIF / PEPE

• On-chain: POPCAT / SHARKCAT / Boden / so many I don’t even know…

I’m eager to see if this time brings anything different, but I doubt it - it’s probably more of the same. That’s all from me this week; I do hope that this rally is sustained, but we’ll see. It’ll be pretty amazing if we got back to 72k, though I doubt that we achieve that this week. My base case would be a sustained alt rally as we range between 60k - 65k, and then maybe given a few weeks we can break 65k and target 72k.

TLDR; bullish, higher for longer (hopefully!)

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Executive Summary 📝

After what we saw last week, I repeatedly said that the fact that we didn’t break 60k was extremely bullish - after all, sentiment was max bearish, and we were at range lows.

I believe that the setup was extremely bullish on HTFs - BTC on range lows, sentiment at bottoms, OI flush, alt/BTC charts all reset, largest liquidation event, largest OI reset, etc. - all before the halving.

This essentially becomes a “consolidation” period for BTC right below previous ATHs, which paints a picture for bullish market structures. I’m also of the opinion that the halving was an event that people avoided - markets hate uncertainty, and the halving acted as a sort of “overhang event” that people either hedged, or flat out avoided just to buy later.

In essence, I think Q2 will shape up to be very bullish, hopefully. Alts wise is where my opinion may differ - I think that we’re going to see more of the same - asset selection is key, and that what’s dead will continue dying. Everyday we’re getting more and more inflation for many tokens - and without an increase in the amount of money in the system, these tokens are essentially designed to die by inflation.

Shorting these tokens to hedge out market beta may be an excellent strategy. I also believe that this quarter has the possibility of being slower than Jan - Feb ; i.e we might see a slow grind up instead of the crazy alt season we had earlier. I don’t know, but I’d give it a 30-50% chance of happening.

Ultimately, the bullish trend remains intact, and I’m long and strong.

Market Narratives 🎙️

I’m probably going to combine both on-chain and CEX tokens just because it’s easier to twice instead of referencing the same narrative twice.

Many tokens recovered strongly from the dump, but there are no obvious narratives that can be seen. On-chain wise, there’s no one dominating narrative right now - small pockets of liquidity here and there, but I’m just one man who’s working a Web2 job (not even in crypto!) and so I can’t cover em’ all

1. Runes, and BTC Beta

Runes as the most hyped protocol to launch on Bitcoin. I’m not the best expert to ask about Runes, especially not about the tech - all I know is that people seem to think this is where money is flowing next.

• SATOSHI seems to have done well post-mint, but time will tell whether it can do a sustained pump

• Generally, memecoins feel kinda dead-ish - runes feel overhyped and the fact that every influencer was tweeting about it being the next “1000x” platform means that edge is eroded and generally profit as well

• CEX Coins: Well BTC L2s had a green week - STX / CFX / CORE, but post halving I just don’t see a catalyst for them to continue performing, at this point they’re just BTC beta

• On-chain Coins: BVM - Bitcoin Virtual machine saw quite a run up / PUPS

• Ordinals: Prometheans seems to be doing well - they apparently own the #2 run

2. ETH/BTC’s time to shine

ETHBTC may have finally found a bottom… for the 1029th time. I can’t say for sure, but with the ETH ETF approval coming up, this might be a trade with tailwinds in its favour.

• CEX Coins: Ethena, LSD Protocols, L2s, PENDLE

3. Is AI... back?

AI saw a nice rally this weekend despite NVDA’s recent sharp sell off in the stock market. It’s worth noting that rumor has it GPT-5 is arriving this summer, which may cause a nice rally in AI coins.

You also have other catalysts, like IO_Net (big GPU Mining project that’s been really hyped) launch in Q2 2024 (I heard May), Apple WWDC in June

• CEX Coins: NEAR / RNDR / Arweave / TAO / WLD

4. Gaming…?

Gaming has been one of those narratives that didn’t really stick - it would outperform for like a week, and die off right after. We’re currently seeing some chatter on the usual gaming tokens - would be worth watching what they do

• CEX Coins: MAVIA / BEAM / RONIN

4. Individual Outperformers

These are usually for those coins that I can’t really find a grouping in

• CEX Coins: ONDO / SOL / WIF / TON

5. Social-Fi

Social-Fi has been making the rounds on certain group chats as people discuss friendtech’s airdrop. The market has shown its hand by repricing many friendtech keys - certain influencers like Hsaka and Ansem doing a 5-10x.

• On-chain coins: $DEGEN

6. Other narratives

Go check out c0xswain’s tweet thread on other narratives - he talks about:

• Euro Cup

• Presidential Election: Long $TRUMP / $BODEN / $RFKJR / $PEPE

• and more…

Anyways, that’s all from me this week. I’m sure there are some narratives I’ve missed - as someone whos juggling a full-time non-crypto job, it’s extremely difficult to trade / do work. If there’s anything you want me to cover or think that I missed, please leave a comment / reply to this email! I’ll make sure to add it in next week.

As always, remember to stay safe and stay healthy! I’ll see you guys next week <3

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Executive Summary 📝

First things first - you might say: Kyle, the chart doesn’t look too bad. BTC is just at range lows, and we’re still rangebound within 61k! Yes, you are right. Let that not distract you from the fact that, however:

• We wiped out almost a billion dollars in open interest

• We saw two days where billions of longs got liquidated

• Most alts dropped 25-50%

We saw people on CT making threads about how they got liquidated in one candle, losing anywhere from 1m to 4m, a ton of pain on the timeline, and general “it’s so over” sentiment never seen before since FTX.

The cause, of course, was the announcement and pre-announcement of the war between Iran and Israel just days before. We basically had two huge dips, each one an escalation of the next. The first dip was the “announcement of the war”, and the second one was on “confirmation of war”.

Perhaps what affected most traders were the ones who bought the war dip on April 12th (i.e me) - they would wake to see that their portfolios were down an additional -25% despite already buying the dip. It was truly an amazing sight to see - alt/BTC charts getting reset back to 0.

And lo and behold, the market bottomed the moment this tweet was sent out - by the legendary trader, GCR himself. I felt literal shivers the moment I read this tweet - and whether by chance or by the collective belief in his tweets, the entire market bottomed shortly after this.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can analyze this move calmly. Perhaps one of the most notable things that went unannounced this entire downturn was the strength of Bitcoin in this dump. While most alts were down -50% or more through the past two days, Bitcoin held steady above 60k - an impressive feat, but perhaps this can be better observed through looking at alt/btc charts - many of which are back at levels unseen seen the start of the bull market.

It really goes to show the strength of the ETF - with global institutional adoption of Bitcoin, it’s safe to say that Bitcoin is experiencing less volatility to the downside compared to what it would have seen in similar situations a year ago. Perhaps this will push more institutions to adopt Bitcoin - lower volatility in precarious situations. Time will tell.

Market Narratives 🎙️

Well, I believe the market has bottomed. The bad thing about being a 24/7 market is that crypto is the only thing people can touch when a black swan happens on a weekend. We saw PAXG (tokenized gold) rocket up on these news - perhaps a prophecy of what is to come on Monday open.

That’s why I also believe that we have bottomed before tradfi - while more downside is expected from Monday open, likely, the worst is over (famous last words!). Either way, these are excellent areas to start bidding, with many alt/BTC charts reset.

But more importantly will be identifying the coming narratives. During the liquidation cascade, I too was wondering - what would be the next narrative? Here are my top contenders:

1. BTC and its beta

BTC unironically is the “comfiest bid” during those times of stress - because of the reasons I stated above. Also, BTC dom has been slowly grinding up - a sign of the times!

I thus expect STX to also do just as well - being the best BTC beta thus far and with the Nakamoto upgrade coming soon, STX might see a bid once again.

While BRC-20 and Ordinals are picking up steam, you can look at the price action of ORDI to judge whether ORDI is a good bet on the Ordinals scene (surprise, it’s not) - a better bet would be PUPS, something I’ll talk more down below on the on-chain section.

2. ETH and it’s betas

Before the dump we saw an ETH-related rally, with top performers on certain betas like ENA and PENDLE. We might see this resurge as a narrative again - with PENDLE being one of the strongest coins that outperformed ont he dip.

3. SOL… and WIF

Many of our favourite CT influencers tweeted about buying SOL at 120s at its lows - and with SOL down 50% from the highs and being a top pick for memecoins / this cycle in general, it makes sense as a narrative. And if SOL pops off, you can expect its prodigal memecoin - WIF, to take off as well.

4. Individual outperformers

• $ONDO - Blackrock RWA token

• $TON - The Open Network, integrated with Telegram

These two coins are seeing a lot of attention right now and could poise to outperform in Q2.

On-Chain ⛓️

On-chain is now officially split up between ETH (Base), BTC, SOL

• Ordinals and BRC tokens are taking off

  • PUPS as the mainstay token for BRCs, and Bitcoin Puppets as the main PFP right now that’s attracting all the money

  • Runes and any rune related tokens - Runestones, Rune pups, etc.

  • BRC tokens: PUPS / OMBI / SHID / PIZA / NODE

  • We might see a gen-art related run (it’s not here yet) - but some notable names. inthis section are Bitglphs, Flower x Harto, Stepepes, etc.

• For Base, the main name I see is $DEGEN on Base

• On SOL, cat tokens seem to be doing well - with certain names like Sharkcat and MEW - people are seemingly betting on the “first billion cat memecoin”

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

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Executive Summary 📝

It’s an interesting phenomenon to observe the PA of alts vs BTC this week. For the most part, BTC.D has been steadily grinding higher while alts are dying like flies against BTC. This can simply be explained with the fact that BTC has direct ETF inflows, but perhaps what we should be concerned about is broader market strength.

The question everyone wants to know is - wen bottom? I believe that BTC might continue ranging for a while, but the bottom is in the midst of resolving - this weekend, most good alts pumped 10+% off the lows.

CPI is this week, and you can expect the usual short-term de-risking into CPI which might dampen volatility, but all in all, I’d set bids at key levels from here expecting alt szn Chapter 3 soon. With most alts already down 20-30% from the highs, this puts us into a healthy consolidation as we go into the halving.

However, on the macro side we might see a “black swan event”. A few days ago, traders were spooked at increasing tensions between Israel and Iran. I’m no geo-political expert, but as far as I’m concerned, war is always short term bearish and spooks the markets.

This could be the black swan of 2024, with the same results as Covid - i.e you buy the war FUD, and then we rip into the halving + post war bullishness. There’s been a ton of threads about how BTC has reacted to this - that it seems like we’re having a “flight to BTC” just like how people flee to Gold in times of uncertainty. Is BTC finally taking the narrative of digital Gold? Time will tell.

All in all - cautiously bullish is my take, and removing emotions from the process by just setting bids at key levels - if I think it still goes down more, I size less for the higher bids and more for the lower bids.

Market Narratives 🎙️

If you’ve read my latest High Conviction Bets (link below), you’ll know that I mentioned the importance of rotating into key narratives this cycle (so far), instead of holding a “undervalued” token and praying it goes up. I’m bringing this up because we might be seeing the emergence of a new narrative - ETH might be finally taking the stage.

This year, many, many people have called the ETHBTC bottom - just for it to go even lower. However, with Eigenlayer coming up in Q2, there’s good chance that ETH will do well - especially given recent performance of ENA (Ethena airdrop).

We also have Pendle taking the stage, and as such we might be seeing signs of life in the ETH maxis.

ETH Narrative

• ENA - Ethena’s token

• PENDLE - strong coin, one of the most used yield farming protocols this cycle it seems

• ALTLAYER - Eigen beta

• POND - Eigen beta

• The usual LSDs - LDO / RPL / FXS /

• If you’re feeling adventurous - L2s like OP / ARB / STRK / SKL / MATIC

Ordinals are also taking the stage once again, and with that comes the rise of BRC-20 tokens. ORDI rose 30% in the weekend, and so:

• ORDI

• SATS

might look like decent tokens to ape. I will however, say that on-chain has much more opportunity than CEXes when it comes to apeing Ordinal related tokens - read more below!

Other outperforms I’m eyeing to pick up more of:

• WIF

• SOL

Lastly, there are tokens that are already so dead, yet have performed incredibly well previously - for example:

• GALA

• TIA

• INJ

• LINK

The issue with these tokens is that being early is as much of a curse as being wrong - the trade could be right, but you could be a few months too early. These are difficult tokens to trade, and as such I usually rely on certain EMA crossovers to tell me when momentum is building.

On-Chain ⛓️

On-chain remains a mixed bag, but there’s been quite a lot of activity on certain chains - BLAST is no more after the multiple rugs — let’s take a look at $YIELD (of which I lost a lot of money)

Base chain remains relatively hot, with their NFTs seemingly doing well. With meme activity dying down across all chains, it might be a good time to start DCAing into the stronger memes:

• boden on SOL, alongside the cats - popcat, sharkcat, man Ion’t even know - I’m so lost in memes lmao

• MOCHI / TOSHI on Base previously - and you also have doginme, COIN, etc.

For Ordinals, you’re spoilt for choice for what to buy:

• Node monkes

• Puppets

• $PUPS (memecoin token)

• Runes

• Bitcoin Virtual Machine ($BVM on Dexscreener)

On-chain remains relatively “trench” level which means I can’t spend that much time on it (due to the nature of working a Web2 job in the day, lol). Trends change in a day, and today’s top performing coin is tomorrows largest loser.

This week, the number of coins that have performed consistently throughout the week are extremely little - as such, I’m quite at a loss for words when trying to find tokens to cover. These tokens literally go up 80% in one day, and -50% the next. No “good project” that has concrete progress comes to mind - but AI had a recent resurgence on-chain as well.

Well, that’s all for this week! See you guys next week - and fingers crossed, we’ll see better prices! Remember - stay safe, and stay healthy!

<3, Kyle

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Market Read 📊

The Bull Market of 2024 has not been an exceptionally easy one to navigate, despite what CT tells you. Many, many people have been caught offside on the meme pump, only select alts are pumping, and perhaps more pertinent for me, is the fact that profits in this market have to be secured quickly.

Q1 2024 and the tail end of Q4 2023 saw ETF inflows coming in hot, pushing BTC all the way from 40k to where we are now, ranging around the 60k-70k region.

The biggest takeaways I have are:

• It is not a hodlers market anymore. Rotations exist, and it is extremely important to learn to rotate. In other words, secure the profits, and then choose the next narrative to ride.

This could be seen in the many mini-cycles we had at 60k range so far, and the performance of certain once stellar narratives, such as BRC-20 coins (ORDI / SATS) into underperformers. You also have certain narratives like LSTs vastly underperform the broader market, and really the top “high sustaining” narratives this mini-cycle were just BRCs, AI, Memes and Solana.

Past performing tokens like INJ / SEI were nowhere to be seen - sure, a rising tide lifts all boats, but their outperformance was by no means great.

• Accept that you’re wrong, and accept it quickly

I think what comes in a bull market are thesis that go something like “this is X beta, this will outperform” and the pure belief that “everything goes up in the long term”. As such, it’s very easy to fall prey into moving your goalposts when price doesn’t go up in a straight line - first you say this is a pull back, and you add. Then on a deeper dip, you say that the thesis is still solid, and you add more. On the third leg down, you’re underwater and don’t know where you’re wrong.

In a bull market, your trades are often right, but come at the wrong time. THAT’s the key lesson I learnt - my trade is right; of course everything goes up in the end! But timing it is a whole different ball game. SOL Defi season - longing JUP / JTO would have greatly underperformed until very recently. AI post GTC also greatly underperformed, despite any “long term AI thesis”.

As such, it’s important to just accept that you’re wrong fast, and pivot quickly.

• Take profits, and take them quickly

Mini-cycles exist, and in this market, when the trend shifts, you’re left with very little time to secure the bag. In a blink of an eye, a position that was up 300% could quickly turn to 100%, meaning you left a huge ton of profits on the table. I’ve learnt this the hard way, watching 5 figure P&L profits literally vanish. The profit-taking this cycle is severe, and so - in the wise words of some guy on Youtube - “I sell not because I’m bearish, but because selling is the only way I can make money”.

• Choppy markets are still best managed through spot strategies, instead of perpetual positions. This is more of a “learners point” than a specific market read, if anything.

Perhaps this point is more for myself than anything else. For the fund managers / rich whales reading my newsletter, there is probably no need to touch anything but spot. But if you’re a tuna like myself, the urge to use perpetuals to “add on more size” to your existing spot positions is highly attractive.

Honestly, making a difference between instruments is pretty amateurish, but I believe that my argument for spot > perps personally goes deeper than that - it’s way harder to “don’t sweat the P&L, sweat the trade” when you’re trading on perps. The nature of this market makes it such that not only are the best performing gains made on spot holding, deep corrections makes it painful for you to hold leveraged positions through.

• Memes. Don’t let your memes be dreams.

There is really no reason to fade the meme rally unless you’re a fund with a mandate. I admit that I got on the meme rally a tad too late - only entering WIF at around $2, despite seeing it all the way up. I sort of brushed the entire meme rally at the start (when PEPE first 2x’ed) as a sort of one-off trend, but learnt to switch bias quickly after realising how much I’ve missed.

Unfortunately, the real alpha lies in trading memes on-chain, but between juggling a Web2 job and trading, I can’t find the time to degen on-chain 24/7. I do think that if you’re an up-and-coming degen hoping to make it, you definitely shouldn’t fade shitcoin szn - it is and will probably continue to be extremely profitable.

Ultimately, I think my portfolio performance was pretty disappointing - a 5x on the total portfolio at ATHs, but gave more than 50% of that back to the markets. But oh well, the past is in the past. There’s nothing we can do but march forward, and play it better next time.

Current Portfolio 💼

I have consolidated my positions even further, and am now sitting comfy on my tripartite of memes, AI, and Ordinals. I believe that this is a cycle where the tech does not matter - no one’s falling for the ol’ ponzi schemes of 2020 Defi Summer, or the “new parallelized EVM” scalability nonsense.

It seems like the wishy washy hand-wavy tech jargon of the 2021 has been “priced in” - the only tech that matters is numba go up. As such, to outperform, one must find narratives that best reflect the numba go up technology.

I find these to be mainly memes and Ordinals. Memes are self-explanatory, but why Ordinals you may ask? Well - do you remember NFT 2021? NFTs were one of the most “numba go up” technologies back in the 2021 cycle - and I have no doubt that NFTs but on Bitcoin are the same thing.

Trades 🖥️

This tweet sums up the lesson I very recently learnt (probably should have included it above); “maintaining that aggression in order to make a set amount every month is how you give it all back”.

I’ve sort of been trying to slam bids the same way I did from the entire run up pre-72k, and I’ve given back so much money to the markets that it’s embarrassing. My outlook for current markets is that we’re going to chop under ATHs into halving, but I’m biased towards the downside.

I believe that we’re not going to range between 60-69k forever, and instead we’ll be breaking below at some point. Either way, I’ve had bids set for lower.

Here’s my list of what I’m looking to bid:

• GALA

• WIF

• JUP

• ENA

• ARWEAVE

But I’m 100% flat cash on my spot positions right now. Also, not doing anything on-chain.

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this article! I know it was a lil lengthy, but I really thought someone would read this and hopefully not repeat the same mistakes I made. As always, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll see you guys soon.

<3, Kyle

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Executive Summary 📝

The market seems to have an obsession with calling tops every time BTC retests 72k; I spent a good chunk of my time planning out the different scenarios I’d have to see if this was truly the top. A monthly close below 61k, coinciding with a weekly close below 66k would be extremely bad. This, coupled with negative ETF flows would be a signal to revert. But as long as we don’t get that, I’m inclined to believe that the trend will continue for longer, and that any chop in between is considered “noise”.

Once again, the advice is: Zoom out. CT has the memory of a goldfish, and can’t seem to remember the fact that we faced this sort of choppy PA on the way up. Not every retest of 72k has to be an immediate smackdown to 60k, and not every breakdown of 69k means we’re going to 52k.

On the weekly, we’ve had an insane performance from memecoins. If you read my latest Substack thesis (linked below) you’ll know that I believe in the memecoin supercycle - and over the weekend, we’ve suddenly had an inflow of people who’ve been rehashing the thesis.

The idea is that people are tired of the “VC dump on retail” game, and are embracing memecoins because they are more “egalitarian” - for example, see this thread. Personally, I believe that the reasons don’t matter - what matters is that the market has shown its hand, and that it really, really likes memes.

Either way, there are only a few narratives so far - BRC NFTs, AI, Memecoins, Solana are the strongest ones. Others have not performed as reliably as these. This could be argued as a sign of how nascent we are in the cycle, but my advice is to just continue longing the strong.

Lastly, a bit of copium for those thinking its the last cycle, or that the cycle is ending soon (these are thoughts I’ve been struggling with as well - the idea that maybe this is the top):

Market Narratives 🎙️

Some of my favourite trades:

• Spot long WIF

• Spot long JUP / JTO as a beta bet to SOL breaking 200 and having continued strength

• APT strength into the announcement season in April, with rumors flying around about RWA / AI / I don’t even know.

• FIL into ionet’s launch in April (hopefully)

Others:

• Pendle has been a silent mooner - and as people call for ETHBTC bottoms, it may continue to outperform

• Litecoin rallied last week following CFTS’s announcement that ETH and LTC were “commodities”

• FET, AGIX and OCEAN rallied last week on news that they were merging their tokens - honestly we might see more of this soon

• With BTC having a very nice monthly and weekly close, we could be primed to break 72k - longing STX / other BTC beta like SATS / RATS / CFX might be a good idea (although, STX probably has highest beta)

On-Chain ⛓️

Memes are still heating up, on SOL, BASE, and the new L3 on Base - DEGENchain!

• Degen chain: DEGEN on degen seems to be doing extremely well

• Solana: Popcat / Nubcat / cats are in season, as many cats saw rallies of over 100%

• Blast seems to have taken a hit after two major protocols got exploited - SSS and Munchables. While in both cases, not much money was stolen and all the ETH is going to be refunded, you can expect that this will damage the integrity of the ecosystem

Unfortunately, I’m quite busy with my non-crypto job, and so this is all I have for you guys this week :(

Remember, keep yourselves safe and healthy! See you guys next week <3

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Executive Summary 📝

I’m sorry - I had to bring back the good ol’ tagline of “BTC at 66k in 2024: GOD THIS IS SO BEARISH”. It’s a little embarrassing though, considering how last week I was talking about ATHs and how it was a waste of time to be bearish (LMAO).

But such are the consequences of only posting once a week. On the lower time frames, however, I posted on my Telegram channel that 1bn dollars of inflows on the day of 72k and yet it didn’t budge in hindsight, was atrociously bearish.

We also had massive derisking into FOMC, and as expected, Powell did not raise rates (a raise rate outcome spooked the market because of a hot CPI). The market turned short-term bullish and we quickly rallied off the bottom.

Unfortunately, we’re now in rangebound territories. I’m obviously bullish on higher time-frames, which is why I titled this piece: “BTC at 66k in 2024: GOD THIS IS SO BEARISH”. Zoom out, people! We’re 3k from ATHs of 2021, and for some reason, everyone thinks that it’s the end of the world.

Short-term wise, I have to admit that I have no clue. I’m on the side of rangebound conditions / bullish, though. The past 3 days of IBIT inflows have been terrible - but I think a bottom can be found when these outflows no longer impact the market. Just like how 1bn of inflows didn’t push us past 72k, the bottom might be in when X millions of outflows didn’t push us down a certain price.

A bull case can be made with the latest data - ETF inflows from IBIT seem to be going up, and with that it may bring a renewed pump. A bear case would be more outflows (no one knows what tomorrow brings, and today could be a “one off” event) and the fact that the BTC chart does look primed for more downside.

I will say that the current market conditions are more akin to slightly PvP than PvE though - pumps being sold off quickly, narratives not sticking, etc. Pockets of outperformance will be found in certain names, but otherwise, I’m bing chilling in spot. Obviously, if we start going up again, this will very quickly change.

Market Narratives 🎙️

Most things are down on the weekly, but certain pockets of outperformance like:

• FTM - Andre is back, and shitposting on Twitter. FTM is having some sort of upgrade to parallelized EVM, and a bunch of other catalysts like a supposed stablecoin.

• STX - Nakamoto upgrade into the halving is a famous trades amongst people I talk to

• SUI - World Gaming Conference and SUI has earned itself the name of being a “gaming chain”

• ONDO - RWA Narrative because Blackrock recently deployed a tokenized asset fund on ETH! Aaaannnnd ETH still couldn’t catch a bid, smh. 1 ONDO = 1 Condo

• APT - I’m not entirely sure why, but I do see traders talking about this as a narrative

• CFX: Chinese STX - it’s now a EVM Compatible Bitcoin L2 solution - I see it a lot in WeChat groups I’m in - the Chinese really like the coin.

On-Chain ⛓️

On-chain is slowly heating up - just not on ETH, of course (rest in peace). Base had a short 4 hour season today, but Blast is really blasting off!

• Cryptovalleys: A “DFK-esque” game on Blast that has taken Crypto Twitter by storm - going up more than 10x in a week.

• SSS: The other game on Blast that was made by the Crabada team. Unfortunately, they got exploited this morning - but by a supposed white hat hacker, so let’s hope everyone gets their funds back (I got hit, rip)

In general, I actually think Blast might take off - Base narrative felt too forced, but Blast has “legit projects” that are doing really well - reminiscent of Harmony One with DFK, and Arbitrum with MAGIC, tbh.

• Base chain: TYBG / BRIUN / DOGINME / COIN / ETF / MOCHI / TOSHI as some of the more notable meme coins. I won’t even bother going into what each one does - except that MOCHI / TOSHI are Brian armstrongs cats LOL

• Solana: BOME / SMOLE but otherwise general shitcoining I guess

• BRC-20 NFTs

  • Runestones have taken over the world, with everyone getting airdropped random rune NFTs - Runeswords, Tiny vikings, etc. As to whether any of em have value - I’d say no, but it’s always nice to get airdropped things I guess

• CHEX - RWA project that Ansem & friends are shilling

That’s it for this weeks market update! Remember,, keep yourselves safe and healthy! See you guys next week <3

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Executive Summary 📝

In my post around 2-3 weeks ago, I remember writing the line: “BTC at 52k in 2024: GOD THIS IS SO BEARISH” as a sub-title to the market update I pushed out that week. The week before that, I pushed out one titled “BTC at 42k in 2024: GOD THIS IS SO BEARISH”.

All this was to make fun of how people on CT were atrociously bearish despite having the opportunity to front-run millions of dollars of inflows. Fast forward to the present, and here we are - 72k, past ATH - and we’re just getting started.

At this point, I don’t think I want to waste time talking about being bearish, or positioning, etc. If you’re short, you’re either 1) pair trading, 2) hedging your long exposure to shorts, 3) retardio.

Instead, what I find a greater use of my time, is to talk about lessons I’m currently learning in the bull market. The bear market was full of lessons like - don’t get caught up in the sauce, remember the mini-cycle, take profits fast, etc.

The bull market has its own set of lessons, and a key one that I’m learning so far is: Never rotate to chase pumps. This is one that I’ve been struggling with - in a bull market, all your tokens go up, just not in the order that you want them to.

And by the time you sell your old token to ape the new shiny thing that’s rising, you’ll end up not catching the meat of the move, and more likely than not, you’ll be selling the local bottom, and catching the local top of the move. It sucks, and I’ve seen it happen to me for NEAR, TIA, PIXL, etc. Ugh.

Anyways, as for the markets, there’s really not much to summarise. We’re at ATHs, and studying 2020s, we probably have some sort of candle that takes us past to 80k / 90k some time soon.

Unfortunately, market seems to be de-risking in advance of CPI numbers tomorrow - but in my uninformed opinion, this might be a good dip for the sidelinoors to ape into.

The only bearish argument I can make is if the market decides to close below previous ATHs for extended periods of time - it could signify a fake-out and present a bearish argument for LTF traders.

Market Narratives 🎙️

These are the narratives we’ve seen so far, and I see no reason to stray away from them.

For AI:

• RNDR / NEAR / FET / AGIX

With GTC coming on 18 March and Illia, the co-founder of Near, talking on the same panel as Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvdia, I expect NEAR / RNDR to continue outperforming.

For Gaming:

• BEAM / MAVIA / PIXL / SUI / APT

Gaming Developers Conference is also on March 18. Expect these narratives to take closer hold of the market as we approach the dates, especially if BTC allows for it.

For Memes:

• PEPE / WIF / DOGE / SHIB / FLOKI

Memes led the initial rally, with coins like PEPE and WIF doing a casual 600-700% on the monthly. Memes are also extremely volatile, capable of doing pullbacks of -60% when the overall market nukes -20%, and so must be kept in mind if opening leverage positions on memes.

For individual outperformers:

• SOL / INJ / TIA / ONDO / LINK / etc.

These are individual outperformers that have shown to have good teck - Solana as the retail chain, INJ as the asset that moves 20% in a day, TIA for the modular narrative, ONDO for RWA with Blackrock, Link as the “700D accumulation range” trade, etc.

On-Chain ⛓️

ETH on-chain remains extremely dead compared to the perps markets. Solana memecoins beg to differ, however - many of them are doing well, with recent names like Popcat, joe bidun, etc. all coming out of the woodwork and netting meme traders 1000xes.

Generally I have not had the capacity to look into on-chain markets - it’s tiring enough to keep up with perps, let alone memecoins on SOL - a chain where you could launch a memecoin every minute. It’s also not my edge, so I stay away from it.

On-chain just seems to be a festival of memes on the cheaper chains, mostly SOL / BASE / maybe BLAST. I haven’t seen any incredible mid-cap projects lately.

• MOG - memecoin on ETH, best contender to PEPE maybe?

• TRUMP - I don’t think i have to explain this one

• GENUS - some new dePIN / AI play

• Netmind (NMT) - on BSC, an AI play that is apparently super legit and has been UpOnly since launch day.

• Popcat - SOL memecoin

• MOCHI / TOSHI - Base memecoins, named after Bryan Armstrongs’ cats

• Then you also have BRC20 NFTs, like

  • Puppets

  • $PUP - BRC 20 memecoin for puppets

  • Runes

  • Node monkes

  • Gen art - hashstreams, floraforms, etc.

Generally, with so much stuff, your attention is really easily divided - in cases like this, again: you don’t want to overrotate. Find something, build a thesis, size, and wait.

As usual, thanks for reading! I’m sorry for not pushing out more frequently, I’ve been really busy with IRL stuff / bull market trading (more the latter than the former, tbh. I should listen to my own advice and cut down!)

Remember, above all, keep yourselves safe and healthy! See you guys next week <3

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Executive Summary 📝

It’s been a week and we’re still ranging around 50-52k. Nothing much has changed, and neither has my advice of “don’t overtrade, buy good coins, and wait”. But at the same time, this week is not the same as the last - ETHBTC may be finally getting the bid it’s been waiting for this whole time, as people finally realise that we are in fact getting an ETF.

This also comes on the back of the Uniswap Fee switch proposal, where people are speculating that this is but a signal fire for what’s to come.

Generally, AI coins have also been doing extremely well - having two big boons these two weeks - Sora, OpenAI’s text to video model, and a strong NVDA earnings that saw NVDA surge.

However, I also saw a great thread by PaulMacro on Substack where he pointed out that 3 years ago, we saw the headline that said “Crypto in the Classroom” - pointing out that these sorts of articles are top signals because it means retail is in en masse.

This time isn’t different, and we’re seeing “everyday investors” getting rich off these stocks - remember GME, AMC, etc.? This is as top signal as it can get - everyone is already in. This matters because the popping of the NVDA bubble will definitely cascade to AI coins, and also because NVDA has been essentially carrying 15% of the entire SPX YTD.

EDIT: This is me writing when BTC is at 56k. Well, good to see that the me of Saturday told you guys to remain long, because why wouldn’t you? Guess we’re not going to get the ETH bid anytime soon as Bitcoin remains an absolute monster - but it’s coming… soon. very soon. May, in fact, which is in-line with when people expect the ETH ETF to be approved.

Back to the whole AI bubble thing - I think that with BTC inflows being correlated w tradfi, the next major macro event will definitely be rate cuts, and that might be the death knell. But idk tho - apart from that, I think we can continue to remain cautiously stupidly bullish.

Market Narratives 🎙️

• Every chain is now AI?

  • NEAR is pivoting to AGI

  • Theta went up 45% when the CEO announced that they were “Ushering in a new era of video and AI computing. Theta EdgeCloud”

• Memecoins saw a revival as PEPE moved 50% in a day on a short squeeze / supply being cornered / fundamentals just rapidly improving, I guess. Quite sad I missed this obvious trade that has been shilled for months.

• AI related coins are doing okay-ish

  • AKT is the best performer for the AI sector today, as they dropped 3.5 million to for providers to commit NVIDIA GPUs

  • Render is up, but not outperforming Bitcoin

• Your standard tokens from previous narratives are doing well too

  • Gaming tokens are up, as BEAM had a monster 9% move

  • SEI is up 10%

  • SOL is up 6.8%

• ALT and PYTH announced that they were listing on Upbit, and saw an instant 10% candle

Well, honestly - alot more things are up, but I figured that these were the best to focus on. When BTC stalls for altszn, you’d likely wanna add only top performers, and not stuff that only performed in-line / underperformed BTC on this rally.

But aside from that - It’s really the season where you throw a dart and hit something that’s up 10%. We’ve waited 2 years for this! Can you believe it?

On-Chain ⛓️

• GLM - being narrated as an AI coin with a huge treasury

• FLIP - mainnet launching soon

• POKT - Depin + rewkang / zoomeroracle shilled

• MOG - a memecoin that’s back near ATHs

• SHU - Shutter, a new LBP that has some incredible tekk. Might be ETH beta since it does MEV protection stuffs

• Alephium - POW blockchain, people speculating that it runs up like Kaspa

• comAI - Tao beta

• PIXL - New gaming coin with highest DAU, and actually supposedly has a. lit game (I’ve never tried)

• Node Monkes - something I’ve. been shilling since 0.1 BTC, and now has caught the attention of NFT whales. 0.4 now.

• Puppets - Node monkes beta

• Pudgy Penguins - Need I say more?

• Kanpai Pandas / Sappy Seals - Pudgy beta

Tis the season to ape first, research later.

As usual, thanks for reading! I’m excited to see where we go in the next months. But remember, above all, keep yourselves safe and healthy! See you guys next week <3

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

I think maximum value comes from the trading portfolio that I have, so I’m going to try playing with different structures - spending less time on the spot portfolio, and more on the trades. I’m also more of a HTF trader, and try not to trade below the D1, so it fits nicely w the weekly pace of the substack

Market Read 📊

My telegram channel correctly forecasted the arrival of a downtrend:

I also think another top signal for me was this:

where ETH OI simply blew past OI at ATH prices. Funding was incredibly negative, and generally everyone was frothing at the mouth expecting higher prices. Now that we’ve gotten a pullback, the issue with being a bera is that you never know when to stop.

I will be honest - I have no idea where the bottom is. No one does. In an ideal world though, I will say that my bera thesis plays out if prices goes to 48k. The problem is where I’m wrong - it looks something like:

• OI goes up price goes up, showing that market can be even more stupid than it currently is

• Alts have a sustained rally as BTC trades sideways here

• CME inflows become positive AND it pushes prices (CME has not been pushing prices lately)

I simply do nothing in these conditions. Other than AI coins, BTC and ETH, nothing feels good to long. I think this is a sit on hands season, and patience will pay off.

Current Portfolio 💼

Nothing much has changed, but I am looking to add more coins to my spot long portfolio. Some top contenders are:

• Increasing my PRIME allocation

• Increasing my KREST allocation

• comAI

• Root

But right now, I’m just chilling.

Trades 🖥️

Perps 📈

Again, nothing is appealing to market long in this market. I do have bids for the following coins though:

• TIA

  • TIA has been quite underlooked this mini-cycle, but every dog has its day. It’s definitely appealing in the $15 zone

• BEAM

  • While I’m bullish GameFi, I did not expect it to have the strength that it did because people generally hate longing GameFi given that everyone knows it’s a big scam from last cycle. However, price proves everyone wrong and it’s definitely a narrative to stick with

• RNDR

  • AI. That’s it. RNDR is up like 10% on today’s NVDA news, which is crazy, considering everything else is going down.

I also am looking to enter a swing BTC long with a target of 50k → 69k.

On-Chain ⛓️

On-Chain is definitely more interesting, but at the same time, it’s also pretty dead. My current portfolio consists of:

• MOG

  • The literal best memecoin that has a fantastic chart. It’s pixel perfect, down to the S/R lines. When meme szn comes back, this should tap 100m mcap.

• MAVIA

  • MAVIA hit some of my limit bids, so I am now a community member. Depending on how it continues performing, I may be forced to cut it; generally, I think steam on this coin has died for the next few days - who is left to buy?

• comAI

  • AI token that I’ve been slowly buying - but at the same time, not too much, just because I’m already so overexposed to TAO.

On my watchlist:

• ROOT: Gaming / L1 metaverse play that I know some smart people are in. I haven’t done enough research, though

• POKT: Shilled by ZoomerOracle, POKT is a dePIN AI play that has been silently sending

• GLM: Golem, an AI protocol, has been shilled all over the timeline. I don’t like this trade that much because I feel like it’s running out of steam, tbh. Also, Binance announcing the listing for it probably is a top signal.

This week is really boring - use this time to go touch grass.

As always, I’ll see you all next week. <3, Kyle

Executive Summary 📝

My market color just two weeks ago was titled “BTC at 42k in 2024: GOD THIS IS SO BEARISH”. It goes to show how:

1. People will only be bullish at the tops or bullish too late

2. Some things just don’t change

Paradoxically, the sentiment I’m seeing and feeling right now, at 52k, is the same as what I felt at 42k. People flip-flopping on the TL, changing sentiment, people screaming to run it back to 45k, etc. It’s a chop-fest out there, but I remain a bulliever.

Again, the advice I have in these situations: don’t overtrade, buy good coins, and wait. Personally I think prices will once again be higher soon, so don’t screw yourself over trying to trade the lower timeframes.

The way I’m playing this mini-cycle is quite different from how I played the last mini-cycle from Dec - Jan. It’s clear that it’s not a season to punt things - liquidity is thin, and only select coins are doing well. Highly concentrated bets and patience seem to be the name of the game, and as such I have positions in select coins that I just don’t touch.

Market Narratives 🎙️

• AI had a god candle this week upon news of OpenAI’s newest text-to-video model, Sora.

  • Worldcoin (WLD), where Sam Altman sits as co-founder, moved 170%+ this week upon the release of Sora

  • RNDR broke the previous range high of last mini-cycle and is now sitting close to $6

  • TAO continues creeping ever closer to $700

• GameFi saw an incredible rally this week as Mechanism Capital’s founder Rewkang continues shilling Heroes Of Mavia.

  • Beam is up more than 10% on the day, and has solidified itself as a mainstay “gaming coin” of this cycle

  • With $PIXL coming soon on Binance launchpad, it’s worth keeping an eye on

• Other Outperformers:

  • INJ got narrated on and subsequently saw 15% price increase

  • SOL is currently hitting highs last seen in January 2024. While SOL season may have died down a bit, certain shitcoins are outperforming like WIF, AI, and META

  • TIA and DYM are currently underperforming the market, and with attention away from TIA, it may be a good time to look into it

• ETH Beta continues to be a trade people look at as everyone expects an ETH ETF to be approved sometime in May. Current outperformers are:

  • BLUR - has the narrative as the main NFT marketplace on ETH, as well as proxy to BLAST, another Ethereum L2

  • Layer 2s: OP / ARB and more recently MATIC with their token migration

  • LSTs: LDO / RPL

  • Others: ENS

• New coins that are worth monitoring

  • ZETA as one of those “low mcap, high FDV” coins - this has been performing spectacularly

  • DYM as TIA beta

  • AI as a gamefi x AI intersection, but also because the ticker is AI

On-Chain ⛓️

AI:

• OLAS saw a huge price reversion back to $6

• Unlike the rest, the outlier ComAI saw an exploit in one of the whales wallets, which dumped it to as low as $1.8.

• MAI saw a sudden 3x as news of their Hyperliquid vault came out that it would be launching sometime in March

• New projects: Arbius, an AI project backed by a16z, followed by Marc Andreessen on Twitter

GameFi:

• Other GameFi outperformers like GuildFi as beta to Beam continues to chug along nicely

• PRIME finally broke ATHs, an achievement worth celebrating

Memes:

• MOG revived after months of downtrend / accumulation, and swiftly broke ATHs. It promptly retested the ATHs, but managed to consolidate above before going higher. Many are speculating it to continue chugging along with a revival of the ETH Eco after ETH breaches $3k

Others:

• MOBY, the ICO platform that recently launched, 2x’ed in a week. With many projects in the pipeline, it may signal a revival of the ICO era. Time will tell.

As usual, thanks for reading! I’m excited to see where we go in the next months. But remember, above all, keep yourselves safe and healthy! See you guys next week <3

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Market Read 📊

I’ll keep this one short and sweet - I believe it’s time to pay attention again. This is round 6 of the bull run, and the start of another mini-cycle. The past few weeks have been incredibly choppy, with BTC ranging around 42-43k.

Of course, sell the news ETF played out as expected, and the “short-term bearish, long term bullish” event started forming as BTC broke out of the range to 47k. I’ve repeated this in my Telegram channel (link here) as well - HTF, it makes no sense to be bearish post-ETF.

With millions of dollars buying BTC everyday, I just don’t see the case for being bearish.

The next macro event that I see affecting the markets disproportionately will be rate cuts - but until then, we remain long. And as always, as BTC goes up, alts will fall in BTC terms - but when it starts consolidating, that would be the starting signal for an alt rally.

I simply believe the vibes in the market have changed from just a week ago - things couldn’t catch a bid, most people were getting chopped up; we’re finally getting easy mode again, the same mode we saw late November - January 2023.

Current Portfolio 💼

I’ve cut OLAS, Treeverse and Timeless from my portfolio. This is where I want to talk about how I screwed up my positioning last “mini-cycle”. At some point, I believe the OLAS position was > 15% of my portfolio when OLAS was at $8. It then went to $3, and the same with a lot of the NFTs and tokens that I held.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt through that was: there is a major cycle and many mini-cycles. And the drawdowns of these mini-cycles can be intense. In essence, it’s really difficult to justify having a “long term position” in some of these coins when you really don’t know.

Sure, high-conviction bets take a longer-term investment horizon, but I feel that I was

• Sizing too much

• Into higher time-frame investments

• That drew down 50% when the mini-cycle ended

• And not taking profit in the mini-cycle

Every position I had, I thought was a “cycle hold” - which, basically meant I left a lot of the money on the table. Even if OLAS goes back to $6, it still doesn’t change the fact that I ate a >50% drawdown in between from $8 → $3.

Another thing to remember is that I’m no whale - and so it doesn’t make sense for the entirety of my portfolio to be “long term-holds”. I feel that I really sized too much into many of these on-chain shitters.

Moving forward, I’ve decided to basically split my portfolio into 60-40 - 60 being spot cycle holds, 40 being the trading / swing part of my portfolio. Spot cycle holds should also be trimmed down to a maximum of 3 positions, because I think that predicting “cycle holds” is way harder than it looks.

I believe in Node Monkes, but honestly, no one knows if it’s gonna be a cycle hold. And everyone has their own “cycle hold” - some have ONDO, some have BEAM, some have UNIBOT - you get the point. Everything that glitters is not gold, and that’s really something to think about.

I haven’t really rebalanced my portfolio yet, so it’s currently still something like 80-20, but I’m working on it. In the upcoming mini-cycle, I want to turn my trading portfolio way bigger and roll those profits into my spot-long portfolio.

Anyways, thanks for listening to my Ted Talk. I’m definitely not a great trader, but I’m working on it real hard.

Trades 🖥️

Many, many coins look good. I’m so excited to dive right in:

• TIA: Celestia needs no explanation. One of the best performing coins last mini-cycle

  • DYM: Celestias new younger brother. DYM launched with Airdrop claim FUD, but it 2x’ed straight out of the gate. I think this has potential to do well if TIA does well, and with quite a large amount of DYM airdropped staked, I think this low circ / high FDV coin can absolutely print

• MAVIA: A gaming coin by the Heroes of Mavia game that went absolutely parabolic on a Rewkang thread.

  • BEAM: The gaming “index” coin, that is seeing a pump due to the increased interest in GameFi again

  • PRIME: Prime looks fantastic as it touches $9 yet again. Now being narrated as “AI” as well due to their inclusion of AI agents, PRIME truly has the best of both worlds

• AI, of course. With Sam Altman looking to raise in the trillions for AI, AI coins caught a bid last night

  • TAO flirts with $600 as the biggest performer in my portfolio (thank god)

  • RNDR might catch a bid

  • Many AI coins are launching in Q1 - Morpheus, IONet, etc. Other projects that are good to look into are HyperspaceAI, Ritual, Gensyn

  • Interestingly enough, WLD didn’t catch a bid. The whole “Sam coin” narrative may not turn out in favour of WLD buyers

• SUI. SUICUNE is the newest narrative to form, and may be the “SEI” of this cycle

• Past performers, like:

  • INJ / LDO / PENDLE / SOL / LINK

On-Chain

• 404s: Pandora absolutely blew out the 404 meta, making a 60x, from 500 → 30,000. Crazy.

• BRC-20s: This may catch a bid, with recent launches like Quantum Cats and RSICs heating up the BRC20 eco.

• MOBY: A recent ICO launch that got up to 4,000 in ETH contributed - if this does well, it may signal a comeback of the ICO era - the greatest era of our lives

That’s it for this week! See you guys next week <3

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Executive Summary 📝

God, the last Market Update on 8th Jan was covering the ETF launch - and I vividly remember being in the boat “sell the news”. I was right, as BTC had a 15% move down in the coming days.

We’re way past that now though, and for the past 25 days or so we’ve pretty much just ranged within 38k to 42k. Where do I think we go next? Well, I think this is extremely bullish for our cryptoassets - with the largest uncertain event now removed, I fail to see the argument against being a bull on higher time frames.

On the lower time frames, CT continues to scream and cry and flipping their bias everytime price moves 2% in the opposite direction. It’s a chop-fest out there, and I think my tweet very nicely packaged the sentiment I’m seeing.

Again, if you were here in the 2023 bera market, you know what to do in these situations - don’t overtrade, buy good coins, and wait.

Market Narratives 🎙️

There are no narratives right now except for TAO being at ATHs. Funnily enough, the last Market Color I wrote that “TAO is back at 200, if anyone is looking to pick some up”. Right now, TAO is sitting at 487, a nice 2.5x.

• Pendle has been one of the best performers this month, and if LSDs come back in full force (which they should with Blackrock’s ETH ETF), this will probably be one of the best betas to buy

• Pyth has finally broken out of its cursed coin pattern, going up 20% in a week

• RON, the coin of the Ronin chain had been steadily grinding up for the past few weeks, dumped more than 20% on the Binance listing day, with clear chatter of “insidoor trading” all over Twitter

• RNDR was one of the best coins to trade for the Apple Vision Pro launch, briefly touching $5 before going back down to $4.5, but still a nice 20% from where I talked about it.

On-Chain ⛓️

I’d say on-chain is more fun and more active than perps right now, based on what I’ve been seeing

• LBPs did significantly well on launch, with VEC/INS/CAD all making multiples out of the gate. However, they dropped sharply after - making it known to everyone that it is still very much PvP. However, apeing the LBPs were almost always profitable despite the dump, which is great

• Loot and Whales have been outperforming the broader market, with Whales being an OTC points exchange of tokens that haven’t launched, and Loot receiving 10% of Whales revenue

• Emerald rugged, but it’s successor, Pandora, is up almost 10x from the bottom. It features some sort of new tech of ERC-404 - fungible non-fungible tokens

• MOBY is a new ICO platform that saw 1,200 ETH being deposited in the first 18 minutes. Read my thread on it here.

  • Dymension airdrop is coming this week, which, if past airdrops have been any indicator, may be a dump upon arrival.

That’s all for now! It’s a slow week, so stay safe out there. See you guys next week <3

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.

Executive Summary 📝

In the last market update 4 days ago (High Conviction Bets), I talked about how I now believe the ETF to be sell-the-news. I backed up this with data - 50-100% APR on funding across the board, CME OI at ATHs, etc.

We nuked shortly after, and I continue to be in the boat of “sell the news” - that is the plan, at least. However, I also outlined the invalidation of said plan with a couple of different scenarios, with the most likely one being: Flipping bullish if days after sell-the-news show bullish PA.

I mean - this is very common sense. But if we for some reason get post-event bullishness (for example, if the launch of the ETF is just a few days after the approval), there is an utmost need to flip bullish.

Anyways, I don’t see a reason to position bullish or bearish here. In either case, all you have to do is be at your desk and take up a position when the deed is done. If it’s an outright ETF Denial - well, expect some carnage in the next few weeks.

Market Narratives 🎙️

Narratives are pretty stale right now as liquidity flows to safe havens and people wait for the event to play out. The strongest narratives I see are:

• ETH ETF: ETH/BTC has bottomed for the 99th time in a row, as people narrate the “BTC to ETH flows” idea.

  • LSDs saw a pump in the previous week, as LDO broke its triangle wedge pattern

  • OP/MINA/ARB saw massive flows as well

• Many alts have reverted back - with -20%/-30% across the board. If we get a bullish ETF scenario, this is probably a great time to BTFD

• GMT outperformed yesterday upon launch of its newest game-update: Gas Heroes. I have not been keeping up with it, but here’s a great thread by Folius Ventures’ MapleLeafCap.

• TAO is back at 200, if anyone is looking to pick some up

• People bidding $AI because of good ticker + AI + GameFi tech

On-Chain ⛓️

On-Chain is even more dead as liquidity has been siphoned and people are just waiting in the sidelines. Some news we have:

• $SAGA Community Genesis Airdrop

• $1CAT announcing a “strategic partnership” with DWF

• $CEL & $ETH - Celsius Network Unstaking ETH

• $IOTX Is Preparing To Launch Their ZK L2 DePIN Solution

• $KAS Announced The Launch of Testnet 11 on January 7th

• $XAI airdrop for the node holders

• Azuki announced $ANIME (not officially, but probably) → Other NFT collections might look to do the same

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this document is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content is based on sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy, completeness, and timeliness cannot be guaranteed. Any reliance you place on the information in this document is at your own risk. The document may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The author(s) of this document may or may not own positions in the assets or securities mentioned herein. They reserve the right to buy or sell any asset or security discussed at any time without notice. It is essential to consult with a qualified financial advisor or other professional to understand the risks and suitability of any investment decisions you may make. You are solely responsible for conducting your research and due diligence before making any investment choices. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author(s) disclaim any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from the use of this document or its content. By accessing this document, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer.