sloth

Head of Research at Cryptech

Delivering unique crypto insights to investors, traders, venture capitalists, and hedge fund managers

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[sloth @0xSloth]

<<LONG DEGENERACY>>

Humanity is crumbling.

It doesn’t take much looking around to see the effects of societal decay.

Purchasing power is at an all time low and falling (gap b/w wages and cost of things)

Unemployment amongst recent college grads is at all time highs

Homeownership rates amongst younger generations are down

•Happiness rates are down
•General outlook is down
•Su*cide is up
•Porn usage up
•SSRI usage up
•Drug usage up
•Gambling up
•Marriage rates are down
•Birth rates are down
•Religion participation is at all time lows and inflecting
•Cost of college is out of control
•Post college wages cratered
•Social media and device usage is sky high (brain rot)

What does all of this mean?

If you are a Millenial, Gen Z, or even Gen Alpha you already know. You are feeling it.

The future for these generations is bleak.

Put more scientifically, the rewards for the effort of their labor (mental and physical) are diminishing exponentially.

Why work if you will never own a home? A car? Have a family?

What is the f*cking point???

The system was created for and by the Boomers. They got…

•Cheap education
•Cheap housing
•High purchasing power (wages)
•Access to political power
•Cheap access to capital (low rates)
•Low taxes

…and now they are pulling up the ladder.

This creates resentment. Anger.

So the stage has been set. The younger generation is now disillusioned and bitter.

Gone is the American Dream of a stable happy life working a decent job with a house a car and a family.

It is dead.

This leaves them stuck in a corner with only two ways out.

Cope — TikTok, porn, brainrot, drugs, ssris, spending not saving (nothing to save for)

Leverage — gambling, lottery tickets, meme stocks, memecoins

For some door number one is the only option. For others both doors are open.

It’s here the cope of existential failure crashes headlong into hedonism.

Infinite pleasure paired with the high leverage yolo bets to make it out of the hell on 1000:1 odds.

Why not take a shot on the next DOGE? What have I got to lose?

The past holds hints of the future

Long before crypto, GME, NVDA, and QQQ we had 4chan.

A disgusting backwater of the internet called /biz/ where enterprising NEETs who speedran this realization of no prospects 7 years early. Here they would freely discuss and execute on hairbrained investment plans across tech, biotech, industrials.

Pretty much anything that might have a chance at going up double digits percentages (this was the era of stocks — a 40% bump was insane).

2017 came along and /biz/ fundamentally changed.

NEETs were joined by a flood of normies looking to “make it” on the next big crypto coin. The message board was quickly converted to nearly 100% crypto talk as stonks faded away.

Who wanted a 20% return on a biotech FDA approval when DOGE could get you a 2000% return?

More people were coming to casino and more were stepping further out on the risk curve.

2020 changed the game again.

A global pandemic forced Americans home and gave them thousands of dollars in “stimmies” — free money.

The stock market saw record high volatility with the VIX smashing 70.

Robinhood had just launched no fee options trading on their platform.

What did people do? They speculated like mad with leverage. Hey the world was ending anyway why not YOLO my stimmy into deep OTM calls on airlines?

But this was only the beginning…

2021 brought us GameStop.

Up until 2021 trading YOLO options (or crypto) was relatively niche.

It was young, terminally online, kids that figured it out but it wasn’t mainstream.

What they did though was set the stage. Their trading in 2020 had validated Robinhood as a platform and created a runbook for people to YOLO trade stocks with options.

The GameStop event saw a mainstream media cycle which sucked in a whole new wave of normies.

They got sucked in because of a narrative.

A David vs. Goliath epic with an enigmatic basement dweller at the core and a chance at making money to boot.

This was deep f*cking value.

The normies were taking shots at buying cars, paying off crushing student debt, taking vacations, buying that designer bag — all things they didn’t think they would ever be able to do.

GameStop was hope.

What future?

Since 2021 we haven’t seen another GameStop-esque event.

Roaring Kitty went into hiding. /biz/ returned to posting crypto garbage. Wall Street Bets shut down and then reopened a shadow of its former self.

But yet the world has continued to decay around us.

Which leads the casual observer to one of two conclusions…

1. This time is different, everyone is happy :)~
2. A new, bigger, wave is building.

Spoiler alert. It is number 2.

GameStop had problems.

Regulators (collusion??) stepped in and stopped the music. People lost money. People were angry. Justifiably so.

In 2021 parallel to the GameStop saga, crypto was having its own bull market.

Running up to over a $3T market cap, crypto proved that without regulators, traders (normies) could freely buy and sell thousands of coins with minimal issues.

For a relatively small niche of people, crypto had had its Robinhood moment.

The foundation was set. The technology was proven.

And the experience has only gotten better…

In 2024 crypto got fueling a trillion dollar meme coin craze.

In 2025 Hyperliquid went mainstream giving perps traders decentralized access to 50x leverage across major tokens.

Volume and volatility were immense. For the first time in crypto’s history crystal clear demand signals met supply: the people wanted to gamble.

Long degeneracy.

2017 until now has shown us three immutable truths.

Truth #1 — younger generations are desperate and descending into nihilism

When the deck is stacked against you, you’ll play a different game.

Truth #2 — this group has real capital and in the aggregate can deploy it in size

They may not be buying houses but they can buy DOGE.

Truth #3 — the only way out of the hole is a rocket ship

100:1 or 1000:1 home runs are the only thing that can save these kids from modern hell that has been created for them and they know it.

So what does all of this mean?

It means anything offering massive asymmetric risk / return is a potential target for this demographic which is only getting older and larger.

What is at the very end of the risk spectrum? Crypto.

Perps, prediction markets, AI, memes, NFTs, options and whatever else appears.

The world’s greatest casino is open for business 24/7 and baby, business is a boomin’.

But this isn’t a phase. It’s a pressure valve.

When a generation is denied stability, denied mobility, denied a future, it does not simply lie down and accept it. It mutates. It adapts. It finds risk where risk still pays. And it pours every last dollar, every last dream, into that narrow band of possibility.

This isn’t degeneracy. It’s the logical end state of a civilization that broke its own reward mechanisms.

And as long as the system keeps offering nothing but struggle, scarcity, and decline, these kids will keep spinning the wheel. Harder. Faster. With more money and more conviction.

The collapse of the old world didn’t produce despair, it produced speculators.

Crypto isn’t the sideshow. It’s the successor.

The markets aren’t unhinged. They’re reflecting reality.

And the next wave won’t look like GameStop. It’ll be bigger. Wilder. Unstoppable. A generational scream expressed as leverage.

The casino isn’t a symptom. It’s the new center of gravity.

Welcome to the future.
Place your bets.

[sloth @0xSloth]

most momentum trading in crypto can be reduced to bid if price &gt; 50d sma

[sloth @0xSloth]

@gekko_eth @AskVenice @AnthropicAI @claudeai @venicestats definitely nothing, return to scrolling, nothing to see

[sloth @0xSloth]

permanent supply burn

[Crypto Tax Made Easy @CryptoTaxSucks]

Client passed away unexpectedly.

Had 6-figures in crypto.

Family can’t access it because client was paranoid about security.

Didn’t leave instructions behind.

How do you solve this?

[sloth @0xSloth]

@jesseproudman @gekko_eth @AskVenice @SpaceX @xai this goes hard

[sloth @0xSloth]

the most powerful model in the world available at your fingertips

privately.

[Venice @AskVenice]

Claude Fable 5 is now available anonymously on Venice

[sloth @0xSloth]

@BowTiedBull 32 btc is a drop in the bucket

[sloth @0xSloth]

crypto has a long and storied history of consensus "death of x" chants being met with "x" going parabolic

the contrarian take often plays out violently in this industry best beware of the other side

[McKenna @Crypto_McKenna]

I think we’ve begun the rotation out of Ethereum. I think this started around 6 months ago.

I’ve seen a large amount of bear takes on Ethereum calling for 3 digits and felt resistance to it. But now I do genuinely believe we are just starting to see the rotation out of Ethereum.

I’m not sure how long it takes but I do see Ethereum going towards $1000. Every under water DAT will sell ETH on their balance and buyback their own shares. No one is buying these sell flows.

If anything people are going to rotate early and it’s going to unravel slowly and there is no demand to meet it.

[sloth @0xSloth]

@beaniemaxi or mr. market is correct and you are wrong

[sloth @0xSloth]

@Crypto_McKenna oh no too much money

[sloth @0xSloth]

hyperliquid remains the confluence of many trades

you can express many theses by buying $hype and the neat thing is only one of them has to be right

[CFTC @CFTC]

.@CFTC Issues Policy Statement Concerning the Listing of Perpetual Contracts: https://t.co/7fhwow4dz2

[sloth @0xSloth]

@ch_ew_y @txds_ @zodl_app bottom signal confirmed. 🫡

[sloth @0xSloth]

yea, everything but crypto

[Citrini @citrini]

I think today may be the start of an everything rally (as opposed to a “AI rallies and anyone invested in anything besides AI wants to end it all” situation).

[sloth @0xSloth]

this will come to mark the local $eth bottom and a level unlikely to be revisited

see you at $10k

[David Hoffman @TrustlessState]

https://t.co/5EOn4y2pdx

[sloth @0xSloth]

@podcastpunk spx6900 coded

[saila @sailaunderscore]

How life feels once you start ignoring ‘JPMorgan market research’ and just follow ‘bubbleboi’ and ‘racistinvestorbrah’ on 10x leverage

[sloth @0xSloth]

@dansquare06 danish pivoting into macro commentary

[sloth @0xSloth]

"digital cathedral for global finance"

[Ryan Watkins @RyanWatkins_]

In the best way possible, Hyperliquid is starting to feel like a radical online cult building a digital cathedral for global finance.

It’s amusing seeing all these centralized crypto companies buy $HYPE to signal alignment to the community as if it’s tribute.

I don’t recall this ever happening with any asset other than $BTC.

Beyond the obvious flows benefit, the practical implication here is that an increasingly wide and powerful network of people and institutions in the crypto ecosystem are all highly incentivized to make Hyperliquid a massive success.

I honestly believe this dynamic wouldn’t exist if Hyperliquid didn’t do a fair launch and rekindle crypto’s original spirit.

My bet is this will remain a compounding advantage for Hyperliquid well into the future.

[sloth @0xSloth]

venice.

[Robinhood @RobinhoodApp]

$VVV is now available to trade on Robinhood Crypto, including NY.

[sloth @0xSloth]

@DromesLaw theres plenty of usdc to go around no need to post lukewarm takes like this