Moneymaker

Веду дневник о своих инвестициях в крипто: ico/дропы/спекуляции. NFA.

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

🍕 “Ponzi, Pizza and a Crisis of Genre”

2025 is coming to an end. The cold autumn air pinches my face and pulls me out of a warm dream into reality. A good moment to look back and honestly ask myself:
“What actually happened to crypto over the last few years?”
Narratives changed: DeFi, NFT, L2, RWA, AI, stables.
Regulators changed their attitude toward crypto.
But one thing stayed the same. The tokens of crypto projects reach FDV of 5-15 billion, yet they have fewer real users and less profit than the fruit shop across the street from your house.
We live in a world of dreams and marketing where people sell an “idea” and not a product.
Let’s go back to reality for 10 minutes.

1. What a normal business looks like

Let’s take a boring Web2 business, Dropbox, and its metrics for 2024:
Market cap: ≈ $7-8B
Revenue: ≈ $2.5B
Profit (GAAP net income): ≈ $0.45B
The company is worth about $7.5B and is already making money. People pay every month for file storage and this converts into cash, not into “potential TVL”. There is no magic here, only a service, a subscription and understandable math.
And this is not a unique case in traditional finance.
Etsy, Domino’s, cruise lines, clothing brands, and dozens of companies have similar metrics. The market cap is 5-15B, while net profit is hundreds of millions every year. The numbers there are not promises, they are already proven results.

2. What a “successful” blockchain looks like

We open DefiLlama and look at blockchain revenue:
Solana: ≈ $40M per year
Sui: ≈ $10-15M per year
Avalanche: ≈ $8M per year
Near: ≈ $3M per year
Then complete absurdity starts.
Fresh L1/L2 networks that we farm, and that someone even buys tokens of on the market, have $10-200K of revenue per month with FDV in the billions.

And even this “revenue” is not profit, it is just the share of fees that accrues to the protocol itself.
It does not account for off-chain costs like the team, marketing, infrastructure and so on.
It is very far from “net profit” like Dropbox or a pizza chain.

3. Where the Ponzi is

In stocks, everything is simple.
You buy a “piece of business” that already makes cash.
There is revenue, profit, dividends, buybacks.
In crypto, in 90% of cases you buy a “coin” that gives you: voting in a DAO (that nobody cares about),
staking income (that does not cover the constant price decay of the token), the right to pray for a new wave of retail.
Protocol revenue almost does not belong to token holders.
It goes to validators and the team, not to you.
A classic Ponzi scheme:
-VCs bring in a round
-The project launches airdrop campaigns and attracts retail
-Artificial product metrics are created
-VCs see the “fake” metrics and inspiring pitches from the team and bring more money
-The team gets the check and the future of the product barely interests them
-Part of retail gets crumbs as an airdrop, another part of retail buys tokens on the market and loses money.

The team has the check, retail has the tokens and a negative PnL.
A classic of the genre, only the wrapping is a whitepaper and beautiful threads.

4. Pizza versus Ponzi

Imagine a pizza chain.
Every day: the dough is mixed, the pizza is sold, the margin is taken, part of it is returned to shareholders as dividends or buybacks.Boring. No 100x in a week.
But if the chain is worth $7-10B, it usually runs billions in revenue, generates hundreds of millions in net profit and still bakes pizza ten years later.
For example, look at Domino’s Pizza, a real business and not a 40 page PDF.

Now compare this with an L2 that draws FDV of $8B, earns $150K-500K per month in fees,does not pay token holders anything and lives only because someone is ready to buy the token at a higher price.
This is the “crisis of genre”.
We call it “infrastructure of the future”, but in fact it is “expensive lottery tickets”.

5. Who really earns money, the shovel sellers ⛏️

There is a layer of the market that feels great.
These are the ones who “sell shovels to gold diggers”:
-big CEXes: fees, listings, futures, options, margin;
-fat DEXes and perp exchanges: trading fees, liquidity, token incentives;
-infrastructure: custody, bridges, analytics, oracles.

They do not care what the next narrative will be, L2, RWA, memes or AI shitcoins.
The main thing is that you deposit once more, trade with leverage once more, bridge once more for points.
Shovel selling in crypto is one of the few truly sustainable business cases.
While everyone is chasing “the next Solana”, the shovel guys are simply counting fees.

I am not for “leaving crypto”, I am for an honest dialogue.
One of the few ways to change something is to talk about it openly and not pretend everything is fine.
As long as we call Ponzi “innovation”, shovel sellers will keep earning,and retail will keep confusing “bets in a casino” with investments in real business,while the casino politely smiles and forces them to lose their money, chip after chip, cycle after cycle.

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

It’s time to buy $CBRS

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

Two the-open-network:native updates this week: Telegram’s native wallet rollout and the details of its .gram domain application.

Telegram 13.0 is out. Walt has been removed from settings, while Telegram’s own interface now points to a Money section. Native wallet access remains limited. A fresh community report says receiving GRAM from someone who already has access can activate the recipient’s wallet. That mechanism still needs independent confirmation.

If it works as reported, one payment could bring the next person into the wallet. Telegram would have a distribution mechanism running through existing contacts and conversations.

The .gram application reveals a separate expansion. Telegram proposes username.gram registration for Premium users, pointing to their profile by default, with the option to redirect elsewhere. Channels, groups and bots would follow a separate process expected to use Fragment-style auctions. Registration would also be open to the public through accredited registrars. [Application](https://t.co/WJSfjB2wau).

There is competition: Link Freedom Group also applied for .gram. Telegram still needs to secure the domain zone, and mandatory payment in GRAM has not been confirmed. [ICANN](https://t.co/MZ3kyCBQrk).

Wider wallet access is the near-term catalyst. Domains could extend Telegram identities onto the open web and create another market around names. For GRAM, actual wallet usage and the eventual domain-payment rules will determine how much of that expansion translates into token demand.

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

October 7 answers one question for the-open-network:native: does Telegram's .gram filing touch TON at all, and who will own the names.

At 18:00 UTC ICANN publishes every applied-for string in the 2026 round, the applicants, the contention sets and the public parts of each application. Telegram is on that list. Durov said the company applied for .gram so that a username becomes a web address, with the site generated from a prompt and hosted by Telegram.

Three lines in the filing decide whether this is a token story.

1. The applicant. Telegram's own entity or a TON Foundation structure tells you whose product this is.
2. The contention set. A second bidder for .gram means an auction and a year or more of delay.
3. The registry type. A brand TLD under Specification 13 keeps every name with Telegram; users get a managed record and nobody pays anyone for it. An open registry means third-party registrations, and only then does billing in GRAM become a real question. The mission section also shows whether TON is mentioned at all.

The calendar runs long either way: string changes until October 21, confirmed strings on November 17, objections until March 16, 2027, a priority draw in the first half of 2027, delegation after that.

The stack around the filing is already live, which is why it matters. Telegram Serverless runs bot code and a database on Telegram's own infrastructure with a one-command deploy. Bot API 9.6 lets one bot create and manage others, and bots can message each other once both opt in. Cocoon has been running Telegram's AI summaries since January and pays GPU owners in GRAM. Creation, hosting, identity and distribution are converging in one app, and a channel owner already has an audience to launch to.

Domain registration and hosting have no announced GRAM billing, and the website builder is still a plan. Until those terms appear, .gram is a product story. Token demand needs a price list. October 7 is where that reading gets its first test.
$GRAM

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

All eyes on $GRAM

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

Crypto’s top 30, December 2017 to September 2026.
Only 11 names appear in both snapshots. IOTA, EOS and NEO were all in the 2017 top 15.
Which of today’s “blue chips” will still be in the top 30 next cycle?

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

https://t.co/OqcqqKUPuZ

Думаю стоит регаться в $jumper потому что по слухам будет оценка FDV 75M, продукт рабочий, имеется план масштабирования в super app.
Сейл будет через legion

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

В голове держал подобную картину , что должен быть первый спад новой технологии (ИИ), очень нравится пост

[Derivatives Monke @Derivatives_Ape]

What the next few months will look like:

Next Claude model gets released late September, a Fable successor.

It’s not going to be that good, people realise that AI has hit a wall (which already happened around Opus 4.6) and exponential growth/synthetic data was a lie.

Open source models start catching up, they also hit the wall around late October. AI models become as good as they can be for extremely dirt cheap, there will be no more growth.

Late October is also when Anthropic IPOs, around $2T valuation.

The IPO is an instant nuke, too much supply overhang from private investors as well as wider retail figuring out that AI growth has been all a marketing scam.

Whole AI industry gets dragged down with it except the Buffett stocks, it’ll be an industry specific isolated crash instead of a wider market one.

Coincidentally, the fed hikes interest rates at around the same time (late October), further cascading the market.

Bitcoin hits $50k

Mid November time the AI-adjacent stocks end up haemorrhaging whatever is left of the stock market, 30-40% crash in the S&P.

December 2026-January 2027 the fed pivots and markets start rallying again.

April 2027 more Anthropic shares get unlocked from private investors, gets absorbed easily as the market is in a printing phase. Will still trade at around $700b

Bitcoin doesn’t follow though, keeps going down until it remains steady at ~$40k

Good luck everyone.

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

you had a call and the opportunity to sell during

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

winter is coming

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

AI vs crypto?

Очевидно, что текущий ландшафт инвестиционного и новостного пространства захватывает ИИ, в качестве чего-то нового, захватывающего и многообещающего. Так в свое время было и с криптой, но в отличии от цифровых активов -ИИ сразу дает утилити и предвосхищает твои ожидания.
Многие хоронят крипту, так как основная сила крипты была в технологии будущего и внимании, которое привлекалось к ней за счет манипуляций ценой активов.
Технология случилась, но пока не в таком революционном ключе и лишь у 10 продуктов из 100 000.
В сухом остатке ИИ - дал полезность и масс адопшен с первой волны развития, компании ИИ имеют огромную выручку и будущий потенциал очевидно будет сильным.
Также ключевым фактором является внимание людей/инвесторов/ обывателей, которое ИИ забирает на себя.
Крипта теряет свою магию и внимание ритейла это факт.
Я полагаю, что крипта и ИИ невозможны друг без друга и блокчейн будет важным элементом экономики агентов, но это не значит что текущие крипто-активы должны расти , так 99.9% из них создавались только для спекуляций, у них нет прочной модели бизнеса, moat, фин потоков и прочего, единственный зрелый сегмент ниши это биржи/dex.
Ок , а что делать с этим нам -инвесторам , спекулянтам и просто активным людям.
Я для себя нашел простой ответ : пытаться перестроиться и искать возможности заработать на тренде ИИ.
Как это сделать: искать компании, которые участвуют в этой вечеринке (прямо или косвенно)- Nvidia, Google, ipo и прочие.
Крипта безусловно будет в моем фокусе и все ассиметричные способы заработка я буду тестировать, но пропускать идею, которая возникает раз в 10-20 лет, не могу себе позволить.

Самое интересное, что торговать акциями и даже pre-ipo можно на hyperliquid, поэтому не покидая web-3 ты можешь освоить новый рынок.

В инвестициях выживает гибкий, там где хайп и ликвидность, там и вознаграждение.

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

It’s time to buy…nothing in crypto.

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

@lynk0x Sol is 118$.
Delete

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

@DoCryptoBred Вот такие посты, наполненные позитивом и хладнокровием это другое дело 😅

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

@sjdedic SpaceX revenue in 2025 is around 15B$,and that about Alt market ?

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

@lynk0x Are you ready ? Dele..

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

@TheDeFinvestor Aave is another level

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

@lynk0x Such posts do more harm to newcomers to the market than you can imagine.

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

@crypto_birb good job, bro

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

@irritatedeth It’s only 30%, easy

[Moneymaker @2rist2tweet]

@ASvanevik why Monad?