Impermanence as a meme
this is the nature of our reality, the sooner we accept it the easier it becomes mentally
This mentality is also required to progress as a trader in crypto or otherwise
My top 5 takeaways from @mvanhorn:
1. Stop clicking around websites. Print them into CLIs your agents can run.
Matt built Printing Press to turn websites and apps into command-line tools for agents. It researches docs, finds niche repos, and uncovers hidden API calls so agents can use sites like Google Flights, Suno, and OpenArt.
Printing Press: https://t.co/JEkbDpu3HP
2. Use Compound Engineering to build.
Matt says his favorite way to build is to run /ce-plan and /ce-work over and over. This system from @every gives agents structure for planning, coding, reviewing, and shipping so you are managing the work instead of writing every line yourself.
Compound Engineering: https://t.co/QNuGTgsbmM
3. The plans are for the agent, not for you.
Matt often does not read AI’s full plans. Instead, he asks targeted questions: What files will you touch? What is most likely to break? What would an expert say is wrong with this idea? That catches more issues than skimming a giant plan.
4. Use last30days to do research.
Matt’s last30days skill hit #1 trending on GitHub because it answers a real problem: AI research is often stale or generic. last30days scans Reddit, X, YouTube, Hacker News, Polymarket, and the web to show what people are saying right now.
last30days: https://t.co/8O7t18uY2W
5. To become an AI builder, solve your own problems and keep shipping.
Matt has no CS degree and says he does not know how to read code. But he kept building tools for his own problems, contributing to open source, and launching what helped him.
Matt walked through Printing Press, Compound Engineering, last30days, Agent Cookie, and his full agentic engineering workflow in our episode.
📌 Watch the full episode now: https://t.co/2ZqHIKGODc
We got the 80k push on $BTC. Whether this ends up as a macro LH is yet to be determined. But long term I don't think it's a bad spot with quite a bit of patience. Right now I think it's more important to reclaim a prev level if we want true expansion. For example 84-86k area HTF close for momentum
I'll likely return to crypto when things look better. 3 trades on btc in over half a year and one on HYPE and all went very well. this one I had already exited back when we first hit 76k a month ago tho. Sometimes less is more. Gotta know when to push it and when to sit back.
So What's The Data?
A flurry of replies all asking the same question. As well as a flurry of replies calling me an idiot for making the statement that narrative doesn't matter as much as people think it does.
My way makes me money. If your way makes you money there is nothing wrong with that. No need to change. I simply choose not to enter a trade based on vibes.
I'll now give the real life example I referenced in the last post. The coin was DFM that I identified at a 250K mcap. And I still don't even know what that coin is about as it didn't matter. Got in at 250K and got out at 4M. Because of data. It's now 1M at the time of writing. Volume is dying. Bots are leaving. Liquidity is still "thin air". Short of a new data catalyst, it's dead.
My method is relatively simple. You may have a better method. Maybe I'm retarded (saves some of you from saying it). But this method has worked for me and I've been able to obtain around an 80% win rate. On low mcap memes. I happen to be proud of that number.
For screening, I use GMGN. I don't trade there, but they do have some of the better screening tools. On the Trending tab I set up the following filters:
NoMint - checked
Burnt - checked
No Blacklist - checked
MC - 225K
5M volume - 9k
Why 225 and 9? Because many traders filter for 250K and 10K. I like to be first, for things worth trading.
I'm still actively experimenting with these initial filters but lean on the side of not going too filter heavy.
Then, on my display view, I make sure I'm on 5M for time selection and that I have columns enabled for both 5m% and 1h%.
If something is hot on the 5M but still way down on the 1H I won't even bother looking at it. I'm looking for confluence. I also check token age from this view. I don't filter it out as a hard rule but typically I'm not hopping on the bandwagon for an old token just because it has started to pump. But I do like being aware of it.
The next thing I do is copy the CA and if we are still a very low mcap (sub 1M) I'll pull up the Bubblemaps. Does it look cleaner or more dirty than most Bubblemaps I look at every day? (more on that later).
If the coin is over 1M mcap the first thing I will do is pull up the CLOBr liquidity map. This tends to not matter until you get into the 2M+ mcap range, but I want to know right away if LP farms are bogging price action down, what sell pressure is right above current price, how much support is below - is support v resistance asymetric, etc. If it's a brand new coin it may have not even had time to make it to CLOBr yet - and again for very low mcap the CLOBr map doesn't really matter as much as usually the only source of liquidity is the PumpSwap pool anyway.
Then I pull up GeckoTerminal (or DexScreener or similar, whatever one you like to use) and look at volume. How is volume progressing, is it getting more intense, looking the same, or declining. I look at the trend over the past 5M vs 1H vs 6/24. The volume bar graph also helps paint a visual picture but I prefer cross-checking by clicking on the 5M/1H/6H/24H time frames specifically because you can easily see transaction counts, net buy vs sell, etc.
I additionally look at holder counts. Not is it going up or down, that doesn't matter on your early launches. I'm looking to see if the expected holder count appears to be normal & organic for token age + mcap.
I also visually scan the order flow for obvious signs of volume botting. I also scan for addresses I know to be bot addresses that trade anything worth trading all day long. Are those known bot addresses buying or selling? If they aren't even present that's a signal to me the token likely isn't worth trading.
I don't even bother looking at bundled reports. Assume they all are.
Now here's where my strategy and what the data tells me may differ from most. I'm looking for red flags. Because crime moves this space more often than not. So I'm looking for the warning signs of crime so I can trade them. The more sophisticated the crime, the higher the anticipated price action. People don't put a ton of effort and expense into just rugging something at a 500K mcap.
Here's how the data guided me on my successful trade of DFM this AM and why I was able to get in at $250K and out at 4M before the crash back down to 1M.
My filtered view from step one fired off at $225K as it was supposed to. It took me a couple of minutes to complete my checks before I bought in at $250K.
The first thing I noticed as a crime signal was bubble maps. Too perfect. It's still too perfect as of the time of this post. Real life is messy. This means the people who bundle went to great lengths to do it intelligently. Time+effort = longer runway.
Holder count vs age? Also very high. Not organic.
The second thing that stuck out to me is the distribution on this low mcap meme coin is something we all dream of. Not a single wallet held more than 0.3% of total supply.
That...just...doesn't...happen...ever. Again, signs that great pains have been taken to paint a perfect picture (when real life is messy by default).
I checked the order flow and saw a lot of known bot addresses buying and selling - this passed a critical check. If it's not good enough for the bots to transact, it's not good enough for me either.
I saw volume holding steady across a period of time. This means that either organic traders were engaging or more likely that someone paid for sustained volume bots. Many cheap devs will run a volume bot once, just to grab everyones attention. And you'll notice the volume cycle drops off significantly. Here the volume was sustained. So either more money is being invested into the volume bot for a longer duration or organic buyers and sellers are hopping in - doesn't matter to me which it is, just that it's happening.
There was no magic. No big secret formula. I simply looked at the data and said "This looks too perfect. Things are only made to look this perfect if it has a runway ahead of it"
So I buy red flags. Because the effort put into crime can be a strong signal into how long the crime will continue.
As I rode my position up I started looking at the CLOBr liquidity map. We crossed 1M, no liquidity added. 2M, no liquidity added. Past that point I was glued to the screen watching for the first sign of anything turning the tide. Was volume dying? Were sells being met with buys?
Volume didn't die and holder count just kept increasing, but at 4M I bailed. Because at that point there SHOULD have been a better liquidity picture. I know from vast experience in staring at these things all day every day that you simply cannot be at a 4M mcap without better liquidity than simply the PumpSwap pool. All of my experience told me the risk/reward systems in these bots would start giving heavy weighting to the "thin air" below current price. I wanted to bail before they did. Sure I missed the move from 4 to 5.3, but after 5.3 it just utterly tanked.
I even told my TG group that I would ape back in the moment they added the typical large fake liquidity layer to paint support below. But they just never did.
In short? This goes back to my general trading thesis that I taught people about months ago. (It's on the TL, don't make me scroll).
This is crypto. Assume everything is manipulated and that nothing is organic. The way to make money is therefore looking for signs of manipulation and walking in harmony with the Apex Predator so as not to become the prey.
Was this helpful to you? Please let me know. It means a lot. There's a small army of people who love to just crap on anything that comes out of my mouth and I took an hour out of my day to type this up, hoping at least one person would benefit from it.
🫡 From the depths —
The White Whale 🐋
The Impatience Epidemic in Crypto
It’s wild right now. Everyone’s frustrated, convinced the market “owes” them something.
But if you’re feeling that way, it’s not the market that’s broken. It’s your perspective.
The impatient chase noise. The patient study structure.
Markets don’t pay the impatient; they pay the ones who can breathe through the chaos.
When the volatility fades, it’s never the panic that wins, it’s the patience. The traders who kept their head while everyone else lost theirs.
Crypto thrived when it was either trade boring stocks or get insane returns on crypto with wild volatility. Now we have prediction markets, trading cards, precious metals, and a stock market that is actually more volatile than crypto itself. Crypto waiting to find direction again
Downtrends bring out the dumbest opinions.
Nothing amplifies those opinins like a fear vacuum.
When price bleeds, logic quickly disappears, then bad takes multiply, and every loud voice sounds “certain.”
Stay calm. Stay selective. Stay smarter than the echo chamber.
If you know how to filter noise, you already have an edge.
Be water, my friends.