the vision
there are three things anyone here can agree on:
(a) alt coins are structurally flawed and their value proposition is uninteresting for most investors
(b) the more exciting projects are inside web2 and not web3, web3 barely had any innovations and VCs are leaving to fund AI/defense tech startups over the next L1
(c) the disconnect between equity & token is making it impossible for both to be mutually successful, either share or token holder value gets maximised, the other suffers.
these 3 points are the reason why we didn't have an alt season. there is a brick ceiling of innovation inside DeFi & we hit this brick ceiling already (which is okay). The new inventions are mostly incremental improvements, but the last time we saw something exciting come out of crypto was probably zero knowledge & chain abstraction. VCs don't fund incremental improvements and the inventions have a monetary ceiling how high they can be valued. (a) is the reason why VCs don't pure energy into developing this sector, (b) is the reason why VCs look elsewhere and (c) is the reason projects&chart on the open market get suffocated.
Altcoins are structurally broken. The value proposition of utility/governance is not only weak & repetitive, it's laughable. Giving things a multibillion valuation based on vibes and governance is so uncapitalistic and inefficient that it's the consensus now to short down any new bloated high FDV alt coin. If you - as a founder - need to scramble for utility to justify a $1B valuation, then you are cooked (&evil). Utility coins are nothing but cope to extract billions from every day investors who like what you're building. The utility of an asset should be to go up in valuation & that's it. Value Creation, GDP growth. Bidens' SEC tried to suffocate this value creation, but we are free now & Hyperliquid + PumpFun showed that nicely.
Other markets are just more interesting, we hit the ceiling of innovation in crypto, incremental improvements, games of mirrors, but nothing from substance that is exciting &new enough to throw billions at it like back in the ICO days of 2017. there will be a cure for cancer soon and instead of investing in that startup you will have the opportunity to select between brokoli, neiro, sundog, wif, giga, 4 and purr. iโm not against making money, iโm primarily a trader, but it feels like a lot of capital&energy is wasted trading absolute unproductive casino coins instead of contributing to the gdp growth by selecting&helping great ideas grow to unicorns (& you getting paid by being early to those).
Why would I want to invest in DeFi platform #14938 if I could also invest in defense tech, predictive policing, network states, cheap sustainable robotics, autonomous ocean exploring or regenerative agriculture?
the (3)rd one is the hardest pill to swallow. What is the Northstar of some of these products and how does it reflect to the token price ? Plasma One e.g.? How does the growth & usage of stable coins reflect to the actual growth of the token? It doesn't - at all. It's the opposite, the more the equity grows, the more interested are shareholder in keeping the revenue flow to themselves and not giving up revenue to tokenholders.
There's a solution for all of this, which is using all the good inventions crypto brought to the table to bootstrap Web2 innovations.
The Digital Shark Tank
If you want to call it that. Tokenise ideas and make them tradable. Tokenise every Web2 company and make these assets tradable. But the issue here is: How do we make them intrinsically valuable? And the simple&short answer to this is equity.
IPOs are overrated and outdated, the average time a company stays private has increased massively over the last few years. OpenAi, SpaceX, Anthropic will probably not go public for another decade. Yet, especially OpenAI & Anthropic are unprofitable & need funding but don't want to get punished by a public market that requires them to disclose every little financial detail of their company.
Crypto has proven itself to be
- a source of revenue for companies that tokenise
- a massive driver of user acquisition
- the go-to place for network effects & attention
Tokenising OpenAI&Co actually makes a lot of sense, the only thing we had to solve was making their token intrinsically valuable so it's the risk appetite is sticky.
And we solved that. It's called ERC-S & it's open source.
I think crypto will fundamentally change with this invention. It will be rare for a project to launch a token that actually has anything to do with blockchain. We take all the good things of crypto (easy global revenue engine, great user acquisition engine, amazing attention engine) and put them onto Web2 rails while designing tokens that actually have value holding & are not designed to extract from you.
Here's where I see @StreetFDN in 3 years.
Replacement of traditional IPO. Companies like SpaceX will go to us and not the Nasdaq to tokenize first and then maybe in 5 years down the road target a real IPO. Tokenization gives a quote to your equity and provides a liquid secondary vehicle to fund M&A etc with (futarchy mode).
Digital Shark Tank. For this we have to bring cost ห ERC-S down drastically, but I'm confident we can achieve this eventually. Current costs are high 5 figures and while we can pay this ourselves for our champions and the best of the best startups, eventually every startup should be able to tokenize without us having to go through a 1% acceptance rate selection process.
Regulations are important to frontrun. Look at the value Polymarket created. This is a Polymarket regulations moment, just with a 2y time window & even more significant capital formation wise.
after this succeeds we'll disrupt both IPOs and YC/traditional accelerators.
Thereโs currently a surge of volume and noise around perpDEX a kind of boom happening in the space.
But as always, projects that are easy to benchmark are also easy to compete with.
The same goes for most of todayโs perpDEX
Many perpDEX are emerging, but only a few of them truly stand out as unique.
In my view, the most forward-thinking perpDEX projects right now are focusing on integrating and aggregating TradFi stocks, commodities, and more.
Imagine being able to trade everything stocks, commodities, crypto, pre-IPO, prediction markets, and beyond all from a single account.
PerpDEX are evolving.
The boundary between Web2 and Web3 is fading.
The perpDEX 2.0 boom is coming
perpDEX 1.0 (pure perp)
- @HyperliquidX
- @Aster_DEX
- @Lighter_xyz
- @edgeX_exchange
perpDEX 1.5 (integration with TradFi)
- @VestExchange
- @ostium
perpDEX 2.0
(integration with TradFi + aggregation - CEX, perpDEX )
* @klyra
* @liquidtrading
Lets be honest, all of this DEX like @Hyperliquid, @Aster_DEX etc are just centralized networks running on a single server, validator, sequencer, controlled by a single entity, with a single dev team that could push updates that ignores the validations and do whatever they want.
'the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD' โ Job 1:21
yesterday's liquidation event is the most brutal i've witnessed in my time in crypto
i got wiped out on ALL my perps positions
literally everything
eight figures: $30 million+ at peak uPnL if realized, or well above $15 million just before the liquidation started
100% of the following perps position got wiped:
- $BONK
- $FARTCOIN
- $POPCAT
- $PNUT
- $CAT
- $APEX
- etc
i lost maybe 80% of my $ASTER position that i used as a collateral on a DeFi lending protocol
i took out the remaining (~$1 million), fully liquidated it and rotated it into $BONK and $4 because i think i get better R/R from both from here on out:
- BONK because i refuse to be a 'bonk guy' without BONK exposure, and i remain convinced in my deca-billion-dollar target for it. i will continue to add more over time, God willing
- $4 because i remain strongly convinced that BNB season continues until the end of this quarter and i think $4 is the most asymmetrical bet to capitalize on that
thankfully the overwhelming majority of my $USELESS coin position is held in spot, so i didn't record significant loss on that โ maybe with the exception of mid six figures worth of uPnL i had in perps accounts
i am still resolutely convinced that $USELESS is THE memecoin to watch for outperformance from here on out, that it is a multi-billion-dollar narrative currently trading for pennies on the dollar, and that it will end the cycle being a top 5 memecoin at the barest minimum i.e. certainly has a lot more than 10x upside from here. so iโm glad contagion there was contained for me!
what happened yesterday?
everyone blames the recent Trump-China tariffs, but this isn't the first time we've had that this year
and the Trump tariff comments certainly shouldn't have been responsible for such a massive nukage across almost the entirety of altcoins and memecoins in the space
a lot of altcoins crashed 70 to 99% in minutes, when $BTC and $ETH barely crashed 13%
$ATOM, for example, crashed from $4 to $0.001 on top exchanges like Binance โ a 99.9% crash in minutes. no one could have humanly responded to that!
it is also worth noting that this massive altcoin/memecoin crash was EXCLUSIVELY on CEXs. these altcoins did not come close to hitting these levels on spot DEXs, so yesterday's liquidation was almost certainly due to MM/CEX liquidity issues
why it was unprecedented (market mechanics)
many people reported being massively affected, especially since exchange systems broke across the board: stop losses failed, orders didnโt fill, margin couldnโt be added, and platforms became unusable within minutes. the entire liquidation cascade happened so fast that almost no one had time to react, something i donโt think weโve ever seen at this scale before
i was in front of my screen, took a short break, came back to the screen to see the nasty wick about 10 minutes later, then realized i've been liquidated on EVERYTHING i had in perps
it is the craziest crypto event i have witnessed, ever!
it was worse than COVID, which was a black swan event
you could say whatever you want about this event: you can call it manipulation, unnatural, or whatever else
you would be right tbh
however, whether or not manipulation played a role doesnโt change what i have to do next: as a trader, i am only ultimately concerned about things i can actually control
of course it's easier to point out how it all wasn't my fault and how someone else was responsible, but how does that help me grow as a trader? i win if i make money trading, i lose if i lose money trading. end of!
i'm sure we will be hearing more about exactly what happened yesterday night, which will hopefully help give some people closure
i wish i didn't have to write about this:
this will likely be one of the most viral tweets coming out of this event
many have waited for this moment: 'he is so greedy!'
and there will be an army of people mocking me with 'I TOLD YOU SOs'
but write i must, for a few reasons:
1. a key part of the 'bonk guy' persona and identity i have built is one of utmost transparency around my trades, so others can learn
2. while i lost a fortune in the liquidity wipe event, i have a very diversified basket of alts across perps and spot. i'll be fine; my spot assets are safe. but i think there are people who lost literally everything they have right now that might be having very bad and nasty thoughts, and them seeing a voice like mine at this time just might give them hope
i want to be very clear:
1. i do not need your empathy. i appreciate that some would have the thought, but i do not need people messaging me to empathize with me over this
2. i do not need donations or financial support. it was a massive loss, but i'm okay
i also want to emphasize that i'm in a very good mental state right now, as difficult as that might be for many to believe
i've always been very detached from money and material things, and that makes it easy to cope with situations like this
at the end of the day, my $BONK trade was a trade in which i went from $16k to a peak 8-figure PNL
contrary to what seems to be the most common belief here, it isn't my most impressive trade. if i made it before, i can make it once again!
could i have foreseen exchange systems crashing and nuking the most liquid altcoins and memecoins in the market 70 - 90% in mere minutes before anyone could react? no!
could i have maybe done a few things differently leading up to this event? maybe
however, i am a big believer in focusing on what *could* happen and taking action to get there instead of focusing on what *has* happened
the past is the past, and what has happened has happened
there are a lot of changes iโll be making to my systems as a result of this: less dependence on leverage, sharper risk management, and a stronger focus on protecting my positions from exchange-side risks going forward
all that matters is what happens from here on out...
i remain very optimistic about the market
i do not believe the bull run is over, nor do i think the Q4 rally is out of the picture
so what do i do from here?
lock in more than ever before, be buried deeper in the trenches, and most importantly have fun while i do it!
if there is one thing i have learned after being in this industry for multiple cycles, it is that there is always new opportunities: every day, every week, every month
i have always been one to love a challenge, and i guess this is another one for me and an opportunity to once again prove myself โ not to internet strangers, but to myself
this event has not dampened my spirit, not in the slightest. if anything, it has strengthened my resolve to get back in the ring, fight, and win bigger
i will make it all back, and more!
for those who are in a similar situation, who either lost a fortune or lost it all, i have some words for you:
PERSIST
SURVIVE
DON'T GIVE UP
if you need to take a break, please do
if you're struggling to hold it in, please seek help
above all, pay special attention to yourself and focus on your health
i know it will take a while for the gravity of what happened to hit many, but a philosophy that has always helped me to survive massive drawdowns is internalizing all of these crypto gains as just numbers on the screen โ until it is realized at least!
i know they can have very real consequences in the real world if/when cashed out, but right now i think internalizing it as just numbers on the screen would make dealing with the loss more bearable
you made it before, so yes YOU can make it again
the most profitable period of the cycle is still well ahead of us
we are all going to make it
and you are going to have me along on this journey with you, if that matters to you!
if thereโs one thing this taught me, itโs that no matter how prepared you think you are, youโre never fully protected from systemic shocks โ but you can always control your response. iโll be rebuilding my framework with that truth in mind!
i am once again an underdog, and this is not the end of my story
GOD WILLING