I remember buying the GMX ICO back in 2021.
After watching Uniswap change everything, it was obvious to me that perp DEXs were the next frontier.
I nailed the trade early and was an enthusiastic community member from day one.
GMX had everything you’d dream of at the time:
– zero VCs
– composability
– a real solution to the liquidity cold-start with GLP
– some of the earliest real DeFi fees
– ETH fee-share to token holders
– and a hardcore community that carried the project on its back
I also remember how painful it was to round-trip one of my largest positions during that period.
This was despite having what I considered a 'perfect' scorecard.
The lesson I took from GMX is simple and brutal:
'growth over everything else'.
GMX stopped growing.
And when growth stops, nothing else saves you
Not being VC-free
Not having a loyal community
Not elegant tokenomics
Not clever mechanism design
Not even decentralization
Contrast that with Binance.
It kept growing relentlessly. Users, liquidity, volume all increased and BNB kept climbing.
The divergence becomes obvious here:
(BNB vs GMX chart)
And the lesson hit even harder because one of my closest friends took the exact opposite bet in 2021.
I went all-in on the idealistic path: pure DeFi, pure principles.
He went all-in on BNB: pure realism, pure growth.
His portfolio multiplied several times.
Mine melted.
It was a rude awakening and a lesson I remind myself of every single day as an investor :
Growth over everything.
Nothing else matters.
Updated Market Thesis
I’m adjusting my market thesis.
Let’s start with the big one: the old patterns are dead.
The 4-year cycle, the Q4 pump, the tidy halving-to-parabola arc…they’ve all dissolved into a messy hybrid of trap dynamics mixed with just enough lingering belief to occasionally become self-fulfilling. The market isn’t repeating history; it’s weaponizing the memory of history.
I’ll break down why the 4-year cycle is fully cooked in a separate post, but here’s what pushed me to update my views right now:
Yesterday I watched the battlefield unfold in real time. And “battlefield” isn’t hyperbole. This was not panic, not capitulation, not human emotion. This was deliberate.
Price was walked down with surgical precision over several hours - not panic-sold - walked.
Sell walls advanced like infantry.
Buy walls retreated like a forced withdrawal.
Each inch gained by bulls was immediately met with a repositioned wall just above it.
This wasn’t indecision. It was orchestration.
When I zoom out to macro, the picture gets even clearer.
Markets have had no choice but to reprice around a cluster of U.S.-centric catalysts:
Rising confidence in no December rate cut
The pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling around Trump tariffs
A data-light period in the United States economy
A government shutdown “extension,” not a resolution
And there are more I’m not listing - you can feel them in the air even if you don’t itemize them.
The reason is obvious:
The United States is the gravitational center of global markets.
I don’t love that reality, but we can't ignore it either.
Equities told the same story yesterday: steady bleed, increasing stress, VIX spiking over 20% intraday. Fear is rising.
So where does that leave us?
Right now I believe we are in:
A scalper’s market: modest leverage, tight stops, fast exits.
A spot-accumulation window: slow and boring, but good entries appear for patient hands.
A disciplined sideline environment: when conviction is low, positioning must be low. No signal? No trade.
Markets like this are designed to exhaust everyone.
They drain energy. They drain confidence. They drain attention.
Until only two types of players remain:
The Apex Predators, and the fresh prey.
My conclusion:
This phase isn’t the end of anything - it’s the reset before the real trend forms.
🫡 From the depths —
The White Whale 🐋
Je viens de la contacter. Elle n'est pas prête pour la commande qui va arriver !
J'ai décidé en effet de fleurir ma maison.
Et chez moi, c'est grand.
Soutien total aux artisans !
I'm calling it as I see it right now.
The crypto safety trade dominance ( $BTC.D + Stable coin dominance) seen through the lens of Equinox Valley has been in a bearish landscape since the Iran-Israel war liquidations back in June.
Yes, as of September 13th, it has been retracing back up causing alts to bleed again. But note that the underlying structure is still bearish. The Oct 10th liquidations saw a spike above the crust, but failed to close above.
However, it has still failed to break-down. The persistence of the sunshine (Bulllish OBV) indicated it wasn't ready to breakdown yet.
Though we have not yet gotten a cloud print (OBV breakdown), On-balance volume I believe has broken down and is currently in a downtrend. We could see the appearance of the clouds and grey skies as early as tomorrow.
With price being so close to the surface and early signs of an OBV breakdown, this favours a bullish week for Altcoins if this follows through.
So looking for a break down in this dominance and a bullish reversal for alts next week.
Invalidation would be for OBV to break out of this downtrend and for price to break out into the surface for safety trade dominance, that would be extremely bearish for alts.
We shall see.
The 4th Cycle Trap. For 3 cycles they programmed your behavior. They made you rich with altcoins, and poor with patience. Dominance drops → altseason → dopamine → repeat. But the 4th cycle is different. Now they weaponize that programming against you. Bitcoin dominance sits in extreme premium pricing, range high still fresh, range low untouched, Total3 already exhausted. It’s the same structure… but inverted intent. They show you the same movie so you don’t notice the new ending. Every influencer draws the same chart, “Dominance will drop → altseason will begin.” But this time, it won’t. Because the insiders learned the game too. Why let billions flow into random altcoins when you can launch new ones, seed insiders early, and drain the liquidity yourself? Most of what you see won’t survive. The next wipeout will be biblical, not a rotation, but a reset. So yes, we have levels. Yes, dominance is in premium. But no, we haven’t broken structure. We are range-bound, and the trap is set. When the herd screams “altseason,” Bitcoin will be the only one performing. Because in the end, it was never about the altcoins. It was always about Bitcoin. Trojan horse CBDC'S