Some thoughts on Crypto, Web3 and NFTs. We’re still early, until we’re late.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin closed the worst month ever with -40%. If your time horizon is more than 4 years this doesn’t really matter. I’ll continue stacking BTC, ETH and 2-3 select altcoins.
PlanB was wrong, a bunch of others too, shit happens. I have to say though that I really bought into the vision of Bitcoin reaching $100k, oh well. The chart still looks okay-ish, even though the dip is much more aggressive than previously. See first point about time horizon.
Everybody is talking about 4 year cycles again but … nobody really knows. The more people think BTC follows a very defined pattern (200 Week MA, 4yrs halving, rainbow charts, etc.), the less I believe in it. What I still think is true though, is that BTC’s price should theoretically appreciate due to the limited supply after each halving.
Ethereum, EVMs, L2s
Ethereum is still the king and will remain so for a long(er) time. I think the bear market will actually help both ETH and BTC sucking out liquidity from other chains
Using L2s (Layer 2) still sucks and MetaMask doesn’t help with creating great UX. If only, popular L2 networks would be available to select by default. Bridging is a pain, liquidity is low, tracking where the coins are is hard. Phantom (Solana Wallet) on the other hand does a great job with UX and UI.
Chains with a multi-chain approach like Avalanche (AVAX) and Polkadot (DOT) make it even more complicated. I call myself quite crypto-savvy and using all these X-, Y-, Z-Chains on AVAX was painful. Do you rather take a nonstop flight somewhere or like stop-overs (L1 > L2)
Solana is one of the few non EVM chains that do a great job in terms of UX and tooling. The uptime, for now, not so much.
EVM chains with minimal novelty, or that only use a different consensus mechanism which most of the time it is, will have a hard time once ecosystem funds dry up. Then Ethereum’s L2s like Arbitrum, Optimism, etc. will swallow a bunch of their revenue
DeFi, NFTs, Fugazis
A lot of DeFi Fugazis will vanish, at latest when VC funds dry up and there isn’t enough user adoption. Generating magic internet money was fun while it latest.
MakerDAO, the OG of DeFi, remains the protocol with highest TVL
The crypto carnage was driven by centralized lenders with weak risk controls and minimal collateral requirements. Defi lending protocols operated as designed, and just notched another proof point through a catastrophic risk contagion.
Garry Tan on a great article ”Number Three” by Arthur Hayes
Stablecoins are a shitshow, don’t get me started on algorithmic stable coins. NEAR’s originally designed algo-stable USN is launching a version 2.0 that relays on USDT for some time which says it all.
NFTs have dumped like crazy in price. Usage on Solana and ImmutableX is still going up, which is a good sign. Interestingly, Solana does nearly double the volume of transactions with a little more than half of the buyers. Assets on Ethereum still has the highest valued assets
Too many shitty NFT derivatives like The Great “Dildo on the nose” Goats, Yeah Tigers and more. The cleansing process has started.
NFTs that provided you with utility through staking to receive tokens, are having a hard time. Their token price and usage has gone down dramatically. So much that if you still hold some, the only option now is to hodl.
We’re still early, until we’re late.