Serious question, are there any nuanced, reasonable bear takes these days outside of gov bans it. To me that's the biggest threat by a large margin. I'm always happy to stay on top of stuff even if it runs counter to my personal opinion. Every g damn bear take is the same drivel, its fake money, anyone can create one, energy usage, there's nothing back it etc. Who are the best bears that could raise valid concerns?

Goddamn Sled, that's one hell of an inspiring post above. Do you have any recommended resources for a relative noob? I'm so late to the game that I feel I'm gonna miss the boat. Specifically, but not limited to, how to set up the Yearn and Nexus deal (I'd LOVE be able to get 23% on my savings "risk free", it would be life changing) and also how to educate myself where I could spot defi opportunities in such a convoluted market

+1

If you have any defi resources for effectively tracking early stage projects that’d be great too

"no valid concerns"
"22 yr olds are retiring to Portugal"

primo thought

Margin lending is not risk free. You risk the stable coin collapsing in price. You also take risk in that the platform you are lending on is secure. I’ve been making money doing this, but I’m not kidding myself into thinking it is risk free. I believe the risk is probably lower than what it is perceived to be by most however. The returns wouldn’t be as high as they are with no risk.

Most of the population probably doesn’t know about margin lending. The people trading on margin are likely the sucker end of the bet. Margin lenders are the ones who are collecting the money.

Honestly, the best thing a noob can do is get on twitter, follow the people that spend every day looking for the next 100x and figure out which guys have a knack for it, are intelligent, understand coding etc. I can name a few. Do your own diligence as soon as you hear about a new project, check if the team is legit, check the use case, is it a crowded market they're addressing, is it an original and useful idea etc, then if it clicks for you buy it asap. You're looking for sub 10m-20m caps before they hit 100m-1b cap. You usually sell on the way up but if you super love a project and are absolutely convinced its going to multi B cap you sell small pieces and hold. Very few coins meet that criteria for me. I'm more than happy to sell at a 5x and miss the potential 50x because the 50x takes much longer and you risk a protocol hack or dev rug pull or another coin takes the spotlight etc. You better have a bona fide gem to hold past 10x. My humble opinion of course.

Me personally I have maybe 6-10 coins that are long term holds, the usual suspects eth, link, aave, snx etc. I use those to farm and earn passive income, currently all combined probably in the neighborhood of 50% apy on those with yield farming, which doesn't include the appreciation of the asset that I'm farming. Started farming in November earning 50% apy in a coin that was 1 dollar, now that coin is 20 bucks, so my 50% apy is much much higher over time. Of course I picked the right coin, you won't always, but it wasn't difficult. This is where the due diligence and ear to the ground comes in.

If you want a more direct approach, comb through discord groups, ask questions, make connections with people that know the next coin before it hits the general crypto consciousness. This will require some skills, time, more technical knowledge etc. The first option is easier and doesn't require any cs/coding background. I don't have any.

You're not late to the game, it may feel like it but crypto is today where the internet was in probably the early 2000s if I had to guess. The infrastructure has been quietly building for the past 3-4 years during a bear market. Once the plumbing and wiring is ready there are no barriers to mass adoption like there has been the past few years. It's coming. You missed the first huge bubble sure, and a decent chunk of this one too if you're just entering today, but there are more on the horizon. When a new technology comes along that replaces the old, we never go back to the old way of doing things. Crypto is here to stay. The use cases 10 years from now aren't even conceptualized yet. When the pets.com bubble burst, did we envision 3d clickable movable google maps with images beamed in real time with satellies and 20 person zoom calls with emojis, deep fakes etc? Let that sink in, then determine how early you are.

Just for example, if eth2 ships within 2 years, everything that is planned follows through relatively smoothly, eip 1559 in July, sharding next year, user base expands to tens or hundreds of millions of people, the market cap will easily be in the multiple trillions. Easily. Its at 200b today with 40 dollar gas fees for a simple uni trade. Thats being eliminated as we speak with matic, xdai, optimistic rollups. Those are live now. The protocols on eth that win long term that are worth 1-5b today will be a couple hundred b. Facebook is what, 1t cap? Bank of America market cap is over 300b, why can't decentralized protocols that can automate the inefficient parts of the bank and cut costs, get you a home loan in 5 minutes, earn 10% on your savings account, you never spend hours on the phone directing a wire transfer, submitting documents, why isn't that worth hundreds of billions of dollars in that future? Quick answer, it will be.

Or dot, or ADA, whichever layer 1 wins. Heavy favorite is eth as of today.

For you specifically, you could open a celsius account, get I think 10% apy right now with very little technical know how and no stress, no management. They're probably the best in the business for cefi, funds are insured I think, top quality cold storage custodian used. Using defi, yearn specifically, if you wanted insurance you'd have to navigate nexus mutual, which I think has restrictions on certain countries. I've never used it, I read the other day that around 2% of all money in defi is insured by the individual. Most people don't care. When hacks happen the money is usually repaid from treasury funds or is caught in time where the damage is minimal. In the case of yearn, they are the best of the best in terms of dev talent, market presence, etc. They're some of the brightest minds in crypto, without hyperbole. They've had hiccups sure, but I feel very confident in using their products. If you feel better with the insurance, check out nexus or bridge mutual, don't know if its live yet. Nsure is another. If you want a quick how to get on yearn let me know. Will require a little bit of technical ability, not much. I'd recommend you have at least 5k, probably more, gas costs are still high right now.

Well then savings accounts at the bank aren't risk free then either. You run the risk of the currency devaluing, inflation after massive printing. Actually not the risk, the reality. CPI is a joke, real inflation is much higher and isn't a "risk" its happening year on year. But I know what you mean about risks on platforms. The risk of usdc losing its peg is super low.

Noticing similarities between things in life is useful but not if you apply your conclusion to them incorrectly.

Tooth has that butter boy ego. He only came back to this thread because I called him out in another. His counterpoints seem to rely on similarities of past events and think that is a lock for the future. Enough of a lock that butter ego seems to chime in the same thing over and over. That or he has no other supporting points.

Bullish.

Inflation is pretty complicated because we all have different inflation from each other’s .

Yes food goes up but with a smart phone your cost of camera ,news paper , books , no phone line at home , even maybe Tv , mail , etc goes down since it cost you almost 0 for all of this .

So it goes up a bit in some places like gaz and food but goes way down for technology and all the benefit from it .

Yes, I would agree. Savings accounts at a bank are not risk free. In reality, nothing is risk free. However, I believe that a savings account would be considered more safe than margin lending. Margin lending just has such great returns though that I think it is too good to pass up.

Yeah, lifestyle inflation is what mostly matters. For me personally, I have an excel spreadsheet for life expenses. I have noticed that the price of Little Caesar's pizza has increased from $6.35 to something a bit higher recently. I forgot what it is. I remember when it used to be $5.00 many years ago. So far things have remained mostly the same in comparison to last year. My internet provider just jumped to $80 from $65, so I'll have to talk them back down or switch to AT&T. I've even considered cancelling internet all together and just using data from my phone.

Energy and other essential commodities prices affect everything though.

We can still try to make up the difference by exploiting poor people who live far away though.

Is bitcoin "only" viewed as a better gold or still considered to be a currency for payment transactions?

To me it feels like there is pretty much only talk about Bitcoin as a better gold, lots of DeFi and NFT talk, but not much regarding instant and cheap payment transactions. Probably I am missing something, but kinda surprised where it is heading as of now.

Some products can beat inflation because of innovation. That's irrelevant to the argument though.

Fact is, these things would be cheaper as well without inflation. So inflation reduces your living standards no matter how you look at it. Unless you held/hold Bitcoin of course, then you massively benefit with every passing day fiat still exists.

What confuses me as a dummy is we have people holding because they expect massive inflation and then you have someone like Jeff Booth holding because he expects massive deflation. How do those two things square?

Some say bitcoin is anti-fragile

Where are you lending, what are you getting?

Hi,
I'm new to crypto and wanted to ask, if possible could you provide more info on some of the following?

I'm sure some smart people familiar with the space could have a better than chance accuracy at predicting pumps and all that but, are there and other ways to improve the signal to noise ratio besides lurking various discord groups, and trying not to get scammed? Asking because I'm not even sure I can trust my own judgement of the crypto world.. eg. Back in the day bitconnect almost got me for 10K, but 1%/day seemed too Ponzi for me so I folded pre, but was still disappointed by how gullible I was.

Even though it was a learning experience, in the crypto world where legitimate 20% lending/staking returns are potentially not unheard of, it's hard (at least for myself) to figure out what is and is not an obvious scam.


What I don't understand about those situations is where does the return of 23% come from? How can these projects afford to give that away? Maybe I'm way too naïve and pessimistic but I have no idea why giving away a 20%+ return would be sustainable even in the short term.

Why don't the people directly involved with such projects just take huge loans out from banks themselves and keep the 20%+ for themselves?

The strange part is that I've heard about this from people that I don't consider complete scammers so I'm puzzled by the whole staking/lending arrangement for high returns.

Thanks

Sled,
Thanks a lot for such detailed info, I'll definitely get started on all of this. Are there any Telegrams or Discords you recommended that aren't necessarily affiliated with one particular project, just general knowledge or a place to help get started in the right direction (kind of like this thread)?

Could you make a list of risks and how you're able to eliminate them?

+1

Brock, I used to get on telegram more and still do to find details about specific projects but find that Twitter is easier and much smarter and all funneled into one place. It's literally as simple as following a dozen or so gem hunters, wait for calls, do your own research and buy it if you think it's legit. People tip off presales on twitter, if you can even get in them, its tougher these days. I've picked up 5 coins in the last week just doing this. Went through a wave starting to buy in Nov, sold a bunch off in Feb, now starting a new cycle.

You can pick up so much market psychology, trading tips, FA tips and how to identify good coins, etc all on twitter. There are lots of helpful insightful people there.

xyzzz, If you almost got got by bitconnect then yeah, I'd say maybe take a few laps first and get warmed up before jumping in. I was a noob in 2017 and I knew it was an obvious scam. For someone like you, I'd recommend picking 3-4 coins and going 25% in each. I always rec btc, eth, link, and if you want to go wild pick something down the list with the other. Get your feet wet, read about how yield farming works, GET. ON. TWITTER. and just absorb as much free content as possible. Youtubers mostly suck compared to twitter. It's just dumber, more gimmicky, more scammy. Twitter is filled with alpha, just got to know where to look. The longer you expose yourself to this market, the easier it will be for you to separate the brilliant from the braindead. Assuming you're not also braindead.

By the way, 20% yield is pedestrian if you're deep in the defi weeds. Sounds crazy I know, and it probably won't last forever, but its here now and the space is growing month over month, I don't expect it to hit the wall for quite a while. No one knows what yield farming is yet.

They're not "giving it away", they're charging interest on loans that is higher than the % paid to stakers. Same as a bank. How can a bank afford to pay you say 2%? Because they're using your money behind the scenes to make 10%. Same concept. Apys are super high now because crpyto is nascent, new protocols are formed daily, lots of incentive to get people to use their protocol, so they offer high apys to bootstrap liquidity and a presence in the market. These will come down as the space matures and most protocols die off. Even at that point though I expect apys to be significantly better than traditional banks are today.

Cborders, counterparty risk, sc bug risk, gov ban risk, lose your seed phrase risk. The solution. Don't enter crypto, stick your money in tech stocks and pray that bubble keeps inflating. Probably will for a while.

Very low risk, stick your usdc in Celsius or Nexo, earn 10ish% with an audited, regulated company that's insured and mostly held in top of the line cold storage. That's about as low risk as you're going to get without having to take custody yourself and know what you're doing. Want to increase your risk a few points, you can increase your return. How much tolerance and savvy do you have?

Awesome info once again Sled. I'm gonna reread all your recent posts about ten times and get to work!

Go for it dog. This **** is really cool once you start to really grasp what's being built here, and the implications it has on banks and tech monopolies. And the returns are bad either.

great posts, sled