Chose Rich

Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.

GM everyone. What a wild few weeks it has been. Hopefully you’ve been able to get some sleep. I’m not going to lie, this feels pretty good. After relentlessly bull posting for the last year and a half, we’re now in price discovery. Simply surviving and staying alive in crypto really is all you have to do, all of the bear market grinding has seemed to pay off extremely quickly. Funny how things work.

We’re at the point in the bull market where things have shifted from PVP (Player vs Player) to PVE (player vs Environment). Everyday there is a new story about somebody turning 4 figures into 6 figures off of a new memecoin and I could care less because there will be 10 more opportunities like that tomorrow. Bitcoin is above 70K, ETH looks like it wants ATHs, and CNBC is 50% shilling boomers on the ETF and the other 50% coping about volatility. Me – I’m focused with 20 tabs open, too much caffeine, and still quite cozy.

3 weeks ago, I kicked this off by saying the following:

While I joke that writing has become -EV for me at this point, taking away hours of grinding, I’ll use this opportunity to talk to myself and spew bullish propaganda. I think we are somewhere in between inning 4 and 5 of the bull market or 45-55% complete. The last 6 months or so have been quite fun, but things are about to get silly.

Not only have things gotten silly, they have gotten silly much quicker and more intense than even I imagined. In these moments, I feel frantic as there’s so much going on. Even now, writing this newsletter I could be missing an opportunity to snipe the next 100x solana memecoin on Photon. A much different feeling than bear market newsletters, being relaxed and doing deep research on teams behind NFT projects, finding diamonds in the rough, and trying to stay bullish despite consistent down-only. Now, since we’ve survived, “we are all geniuses” season has begun.

I don’t have any evidence for this but there still seems to be this vibe that many people are sidelined. We’ve run up much quicker from the bottom than most expected (yes, including myself) and haven’t really followed the 4 year cycle. The ETFs have basically been a gold swan, and we haven’t had more than a 20% dip yet this entire run up. With an infinite Tradfi bid and a wave of FOMO, things keep moving higher. Keep in mind, we haven’t even had the whirlwind of airdrops that will be coming our way in q2.

Anyways, I’m not here to tell you how to play your cards in a bull market, catch the next 100x memecoin, or really anything of importance. I’ve been screaming about internet coins and pictures on the blockchain for almost 3 years and you all are still here reading and sending me nice dms, which I really appreciate.

NFTs

NFTs remind me of the mini bear market we had in October 2021 - November 2021. This was when ETH had a monster rally to $4800, gas was $500 a swap, and NFTs got crushed along with volume. Watching this play out has given me some clarity and I feel like I’m dumb for not thinking things will play out in a similar manner. NFTs are late market cycle. While NFTs were actually the best place to trade in the early stages of the bull, we do forget what a true mania felt like. Peplicators gave us a sense of what that feels like this week.

Watching an OE mint out with a .06 floor and rip to ~.35 a few hours later is always fun. Especially in the face of BAYC bids going sub 15e.

Back to the late market cycle point. It usually goes something like BTC > ETH > Alts > NFTS. History doesn’t repeat but it often rhymes, and trading jpegs makes a lot more sense when you realize everyone doing it has already gotten rich.

Now, this cycle will be quite different. NFTs are much more established, and many will catch narratives. Pudgy penguins act as an airdrop farm, Captainz/Creepz act as token farms, and many other NFTs are tied to future airdrops or tokens. The entire bear market we talked about how web3 gaming was going to be the next meta. I think we talked about it so much we forgot that it actually has played out quite well, with other projects liike block games and pixelmon being some of the few NFT projects that are catching a bid.

On the other hand, Solana NFTs have been getting absolutely crushed. Outside of Madlads, I don’t think a single project has done well month-over-month. While it’s been an absolute grind, with a lot of disappointment so far, I am still extremely bullish on Tensor and the upcoming airdrop. Blur essentially saved NFT volume in the bear. Tensor, is going to re-ignite the entire Solana NFT ecosystem in my opinion.

For now, I’m less focused on “trading” NFTs as they’re not the meta. And that’s ok. I have my long-term bets placed. I am still keeping an eye out for projects like SOMO, INK on BTC, and some gamefi stuff. Eventually, last cycles NFT mania will make this one look like child’s play. Nodemonkes went from .15 to .9 BTC before the retrace to .5 in a 3 week period. $60,000 for a digital monke on the OG blockchain and trading volume was insane for days. At some point, we’ll have 5-10 collections at a time going through this type of vertical accumulation.

On the next NFT mania:
For me, when people are minting something bc they genuinely believe it's going to be the "next" something that’s when you want to take note. Some of these projects will in fact be the “next” big project. Eventually, this will become a theme, and late cycle we’ll see projects minting for high prices like 1e+ (Remember Ragnorok, PXN, Valhalla, etc.). People will look not to mint and flip, but will mint with the idea to sweep the floor immediately at multiple ETH opening price because they think it will be the next blue chip.

Nodemonkes were a good example of this as the narrative is that they are the punks of BTC. I’m actually super bullish Nodes, but my note is that this will be the sentiment for multiple new projects at a time during an NFT mania. We’re not there yet, but always good to keep in the back of your head.

There’s probably 100 other things I can cover, and do a deep dive on. But frankly, there’s no time for that when a world of opportunity awaits. I’ll go back to writing essays about finding diamonds in the rough and making contrarian takes whenever the next bear market is. For now, we can all ride the wave of Larry Fink bidding our bags and enjoying the show.

Hope you all have another amazing week.

Cheers everyone,
Wilson