I have once again completed another personal milestone!
It is a cringe milestone, but a milestone nonetheless. It's not very often that I complete an entire 13-week powerdown cycle without canceling it. In fact, if this post is to be trusted, I've only done it once before in August 2021. That post is exponentially more cringe than this one ever could be.
To provide a frame of reference for such cringe:
LEO was trading at 27 cents and CUB at 66 cents, and I had the audacity to make the claim that both were oversold and a good buy. I really need to stop doing that, as there is very little to gain and quite a bit more to lose by making such statements.
Even more cringe than all that was the chatter about Cakepop and potentially other IDOs getting launched off the CUB platform. Luckily I'm on record as officially advising everyone on Hive to NOT participate, of course at the last second I didn't take my own advice and aped some CUB into it, which as I recall was immediately rug-pulled by a liquidity pool that should have never existed in the first place.
Quietly moving on:
2021 wasn't that long ago, but my entire mindset has shifted quite a bit since then. I would never even consider participating in some kind of fad meme token these days. I wouldn't even bother to research it, and I would advise others to not waste their time either.
Time is the ultimate resource.
I have considered participating in crypto's next round of FOMO-fueled casino mega-gambling, but even if so I will approach it with a completely different strategy.
I 100% guarantee you there is no point in researching the underlying tokenomics of any new asset that gets launched in 2024. That is normally what I would do, as I like to know exactly what I'm getting into and I enjoy figuring out all the game-theory and such, but at the end of the day none of that matters.
Every new token that launches is going to shill you some majestic story about how it's going to create a sustainable ecosystem with long term staying power. How many of them actually do? I'd say 1% is extremely generous. Given this inevitability, is it really worth it to heavily research 100 new networks on the off-chance you'll be able to identify potentially a single good one?
Of course not:
It's a far better strategy to just gamble your ass off in the casino (if that's your thing), cash out quickly, and then wait for the bear market to flush 99% of everything down the shitter. Then once everything has been flushed (literally now) you take the money you set aside (I didn't) and buy into the real networks that have proven themselves in the field rather than in theory.
So which networks have proven themselves?
Not many, if any. You know I'd make a pitch for MAKER if they had spent this time further decentralizing their asset, but all they did was get more centralized by allowing ridiculous mechanics like the ability to collateralize DAI with USDC. I don't know a lot about Rune or ThorChain but they seem like a solid choice.
That being said, neither MAKER or RUNE even launched in 2020 (the year of the new narrative FOMO and extreme DEFI casino gambling). I don't think I can name a single asset that launched in 2020 that has staying power. Like I've said before: I'm over it. Bitcoin and Hive only from here on out honestly. I doubt I'll be shilling anything else for quite some time.
Also imagine if the new narrative of the next casino rampage happens to be decentralized social media. It would be pretty hard to justify participating in that given Hive's intimate association with deso. Then again if the goal is to jump in and out of a project within the matter of days or weeks it might not matter much. Still it would be a bit cringe to sell Hive into some shiny new thing that's essentially guaranteed to implode after running out of bull market momentum. I guess it depends on how successful the gamble is and if said account has more or less Hive after the dust settles.
The lines are closer now than they ever have been.
BigCorn
Here's a fun little analysis I saw on Twitter today. It's pretty wild to see Bitcoin never even come close to dipping lower than it's 4-year-old spot price on the logarithmic scale. Unfortunately we can very clearly see from this chart that history is not on our side in terms of entering a bull market quadrant (octant?) .
I must admit I was pretty disappointed with this cycle's version of a "summer bull run". In 2019 we went from like $4k to $13k and then bled down back to the doubling curve. This time we've gone from $16k to $32k and the exponential doubling trendline towers above the spot price at $86k. So either Bitcoin is comically oversold due to piss-poor legacy economics/recession or the doubling trendline simply isn't a thing anymore.
Personally I still believe that the trendline is still highly significant, even if it currently represents the peak of the next bull market. For frame of reference this would result in a spot price of around $400k at the end of 2025. I have to expect Bitcoin will at least kiss the curve one last time before I retire it. Too bad I'll have to wait another two years to know for sure.
Because the summer run was so disappointing I've convinced myself that we can still get a "real" run at the end of the year... even though this runs contrary to history. I must admit it could just as easily go the opposite way, with the end of year resulting in a very nerve-wracking bottom-out. It's all a question of what's stronger: legacy macro economics or the 4-year cycle? Is the exponential curve still in play or is it simply a greedy and completely unsustainable target?
Comments are also being made about the DXY today. This is the value of the dollar vs a basket of other fiat currencies. A strong dollar is bad for markets as those markets tend to bleed out against a strong unit of account. This is especially true considering the economic environment that creates a strong dollar: rising interest rates and constant deflationary pressure across all sectors. After all, inflation isn't going to deflate itself, amirite?
Wasn't this post supposed to be about powerdowns?
Ah yes well my strategy for many months now has been to stay above a voting power of 225k. We can see that I've slightly surpassed this goal and currently have a 4k HP buffer. Perhaps now would be a good time to bump up my defense line to 230k.
Would it have been nice if I had just been a responsible adult and cashed out $30k during the bull market to pay for all my bear market living expenses? Sure would! Unfortunately I do not have a time machine so better luck next round. Then again I'm pretty scrappy and have been living well under the poverty line for my entire adult life. Perhaps I will finally learn my lesson and position myself with lower risk next time around the block.
The powerdown
I've unlocked 7k hive over the last 13 weeks, and my HP seems to have gone slightly up during that time. I consider it a privilege to have gambled so poorly on the markets yet still be in such a seemingly good position. I suppose constantly penny pinching has its advantages.
I'm sitting on $4k HBD and the plan has been to push that into Hive and BTC once Rektember is finally over and done with. Unfortunately now with backdoor access to Binance being cut off via Mandala there aren't a lot of places left with any kind of liquidity.
USA doesn't have access to the top five markets by volume. I haven't logged in to MEXC in over a year so that might be an option, but also the spread is half a percent... which means the gap between buyers and sellers is higher than the trading fee; a very bad sign. The 2% depth is abysmal as well, with a 2% slip only requiring a couple thousand dollars of sell pressure. WOOF!
Hell I might start using @brianoflondon's HIVE/LIGHTNING bridge just out of spite at this point. Assuming I can even figure out a way to turn Lightning BTC into actual BTC on Coinbase. In any case it's pretty clear that decentralized liquidity pools that can't be delisted or regulated away are moving up the list of priorities at alarmingly exponential speeds. Wen SPK SIP?
Conclusion
Being a distressed seller during the bear market is not fun! 100% of my income comes from Hive, and this has been the case since I moved to PA in September 2021... right before Hive peaked at $3+ during Thanksgiving. Ah those were the days!
Luckily I can still very comfortably pay my rent and food bills and still have a bit leftover given my current situation, and I'm pretty grateful for that... even if selling any amount of Hive at this juncture is cringe beyond measure. I have many times found ways to avoid such cringe (like selling other assets) but not always. Let it be known that even if my wallet looks like it contains a healthy amount I very much consider myself on financial life-support. Perhaps I always will; maybe that's just how I operate.
At the moment I'm still tentatively bullish into the end of the year, and I expect mid to late November to provide a solid signal as to where the market is going, as is often the case. I'm once again loading up my credit card with debt instead of selling crypto; longing the market by proxy as it were. I'll be forced to pay that down come November no matter which way the wind blows. Wish me luck.