This morning, I woke up and did what I usually do right after waking up .. a "WTF?" and an "ONLY IF?!" escaped my mouth, with my morning voice heavier than usual since my throat wasn't scraped yet .. still "What If?!" bounces through my head left to right, top to bottom, trying to escape, but it can't. By now, it is mostly like whispering but amplified at times, like when writing these previous few sentences.
image: by GROK based on my prompt .. in reality, I have grey, much longer hair 😆
The Beginning
Yesterday, through my meme network, I got a call for the Mario token. Early. Very very early. The call was made around 9 PM CET (Central European Time) an hour after launch, when the market cap (MC) was around 200k$. I was watching a movie, therefore I didn't see the notification on my phone immediately. Only after the movie finished (not a great movie, but still, made me smile from time to time). Must have been 20 minutes after the call.
"Super high risk!", the notification said, "It could go to 10M$ MC!"
No questions asked I jumped in at around 1M$ MC with 1 Solana (Sol). A retrace immediately after, to about 700k$ MC. "Damn, this always happens to me", I thought. Since I saw through DexScreener that this token was different to many other meme plays I've done in the past two months, I bought more in this dip for another 1 Sol. This time, it was a good decision. During the initial run-up to 9M$-ish, I did what everybody, with such early bird entries, is supposed to do: DCA out and leave some moon tokens in the wallet.
Real or Fake?
The token was not launched by Mario Nawfal; Nor his team. He was in an X space when it did its run-up to 9M$-ish. But anyway, his attention was grabbed by the launch team. He posted on X: "lmao what do I do with it? 😂" (source). This single X post pushed the token to 9M$. The run-up that I took advantage of. In my wallet after DCAing out, something like seven more Sol than before I embarked on this play. Nice solid gain! For just 2 hours with eyes on the chart, like a minute, or even second trader. Yes: In such cases, I have Dexscreener set on 1 second.
and then ..
Mario posted on X he received tokens and that he burned them .. his message (source):
"So out of nowhere I check my wallet and see 7m on there. No idea who created it, and the point of doing this, but cool experiment. burning it all"
The Mistake & Being Rationale
My last DCA out was at around 5M$ MC. The info from Nawfal burning the tokens, received me just after that, when the token was around 3M$ MC. Major news! Right? But it didn't effect the token downfall. I noticed a few hefty sell transactions. Full clipping. 20k$ to 40k$ transactions one after the other.
In the hind side, this must have been the team selling their remaining tokens directly after sending 70% of token supply to Mario. But this didn't click with me immediately since I saw all sorts of meme tricks still at play, such as bots active to increase holders, bots active to pump volume, and such. But because of this major news, I thought, let's get some tokens again, on a dip. So I decided to buy for 0.5 Sol at around 2M$ MC. Just after the buy, I noticed I made a big ass mistake. Instead of buying for 0.5 Sol, I bought for 5 Sol. Big amount for me in memeland. Too big.
The dip wasn't done yet. Went down and down and down. I told myself: "When it goes below 1M$ mark, I sell". So I did, for a loss, about 50% this time. But still, the whole play was in a nice profit overall. Not the 7 Sol, but still a 4-ish Sol.
Losing Interest
I continued to follow the chart, although now I wasn't chart staring anymore, watching some TV program on my laptop instead. On a smallish window, so I could kinda see the chart. But then again, I wasn't focused on it. For an hour, the chart kept its local floor at around 750k$ MC. In the process, I lost all interest. Simply, because the market didn't react to the 70% token burn by Nawfal, in any positive way possible. The falling knife, the team must have initiated, continued while the world was made aware of this action.
Fear over Rationale
An hour in at 750$ MC which turned into being the floor, the second run-up was initiated. At the time this was a pure gamble. Will the run-up be sustained? Or is it one of those relief run-ups initiated by big boys to push the token up for them to exit? Something one can see happening most of the time. Since I was sitting on a nice profit, the market allowed the token to fall to 750k$ MC knowing about Mario's attention and the burning of such an amount of tokens, I couldn't get myself to buy in again. The fear took over from my rationale. The last dip buying and the error I made which costed me a nice part of my initial profit, made me fear anything. I even decided to go to bed.
This Morning
Normally, I just open my portfolio app on my phone, the moment I wake up. A not so well maintained one. Perhaps half of my real portfolio in the CoinGecko app. Red overall, with some greens here and there. The usual lately 😆 Next up, usually preparing coffee. This time, first a quick walk (could also been classified as a slow run) to my laptop. "Mario. What did Mario do?" In seconds I heard myself saying out loud: "WTF! ONLY IF?!" .. the rest is history.
For fck sake: 5 Sol worth of buy at 1.5M$ MC. Mario MC at about 40M$ the moment I checked the chart this morning. This would've been around 135 Sol. The all-time high was a few hours before when I was in my deepest sleep possible, about 94M$ MC. My wallet would've seen about 315 Sol in it, 80k US Dollars 😱. Still 34k US Dollars the moment I saw Mario this morning.
The Possibility?! However, Not the Reality! 😱
Once in a Lifetime?
I am telling myself I just missed the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I fck-ed this up big time. At the same time I tell myself: "This shows the potential of meme plays." Mostly I lost over them. Sometimes I won. Overall, I am still at a little loss, but approaching breakeven. All because I started to learn how to play memes at early launch. Sell initial at 2x, perhaps 3x. DCA out quickly with smaller portions. Be completely out, or leave a small moon bag when the first local top is reached. I did this more or less perfectly with Mario. The 0.5 Sol buyback wasn't a bad idea as well, but the mistake of buying with 5 Sol instead of 0.5 Sol made me scared to lose most of my gains. Emotions got to me, killing my rationale thinking. Hence, I sold and took a 2.5 Sol loss. Hence, my growing disinterest in the token when it continued to sit on 750k$ MC.
Endnote
This time Fear got a hold of me instead of Greed. Both can be dangerous! Greed makes us HODL to zero. Fear makes us miss opportunities that are in front of our eyes.
Lesson learned, for sure! Next time, always, always leave a moonbag. Also, next time make sure not to make a mistake in setting the dot or comma in the DEX Swap screen. In fact, I think I used the comma, but the DEX only accept the dot. The cause of the mistake, as far as I can tell.
What Story Do You Have for Us?
all images by edje unless stated otherwise
ps YES, I sometimes talk to myself out loud 🙂