Bull or Bear, It Doesn’t Really Matter

We are in a bear market. And that is fine. It is not fun to experience a bear market, but they are also not the end too. Traditional markets and crypto markets alike are retracing after the money printer taps are put to a halt. We are in an unprecedented macro environment with high inflation as a result of the irresponsible money printing ever since 2008’s Global Financial Crisis. The Baby Boomers left a huge mess for the Millennials to figure out, and unfortunately everything but cash right now is down bad.

I’m nearly down 50% from my All Time Highs and essentially back to where I am in late 2021. It’s a setback but I am not worried at all. My time horizon is in the decades range and money can always be made back, what’s important is the process of accumulating said wealth, and staying wealthy after the fact.

The crypto market is still extremely new, and being new means there are risks involved when trying out cutting edge technology that might break. Some call it financial engineering, some call it innovation, whatever it is, new technology is always met with strong sentiments from both sides, with a particular project that has caught the attention of the world recently: LUNA/UST.

RIP LUNA 2022

I don’t think I have to elaborate about what happened, but essentially, the UST bank run risk has always been very real and discussed thoroughly across many twitter threads, blog posts and podcasts. Nothing is risk-free and every reward has an underlying risk. The Terra saga is unprecedented and a black swan event that no one would have expected to actually happen. Be it a targetted attack or not, fact is, the project has collapsed which means literally nothing is too big to fail. We saw an important lesson in 2008 with the collapse of the 4th largest Banking Corporation at the time: Lehman Brothers, at an astonishing 41B Market Cap at its peak. While comparing Terra blockchain (LUNA/UST) to Lehman Brothers is like apples and oranges, it is definitely an eye-opener to remind ourselves that nothing last forever and every empire will fall no matter how powerful or stable (pun intended) it is.

LUNA is the first investment of mine to actually go to literal zero, and honestly, that’s okay. I allocated 4% of my portfolio to LUNA knowing the risks involved and capping it to 4% also helped me to minimise my losses. Perhaps a reflection here is that I allocated simply because it was an easy bet and viewing it as a bluechip with a good flywheel (UST minted = More LUNA burnt = Higher scarcity in LUNA = Moon) and a pureplay on the growth of decentralised stablecoins.

Perhaps it is easy to focus on the upside when everyone is bullish and dismissing tail events such as death spirals and eventual bank runs from happening, but all in all, I have no regrets allocating my capital to LUNA because the upside was real and the chance of an actual bank run was really low. The important lesson here is to take profits and controlling our insatiable greed. I took out half my capital (+profits) from LUNA near $90-$100 and staked the rest to let the flywheel thesis play out. In short, I should have taken all of my principal out and let my profits run, that way, I won’t ever lose even if LUNA went to zero, so that would be my strategy going forward. Remember, nobody got hurt taking profits.

The recency bias and fears of UST de-pegging has led to a contagion effect among other Stablecoins within the broader crypto ecosystem. We saw slight de-peg in USDT, USDC, DAI and other stables when market participants were rushing for the exits following the CPI news, but many forget that over-collateralised Stablecoins like USDT/USDC/DAI works different from the partial collateral/algo model pioneered by UST. Yes, USDT collaterals might be in a blackbox, which is why you can always go with the more transparent USDC or DAI if you want a Stablecoin with diversified collateral (which comes with other risks too).

Market is just ‘the Market’

Are we going lower? Maybe. Are we going higher? Maybe. Is this over? Definitely not. The point here is, there is really no point in confirming whether X is the case or Y is the case. The market will do what the market does. The market is after all just me and you and a bunch of others exchanging different assets to each other and on different timeframes and instruments. There is no distinction between a bull or bear market (its all semantics), the market is really just, the market.

If you are a trader, then now is probably a tough market to be trading in as liquidity dries up. Speculators and leveraged traders will also be packing bags as cost of borrowing is going higher as a result of the rate hikes, and put an end to a decade long period of easy money thanks to the money printer since 2008.

If you are an investor (meaning you study fundamentals and invest for the long-term of at least 5 years or more), then this valuation reset is a God Send. When sentiments were bullish, speculators will take the helm and push valuations to unseen levels *cough* GMT *cough* OHM *cough* JEWEL, but with crazy valuations comes crazy downside risk too. It’s a game of musical chairs in which he who sits down (joins) the slowest gets rekt.

You may also argue that crypto don’t really have much fundamentals, which from a Traditional Finance perspective might be true, but there are inherent factors which you can consider as Fundamentals such as the Project Team, Token Valuations (FDV/PE ratio/PS ratio etc.), wallet distribution and more which can be valued from a fundamental standpoint. Even with great fundamentals however, our thesis can still be wrong because investing in the forefront of technology means there are unseen risks which simply cannot be modelled or predicted, as we’ve seen from LUNA.

Crisis = Opportunity

Now that markets have flipped bearish, I think it might once again present a huge opportunity for sidelined capital to start allocating further before sentiments flip bullish. Crypto market participants are an impatient bunch who expect tokens to pump 3-10x in the matter of days, and the current market simply bore them to death. NFTs are the same as well. Speculative flippers are exiting the market as volume dies off and everyone fleeing for the safety of the dollar. But you really have to ask yourself: Are you really going to guarantee your losses by going back to cash and succumb to inflation? Not gonna be me. Yes, tokens might continue going lower and I am going to catch falling knives, but I am investing for the long-term, I am not exiting into the sunset tomorrow or next week, neither am I using my emergency funds or holiday fund which I require next month.

If you are over-invested, meaning you are using short-term funds for your holidays/house purchase/car purchase/wedding and putting them into Altcoins, you are probably over-invested. Short-term funds should be placed into lower-risk, lower volatility type assets which in the crypto equivalent world is BTC/ETH or Stablecoins. Of course, nothing in crypto is risk-free given we are on the tail-end of the risk curve, but personally speaking, investing in crypto requires you to have a time horizon of minimally 4 years (1 Bitcoin halving cycle) for you to actually compound your portfolio. If you are trying to make it within 1 year, you are setting unrealistic expectations for yourself unless you are a god-tier trader or simply got lucky (eg. Bought BAYC, forgot about it and mooned). Crypto is an attention market with narratives changing at the speed of light. It really requires you to be on the edge of the market (wherever your niche is) and be extremely active in order to make life-changing returns.

The Barbell Portfolio Strategy

Having a long-time horizon does not mean bagholding your tokens to 0 and only selling them at Year 3 or Year 4. Having a long-time horizon means believing in the industry and building out a prudent portfolio which not only fits your risk tolerance, but also maximising for the best case scenario possible. For myself, that is utilising a Barbell Strategy Portfolio that forces me to invest in long-term, lower risk assets (buying and holding, passive investing) and the highest risk, highest reward assets (that will be actively managed), while foregoing the middle risk, middle reward assets.

Doing so allows me to concentrate my portfolio and consistently accumulate lower-risk assets (for me its ETH and USDC) and exposure to the highest risk/reward assets (right now its RBW) and increase my portfolio’s upside potential. My strategy will be to always rotate between 2 sides of the Barbell (Lowest and Highest Risk), taking profit from the high risk when times are good and rotating them into ETH/USDC to compound my gains, and buying into Highest Risk asset pool when an opportunity presents itself.

The lesson here for myself is to continue being consistent in my portfolio strategy (which have worked and pushed me into 6 Figures), and to keep taking profits because nothing lasts forever. Bearish sentiments are a good time to consolidate your holdings, and get rid of low conviction bets which don’t really make sense.

Don’t Get Shaken Out

The final point is about Survival. It’s always good to live to fight another day, and never put in more than you can afford to lose. If you get shaken out of the markets right now, you will miss out the incredible gains that come along once sentiments flip and macro gets a grip of itself and of reality. If you are not with the markets at its worst, you don’t deserve the markets at its best. It’s as simple as that. Also, bearish times = slower pace so take this time to upgrade your knowledge and keep educating yourselves. I personally found more time to read more books and learning new things as the markets slow down. Take in some fresh air and enjoy the real world before heading back to the markets. Your body will thank you for it. As I’m writing this on a train to Paris, I wish you all the best in your investing journey. There is always a light at the end of a tunnel. Keep fit, keep healthy and keep grinding. We will all make it eventually.

If you think crypto is interesting but you find it hard to learn about them, you can consider joining my telegram group where I share articles, investment opportunities and more research based content on an almost daily basis. You can also ask questions, and take part in polls to see how others think as well! 

Join My Tele Channel Here For Blog Updates And More!

For those who are already into Crypto

Want to learn how you can earn high yielding interest rates on your idle crypto assets in a secure, safe and easy manner? 

Earn Yields on Those Crypto With These Platforms

You can read up more on my post  here to learn more about Celsius and Nexo which give you interest on your crypto assets 

Or read up more on Hodlnaut here which is a Singapore-based crypto lending platform with market beating interest rates

What is Bitcoin? Answers here

Or do your due diligence on Bitcoin in my post here where I debunk some of the myths regarding Bitcoin.

What is Ethereum? Simple Guide Here

I did a bite-sized article on Ethereum for you to get a crash-course on what the buzz word is all about here.

Gemini Exchange (My Favourite Crypto Exchange)

Also my crypto exchange of choice Gemini here if you are looking to buy your first crypto!

Too Many Crypto Platforms? Here’s a Crypto One-Stop Solution

If you think there are too many crypto platforms out there, here is a simple solution for you. An all-in-one app for you to earn yield, trade, invest or borrow crypto with high security and assurance. Check out my Matrixport review 

What is Decentralised Finance (DeFi)?

Or do you want to learn more about DeFi in a simple to understand manner? Click here to learn more

How to Value Crypto Assets?

Learn more about how you can put a “fair value” on crypto such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and more here

Crypto Referral Links (Click and Sign Up)

Hodlnaut: Earn US$20 in BTC/ETH/USDT/USDC/DAI for free with your first transfer of US$1000 or more in the corresponding crypto asset of your choice!

Gemini Exchange: Deposits and buy US$100 or more crypto on Gemini and you will earn US$10 in BTC.

FTX Exchange: Create a FTX account here and trade the lowest fee and best UI/UX crypto exchange!

Coinhako Exchange: You can create an account by clicking the link and then enter promo code: COINGECKO when doing a buy/sell and enjoy 20% trading fees discount! 

Celsius Network: Earn US$40 in BTC for free with your first transfer of US$400 or more in any crypto asset and wait for 1 month!

Nexo: Earn US$10 in BTC for free when you transfer US$100 or more in any crypto asset of your choice!

Disclaimer: 

The content here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment or a recommendation to buy or sell a security. In fact, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor and may not be used to evaluate or make any investment.

Crypto Portfolio Update (April 2022)

In retrospect, April was a tumultuous month. The entire macro landscape was perplexing, and market participants were constantly in a state of confusion.

Also, I am currently in Europe at the point of writing and will be roaming around till August, so pardon the weird posting time of updates on Telegram/Email. (also missing bubble tea/sg food alr..)

Welcome to KrabbyPatty

Is the bull market still going strong? Is the bear market in full swing? What does the Fed’s action mean for future yields and potential returns? It’s constantly buzzing through my head, and I’m sure it did the same for you. Sideways crab markets are difficult to understand because one minute we pump and think the bull run is back, and the next minute we dump back to the same price level, leaving us baffled over and over again.

Herd Mentality Awareness

The majority of market participants are investing in similar assets and, as a result, have similar portfolio compositions. The allocation is the most important factor in determining the return. Is your portfolio dispersed across a variety of assets or concentrated in just a few key positions? Is it more common for these positions to outperform or underperform the benchmark market returns? These are important considerations to make when re-evaluating your current portfolio and deciding on a new strategy.

Markets Are Becoming More Efficient

Of course, neither I nor anyone else has a crystal ball to predict where markets will go. The April market situation has left hedge funds, venture funds, billionaires, and retail investors all perplexed. In comparison to 2021, the market in 2022 is far more difficult to navigate. Anyone expecting returns similar to those seen in 2021 will be disappointed or disheartened by the end of the year. The amount of intellectual capital and smart money flowing into the not-so-nascent crypto markets is immense, and this will only serve to make the crypto markets more efficient over time. The difficulty of making money (whether trading or investing) will increase over time, and natural selection will occur among market participants (winner takes all).

On the TradFi front, the S&P 500 index and NASDAQ index were down 8.7% and 13.2% respectively in April. On the crypto front, the large caps (BTC/ETH/AVAX/BNB/SOL) are down 13% to 33%. Altcoins which relied on hype and speculation quickly died off when fear kicked in and are easily down 70% or more and most probably not recover anymore. Things definitely look bad for the overall market.

Liquidity is seeping out of risk-on assets after the hawkish stance from the Fed and Quantitative Tightening kicking back which means less free money flowing in the global economy. With inflation at historic high (14%) while central banks are capping easy money back into the markets, we might be facing an unprecedented stagflation event with recession + high inflation. People with little to no assets will get consumed by inflation while others get fired due to the recession. Macro simply is sh*tty.

April 2022 Portfolio

As of 4th May 2022

Consolidation

The right side of my portfolio looks messy as heck. How did it even end up like this?

RBW + ETH

I basically stopped allocating to my losers while adding on to my winners, and focus on concentrating my bets. In this case, I was betting heavily on 1 thing: Crypto Unicorn’s Rainbow Token (RBW). I have been accumulating ETH over time as part of my barbell strategy to accumulate as much ETH as possible since it forms the basis of my “Low Risk” portfolio. I have no trouble adding more ETH since that will be part of my long-term accumulation bag and ETH is always king.

I’m currently unstaking all of my Cosmos Ecosystem coins, with the intention of accepting the loss and concentrating my bets on where my conviction lies (for now). Crypto Unicorn is a new game that has well-thought-out faucets and sinks, as well as amazing RBW tokenomics (nearly half of all RBW circulating supply are staked for 9-12 months). With breeding loops sucking even more RBW out of circulation, as well as additional sinks like Shadowcorn hatching, item crafting, Land crafting, and Rainbow Marketplace fees, it’s easy to see RBW experiencing a supply shock. To me, this is a very asymmetric Risk-Reward ratio, with a very high probability of a positive EV (Expected Value).  I am putting my money where my mouth is. Do take note that my RBW net cost basis is low (approx $0.8), so the supply shock scenario plays are framed from my own price entry and this is definitely not financial advice. Please do your own due diligence!

As you can see, if you dig deep enough into the markets, there are always pockets of opportunity. If you want outsized gains and extreme asymmetric R/R plays, it’s far better to be surgical than to have a birds eye view. The majority of market participants have only a basic grasp of many coins, and thus have similar portfolio allocations (typically a few L1/L2s spread evenly, with some Bitcoin and Altcoins thrown in for good measure).

Noise Is Hard To Ignore

I’m not pointing fingers, but tokens like OHM (Olympus), TIME (Wonderland), SPELL (Abracadabra), JEWEL (DeFiKingdoms), and others that have been shilled the most on Twitter and elsewhere have attracted the most market participants due to promises of high returns and over-hyped narratives claiming to be the next big thing. (Look how those things ended up. I am lucky enough not to fall for these Ponzi-esque projects but had I been early in finding them, money can still be made.

Instead of being the herd that apes into those things at the late stages, find your own edge and sharpen it as much as you can. You’ll be able to find gems before the rest of the herd, and once the narrative has been sufficiently hyped, you’ll be able to quietly exit into the next play.

Crypto, it turns out, is all about narratives and attention. The Cosmos story took off in March and then fizzled out after the failure of EVMOS. While EVMOS is now operational, the market’s focus has shifted elsewhere, and most market participants have become bored and have moved to the sidelines as a result of the market’s sideways movements. It’s unfortunate to admit, but crypto remains speculative, but that is the nature of the market. It’s a never-ending game of who has more information than others and who takes advantage of it, with dozens upon dozens of sectors and hundreds of narratives for speculators to bet on.

NFTs

On the NFT side, I recently got scammed by someone on Discord and had my Genesis Kaiju, Baby Kaiju, and ASM Brain stolen.

TLDR

On the Kaiju discord, I attempted to do a P2P NFT trade. We started talking after user NGMI#4921 expressed interest. I recommended nfttrader/sudoswap because it appeared legitimate on Twitter. The scammer claimed that he had been scammed on nfttrader and sudoswap and recommended that people use swift trade instead. I did some research and discovered that Swift Trade was rife with scams, so I avoided using it. The con artist then suggested trading a worthless NFT on swift trade to test the site’s legitimacy. It seemed harmless at the time because the maximum loss would be the useless NFT. However, connecting to Swift Trade grants the scammer access to your wallet, allowing him to withdraw my NFTs. I’m usually on CT to keep up with the latest scam tactics and avoid falling for them. This scammer (or a group of scammers) has been employing this strategy of delaying the transaction for a few days in order to reduce suspicions and not appear desperate. To make me believe that they were also wary of me being a scammer, the scammer said things like ‘can you lmk what to search on google as idw to click on any links you’ve sent‘. I looked up his address and username on Twitter, but there were no tweets about scams. Only after I was scammed did I discover NGMI#4921 was a malicious scammer on Doodles discord but it’s already too late.

Tragedy aside, I still have the rest of my NFTs, with a heavy allocation to Crypto Unicorns (obviously). It is definitely important to keep precious NFTs in a separate wallet and avoid being lazy. I paid an expensive lesson here but hopefully others can learn from it and prevent a similar outcome.

What Next?

To be honest, I don’t know. I am going to focus on my edge here on out (which seems to be GameFi/NFTs) and spend more time concentrating my portfolio than to diversify it based on my edge. My portfolio is at an inflection point and concentrating it can hopefully allow me to capitalise on huge asymmetric risk-reward ratio according to my circle of competence.

The market dynamics within crypto are definitely much different from the one in 2018-2019. The market has matured versus the lack of activity and utility of crypto back in 2018. You pretty much can only buy Bitcoin and Ethereum back then and almost everything else were vapourware. Useful DApps only went live and matured from 2020’s DeFi summer onwards. In 2022, we have a thriving and dynamic L1 competitive environment, application-specific blockchains, Layer-2s innovation taking shape, NFTs, GameFi, and many more developing narratives as blockchain technology continues to be experimented worldwide by different start-ups. Use cases are constantly evolving, but the market is definitely maturing beyond just Bitcoin and Ethereum.

As late-stage adopters begin to approve of blockchain’s viability and the transition to digitisation, we are most likely approaching the steepest part of the adoption S-curve. The analog world as we know it will be obsolete, and the concept of an internet-native currency and economy will become the norm sooner or later. Banks will follow the Power Law curve as they no longer serve a purpose, and we may see a gradual consolidation of big banks through M&A deals as weaker players are pushed out of the market. In 2022, banks are no longer rejecting Bitcoin, and nation states are embracing digital currencies. You get the picture.

If you think crypto is interesting but you find it hard to learn about them, you can consider joining my telegram group where I share articles, investment opportunities and more research based content on an almost daily basis. You can also ask questions, and take part in polls to see how others think as well! 

Join My Tele Channel Here For Blog Updates And More!

For those who are already into Crypto

Want to learn how you can earn high yielding interest rates on your idle crypto assets in a secure, safe and easy manner? 

Earn Yields on Those Crypto With These Platforms

You can read up more on my post  here to learn more about Celsius and Nexo which give you interest on your crypto assets 

Or read up more on Hodlnaut here which is a Singapore-based crypto lending platform with market beating interest rates

What is Bitcoin? Answers here

Or do your due diligence on Bitcoin in my post here where I debunk some of the myths regarding Bitcoin.

What is Ethereum? Simple Guide Here

I did a bite-sized article on Ethereum for you to get a crash-course on what the buzz word is all about here.

Gemini Exchange (My Favourite Crypto Exchange)

Also my crypto exchange of choice Gemini here if you are looking to buy your first crypto!

Too Many Crypto Platforms? Here’s a Crypto One-Stop Solution

If you think there are too many crypto platforms out there, here is a simple solution for you. An all-in-one app for you to earn yield, trade, invest or borrow crypto with high security and assurance. Check out my Matrixport review 

What is Decentralised Finance (DeFi)?

Or do you want to learn more about DeFi in a simple to understand manner? Click here to learn more

How to Value Crypto Assets?

Learn more about how you can put a “fair value” on crypto such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and more here

Crypto Referral Links (Click and Sign Up)

Gemini Exchange: Deposits and buy US$100 or more crypto on Gemini and you will earn US$10 in BTC.

FTX Exchange: Create a FTX account here and trade the lowest fee and best UI/UX crypto exchange!

Coinhako Exchange: You can create an account by clicking the link and then enter promo code: COINGECKO when doing a buy/sell and enjoy 20% trading fees discount! 

Binance Exchange: Create a Binance.com account here and trade the widest range of crypto pairings!

Hodlnaut: Earn US$20 in BTC/ETH/USDT/USDC/DAI for free with your first transfer of US$1000 or more in the corresponding crypto asset of your choice!

Celsius Network: Earn US$40 in BTC for free with your first transfer of US$400 or more in any crypto asset and wait for 1 month!

Matrixport: Get a $1288 free coupon trial to try their product and earn $20 in USDC when you sign up successfully and become a qualified client!

Nexo: Earn US$10 in BTC for free when you transfer US$100 or more in any crypto asset of your choice!

Disclaimer: 

The content here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment or a recommendation to buy or sell a security. In fact, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor and may not be used to evaluate or make any investment.

Crypto Portfolio Update (March 2022)

This post probably concludes Q1 2022. With the FOMC meeting concluding a 25 Bps rate hike, it relieved the market from uncertainty (at least in the short run) although the war in Ukraine remains while potential threat of escalation between Russia and NATO still remains.

With the sigh of relieve from the expected rate hike this time round, markets had to rally – starting from the further end of the risk curve first: Crypto.

My personal portfolio basically bottomed out on 22 March before it went on to stage a comeback rally and now I’m back at January highs all over again. Did my portfolio change a lot? Oh yes.

March 2022 Portfolio

As of 25 March 2022

Rotate the gains

Portfolio is looking messy and I agree. How did it end up looking like that? Well, I basically took profit off Fantom (sold 70% through slow and steady DCA) and rotating into stablecoins and allocating more into Cosmos Ecosystem tokens.

Why did I sell my Fantom? Opportunity Cost.

I already made more than 10x from the ecosystem and it made sense that I milked whatever I could out of it and had to compound those profit elsewhere. I am not bearish on Fantom in any way but simply moving on because there are better opportunities elsewhere.

Also regarding Stables, majority is farming on Stargate.

Into the Cosmos

The Cosmos Ecosystem coins like ATOM, SCRT, JUNO, OSMO are either staked with validators for airdrops and yield or pooled on Osmosis and JunoSwap. I am not planning to be actively looking at this portion of my portfolio and just going to be as passive as possible while my active efforts lie elsewhere. Cosmos ecosystem somehow died off after the failed launch of EVMOS (EVM + Cosmos) and the recent squeals on Juno and their proposals, but I couldn’t care less.

App-Specific Chains, IBC, Inter-Chain Security, CosmWasm, Evmos – All of which are excellent innovations within the space that you cannot find an equivalent competitor anywhere else. (Subnets are not even close)

The Tendermint team has been building non-stop and it simply is a matter of time before the Cosmos Ecosystem become a thriving network of app-chains that serve their main utilities and become the best in class for that use case.

Gaming Season – Crypto Unicorns/Embersword/ Crypto Raiders

As we head into Q2, GameFi tokens are starting to heat up once again. This time, the best performer thus far has to be Crypto Unicorns for me as I sold my floor unicorn NFTs for 23x gains while the governance token RBW managed to 5x in a month. Not forgetting that the team has been dropping the community and early adopters with ample rewards such as RBW tokens and UNIM tokens for long term holders of the game NFT.

Embersword is also coming in with its beta testing gameplay for Badge holders and Land Owners and I am definitely excited to play this one. Its Free-To-Play first while the Earn aspect is applicable for Land Owners that wish to earn yield from their digital estate.

Crypto Raider is a Runescape-looking, dungeon raiding RPG that has one of the best crypto gaming communities in Web3. You can either purchase Raiders that will enter dungeons and defeat monsters to earn rewards and loots, level up and defeat bigger bosses etc. You can even become the dungeon monsters itself by purchasing MOBS, which are essentially passive yielding NFTs as long as they defeat other Raiders that come along and take a portion of their loot and rewards. I am currently just staking RAIDER tokens in the Raider Bank for passive AURUM rewards. (unlocks in 10 days)

There are more games that are coming down the pipeline but these are the 3 I am currently vested heavily in (tokens and/or NFTs).

As a GameFi side bet, I also allocated a small amount towards Immuatable X to bet on the entire GameFi stack within the Immutable ecosystem. IMX is definitely not a long-term hold for me (valuations are too high imo) but I am willing to trade it once the macro GameFi tailwind hits. (Might be right now)

Metis – The Layer 2 Underdog

As the Merge narrative edge closer and closer, I am enjoying my time on one of the best Layer-2s of Ethereum: Metis.

User experience is just superior with super fast transaction times and cheap fees (it will get cheaper!) while enjoying the security and decentralisation of Ethereum. There is also something about Metis-based Dapps that is so enjoyable as they’re all related to the Greek Gods and they have some of the best dashboards in crypto and no one is even talking about it.

Being able to deploy multiple virtual machines (Versatility), Polis Middleware (Allows Web2 to port over to Web3 easily), native IPFS integration, Ranger upgrades (solve the drawbacks of Optimistic Rollups) and many more are reasons why I think Metis will win the Layer-2 scaling wars.

It is a matter of time before the Ethereum community and the greater crypto communities realise the power of Metis and some of its advantages it has against fellow Optimistic Rollup Arbitrum and Optimism (which still does not have a token).

Pocket Network – Decentralised Infura

If you are bullish on Web3, you are automatically bullish on Pocket Network, period.

Infura and Alchemy are centralised solutions with sunk cost from monthly fees to use their services. POKT solves it. With more POKT nodes servicing more relays for the entire web3 – Ethereum, Avalanche, Harmony, Polygon, Fuse, Binance Smart Chain, Fantom etc, it will only help to decentralise crypto infrastructure layer even more and create a truly anti-fragile and censorship resistant web3 ecosystem.

I am currently staking all my POKT on Poktpool and receiving passive yielding rewards in POKT.

Terra

Do I need to say more? I am only regretting having such a small allocation towards LUNA. What about the Anchor FUD? I think it is an issue, but Do Kwon won’t let Anchor fail. Never. UST will continue to see the adoption flywheel, outpacing other Stablecoins designs while continuing to innovate new ways for more use cases and diversify away from Anchor.

I won’t be adding more to my LUNA allocation.

NFT Allocation

I realised I haven’t really talked about the NFT side of my portfolio, but essentially I am currently holding these (significant NFTs with value only)

• 1 x Genesis Kaiju Kingz
• 1 x Baby Kaiju Kingz
• 9 x Crypto Unicorn Land (6 Rare, 3 Mythic)
• 2 x Myhtic Unicorns
• 2 x Shadowcorn Eggs
• Embersword Plat Badge + Land
• 1 x Adidas Originals ITM

Conclusion

I’m going to keep this post short. Work has been busy and never-ending (crypto never sleeps) but thoroughly enjoyable and fun. I also won’t reveal the exact figures in $ amount of my portfolio anymore for the sake of privacy and security, but the market has been forgiving to me thus far and a few tail events like RBW token and the overall Unicorn ecosystem has been keeping my portfolio afloat all these time.

2022’s crypto market is definitely much tougher to navigate compared to 2021. More sophisticated players are getting into the space day by day and the market will eventually get more efficient. Alpha is shrinking and becoming increasingly difficult to find and it will become more and more difficult to make life-changing returns like it used to be in the past.

As the market continues to climb (for now or longer it doesn’t matter), remember to take profits along the way as the market will eventually crash (and also recover again). But taking profits is the most secure way to compound your returns in my opinion and let tail winners have its run and not disrupt it unnecessarily.

Hopefully Q2 will be a bullish quarter as we head into the Merge narrative and Ethereum finally transforming into a Proof-Of-Stake, ultrasound money powerhouse. Nation states are still buying into Bitcoin, while regulators have displayed accommodative stance towards crypto while TradFi firms continue to explore the blockchain space. We are at the steepest part of the adoption S curve, and yes, we are still early, although it will get increasingly harder to make mouth-watering gains as the market becomes efficient.

If you think crypto is interesting but you find it hard to learn about them, you can consider joining my telegram group where I share articles, investment opportunities and more research based content on an almost daily basis. You can also ask questions, and take part in polls to see how others think as well! 

Join My Tele Channel Here For Blog Updates And More!

For those who are already into Crypto

Want to learn how you can earn high yielding interest rates on your idle crypto assets in a secure, safe and easy manner? 

Earn Yields on Those Crypto With These Platforms

You can read up more on my post  here to learn more about Celsius and Nexo which give you interest on your crypto assets 

Or read up more on Hodlnaut here which is a Singapore-based crypto lending platform with market beating interest rates

What is Bitcoin? Answers here

Or do your due diligence on Bitcoin in my post here where I debunk some of the myths regarding Bitcoin.

What is Ethereum? Simple Guide Here

I did a bite-sized article on Ethereum for you to get a crash-course on what the buzz word is all about here.

Gemini Exchange (My Favourite Crypto Exchange)

Also my crypto exchange of choice Gemini here if you are looking to buy your first crypto!

Too Many Crypto Platforms? Here’s a Crypto One-Stop Solution

If you think there are too many crypto platforms out there, here is a simple solution for you. An all-in-one app for you to earn yield, trade, invest or borrow crypto with high security and assurance. Check out my Matrixport review 

What is Decentralised Finance (DeFi)?

Or do you want to learn more about DeFi in a simple to understand manner? Click here to learn more

How to Value Crypto Assets?

Learn more about how you can put a “fair value” on crypto such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and more here

Crypto Referral Links (Click and Sign Up)

Gemini Exchange: Deposits and buy US$100 or more crypto on Gemini and you will earn US$10 in BTC.

FTX Exchange: Create a FTX account here and trade the lowest fee and best UI/UX crypto exchange!

Coinhako Exchange: You can create an account by clicking the link and then enter promo code: COINGECKO when doing a buy/sell and enjoy 20% trading fees discount! 

Binance Exchange: Create a Binance.com account here and trade the widest range of crypto pairings!

Hodlnaut: Earn US$20 in BTC/ETH/USDT/USDC/DAI for free with your first transfer of US$1000 or more in the corresponding crypto asset of your choice!

Celsius Network: Earn US$40 in BTC for free with your first transfer of US$400 or more in any crypto asset and wait for 1 month!

Matrixport: Get a $1288 free coupon trial to try their product and earn $20 in USDC when you sign up successfully and become a qualified client!

Nexo: Earn US$10 in BTC for free when you transfer US$100 or more in any crypto asset of your choice!

Disclaimer: 

The content here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment or a recommendation to buy or sell a security. In fact, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor and may not be used to evaluate or make any investment.

Surviving The Crypto Market

The Macro Confusion

2022 so far, has been a year full of surprises. On the macro front, we have unprecedented inflation, uncertain policy changes that can alter the entire financial landscape, unprecedented global debt and the potential of war between Russia and Ukraine – all at the same time when the coronavirus is finally dwindling albeit high infection rates but the world has largely lost its attention on Covid-19 (fingers crossed).

Adidas NFT

We see mass adoption of crypto jargons in mainstream traditional finance everywhere with fashion and sports brands adopting “Metaverse” and even JP Morgan (which historically was skeptical and bearish crypto) has set up a store in Decentraland, one of the many Web3 metaverses right now.

JP Morgan Store in Decentraland

Adoption or Top Signal?

These are confusing signals, on one hand, we might think all these trends towards mass adoption as NFTs and metaverses goes mainstream but on the other hand we see our ‘normie’ friends who showed zero interest in crypto suddenly talking about NFTs or owning several NFTs even without understanding what Ethereum does or how the blockchain work. It is very easy to view adoption as a top signal and vice versa, the difficult part is sieving out the noise and judging for yourself.

Choosing the appropriate strategy to adopt

Are you here for the long term or short term? This is a question you must ask yourself carefully because it will determine the kind of strategy you should adopt as every person’s portfolio is different depending on age, time horizon, investing competency, emotional discipline and many more factors.

Don’t be the guy that watches 20 different crypto YouTube videos telling you the next 100x Gem and then go ahead and buy 20 different coins thinking one of it will 100x because it won’t. If you lack the conviction to hold through high volatility or not even understanding the project, then you are doomed to fail, over and over again. (Until you finally do proper research)

It may sound addictive to chase the next 10x or even 50x small cap crypto gem seeing others have done it themselves but how much of it was actually skill or luck? Did that person tell you how much he lost before he chased the right shitcoins and made 50x? And how big was the 50x? If the person only placed a small $10 bet for example, 50x is only $500. And even if the size was big, did the person take profit? Did he rotate the profit elsewhere and go on to compound those gains? Or did he go casino mode and gambled all the profits away in another shitcoin that went to zero?

Mindset, Mindset, Mindset

The moral of the story here is: If you treat crypto like a casino, then you will get casino-like returns. If you come up with a proper investing framework and the goal is to survive long enough that you keep your gains and continuously compound it, then you will be bound to make more in the long run.

There is a huge difference between Getting Wealthy and Staying Wealthy, and in crypto, it may be easy to get wealthy as you just need some luck and buy into a 100x token that you forgot you bought 8 months ago or that NFT collection that rocketed to 100 ETH *Cough BAYC* and you suddenly lost all rational sense when it comes to money and valuations.

Many Bored Ape Holders lost their NFTs to scams which costs hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in ETH, and it seems to repeat again and again. Why?

Many Bored Ape holders have no idea what Ethereum is or, worse, what a Seed Phrase is. Some of them are duped into entering their Seed Phrase and transferring their NFTs away from their wallets, resulting in the loss of their private keys. The importance of operational security and preventing your wallet from being doxxed was not a priority for many BAYC holders until scammers began to take advantage of their ignorance about crypto wallet security.

So, while their NFTs made them rich (theoretically), they did not upgrade their knowledge to protect that upgraded level of wealth and thus lost it just as easily as they gained it. I believe you understand what I’m saying here.

So what’s the purpose of this post? I think it’s a mental reminder to myself and everyone to remember the key thing when it comes to investing: Surviving.

Rationality and Perspective

The crypto market is a place full of opportunities and unimaginable gains that traditional investors or even sophisticated hedge funds can only dream of. We often talk about gains in multiples (2x/5x/10x gains) and this is something traditional finance investors can never grasp their tunnel vision on. What takes years or even decades to achieve can be achieved in a span of months and sometimes weeks in crypto, reaching incredible multiples that might even be generational wealth figures.

While most of us are ultra bullish on the long-term outlook for crypto, it is without a doubt still highly risky in crypto and the DeFi world. It’s a game of who have more information edge and whether you can find opportunities early before anyone else does such as farming early before the latecomers dilute the rewards or minting a stealth mint project only to see it moon 200x on secondary markets.

While all of us strive to be ‘early’, there are also various traps that lure degenerate apes who lost all rational sense of valuations into thinking they are early into a farm only to be rug pulled and losing all their capital.

If you don’t have that information edge, then its better to stick to solid projects with actual fundamentals and accumulate such tokens slowly in the long run. That way, you are limiting your downside risk tremendously while still enjoying a comfortable level of upside.

Hence the key idea here is to survive. Don’t go full degen or you risk losing all of your hard earned gains.

Portfolio Changes

As of 19 Feb 2022

As for my portfolio, I have been consolidating my portfolio into a few key bets (ETH/FTM/METIS), and sold some of my smaller positions like GuildFi, Merit Circle at a loss while taking profit on Dopex and Ronin and rebalanced some of my positions.

I am now mostly in solid projects and ecosystem tokens takes up a huge chunk of my portfolio. Specific DApps are too difficult to bet on which is why I prefer owning an entire ecosystem which functions similarly to an ETF; whereby owning ETH means owning the entire Ethereum ecosystem and owning FTM means owning the entire Fantom ecosystem and so on, you get the point.

Of course there are higher beta plays like the underlying ecosystem coins that will do better than the native token (like ETH/FTM/METIS) but at the same time I have capped my downside risk should there be further market downturn.

I am comfortable with the portfolio I am managing and this helps me keep my emotions in check so I don’t make irrational decisions like panic selling or not being able to sleep because I am “over-invested.”

Surviving in the markets does not mean you outperform your peers for a particular time period or year, but continuously compounding your wealth (be it big or small gains) no matter the market conditions and not being shaken out of the markets for as long as possible.

Consistency > Short Burst of Outperformance

Warren Buffett was said to be the greatest investor of all time not because he is extremely talented at investing or making a 100x on his investments in the shortest amount of time, but due to his perseverance and ability to remain in the markets for >80 years, while going through multiple recessions, wars, conflicts and market crashes.

He did not make jaw dropping gains of 100x on his portfolio in 1 year but he was consistently investing for >80 years and allowing compound interest to do its thing. So unless you are retiring tomorrow, I recommend you to sit back and relax because investing for the long term means ignoring short term noise (eg. Fed policy change/Russia/Ukraine conflict) and sticking to your long-term thesis. (eg. Where will crypto be 10 years from now?)

Yes, you might say that crypto and stock markets are very different, but the concepts used to tackle it is fundamentally the same. The market will always be a voting machine in the short run and a weighing machine in the long run.

Focus on fundamentals if you are in this market for the long-term and make use of technicals to determine a good price entry, not predicting what Bitcoin’s price will be in 2 weeks.

And like every great investor said, you should know what you own, and why you own it, concentrate your bets (on conviction) if you want to be rich, diversify to maintain your wealth, and to always buy when others are fearful and sell when others are greedy. Applying all these thought processes will help you become more rational and think like a long-term investor.

Crypto is an active investment

Crypto is still very early and narratives change at the speed of light, it is pretty much active management that wins, so you do need to have a decent level of understanding of the crypto markets and see where it is going to have a sense of which project is good and which projects are bad.

If you throw money into crypto not bothering about the competitive landscape or which sector is meta right now, you will be exit liquidity for everyone else who have information edge against you.

Concluding Thoughts

Form your own thesis and build your own conviction, research on as many projects as possible for you to form that thesis and improvise over time. The key is to survive and compounding your way to financial freedom. We as humans always overestimate what we can achieve in the short run but underestimate what we can achieve in the long run, and I believe this is extremely true when it comes to crypto investing.

Developing your own circle of competence (be it NFTs or DeFi or GameFi or DAOs) is what will separate you from the crowd and finding opportunities before others. It will then be up to you to have the courage to buy it when the market is irrationally fearful and holding it for the long run. Or you can adopt a Barbell Strategy that separates your long term holds from your short term rotation (higher beta) plays.

I hope you think about some of the points mentioned here before going all in on the next Ohm Fork anon. The new Ohm Fork will come in all shape and sizes and its up to your own judgement to spot it and deal with it. If you have no idea what it does to accrue value but seeing many influencers on Twitter shilling it non-stop, avoid it unless you can understand it. If not, you will be the exit liquidity and yield for those who knows how it works.

Let’s survive the market for as long as possible.

If you think crypto is interesting but you find it hard to learn about them, you can consider joining my telegram group where I share articles, investment opportunities and more research based content on an almost daily basis. You can also ask questions, and take part in polls to see how others think as well! 

Join My Tele Channel Here For Blog Updates And More!

For those who are already into Crypto

Want to learn how you can earn high yielding interest rates on your idle crypto assets in a secure, safe and easy manner? 

Earn Yields on Those Crypto With These Platforms

You can read up more on my post  here to learn more about Celsius and Nexo which give you interest on your crypto assets 

Or read up more on Hodlnaut here which is a Singapore-based crypto lending platform with market beating interest rates

What is Bitcoin? Answers here

Or do your due diligence on Bitcoin in my post here where I debunk some of the myths regarding Bitcoin.

What is Ethereum? Simple Guide Here

I did a bite-sized article on Ethereum for you to get a crash-course on what the buzz word is all about here.

Gemini Exchange (My Favourite Crypto Exchange)

Also my crypto exchange of choice Gemini here if you are looking to buy your first crypto!

Too Many Crypto Platforms? Here’s a Crypto One-Stop Solution

If you think there are too many crypto platforms out there, here is a simple solution for you. An all-in-one app for you to earn yield, trade, invest or borrow crypto with high security and assurance. Check out my Matrixport review 

What is Decentralised Finance (DeFi)?

Or do you want to learn more about DeFi in a simple to understand manner? Click here to learn more

How to Value Crypto Assets?

Learn more about how you can put a “fair value” on crypto such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and more here

Crypto Referral Links (Click and Sign Up)

Gemini Exchange: Deposits and buy US$100 or more crypto on Gemini and you will earn US$10 in BTC.

FTX Exchange: Create a FTX account here and trade the lowest fee and best UI/UX crypto exchange!

Coinhako Exchange: You can create an account by clicking the link and then enter promo code: COINGECKO when doing a buy/sell and enjoy 20% trading fees discount! 

Binance Exchange: Create a Binance.com account here and trade the widest range of crypto pairings!

Hodlnaut: Earn US$20 in BTC/ETH/USDT/USDC/DAI for free with your first transfer of US$1000 or more in the corresponding crypto asset of your choice!

Celsius Network: Earn US$40 in BTC for free with your first transfer of US$400 or more in any crypto asset and wait for 1 month!

Matrixport: Get a $1288 free coupon trial to try their product and earn $20 in USDC when you sign up successfully and become a qualified client!

Nexo: Earn US$10 in BTC for free when you transfer US$100 or more in any crypto asset of your choice!

Disclaimer: 

The content here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment or a recommendation to buy or sell a security. In fact, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor and may not be used to evaluate or make any investment.

Crypto Portfolio Update (January 2022)

2022 began with the markets reaching all-time highs due to the continuance of the Santa Rally and the emergence of new storylines such as FOAN (Fantom, ONE, Atom, Near) and even the Simp DAOs phenomenon, which prompted markets to get frothy right from the start.

Of course, the unsustainable rally had to end, and sentiments shifted shortly after the Federal Reserve signaled their intention to begin tapering, rate hikes and begin Quantitative Tightening, which in short means higher interest rates and less money printing – typically indicating that inflation is high and central banks are taking measures to reduce it.

The news rattled the markets, and many began to de-risk into cash, which meant that risk-on assets like stocks and crypto were the first to feel the impacts, and we witnessed Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the rest of crypto went into free fall as leveraged traders liquidated while panic sellers sold irrationally.

Changing Macro Landscape

Since the Fed began its accommodating strategy of QE to prop up the markets and promote its economic rebound in 2008, the markets have been on a “Up Only” mindset. Interest rates have been at an all-time low for decades, and risky assets such as equities (particularly growth companies) and cryptocurrency have profited from this macro development.

In 2022, we begin to feel the consequences of all these years of money printing, with inflation reaching up to 7%. The entire macro dynamics is extremely complicated, and I don’t want to get into the details, but long story short: Inflation is out of control, and central banks are considering raising interest rates and potentially dealing with their ballooning balance sheets, which the markets do not like.

My 2022 Outlook

With the macro landscape out of the way, I am not investing for a 1-3 year horizon, so I’m zooming out to the big picture and I just can’t see why crypto will remain at where it is 5-10 years from now.

NFTs are turning mainstream as social media outlets like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook are integrating with NFTs and mainstream brands like Meta (Facebook), Apple, Microsoft, Nike, Adidas, Prada, Gucci and many many more exploring the metaverse and launching their own NFT products. Top signal? Adoption? Bubble bursting soon? That opinion depends on how much you know the space and it’s up to you to decide.

Layer-1/2s, in my opinion, will continue to grab market share away from Ethereum in 2022 as Ethereum attempts to fix its congestion issues and upgrade to Ethereum 2.0. We’ve all seen what Layer-1s like Solana, Avalanche, Terra, and Fantom did in 2021, and that outperformance is certain to continue in 2022.

Alternate Layer-1 projects such as Fantom and Luna may continue to outperform in my opinion, while Layer-2 projects such as Metis and Ronin side-chain may help to scale Ethereum even further, gaining significant market share and becoming the “Steam” of crypto gaming, respectively.

Cross-Chain developments will also likely become a narrative some time in 2022 as the Cosmos ecosystem has many exciting developments incoming like EVMOS (EVM Compatible Cosmos Zone), Gravity Bridge (Ethereum to Cosmos), shared security and liquid staking that will boost liquidity and porting of major EVM projects onto Cosmos. Just imagine EVM + IBC.

DeFi derivatives are also in the early stages of adoption, with Dopex and GMX serving as the primary decentralized options market and hybrid perpetual/spot market, respectively. The derivatives market’s total addressable market (TAM) (even in TradFi) is massive. To entice investment banks and other large players into the crypto space, there must be an institutional grade DeFi structured product for these TradFi veterans to port over to crypto.

In terms of NFTs and metaverses, Crypto Unicorns and Embersword releasing soon might be the ones that will spark the gaming bull run, but who knows, maybe the macro landscape continues to weigh on the markets and we see 2022 being a risk-off year as interest rates rises and whales pack up their bags.

Overall, I believe that 2022 will be a year in which crypto continues to rise despite the macro environment, although this remains to be seen as we have yet to see any genuine rate hikes from the Fed, nor have they begun quantitative tightening.

January 2022 Portfolio

As of 30 Jan 2022

Based on my 2022 outlook and some rebalancing I did, this is how my portfolio currently looks like at the end of January. I might be looking to concentrate my portfolio further and definitely looking for an entry again into ATOM (Cosmos) and the rest of the Cosmos ecosystem to align with my 2022 outlook. (I previously sold off ATOM during the mania phase at $36/ATOM)

In terms of performance, I am down 22% from my all-time highs (in early Jan) but still net positive as long as Bitcoin doesn’t nuke below $20,000 USD. I consider my allocation to be rather conservative as I am mostly in top 100 projects and my focus right now is on minimising downside risks instead of maximising upsides.

If market sentiment begins to improve, I may consolidate and concentrate my portfolio even more to position for the upside. During the initial dips, I cut many losses in riskier tokens like TEMPLE and GF and instead rotated into stronger fundamental tokens.

Axie Scholarship Payout Dropped Significantly

With the worsening macroeconomic outlook, hyperinflating SLP supply, and scholars losing interest due to the shrinking payout (in dollar terms), my passive income strategy via Axie Scholarship has taken a hit this month. Axie prices on the market are at an all-time low, and SLP has also dropped to 1 cent per SLP. However, since August of last year, the scholarship has averaged out to 5100 SGD per month in payout.

Many of my scholars had left, so I had to consolidate the Axies into stronger scholars, giving them 10 Axies with 40 energy to spend each day. This is also a good reminder for myself to not put too much emphasis on Axie, despite being bullish on it long term, because it is largely dependent on whether the Sky Mavis team can execute on their new roadmap, solve the SLP hyperinflation problem, and ensure that the game is fun first and the earning aspect comes second.

The short to medium term outlook for Axie Infinity is bearish, but it all depends on the team’s ability to pull it off. By the way, I’m not going to sell my Axies anytime soon; I’m just finding it difficult to break out of the negative flywheel the game is currently in because scholars see the game as a chore rather than a game for fun and enjoyment.

NFT in a booming bull market

NFTs, on the other hand, are on the rise and seeing greater volume than ever before. Some of the projects I am holding are doing very well. The Genesis Kaiju Kingz floor has increased to 6 ETH, the Crypto Unicorns floor has increased to >2 ETH, and Crypto Unicorn Mythic Land plots are also nearing the 2 ETH floor at the point of writing.

That is nearly 20 times the mint price, and several other NFT projects are nearing or breaking new all-time highs. The unique relationship between NFTs and Ethereum prices is fascinating to observe; as falling ETH prices meant cheaper NFTs in USD terms, where falling ETH prices benefit the NFT market.

This suggests that it is unlikely to see another multi-year bear market like the one we saw in 2017/18. Back then, the market structure was completely different, with few innovations and projects that were merely Bitcoin/Ethereum clones (forks).

Today’s crypto market is dynamic, with sectors ranging from Layer-1s/2s to DeFi to NFTs to Derivatives to Gaming and many more. We may see bearish sentiments in some sectors but bullish sentiments in others, as we are witnessing in the NFT markets right now.

What’s Next?

The next Fed meeting is in March, and it could be the first hammer that signals a shift in central banks’ stance toward containing inflation and winding down their accommodative stance toward the markets since 2008. The markets will most likely be in a state of uncertainty and doubt until the next meeting, so we can expect a sideways market in the short term.

During this time, my goal will be to accumulate my strong convictions and further concentrate my portfolio. When the market is choppy, it is the best time to accumulate, and when market participants are fearful, it is the best time to find pockets of value.

Key Projects on my Watchlist:

1. Cosmos (ATOM)
2. Metis (METIS)
3. Ronin (RON)
4. Osmosis (OSMO)
5. Immutable X (IMX)
6. Secret Network (SCRT)
7. Convex (CVX)
8. Dopex (DPX)
9. Pocket Network (POKT)
10. Celestia (Token Not Out Yet)

Which projects are you looking at? Let me know in the Investing Beanstock DAO telegram chat and we can discuss this further!

If you think crypto is interesting but you find it hard to learn about them, you can consider joining my telegram group where I share articles, investment opportunities and more research based content on an almost daily basis. You can also ask questions, and take part in polls to see how others think as well! 

Join My Tele Channel Here For Blog Updates And More!

For those who are already into Crypto

Want to learn how you can earn high yielding interest rates on your idle crypto assets in a secure, safe and easy manner? 

Earn Yields on Those Crypto With These Platforms

You can read up more on my post  here to learn more about Celsius and Nexo which give you interest on your crypto assets 

Or read up more on Hodlnaut here which is a Singapore-based crypto lending platform with market beating interest rates

What is Bitcoin? Answers here

Or do your due diligence on Bitcoin in my post here where I debunk some of the myths regarding Bitcoin.

What is Ethereum? Simple Guide Here

I did a bite-sized article on Ethereum for you to get a crash-course on what the buzz word is all about here.

Gemini Exchange (My Favourite Crypto Exchange)

Also my crypto exchange of choice Gemini here if you are looking to buy your first crypto!

Too Many Crypto Platforms? Here’s a Crypto One-Stop Solution

If you think there are too many crypto platforms out there, here is a simple solution for you. An all-in-one app for you to earn yield, trade, invest or borrow crypto with high security and assurance. Check out my Matrixport review 

What is Decentralised Finance (DeFi)?

Or do you want to learn more about DeFi in a simple to understand manner? Click here to learn more

How to Value Crypto Assets?

Learn more about how you can put a “fair value” on crypto such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and more here

Crypto Referral Links (Click and Sign Up)

Gemini Exchange: Deposits and buy US$100 or more crypto on Gemini and you will earn US$10 in BTC.

FTX Exchange: Create a FTX account here and trade the lowest fee and best UI/UX crypto exchange!

Coinhako Exchange: You can create an account by clicking the link and then enter promo code: COINGECKO when doing a buy/sell and enjoy 20% trading fees discount! 

Binance Exchange: Create a Binance.com account here and trade the widest range of crypto pairings!

Hodlnaut: Earn US$20 in BTC/ETH/USDT/USDC/DAI for free with your first transfer of US$1000 or more in the corresponding crypto asset of your choice!

Celsius Network: Earn US$40 in BTC for free with your first transfer of US$400 or more in any crypto asset and wait for 1 month!

Matrixport: Get a $1288 free coupon trial to try their product and earn $20 in USDC when you sign up successfully and become a qualified client!

Nexo: Earn US$10 in BTC for free when you transfer US$100 or more in any crypto asset of your choice!

Disclaimer: 

The content here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment or a recommendation to buy or sell a security. In fact, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor and may not be used to evaluate or make any investment.

2021 Performance Review and Reflections

2021 has been a wild ride. Earlier this year, I was still investing into stocks but building more convictions in crypto over time as the asymmetric risk-reward that this asset class offers is simply out of this world and not taking a large enough allocation might prove to be an opportunity cost of a lifetime. Approaching the May 2021 Bitcoin crash, I finally decided to liquidate all of my US stocks and bought into the crypto dip, and it was one of the best decisions I made this year. More on that later.

It was definitely a year of ups and downs, as the world continues to be rampaged by the coronavirus The markets also presented itself with various pockets of buying opportunities, as uncertainty of the virus such as the Delta Variant and Omicron scares, Fed’s tapering fear spooking the markets and general bearish sentiments nearing the end of year for crypto.

In hindsight, there were many periods of good buying opportunities throughout the year, it is really up to the individual to have the foresight to see it, courage to buy it and conviction to hold it.

An important lesson of 2021: Having enough liquidity

Even with these great buying opportunities, I was constantly plagued by a problem: Not having enough liquidity to buy dips. In short, I should have stocked up at least 10% of my portfolio in Stablecoins/cash in order to buy meaningful dips and huge discount opportunities in the market. Instead, I am typically fully allocated throughout the year and the only thing I could do was to watch the dips getting bought back up or me rotating some positions over to buy into higher beta plays in the market.

Net Worth Grew 6.32x or 500+% From 2020

It might sound insane, but switching my portfolio into a 100% crypto portfolio really did wonders to my portfolio growth. I originally did a projection for my net worth for the next 10 years, and this year has already hit my personal targets set in 2024, so I will have to readjust all my calculations again. If you asked me at the beginning of 2021, I would have thought it will be crazy to think how much my portfolio would have grown.

Compared to 2020, the difference in this portfolio outperformance was due to me completely rotating from US Tech Stocks into crypto, especially so during the May crash thanks to China’s ban on Bitcoin Mining. (thanks China for the discount and entry!)

More Income Streams

Furthermore, I also kickstarted multiple streams of passive income through yield farming, Axie Infinity Scholarships and yield generating NFTs which gave me a steady stream of cashflow every week and every month. I’ll go on to reinvest those passive income into my high conviction bets and continue to compound them.

Aside from passive income, I also invested my active income from work and funnelling it back into crypto. Since I’m still a student anyway, I don’t see the need to upgrade my lifestyle now and hence would rather continue to accumulate assets over time which will pay for me in the future. In 2020, I originally aimed to double or triple my net worth by 2021 or 2022, but a combination of different income streams and rational investment decisions was able to push it even higher than I intended to. (Yay!)

As a sweet sweet bonus, my girlfriend and I also used our November Axie Scholarship payout to fund for our 8-day trip to South Korea when the VTL opened, so I’m really thankful that we took on the risk to start the Axie scholarship early with enough capital to make our passive income payout significant (It’s currently 3500 SGD/month each on average).

Letting your winners run

When I finally managed to hit $100K a few months back, I realised I did that not by actively trading in and out of my crypto positions. Instead, it was simply letting my winners run.

Crypto markets move super fast, and typically, a new narrative can spring an ecosystem or sector into “Full Send Mode” and cause a parabolic move up that will catch everyone by surprise.

We saw this in August with Axie Infinity Play-to-Earn and the NFT Bull Market, and then again with Metaverses when Facebook rebranded to Meta etc.

The Layer-1 narrative was super strong this year, which is why if you invested in any of the alt-Layer 1s this year like BNB, SOL, AVAX, FTM, MATIC, LUNA, you would have done extremely well this year.

In my case, the standouts from my portfolio that managed to outperform the market and reward me with handsome returns were these particular winners:

1. AXS (Axie Infinity Shard) – 16x (+1,500%)
2. FTM (Fantom) – 12x (+1,100%)
3. LUNA (Terra) – 5x (+400%)
4. EmberSword Platinum Badge – 4x (+300%)

I eventually sold all my AXS tokens at an average sell price of around $120/AXS and rotated into other crypto assets, and I am currently still holding on to the other 3 winners, although I realised some profits on FTM and LUNA to take back principal amount first.

I also tried to chase narratives and do some momentum trades to try and catch the tailwind before it takes off, such as AVAX. I bought a huge bag of AVAX (at around $40/AVAX) looking to allocate ahead of Avalanche Rush but decided to take profit early (around $60/AVAX) because I wanted to rotate back to farms on Fantom and build more Axie teams instead.

In short I’m NGMI on Avalanche 😦 But hey I did get the bridging airdrop ($GB tokens) for being an early AVAX adopter so still thankful to AVAX for free money!

Taking the leap of faith

Being the clueless undergraduate that I am, I am still conflicted earlier this year if I wanted to focus on getting more work experiences (through internships) or trying to fix my grades and do well so I can get into a good company in the future (Who doesn’t want to right?)

In September, I was presented with the opportunity to join Delphi Digital thanks to a friend, and from there on, I took the leap of faith and went all out to fight for the Full Time Role. I eventually got the job and it was one of the best decisions ever made in my life. The culture and freedom is unseen of, and the abundance of welfare and friendship along the way of a global team is also something I won’t trade for anything else.

I took an LOA (Leave of Absence) for the upcoming semester to fully focus on my Full Time Analyst Role at Delphi, and so far the amount of things I’m learning from all the super smart and talented people here is lightyears ahead of what I will be able to learn from school hands down.

It is truly an inspiration to be working among these folks and I am looking forward to learning more practical and technical skills from them. And also Delphi is the best company to work in web3 hands down!

2021 is definitely a defining year for me personally.

2021 Portfolio Performance

Honestly speaking, I haven’t been keeping track of Traditional Stock Market Indexes this year after I converted to crypto entirely. From the looks of it, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is up 23.7% this year while the S&P 500 Index is up 29.15% this year. NASDAQ-100 Index is up 28.94% this year. This is one of the best year for traditional equities, not too bad.

If you have however, allocated capital into crypto assets, and chose the lowest downside option in the form of Bitcoin, you would be up 79.31% this year. If you instead understood that Bitcoin is merely a store-of-value asset and wanted to invest in an entire smart contracts ecosystem with a plethora of utility and deflationary mechanics in the form of Ethereum, you would be up 467% this year.

Overall, my portfolio was up 532% this year, which means I at least managed to outperform crypto bluechips like Bitcoin and Ethereum by a slight margin. But it is an absolute outperformance if you compare it to traditional market indexes.

This outperformance will continue to remain this way as crypto continues to mature over time, but Traditional Finance folks will continue to be in denial and disbelief, wishing one day that “Mean Reversion Theory” will happen to crypto. (Have they heard of the Internet? Did it disappear? I let you answer that.)

The low interest rate environment has continued to lift risk-on assets like equities and crypto even higher, but with the Fed signalling rate hikes to take place in 2022 and tapering to happen as well.

Current Portfolio Allocation and Outlook

In terms of how my current portfolio looks like, it’s something like this:

Asset Name	Portfolio %	Sector
Ethereum (ETH)	43%	Layer-1
Fantom (FTM)	21%	Layer-1
Embersword Platinum Badge + Land	16%	Gaming
Terra (LUNA)	7.3%	Layer-1
GuildFi (GF)	3.84%	Gaming DAO
TempleDAO (OGTEMPLE)	3.6%	(Degen) DAO
Yield Guild Games (YGG)	1.95%	Gaming DAO
Merit Circle (MC)	1.53%	Gaming DAO
Cosmos (ATOM)	1.48%	Multichain

As of 26 Dec 2021

Based on the current allocation, here are a few things that I am looking out for in 2022:

1. Crypto Gaming will continue to onboard hundreds of thousands of new gamers into crypto and become the first sector to onboard 1 billion users.
2. Gaming Guilds will be an important gear in the adoption flywheel to improve liquidity and deal flow while expanding the metaverse through co-creation and mindshare
3. Multi-chain infrastructure will start to take shape with enhancements to shared security and important bridges such as Gravity Bridge that will connect EVM chains to IBC.
4. Ethereum Layer-2 Scaling will become a popular narrative in 2022 as talented teams behind the scenes for the past few years such as Starkware, ZKSync, Celestia and many more shock the industry with mindblowing tech and scaling solutions
5. Terra will become the multi-chain Stablecoins powerhouse as it links up IBC with the Cosmos ecosystem + Money Market integrations
6. Fantom’s new virtual machine: FVM will shock the industry with its unique DAG infrastructure and Lachesis consensus offering unprecedented scaling possibilities
7. CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currencies) experiments start to emerge starting with China’s digital RMB
8. More artists and brands joining the NFT sector after seeing the success of Nike and Adidas as we see mainstream acknowledgment of this new tech
9. DeFi 2.0 to spark a new crypto renaissance in terms of innovation and DAOs to take part in the Curve Wars that will be replicated on other chains
10. Crypto to continue outperform any other asset class and potentially growing to $10 Trillion Market Cap and beyond.

These are just some of my views and predictions for 2022. But it is very difficult to imagine a Bear Market from every angle and viewpoint that I can think of.

In my view, I feel that we might see smaller pockets and sectors entering a bear market while other sectors continue to see strong tailwinds and unprecedented growth.

For example, we might continue to see NFTs being in a bear market for quite some time due to 80% of projects being poor quality, short term cash grabs, but on the other side we continue to see crypto gaming growing exponentially. You get the point.

A macro crypto bear like the one in 2018 is highly unlikely in my opinion. The market back then vs now has completely different dynamics and capital influx. I might be wrong though. So please this opinion of a random dude online with a pinch of salt.

Bitcoin and Ethereum as the Benchmark Index

From 2022 onwards, it will be unrealistic to compare crypto returns to stock market returns as it simply is too stark of a contrast to do that and will not be meaningful since crypto is a nascent sector that will continue to outperform traditional, slow growing sectors.

Bitcoin and Ethereum will thus become the benchmark index thanks to their Blue Chip status.

I’ll just port over this paragraph I wrote in 2020’s Review:

“If everyone is looking for the same spot for gold, what chances will there be for you? Do you think you will get higher returns than the market manipulators or big investment bank with thousands of analyst doing research every single second? Probably not. Instead, be a contrarian and look elsewhere where no one is looking, because that is where you will find multi-baggers that can deliver returns such as Peter Lynch. You can read up more about this in “One Up On Wall Street” by legendary investor Peter Lynch.”

Investment Objective

Starting 2022, my goals will be dead set on the following:

Long-Term Outperformance over Bitcoin and Ethereum

While the past year’s gauge does not determine long term performance, it is a good starting point to set up a long term track record and set the foundation for me to achieve my goal.

While I managed to beat the market this time round, it does not mean I will continue to beat the market because my portfolio is after all concentrated so any pullback will hurt my portfolio more than the market itself. The reverse is also true that when markets goes uptrend, my portfolio should outperform the broad market theoretically speaking.

Regardless of what the market does, I will continue to be a net buyer of quality crypto and selling to rotate to a better horse or taking profit to enjoy in the real world.

Below are some thoughts taken from last year and this year:

General Thoughts

Timing the market is not my game, I rather focus on taking a business owner mindset when I invest in a project. My philosophy is for a good quality company that is growing, I should consider holding on even if it is overvalued. Attractive investments are extremely rare, so get in when its fairly priced, and just ride the wave, ignore the noise and keep investing consistently.

On Market Crashes

This is the one thing that investors and layman alike fear the most. The market will always swing between being overvalued to undervalued, which at the extremes will lead to bull run (like right now) or market crash, and it is all due to market sentiments of greed and fear in play.

Looking back on history, the stock market experienced a severe (>40%) crash every 10-15 years or so on the average. All times, it has recovered and exceeded the previous high within a few years. The same goes for crypto as well, while there are currently only 3 distinct market cycles within crypto that we can refer to, each cycle the market cap trends higher as the asset class continues to mature.

Timing the market may work short-term but not long-term

Some may think a good profit can be made if we sell our investment when the market is overvalued and then buy back in when it crashes. I think this is very difficult to execute successfully. Miss one cycle and you may need to wait out many years or miss out completely because narratives are changing every single day.

Each major market correction can offer opportunity to greatly magnify our portfolio performance. Many fails to realise that a lower price, in fact, reduces and not increases the risk. 

The importance of a war chest

Keeping a sizeable warchest is important. A war chest of 5% in cash will not have that much impact. But keeping too much cash (>50%), will mean you are only enjoying half of the earning growth of your investment during the in-between years. I personally think a good ratio will be in the 10%-20%.

Lastly, we have to be mentally prepared. Just imagine that your portfolio is cut by 40-50%, what is the impact to you financially, do you still have other incomes to cover the expenses? I always ask myself that if my portfolio is reduced by half, will my life be any different and will I panic. Stress test our financials to such scenario will help to prepare our mindset when it happens.

Because it will happen, the only question is when. (Already happened multiple times this year if you are in crypto)

Writing Journey

Insane how far this blog has came. From start of the year to now, I wrote a total of 47 blog post (including this post) with an average of 2295 words per post. Insane stuff looking back, I can technically write a book like that haha. 105,573 words written this year excluding this post!

I hope you enjoyed the content written this year as much as I enjoyed writing them and penning some of my thoughts down, and the evolution of me going from stocks into crypto. I hope to continue value-adding for beginners, intermediate and advanced investors alike and bridging the gap of financial literacy even further. Crypto is a complicated topic, and it will take time. But I am sure one day everyone will understand it well enough to protect their wealth from inflation.

While I didn’t manage to write an E-Book like I set out my goal at the start of the year due to different reasons and circumstances, I hope that my blog posts were able to inspire you to take on the risk if you are young and strive for financial freedom at an earlier age.

Also, if you really learnt a lot from my blog posts, a shoutout or sharing of my blog post with your friends and family really mean a lot to me, because all these time and effort spent into crafting and writing out a blog post are purely out of my own passion and I will ensure that posts will remain absolutely free for all to read in the future.

This blog is also here as a reflection for my own thought process and tracking my own journey towards financial freedom, just like many other financial blogs out there.

As 2021 comes to an end, I wish each and everyone all the best in your journey towards financial freedom, good health and peaceful family ties and of course, happy new year in advance! To those who read all the way till the end, I sincerely thank you for the bottom of my heart for the unwavering support thus far.

Join My Tele Channel Here For Blog Updates And More!

For those who are already into Crypto

Want to learn how you can earn high yielding interest rates on your idle crypto assets in a secure, safe and easy manner? 

Earn Yields on Those Crypto With These Platforms

You can read up more on my post  here to learn more about Celsius and Nexo which give you interest on your crypto assets 

Or read up more on Hodlnaut here which is a Singapore-based crypto lending platform with market beating interest rates

What is Bitcoin? Answers here

Or do your due diligence on Bitcoin in my post here where I debunk some of the myths regarding Bitcoin.

What is Ethereum? Simple Guide Here

I did a bite-sized article on Ethereum for you to get a crash-course on what the buzz word is all about here.

Gemini Exchange (My Favourite Crypto Exchange)

Also my crypto exchange of choice Gemini here if you are looking to buy your first crypto!

Too Many Crypto Platforms? Here’s a Crypto One-Stop Solution

If you think there are too many crypto platforms out there, here is a simple solution for you. An all-in-one app for you to earn yield, trade, invest or borrow crypto with high security and assurance. Check out my Matrixport review 

What is Decentralised Finance (DeFi)?

Or do you want to learn more about DeFi in a simple to understand manner? Click here to learn more

How to Value Crypto Assets?

Learn more about how you can put a “fair value” on crypto such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and more here

Crypto Referral Links (Click and Sign Up)

Gemini Exchange: Deposits and buy US$100 or more crypto on Gemini and you will earn US$10 in BTC.

FTX Exchange: Create a FTX account here and trade the lowest fee and best UI/UX crypto exchange!

Coinhako Exchange: You can create an account by clicking the link and then enter promo code: COINGECKO when doing a buy/sell and enjoy 20% trading fees discount! 

Binance Exchange: Create a Binance.com account here and trade the widest range of crypto pairings!

Hodlnaut: Earn US$20 in BTC/ETH/USDT/USDC/DAI for free with your first transfer of US$1000 or more in the corresponding crypto asset of your choice!

Celsius Network: Earn US$40 in BTC for free with your first transfer of US$400 or more in any crypto asset and wait for 1 month!

Matrixport: Get a $1288 free coupon trial to try their product and earn $20 in USDC when you sign up successfully and become a qualified client!

Nexo: Earn US$10 in BTC for free when you transfer US$100 or more in any crypto asset of your choice!

Disclaimer: 

The content here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment or a recommendation to buy or sell a security. In fact, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor and may not be used to evaluate or make any investment.

Stocks or Crypto? 6-Months Portfolio Performance Updates and Comparisons

So 6 months ago, I decided to conduct a fun experiment to see whether stocks or crypto will deliver better returns as a portfolio in the same time period. If you have not read it, you can do so here first.

Crypto becoming mainstream

As we all know, stocks have historically been the best performing asset class of the century but the recent boom in crypto has been taking the investing world by storm as digital assets deliver jaw-dropping returns that left Traditional Finance folks in disbelief.

Be Open Minded or Get Left Behind (Again)

“It’s just a bubble.”, “It’s all speculation and Bitcoin does not generate any revenue”. “It’s a Ponzi scheme”, “It’s a scam!”. These are some of the things you might hear about crypto – as with any uninformed, ignorant folks dismissing anything new. The fact is, crypto is more than just currency or being a coin. They are a whole new asset class with use cases beyond anyone’s imagination because blockchain technology is laying grounds for the new internet. So if you still think crypto is all about Bitcoin or Ethereum, or worse.. Doge, you’ll be surprised. There are so much developments in the crypto space right now.

As a refresher, below is the portfolio criteria and also the portfolio that were used for comparison:

Portfolio Criteria

The criteria is simple. All three portfolios will have a total of 5 positions, with allocations spread evenly (20% weighting each) at a starting capital of $100,000 USD.

All 3 portfolios were started at the same time, and the stock prices were taken as the closing price on 18th June 2021. As for crypto, their prices were taken as of the time of writing on 20th June 2021. 

The portfolio inception date is 20th June 2021, no rebalancing will be done, no additional buy-ins, no sell-offs, all 3 portfolios will just naturally grow into their new allocations. 

Returns will be purely based upon future returns. 

This will give equal opportunity for each portfolio to demonstrate their growth potential, and used as arguments as to whether stocks, stocks ETF, crypto or combination of both will provide better overall returns.

Results will be tracked and published on a semi-annual basis for more meaningful analysis and performance.

Here are the portfolios:

*If you want to understand the reasoning behind these portfolios, you can check out the previous post here.

Portfolio 1: 100% Equities-Growth ETF Picks

1. QQQ (Invesco QQQ ETF) – 20%
2. ARKK (ARK Innovation ETF) – 20%
3. ARKG (ARK Genomic Revolution ETF) – 20%
4. ARKF (ARK Fintech Innovation ETF) – 20%
5. WCLD (WisdomTree Cloud Computing ETF) – 20%

Total: $100,000 USD (As of 20 June 2021)

6 Months Later:

As of 19 December 2021

Current Portfolio Value: $87,790 USD (-12.16% YTD)

Looks like Tech-heavy tilt wasn’t the right allocation with the changing macro environment regarding Federal Reserve rate hikes and QE tapering that tends to hurt Tech Growth stocks the most. If interest rates really were to increase come 2022, this portfolio might see some short-medium term volatility as investors and funds de-risk their portfolio towards defensive stocks and value plays.

The portfolio allocation also grew into a new weighting based on the respective ETF performance with QQQ (Nasdaq-100) having the best relative performance and ARK Genomic Revolution ETF having the worst relative performance in the portfolio.

Time Weighted Returns vs Major Indexes (Year-To-Date)

2022 might see ‘easy money’ and speculative bets start to dwindle as the global economy recovers and the money printing slowing down.

Since this portfolio comparison is meant for the long term, there won’t be any adjustments made to this portfolio since it is diversified across many tech companies, even though there is an overweight on the Tech sector. Still, my view of the equities market is that Tech will outperform any other sector this decade, just like it did in the last decade.

In this new decade of high inflation, value stocks and companies with large cash reserves will feel the pain for sure sooner or later.

But that is just my view.

Portfolio 2: The “Community-Pick” Portfolio 

1. Bitcoin – 20% (Crypto)
2. Ethereum – 20% (Crypto)
3. Tesla – 20% (Stocks)
4. Apple – 20% (Stocks)
5. Zilliqa – 20% (Crypto)

Total: $100,000 USD (As of 20 June 2021)

*Slight deviation due to crypto prices

6 Months Later:

As of 19 December 2021

Current Portfolio Value: $133,831.74 USD (+33.90% YTD)

The Community-Pick Portfolio fared much better than Portfolio 1’s Growth ETF Portfolio.

If we take a look at what made this portfolio better than Portfolio 1, it seems that Ethereum and Tesla were the standouts in this portfolio that pulled the weight for the portfolio.

For a hybrid stocks and crypto portfolio, I personally feel that it was able to capture higher risk-adjusted returns through higher beta plays like Ethereum. The worst performer in this portfolio happens to be Zilliqa, which is expected since crypto is seeing an aggressive sell-off in recent weeks and smaller-cap Altcoins are sure to take the hit.

Bitcoin and Apple maintained their allocation weightage, and added some downside risk protection for the portfolio given the “Blue Chip” status of the 2 assets in their respective realms.

Time Weighted Returns vs Major Indexes (Year-To-Date)

If you had this exact portfolio at the start of this year, you will easily have beaten all traditional indexes such as the Straits Times Index, World Stocks Index, and the popular S&P 500 index.

Given that no portfolio adjustments were made, we can clearly see the benefits of adding crypto into a traditional stocks portfolio. While Tesla continues to outperform in the stock market realm, the real out-performer in this portfolio turns out to be Ethereum, and it’s also a no brainer why.

Ethereum is the leading smart contracts Layer-1 blockchain platform with the largest network effects, volume, liquidity depth, user, developers and Dapps.

While people may argue Ethereum is un-usable for most retail users (I tend to agree), the Ethereum Foundation is already coming up with scaling solutions to help Ethereum via Layer-2 solutions and also the inevitable Ethereum 2.0 upgrade planned in H1 2022. You can understand more about Ethereum in the post here.

This portfolio would be how a TradFi investor transitioning into the crypto rabbit hole would look like, and I will expect this portfolio to continue outperforming the stock market over the long run. There will be no adjustments made to this portfolio as well.

Portfolio 3: 100% Crypto Picks (By yours truly)

1. Ethereum – 20%
2. Fantom – 20%
3. Sushiswap – 20%
4. Binance Coin – 20%
5. Chainlink – 20%

Total: $100,000 USD (As of 20 June 2021)

*Slight deviation due to crypto prices

6 Months Later:

As of 19 December 2021

Current Portfolio Value: $197,684.71 USD (+97.68% YTD)

Crypto is still in it’s early innings, and to me is the most asymmetric trade of the decade. Web3 is going to eat TradFi, as more and more jobs gets automated away and many of the great middle class jobs today will be disrupted eventually by AI, automation and smart contracts etc. Banks today are making so much money and keeping it for themselves, DeFi gives the consumer a chance to make it fair and square, which is why the interest in DeFi is so much higher than the Traditional World.

This portfolio incepted based on what I think will be a great passive crypto portfolio made up of some crypto blue-chips spread across different use cases.

Yes, I would have make some changes if possible since crypto is moving so fast and innovation is happening at lightning speed. But I am confident this portfolio will continue to outperform the stock market since the 5 assets here are projects with great fundamentals behind them.

Short term wise, I won’t know if this portfolio will continue to outperform, but I do know that in the long run, this portfolio will hold up and continue to crush expectations.

In particular, Fantom is the huge winner of this portfolio. FTM basically did a 5x since the inception of the portfolio and taking up nearly half of the portfolio now. The second best perform turns out to be Ethereum followed by BNB. A testament to the performance that Layer-1 coins can deliver if you invest in the right ecosystems.

Chainlink is the dominant player in the Oracles space, but relative performance wise, it did not perform as well but I won’t be concerned about Chainlink’s downside in the bear, since it is integrated into so many projects that it will always be around.

Sushi is the confusing one. The project is essentially a DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) and many things have changed since I first made this portfolio post. The lead developer of Sushiswap 0xMaki, has stepped down from the project, and the community was in ruins for quite some time. Now, Daniele Siesta is looking to take over Sushi which brings some narrative regarding turning Sushi into a DeFi 2.0 project(?)

Many things yet to be seen for Sushiswap but fundamentally (P/E, P/S ratio wise), Sushiswap is one of the most undervalued and (somehow) least sort after DeFi token in the entire DeFi space. Which is odd given Sushi’s roadmap and the fact that it exist on almost every blockchain ecosystem.

Once again, the markets can remain irrational for a long period of time, and no one will ever know what happens in the short term. However, given how new DeFi is and how new the entire crypto space is (heck metaverse and Play-To-Earn wasn’t even a narrative 6 months ago), the exponential growth that we are about to see for the crypto market will continue to leave traditional hedge funds and stock market investors in disbelief.

Crypto will permeate every sector

Crypto will eventually be integrated into every sector of the economy, from the financial sector to gaming, to supply chain to healthcare, to E-Commerce yada yada yada… if you still think crypto is a passing fad, well, too bad for you.

The best place to start would be to understand how Bitcoin work, and then Ethereum. Or even better, getting started on a game like Axie Infinity or buying NFTs will also get you down to understand this rabbit hole in no time. The best way to understand crypto is not by reading about them, it is by using the protocols yourself and tinkering the hell out of it as much as possible.

Side-By-Side Performance Comparison

Portfolio 1 (Tech Heavy ETFs): $87,790 USD (-12.16% YTD)

Portfolio 2 (Hybrid Stocks/Crypto): $133,831.74 USD (+33.90% YTD)

Portfolio 3 (Full Crypto): $197,684.71 USD (+97.68% YTD) (Overall Winner!)

Okay I get it. You may say the first portfolio is unfair since growth stocks are taking a hit now. But that is hindsight bias, everyone was betting on Growth stocks 6 months ago.

The portfolios are fair and square since no adjustments will be made. I want to compare the performance in the long term, and so far the past 6 months have proven that crypto continues to take lead, and the same for my personal portfolio as well (which likewise is 100% in crypto) despite the current crypto market sell off.

Also, this experiment also shows how difficult it is for traditional finance instruments to actually beat standard indexes like S&P 500, but adding crypto into portfolios might prove to be a higher beta play to capture higher upsides and help you outperform the market.

Crypto sounds great, but only if you understands them

Again, circle of competence applies to the crypto markets just like it does for the stock market. Everyone has different personality, time horizons and risk tolerance levels, and hence the type of crypto to be adopted will depend on how much you understand them, whether you have conviction in them and whether you are able to withstand periods of volatility.

Investing is risky if you don’t understand what is going on, and even more so if you copy other traders or investor without any understanding. Trend following is a bad strategy over the long run because knowing the entry without understanding the gameplay or exit strategy is setting yourself up for big big trouble.

Again, I go back to Peter Lynch’s quote: “Know what you own, and why you own it.”

The real risk is not understanding what you own. Markets don’t go up in a straight line, so please do your own research and due diligence, take opinions online with a pinch of salt and build your own thesis. If not, you will just get shaken out from the volatility and lose all your hard-earned money.

Investing does not equate to speculating. If you focus on price, you are a speculator. Know the difference.

Conclusion

Crypto takes the win against stocks hands down in this semi-annual portfolio breakdown.

At a total market cap of less than $3 Trillion, the crypto market still has huge room to grow as more people start to understand the different use cases and benefits crypto bring to mankind.

DeFi will continue to eat into TradFi’s market, while NFTs will bring more autonomy to content creators and artists, and GameFi projects will continue to disrupt traditional gaming who has historically been making fat profits for themselves while providing zero monetary value for their consumers.

The story of crypto vs Traditional Finance is the tale of David vs Goliath. It is only a matter of time.

If you think crypto is interesting but you find it hard to learn about them, you can consider joining my Telegram Group where I share articles, investment opportunities and more research based content on an almost daily basis. You can also ask questions, and take part in polls to see how others think as well! 

Join My Tele Channel Here For Blog Updates And More!

For those who are already into Crypto

Want to learn how you can earn high yielding interest rates on your idle crypto assets in a secure, safe and easy manner? 

Earn Yields on Those Crypto With These Platforms

You can read up more on my post  here to learn more about Celsius and Nexo which give you interest on your crypto assets 

Or read up more on Hodlnaut here which is a Singapore-based crypto lending platform with market beating interest rates

What is Bitcoin? Answers here

Or do your due diligence on Bitcoin in my post here where I debunk some of the myths regarding Bitcoin.

What is Ethereum? Simple Guide Here

I did a bite-sized article on Ethereum for you to get a crash-course on what the buzz word is all about here.

Gemini Exchange (My Favourite Crypto Exchange)

Also my crypto exchange of choice Gemini here if you are looking to buy your first crypto!

Too Many Crypto Platforms? Here’s a Crypto One-Stop Solution

If you think there are too many crypto platforms out there, here is a simple solution for you. An all-in-one app for you to earn yield, trade, invest or borrow crypto with high security and assurance. Check out my Matrixport review 

What is Decentralised Finance (DeFi)?

Or do you want to learn more about DeFi in a simple to understand manner? Click here to learn more

How to Value Crypto Assets?

Learn more about how you can put a “fair value” on crypto such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and more here

Crypto Referral Links (Click and Sign Up)

Gemini Exchange: Deposits and buy US$100 or more crypto on Gemini and you will earn US$10 in BTC.

Coinhako Exchange: You can create an account by clicking the link and then enter promo code: COINGECKO when doing a buy/sell and enjoy 20% trading fees discount! 

Binance Exchange: Create a Binance.com account here and trade the widest range of crypto pairings!

Hodlnaut: Earn US$20 in BTC/ETH/USDT/USDC/DAI for free with your first transfer of US$1000 or more in the corresponding crypto asset of your choice!

Celsius Network: Earn US$40 in BTC for free with your first transfer of US$400 or more in any crypto asset and wait for 1 month!

Matrixport: Get a $1288 free coupon trial to try their product and earn $20 in USDC when you sign up successfully and become a qualified client!

Nexo: Earn US$10 in BTC for free when you transfer US$100 or more in any crypto asset of your choice!

Disclaimer: 

The content here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment or a recommendation to buy or sell a security. In fact, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor and may not be used to evaluate or make any investment.

State of Crypto and Updates

It’s been some time since I updated my blog. Having to juggle my studies while working Full Time as an Analyst in crypto was pretty much keeping me busy with little spare time to do much. Not forgetting the craziness of crypto and managing a growing Axie Scholarship Guild.

Mainstream News

Crypto move super fast, and that is because of the immense amount of mindshare and innovation that is happening in the space. It is basically the Internet in 1999 when everyone is coming up with revolutionary ideas and betting on which ones will actually become what we know today as the Big Tech FAANG stocks or MANGA since Facebook changed their names to Meta.

DeFi boom and Ethereum Scaling

In 2020, we saw the golden era of DeFi summer, where Decentralised Finance became a buzzword and a period where yield farming was super profitable after it was first introduced by Compound and its COMP token. We then saw the likes of Layer-1s like Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom, Terra, and Solana becoming the buzz word for DeFi and chain utilisation supremacy.

While everyone is criticising Ethereum for being un-usable and too expensive for retail users (which I agree), the Ethereum Foundation is already deep diving and experimenting with various Ethereum scaling solutions. Ethereum scaling was always in the works with Ethereum’s core upgrade being Ethereum 2.0, which will migrate the current legacy Proof-Of-Work chain to a Proof-Of-Stake blockchain that will drastically improve throughput (scalability) and reduce computational outputs that are energy efficient, which tends to be the main criticism for Bitcoin and its environmental concerns. Ethereum 2.0 will also introduce Sharding which essentially solves the blockchain trilemma of Decentralisation, Scalability and Security. You can catch up on Ethereum basics in no time in one my previous post here.

Ethereum is the main settlement layer of the space

Now, Ethereum 2.0 does offer tons of scaling benefits for Ethereum, and why always Ethereum?

Well, Ethereum is the most decentralised blockchain second only to Bitcoin, and why is this important? Simply put, Ethereum is the most decentralised and secure smart contracts blockchain out there.

The years of network effect and battle-testing from malicious attacks has proven to us that Ethereum will always remain as the most-used blockchain for DeFi/NFTs and other applications that will be developed in the future.

Newer blockchains today are merely complements to Ethereum in my opinion and it will always remain that way if you are talking about a true, permission-less and decentralised smart contracts platform. Volume and liquidity thrive the longest and are the deepest on Ethereum, other chains are lightyears away from the level of network effects Ethereum has attained since inception.

While ETH 2.0 offers massive scaling benefits, it is not enough to port over billions of new users that will come in and use it when mass adoption starts. This is also why the concept of Modular Blockchains are so important: Being able to have modules plucked on top of Ethereum, and serve specialised utilities to make sure the user experience remains world-class but at the same time enjoy the highest level of security across any blockchain on Ethereum.

Ethereum Layer-2 Scaling Solutions

Ethereum Layer-2 solutions are being worked on as the modules that will support the future of mass adoption blockchain on Ethereum. So you probably have seen things like Optimism and Arbitrum in the news lately as Layer-2s are finally making their way to mainstream crypto users. What exactly are Layer-2 solutions though?

In essence, we have 2 main Layer-2 scaling known as optimistic roll-ups and Zero-Knowledge (ZK) rollups. They differ in the mechanisms they work but to keep it simple, they essentially “roll up” multiple transactions from Ethereum’s base layer (Layer 1) and send it over to the Layer-2s to be executed, all the while enjoying the security of Ethereum.

To put it in layman terms, think of it as you having to buy groceries one by one which can be time-consuming and incur cost and time spent to make the purchases but if you bulk purchase them and let the deliveryman send you 1 week worth of groceries all at once, you save up tremendously in delivery cost and speed up your goal of buying the groceries.

There will be specific Layer-2s that serve as specialist for different applications.

For example, Optimism and Arbitrum are optimistic roll-up Layer-2 scaling solutions on Ethereum and their general purpose is to make DeFi transactions cheaper, faster and better on Ethereum. While not perfect, they do enjoy Ethereum’s Layer-1 security which is unbeatable if you compare to other chains like Solana, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche or Fantom which are relatively less secure due to the low number of validators that are securing the network relative to Ethereum.

Immutable X is a ZK-roll up Layer-2 solution on Ethereum and they are specialising in NFTs. Their goal is to make NFT minting, buying and selling way faster with zero gas fees while still enjoying Ethereum’s Layer-1 security.

I hope you are getting the idea of what modular blockchains mean now. They are Lego blocks that can be attached to solve issues faced by Ethereum as we scale up and can be un-plugged if it is no longer needed. So we are no longer plagued by the initial base design of a blockchain and can scale accordingly, nipping the bud the moment they appear.

It is elementary understanding if you think other Layer-1 chains will become the next “Ethereum Killer” because unless the other Layer-1s can attain the level of security Ethereum has, all of these “Killer” narratives are merely marketing talks to give investors hope that they are investing in the next Ethereum.

Other chains will definitely thrive alongside Ethereum, but competing against it in my opinion is futile, given modular blockchain is the future of Ethereum scaling and that basically defeats the purpose of having so many Layer-1s.

Metaverse and Gaming

Aside from Ethereum scaling, we are also seeing Metaverse and gaming becoming a huge topic within the crypto sphere. After Facebook’s announcement of their goals to pivot towards the Metaverse, which is an alternate, virtual reality that users can connect with their friends and loved ones at a deeper level without physically being beside them, or Ready Player One if you watched that movie. (please go watch it if you have not done so already)

A scene from Ready Player One

I am personally invested in a few metaverse myself. These includes the likes of Axie Infinity, Embersword, The Sandbox Voxels and Star Atlas. The gaming narrative in my opinion, is going to make DeFi look small. Just look around us and how many of us play games?

Gaming is much more relatable to the masses than complicated jargons and strategies of DeFi yield farming and collaterals and lending and staking which requires the user to have a decent understanding of Finance and Economics.

In fact, if we look at Axie Infinity alone, which is the highest earning and most used application in the entire crypto space, users are interacting with DeFi without even knowing they are using it when they do things like bridging from Ethereum over to Ronin, staking AXS, using Katana DEX to provide liquidity and swap their SLP for AXS and more.

Crypto gaming will be the sector to onboard billions of users into the space, and these gamers will slowly use DeFi as they progress in the game and get introduced to DeFi eventually.

With a total addressable market size of over 2.5 billion gamers worldwide, I just don’t see how crypto gaming is not going to explode. Facebook and Microsoft entering the Metaverse means that the entire space is still super early as well. Wait till Google, Apple and many AAA rated gaming studios start jumping into the fray and that will be the explosive catalyst needed for mainstream adoption. We are literally just getting started.

State of NFTs

NFTs are in a state of bear market right now. After Ethereum’s massive rise from $3000+ USD to nearly $5000 USD at the point of writing, NFTs saw a massive bleed in ETH terms as speculative NFT traders fled for the liquid nature of ETH compared to NFTs.

Bluechip NFTs value in USD terms saw nearly no changes due to Ethereum’s value in USD appreciating, but in real ETH terms the entire NFT market took a dump, some collections are down nearly -60% or more and projects with little to no utility saw an even bigger dump of -80% or more.

The illiquid nature of NFTs means that you are essentially leveraging your ETH and shorting ETH if ETH is on a bullish momentum, something most NFT traders don’t realise when they ape into the next big thing that promise to become the next Bored Ape Yacht Club or CryptoPunk. Always do your own due diligence and thinking rationally is key.

2022 Outlook

For now, with 2021 coming to an end, there are many exciting narratives to look forward to in 2022. In particular, Polkadot’s parachain auctions are underway, and we will probably see Polkadot related projects start to suck up some of the liquidity away from other chains to take advantage of the mining incentives that will happen on these parachains.

Terra is also launching many of their TeFi projects with the inception of a proper money market in the form of Mars Protocol on the horizon and the core of every DeFi ecosystem, the AMM Astroport.

If you don’t yet know what drives volume and liquidity to a blockchain, it is always the presence of a money market (stablecoins) and AMM that will incentivise users to use the chain.

We also see many of the hottest play-to-earn games like Illuvium, Embersword and many others going live in 2022, so 2022 is going to be a huge P2E gaming boom for sure if you know where to look. Ethereum 2.0 is also coming in 2022, as well as metaverses, so it is going to be an exciting year ahead for crypto.

Shakeouts and Corrections Imminent

We are definitely seeing signs of froth in the market, especially since large-caps like Bitcoin and Ethereum hitting All-Time Highs after All-Time Highs, so it is possible that there will be multiple shakeouts in the market where early buyers start taking profit and spook out the greed and no-conviction buyers out of the market.

Markets don’t go up in a straight line, but if your point of entry offers a margin of safety and you have the conviction to hold or even buy dips when the opportunity arises, I don’t see a problem at all.

Embracing Regulation

With the maturing of the crypto asset class, it is also inevitable that we see regulators start to pin down on this industry hard. But all these are temporary, and in fact healthy for the industry in the long run as this will further legitimise the viability of digital assets as an investable asset class.

Institutions and Big Players are just starting to understand DeFi and all the merits of crypto, and I don’t think we are near saturation point yet. Perhaps when the industry hits 10 Trillion Market Cap where we might see mass adoption start to happen. While the industry is still super early, scams are also prevalent, so always remain vigilant and remember security is critical in this market!

Crypto is the next industrial revolution and not many can see it. I am sure people will be flocking to blockchain-based companies in the future instead of traditional sectors. Time will tell eventually. In fact, talents are already moving from the traditional world into the crypto world.

If you think crypto is interesting but you find it hard to learn about them, you can consider joining my telegram group where I share articles, investment opportunities and more research based content on an almost daily basis. You can also ask questions, and take part in polls to see how others think as well! 

Join My Tele Channel Here For Blog Updates And More!

For those who are already into Crypto

Want to learn how you can earn high yielding interest rates on your idle crypto assets in a secure, safe and easy manner? 

Earn Yields on Those Crypto With These Platforms

You can read up more on my post  here to learn more about Celsius and Nexo which give you interest on your crypto assets 

Or read up more on Hodlnaut here which is a Singapore-based crypto lending platform with market beating interest rates

What is Bitcoin? Answers here

Or do your due diligence on Bitcoin in my post here where I debunk some of the myths regarding Bitcoin.

What is Ethereum? Simple Guide Here

I did a bite-sized article on Ethereum for you to get a crash-course on what the buzz word is all about here.

Gemini Exchange (My Favourite Crypto Exchange)

Also my crypto exchange of choice Gemini here if you are looking to buy your first crypto!

Too Many Crypto Platforms? Here’s a Crypto One-Stop Solution

If you think there are too many crypto platforms out there, here is a simple solution for you. An all-in-one app for you to earn yield, trade, invest or borrow crypto with high security and assurance. Check out my Matrixport review 

What is Decentralised Finance (DeFi)?

Or do you want to learn more about DeFi in a simple to understand manner? Click here to learn more

How to Value Crypto Assets?

Learn more about how you can put a “fair value” on crypto such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and more here

Crypto Referral Links (Click and Sign Up)

Gemini Exchange: Deposits and buy US$100 or more crypto on Gemini and you will earn US$10 in BTC.

Coinhako Exchange: You can create an account by clicking the link and then enter promo code: COINGECKO when doing a buy/sell and enjoy 20% trading fees discount! 

Binance Exchange: Create a Binance.com account here and trade the widest range of crypto pairings!

Hodlnaut: Earn US$20 in BTC/ETH/USDT/USDC/DAI for free with your first transfer of US$1000 or more in the corresponding crypto asset of your choice!

Celsius Network: Earn US$40 in BTC for free with your first transfer of US$400 or more in any crypto asset and wait for 1 month!

Matrixport: Get a $1288 free coupon trial to try their product and earn $20 in USDC when you sign up successfully and become a qualified client!

Nexo: Earn US$10 in BTC for free when you transfer US$100 or more in any crypto asset of your choice!

AMEX Credit Card Promo: Earn up to $365 SGD of Bitcoin when you sign-up for an eligible AMEX Credit Card here!

Disclaimer: 

The content here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment or a recommendation to buy or sell a security. In fact, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor and may not be used to evaluate or make any investment.

Crossing the $100K milestone as an Undergraduate

I did it. I broke the $100K psychological barrier net worth figure which was seen as a typical benchmark for individuals under the age of 30. To be honest, nothing much have changed to my lifestyle even as my net worth continues to compound from my investments and yield-generating assets.

I have been wanting to cross the 6-figure portfolio for the longest time, because your compound interest from investing truly becomes extremely significant when your capital is at least 6-figures. 10% of $10,000 is $1000, while 10% of $100,000 is $10,000. You get the point.

So how did I get to this point? No, I did not win a lottery ticket, it was simply prudent investing, and taking profits and letting compound interest do its work. I did not have any magic formula or secret trading techniques. I sticked to what I know and understand, and just executed my game plan.

Started off with the stock market (2018-2020)

I first started investing back in 2018. Back then, I was absorbing everything I could from every investment book I could get my hands on. Over time, I gravitated towards the investing philosophy of Peter Lynch and Philip Fisher (still applies today), and went to seek out outperforming growth stocks with impregnable economic moats.

I focused on building my circle of competence and sticking to stocks which I understood and had huge conviction on. From 2018-2020, I was pretty much compounding my portfolio of stocks on an annualised basis of ~24% APY, not too shabby. I was able to outperform average stock market returns over a period of 3 years using my own knowledge and stock picking, so it was pretty cool thinking back.

Turning Point: August 2020 -> Crypto Rabbit Hole

Fast forward to August 2020, I was officially introduced to crypto by a friend from University and dived down the crypto DeFi rabbit hole.

It was at this juncture I was exposed to all the jargons within the crypto space, learnt about the different types of crypto including store-of-value crypto tokens like Bitcoin, utility/smart-contract tokens such as Ethereum, farm tokens such as Autofarm token, stablecoins such as DAI, USDC, UST and many more.

I started my yield farming journey in Binance Smart Chain when it first launched around the end of 2020, tried out AMMs and did LPs, experienced impermanent loss and farmed tons of inflationary tokens and understood yield farming, moved on to other chains and took advantage of the liquidity mining incentive programs like Polygon/Avalanche/Fantom and made significant gains from the farms.

As I became more and more well versed with the world of DeFi, I jumped into high-risk yield farms like MALT, and experimenting with unsustainable yield farms and eventually doing proper due diligence and porting over my knowledge from the stock market over to crypto, which I feel gave me a huge advantage because the crypto world is filled with too many short-term individuals who are basically speculators instead of investors.

Know what you own, and why you own it

This quote by Peter Lynch has always been my investing mantra no matter which asset I was investing in. If I can understand a project deeply (just like how I can understand a company deeply), then I will start to build conviction and allocate capital and let the thesis play itself out.

Innovation S Curve is literally playing out for Crypto/Blockchain

The reason why crypto has so much more upside compared to the stock market is because of the market cap. The entire crypto space is currently valued at $2+ Trillion right now. If you compare it to the market cap of Gold ($10 Trillion) or the stock market (~$100 Trillion), crypto is still extremely small and young, which explains why it is so volatile. By the time mass adoption take place (when volatility is more relatable to the stock market), crypto might already be a $10 Trillion industry (perhaps larger).

If you are in crypto now and you have personally tried out Metamask or interacted with smart contracts before, give yourself a pat on the back. You are early.

The next 10 years will be exponential as smart money enters this space and the whole asset class starts to mature and gain traction as a mainstream asset.

How I got to >100K

As mentioned above, as my conviction in the crypto space deepens, I rotated my capital from stocks into crypto completely in March 2021, and it was the best decision I ever made.

If my capital remained in stocks, I would have made roughly +68% Year-To-Date from my stock picks, which is pretty great, but the same capital that got rotated to my crypto portfolio is currently a +700% (7x) Year-To-Date, largely due to the allocation to Fantom (FTM) and AXS. I would have missed out on an opportunity cost of over 600% gains if I left my capital in the stock market.

I also regularly took profits from my crypto every time my capital 2x itself. I’ll pull out the initial capital and let the rest of the profits run. Doing so has allowed me to compound my portfolio over time and prevent myself from losing money.

You get my point here.

Multiple Passive Income Streams

After rotating from stocks to crypto, I started to build up multiple passive income streams within crypto, either through staking, yield farming and most recently, Axie Infinity Scholarships from July 2021 onwards. I also allocated capital into utility-NFTs that generate passive rewards such as MutantCats and Kaiju Kingz.

Mini-Update on Axie Scholarship

Currently, my girlfriend and I have 25 scholars under management and have introduced incentives for scholars to raise revenue and improving the overall average SLP earned per day. Our 25 scholars are averaging ~170 SLP per day with some scholars able to earn more than 200 SLP/day and maintaining 2200+ MMR which is super impressive.

Based on this revenue stream, we are able to generate an average passive income stream of 4100 SGD/month each since the inception of the scholarship business (3 months ago). Being a student, having such a great passive stream is a great boost to overall cashflow and ability to continue re-investing either more scholars to scale up the scholarship or dollar-cost into our high conviction crypto bets.

And 4000 SGD passive income monthly is extremely hard to attain if you do it the traditional way. Assuming you put it in CPF (4%) or get a dividend stocks portfolio with a annualised yield of 5%, that would require 1.2 Million capital at a yield of 4% or $960,000 capital at a yield of 5% respectively to generate that level of passive income. That is the financial freedom figures that most Singapore bloggers I’ve seen hope to attain. If only they knew about Axie Infinity… 👀

Our Axie scholarship capital outlay is no where near that amount mentioned above (its <30K). So the ROI from scholarship is super profitable relative to traditional ways of attaining passive income.

Utility NFTs

Mutant Cat NFT

The recent trend in NFT seems to follow a model pioneered by CyberKongz. In essence, I allocated capital (ETH) into a project called MutantCats which generates 10 FISH tokens every day for staking 1 Mutant Cat.

Meet the Mustachio

Each FISH token is worth 6 USD at the point of writing, which translates to a neat passive stream of 1800 USD per month. (assuming price stays constant)

Kaiju Kingz NFT

Another NFT project with a similar yield concept is Kaiju Kingz. I am currently co-owning the NFT and to sum it up: Each Kaiju Kingz generate 5 $RWASTE tokens per day with 1 $RWASTE worth 20 USD at the point of writing.

Rarity 629/3333 Genesis Kaiju

Holding the genesis Kaiju would translate to 3000 USD per month at the point of writing.

Crypto outperformed Stocks from my own experience investing in both asset classes

Portfolio Return Year-To-Date (15 October 2021)

The above is my returns from the start of the year to the point of writing. The lines you see below are the stock market benchmark indexes which is self-explanatory.

Crypto outperformed stocks, and it will continue to do so. I also did an experiment on 3 hypothetical portfolios on the effects crypto can have on potential returns in a stocks portfolio. The returns were not backtested and are reflecting the real-time gains between the different asset class.

It is also another push factor that convinced me to rotate my stocks into crypto instead.

Q4 2021 Game Plan

Honestly, hitting 100K does not change my lifestyle in any way. I am still re-investing my capital back into crypto with all my profits and passive income streams to compound it even further.

I can choose to buy a car now or rent and live in a cozy apartment now that I have a steady stream of profitable passive income. I pretty much have a degree of financial independence with my passive income stream funding my cashflow and allowing me to funnel back into my portfolio, while also providing for my basic daily expenses and seldom splurges, and not having to worry about running out of cash flow.

Q4 will be tough, because I now have a Full-Time role in Delphi Digital as an Analyst while still juggling with my University workload. I will have less time to blog and probably less time to focus on my grades lol.

For Q4, my investing strategy is simple:

1. Stick to my convictions (ETH/FTM/LUNA)
2. Concentrate my portfolio
3. Keep 5%-10% in Stablecoins
4. Take profits from the potential crypto bull cycle back into ETH/Stablecoins
5. Know what I own and why I own it (Sticking to circle of competence)
6. Build up deeper NFT Gaming/DAOs exposure

Now that my portfolio can finally compound exponentially, portfolio concentration will be my strategy going forward and hopefully I can go for the next milestone of a 200K+ portfolio.

Crypto is a crazy place, if Bitcoin were to go towards a similar run-up like Gold did when the ETF first came out, then the upcoming Bitcoin bull-run might be something no one would have predicted.

No one knows though. But long term wise, I am super bullish on this sector and will be contributing to the education of this sector and driving mainstream adoption even further.

Crypto is the next industrial revolution and not many can see it. I am sure people will be flocking to blockchain-based companies in the future instead of traditional sectors. Time will tell eventually. In fact, talents are already moving from the traditional world into the crypto world.

If you think crypto is interesting but you find it hard to learn about them, you can consider joining my telegram group where I share articles, investment opportunities and more research based content on an almost daily basis. You can also ask questions, and take part in polls to see how others think as well! 

Join My Tele Channel Here For Blog Updates And More!

For those who are already into Crypto

Want to learn how you can earn high yielding interest rates on your idle crypto assets in a secure, safe and easy manner? 

Earn Yields on Those Crypto With These Platforms

You can read up more on my post  here to learn more about Celsius and Nexo which give you interest on your crypto assets 

Or read up more on Hodlnaut here which is a Singapore-based crypto lending platform with market beating interest rates

What is Bitcoin? Answers here

Or do your due diligence on Bitcoin in my post here where I debunk some of the myths regarding Bitcoin.

What is Ethereum? Simple Guide Here

I did a bite-sized article on Ethereum for you to get a crash-course on what the buzz word is all about here.

Gemini Exchange (My Favourite Crypto Exchange)

Also my crypto exchange of choice Gemini here if you are looking to buy your first crypto!

Too Many Crypto Platforms? Here’s a Crypto One-Stop Solution

If you think there are too many crypto platforms out there, here is a simple solution for you. An all-in-one app for you to earn yield, trade, invest or borrow crypto with high security and assurance. Check out my Matrixport review 

What is Decentralised Finance (DeFi)?

Or do you want to learn more about DeFi in a simple to understand manner? Click here to learn more

How to Value Crypto Assets?

Learn more about how you can put a “fair value” on crypto such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and more here

Crypto Referral Links (Click and Sign Up)

Gemini Exchange: Deposits and buy US$100 or more crypto on Gemini and you will earn US$10 in BTC.

Coinhako Exchange: You can create an account by clicking the link and then enter promo code: COINGECKO when doing a buy/sell and enjoy 20% trading fees discount! 

Binance Exchange: Create a Binance.com account here and trade the widest range of crypto pairings!

Hodlnaut: Earn US$20 in BTC/ETH/USDT/USDC/DAI for free with your first transfer of US$1000 or more in the corresponding crypto asset of your choice!

Celsius Network: Earn US$40 in BTC for free with your first transfer of US$400 or more in any crypto asset and wait for 1 month!

Matrixport: Get a $1288 free coupon trial to try their product and earn $20 in USDC when you sign up successfully and become a qualified client!

Nexo: Earn US$10 in BTC for free when you transfer US$100 or more in any crypto asset of your choice!

AMEX Credit Card Promo: Earn up to $365 SGD of Bitcoin when you sign-up for an eligible AMEX Credit Card here!

Disclaimer: 

The content here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment or a recommendation to buy or sell a security. In fact, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor and may not be used to evaluate or make any investment.

Investment and Life Updates

Insane how time flies. In the blink of an eye, it is already October and 2021 is ending in 2 months time.

General Updates

The past few weeks had been busy with Mid Terms and exams, and projects are starting to pile up. On the work side, I am happy to announce that I will be working Full Time as an Analyst for Delphi Digital, one of the most renowned research and consulting firm which focuses on crypto and digital assets. It feels exciting and daunting at the same time as now I have to juggle my time management even more wisely now that I have a full-time job while trying to complete my degree.

On Axie Scholarship Business

The scholarship has now expanded to a total of 25 scholars under management. This is a combination of re-investing the passive income from the scholarship in the form of SLP and also injecting profits made from investments and converted to ETH to build more teams and onboard more scholars.

As the scholarship continues to scale, our income in SLP terms has been growing exponentially, but due to the value decline in USD, our passive income has pretty much been the same in USD, which nets around $8000-$9000 USD per month on average.

The goal for the scholarship right now is to ramp up the SLP generated by weaker scholars by up-skilling and coaching the weaker scholars, and promoting potential scholars into a Manager role to oversee a portion of the scholarship as it scales bigger over time.

October marks the 3rd month of running an Axie Scholarship and so far the initial capital invested has already broke even. With the launch of AXS staking, my idle AXS profits are now staking happily in the staking contract, yielding a comfortable ~200% APR that can be re-compounded daily through re-staking the earned AXS.

The next step for Axie Infinity will be the Ronin Decentralised Exchange (DEX), which will bring in the concept of AMM (Automated Market Maker), and even Liquidity pools for SLP, AXS and WETH. This also makes the Axie ecosystem even more frictionless and I believe this will be another major catalyst that will bring AXS closer to its fair value.

AXS currently still look undervalued in my personal opinion (This is not financial advice).

With approximately 13% of the circulating supply staked in the staking contract and treasury accumulating more AXS from breeding, a positive supply shock is imminent for the AXS token when demand eventually outstrips supply (issuance) by a big margin.

At the point of writing, AXS only has a P/E ratio of 7.69x, so most are still going to miss out on this token yet again, despite me calling out AXS being undervalued since it was $10.

In the end, you need to do your due diligence and build the conviction yourself.

With Battles V2 on the way, that means Axie Infinity is going to launch on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, making it even easier for the mainstream world to onboard the game. V2 also will feature Free-To-Play Axie teams for players that don’t wish to invest financially into the game, but enjoy the game itself. Free-to-play will not feature the Play-to-earn features that current Axie players enjoy, as you need to have skin in the game to reap the monetary rewards.

I expect Axie Infinity to blow up once V2 is live. The graphics, gameplay, engagement will all get elevated to a whole new level. It will shock everyone especially the bears who has been calling it a Ponzi scheme. They will continue to be proven wrong, again and again.

Investment Updates

TWR Year to Date – Portfolio (Red), S&P 500, Straits Times Index, World Equity Index (Yellow, Green, Blue)

Performance wise, it has been a wild ride. As you can see above, crypto-based returns profile are extremely volatile. But with the increased volatility, you are able to capture insane gains from the markets due to market inefficiency, as well as the tons of undervalued crypto projects that can 10x or 20x upon price discovery.

My returns profile also made the traditional stock market returns look like bond returns when compared side by side, as you can see the volatility difference above.

Originally, I estimated my portfolio to attain a 100k portfolio on my graduation year in 2024. But I guess that is going to speed up thanks to the alpha and profits I made from switching fully into a 100% crypto portfolio. Hopefully attaining that psychological achievement of a 6 figure portfolio by year end but pretty much nothing will change to my way of life. I will continue to re-invest my profits and grow my portfolio.

Some of my best performers (ROI) thus far are:

1. Fantom (FTM) – 7x
2. Axie Infinity Shard (AXS) – 5x
3. ETH-based NFTs – 2x
4. Yield Guild Games Token (YGG) – 45%

Portfolio Allocation as of October 3 2021: ETH (Blue), FTM (Orange), AXS (Green), USDC (Red), Luna (Purple), YGG (Brown)

I went with a concentrated portfolio approach to make concentrated bets on my highest conviction plays. My ETH and FTM allocation is pretty much set, and I might rotate my capital from ETH into other assets based on the market sentiments and whether I can find a project which I am extremely bullish on and make a concentrated bet.

Crypto markets move super fast. A week in crypto is like 1 year in the stock market. Heck, sometimes a few days in crypto is like a few years in the stock market. The crypto market cap is only 2+ Trillion USD right now, so there are still tons of room for growth and we are only in the early innings of what’s to come.

Exponential growth cannot be gauged, because we as humans already have trouble trying to do mental sum for 13*27 without using a calculator, so it will be impossible for us to comprehend an exponential asset class like crypto.

If you are involved in this space, I congratulate you because you are still super early. Crypto is here to stay, simply ignore the fear and doubts, stick to your convictions and eventually the fruits of your labour will present it themselves.

Risk Management is Key

I will have to re-adjust my portfolio goals again as my estimated return is already outdated thanks to the outsized crypto returns. Of course crypto won’t always be rainbows and butterflies too, but if you know how to manage your risk and downside, the asymmetric risk-reward potential is something the investing industry has not seen before and I feel bad for anyone still refusing to learn about crypto in general.

Alpha Leaks:

EmberSword

In terms of what I am looking out for the in the following few months, I am planning to bet big on an upcoming Play-To-Earn MMORPG game called EmberSword.

Just look at it. Warcraft/Maple/Monster Hunter OGs will totally understand how EmberSword will work

I have talked about EmberSword in my Telegram Group about my successful Land allocation. Essentially, the game model will be different from Axie Infinity but will be Free-To-Play at its core, meaning anyone can play the game.

The Play-To-Earn features will be for Land Owners. Land owners will be able to get a share of the revenue generated from the game with $EMBER token at its core. Players will be able to purchase exclusive Skins and items upgrades using EMBER tokens which are essentially ERC-20 tokens and can be traded for other crypto tokens or converted to fiat currencies like SGD or USD. The amazing thing is that each individual skin or forged items are individual NFTs which are unique and immutable, so no one person will have the exact same skin or equipment.

The land sale has already ended this time round, and I was lucky enough to have my application reviewed and approved by the EmberSword team with an allocation to 1x Regular Plot, which is essentially a piece of NFT and I can build different things on my piece of land, and I get to receive passive revenue streams from the game economy as well as loot drops that can be traded on the market.

EmberSword Badges

Land owners are also entitled to buy a EmberSword badge, which essentially is a unique NFT with finite supply. Badge holders will have early access to the game, flex the badge in-game, and be granted equivalent EMBER tokens when the token officially launches.

The different badges (Tiers) and amount of Ember Tokens that can be claimed

For me personally, I have already done deep research into the game, the developers behind and investors backing this project, and thus will be eyeing for a Platinium Badge which will cost me $25,000 USDC to purchase. There will only be a total of 100 Platinium Badges, so I am crossing my fingers that I acquire 1 before it sells out on Sale Day.

With the platinum badge, I will also be allocated with a total of 250,000 EMBER tokens which means I will be able to acquire EMBER for $0.1 USD per piece, essentially making me a Seed Investor for the game.

If Ember were to see a similar trajectory as Axie Infinity, and potentially even bigger given how many players are already involved in MMORPG games, the Ember token might take off in an “AXS-like” fashion and allow me to secure a good bag of profits.

There will be future land sales for the other 3 continents that is set to release in 2022 onwards, so stay tuned for the announcement if you want to get a piece of land yourself. Please also do your own research and due diligence, as none of the above is financial advice!

Terra Ecosystem

Another aspect of the crypto space that is gaining traction and seeing billions of asset inflow is Terra’s ecosystem.

With Colombus-5 upgrade, the ecosystem will be burning Luna perpetually as UST gains widespread adoption, and the influx of top-tier protocols and money market projects like Mars Protocol, Orion Money, Nexus Protocol, Nebula Protocol and many more would mean the Terra Ecosystem will be a money market (stablecoins) main stay in the crypto space. Combine that with Cosmos Inter-Blockchain capabilities and the integration with a multitude of bridges, there is no doubt Terra is going to be one of the most used Layer-1 after Ethereum.

As such, I am trying to understand the multitude of new projects that will be launching on Terra in the following weeks and months, so it is going to be an exciting future ahead for Terra.

Macro Outlook

The Evergrande and China’s domestic economic instability are causing the global economy to shrink further into fear territory. However, whether the contagion takes place or not, I will always remain invested because I focus on the long term and not the short term.

If market really collapse in 1 to 2 months from now, no problem, I will just deploy fresh capital to buy the dip and if market don’t recover for the next few months, I will do just fine.

Always remember not to put in money you can’t afford to lose and understand your own risk tolerance.

The key here is to stay invested at all times so you refrain from actively trading which often leads to sub-par results and losses. It is simply impossible to time the market tops and bottoms, so you might as well ride the wave up.

In the long run, markets will always trend upwards because of productivity and growth, but this might not be the case with the money printing by central banks, which is artificially inflating the market and high inflation will be on the rise in the next few years.

Inflation will eat away at your wealth while you sleep

Those who don’t own any assets will have a tough decade ahead, because inflation will tax everyone regardless of their status or net worth. But again, invest at your own risk. Knowing how to manage risk and balancing risk-rewards ratio is ultimately the key and thinking long term is the most important.

If you think crypto is interesting but you find it hard to learn about them, you can consider joining my telegram group where I share articles, investment opportunities and more research based content on an almost daily basis. You can also ask questions, and take part in polls to see how others think as well! 

Join My Tele Channel Here For Blog Updates And More!

For those who are already into Crypto

Want to learn how you can earn high yielding interest rates on your idle crypto assets in a secure, safe and easy manner? 

Earn Yields on Those Crypto With These Platforms

You can read up more on my post  here to learn more about Celsius and Nexo which give you interest on your crypto assets 

Or read up more on Hodlnaut here which is a Singapore-based crypto lending platform with market beating interest rates

What is Bitcoin? Answers here

Or do your due diligence on Bitcoin in my post here where I debunk some of the myths regarding Bitcoin.

What is Ethereum? Simple Guide Here

I did a bite-sized article on Ethereum for you to get a crash-course on what the buzz word is all about here.

Gemini Exchange (My Favourite Crypto Exchange)

Also my crypto exchange of choice Gemini here if you are looking to buy your first crypto!

Too Many Crypto Platforms? Here’s a Crypto One-Stop Solution

If you think there are too many crypto platforms out there, here is a simple solution for you. An all-in-one app for you to earn yield, trade, invest or borrow crypto with high security and assurance. Check out my Matrixport review 

What is Decentralised Finance (DeFi)?

Or do you want to learn more about DeFi in a simple to understand manner? Click here to learn more

How to Value Crypto Assets?

Learn more about how you can put a “fair value” on crypto such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and more here

Crypto Referral Links (Click and Sign Up)

Gemini Exchange: Deposits and buy US$100 or more crypto on Gemini and you will earn US$10 in BTC.

Coinhako Exchange: You can create an account by clicking the link and then enter promo code: COINGECKO when doing a buy/sell and enjoy 20% trading fees discount! 

Binance Exchange: Create a Binance.com account here and trade the widest range of crypto pairings!

Hodlnaut: Earn US$20 in BTC/ETH/USDT/USDC/DAI for free with your first transfer of US$1000 or more in the corresponding crypto asset of your choice!

Celsius Network: Earn US$40 in BTC for free with your first transfer of US$400 or more in any crypto asset and wait for 1 month!

Matrixport: Get a $1288 free coupon trial to try their product and earn $20 in USDC when you sign up successfully and become a qualified client!

Nexo: Earn US$10 in BTC for free when you transfer US$100 or more in any crypto asset of your choice!

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Disclaimer: 

The content here is for informational purposes only and should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment or a recommendation to buy or sell a security. In fact, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor and may not be used to evaluate or make any investment.