crypto

Solana NFTs – Part 1 150 150 admin

Solana NFTs – Part 1

In the past 3 months I’ve dived head first into Solana NFTs. I thought it would be beneficial to recap what I’ve learned about the space.

2020 Crypto Experiments

One of the best things I’ve done in crypto (and I’ve done a lot of bullshit) was experiment in the bear market.

Right at the tail end of 2020, the stars aligned for ya boy. I had extra money, free time and knowledge of crypto from paying attention to the space for years. I noticed that the crypto YouTubers I had subscribed to suddenly started posting again and were hella excited in their videos. I didn’t know it, but it was a perfect time to invest too.

I started learning and using Metamask and Uniswap and buying coins early before they hit Coinbase. I started investing heavier into different coins that were launching and had hype behind them. I kept binge watching crypto YouTube videos and investing in coins they were talking about. I did this all with the expectation that the money I was experimenting with could go to 0.

Crypto is still rewarding me for that experimentation I did years ago through airdrops. The most recent one being Evmos.

So why experiment? Not only for the airdrops, but also because it’s the best time to experiment. The networks aren’t as clogged, so things go faster and things are cheaper. Everything’s calm and settled and you don’t have to learn on-the-fly as much. And ya neeeeeeever know. The things we’re experimenting with today might be normal in the future.

Welcome Solana

In that tail end of 2020, I did a lot of experimenting with ETH-based coins. ETH wasn’t as high priced as it is now and the network wasn’t as congested, so fees were lower.

Nooooooow there is a noticeable fee for everything on ETH! and it’s annoying. At the time of this writing fees are a lot smaller than usual, but I can’t justify using the network as much when Solana is such a cheaper network. Developers are developing high quality games, NFT’s and other resources on it.

I admit it. I had an affair with Solana. I’m sorry ETH.

Random things I’ve noticed or learned while experimenting in Solana NFT’s

  • There’s a lot of younger people in the space with me. Occasionally I’ll see 13-15 year old’s in the space. It’s kinda trippy. Voice chat and spaces expose your voice.
  • NFTs do well in a crypto bear market because it makes for cheap entries to projects that would otherwise price most people out.
  • It’s so great to not have to pay excessive fees. It’s faster and more cost effective. Everything in ETH had a fee and it adds up – staking, unstaking, withdrawing, sending, minting, etc. All fees associated with them. Different airdrops made the fees worthwhile though, so I can’t complain too much about them.
  • It’s more predictable – I don’t have to worry about things like sandwiches or inconsistent fees. I know what I’m going to pay
  • It’s easier to rug – People are starting to figure out the formula for their anonymous rugs and I’m seeing more and more in the space. It’s the wild wild west. Because it’s easier to rug, I appreciate the projects that are transparent and adequately Doxxed and are consistently available through voice and or video or a human social media account. I think this is the way things will eventually go.
  • It all happens on Discord and Twitter – Most of the details of Solana NFT’s are on Discord and/or Twitter. I do see some projects from time to time using Telegram, but for the most part it’s Discord and Twitter. I’ve learned to use Discord and Twitter VERY well.
  • The biggest most well known Solana NFT marketplace is Magic Eden.
  • Some people are happy with the smallest profits. They will mint something for 1 Sol and list it on Magic Eden for 1.01 Sol for a .01 profit (not even taking into account fees).
  • The digital art in the Solana NFT space is absolutely amazing. – There are so much great art that art alone tends to not be enough these days. NFT investors want great art AND some type of utility.
  • Words / phrases / platforms / resources that you gotta know if you’re gonna deal with Solana NFTs – mint date, mint price, supply, volume, hype, WAGMI (we all gonna make it), NGMI (not gonna make it), bluechips, degen, wallet, airdrops, tokens, proof, whitelist (WL), public mint, mint bots, snipers, whales, floor price (FP), Magic Eden and CoralCube.

In Part 1, I wanted to keep it more matter-of-fact style. Find out what happens in Part 2 where I give more of my opinion about the space.

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You like that suspense I put in there? lmao

You know you do.

Neediness In Crypto Investing 150 150 admin

Neediness In Crypto Investing

On September 17, 2020 I received a free airdrop of 400 Uniswap tokens (UNI).  At the time of this writing, this has been the most popular airdrop to date in the crypto space.  The day I received the airdrop, the price of Uniswap was goin all over the place.  That day it was swinging at $3-$8 and ended up stabilizing around $5.  This was my first airdrop so…I thought to myself “Oh my god, free money!” and sold those 400 coins almost immediately for $1400.  I was pretty happy.

Fast forward to today (249 days later) Uniswap’s price is selling at $24.24.  Those 400 coins I sold would have been worth $9,696 had I kept them.  3 weeks ago Uniswap reached its all-time high and was valued at #44.92…so 3 weeks ago 400 Uniswap coins were worth $17,968.

Deep in the Telegram and Discord channels of different crypto coins you’ll see wild success stories and some not-so-successful ones too.

Approaching the Market

The past “me” might have beat myself up over the decision to sell those 400 coins early.  The “me” now sees so many paths to $20,000 that it doesn’t bother me as much.  The main lesson I learned was how I approach the market can affect my results and the experience overall.

I don’t believe there are any accidents.  If I’m honest with myself, I can say I sold those coins early because that’s the amount I was comfortable receiving.  At the time, I was used to receiving amounts close to $1000, but not anything close to $17,968 at all at one time.  I was used to making $800 / week working my regular job and Door Dash on the weekends.  Attracting anything above $1000 at once was way out of my comfort zone.  If I had been earning $20,000+ checks outside of the crypto space, then I would have just left that 400 coins alone.  It wouldn’t have been that big of a deal to me, and I would have given those 400 coins the time and space to grow and mature financially.

The Real Work in Investing

It made me realize that the real back-end work to investing is becoming comfortable receiving the amount of money I want from an investment OUTSIDE of that particular investment.  That way, I don’t approach any particular income stream or investment with a sense of neediness.  I wouldn’t need an investment to go up in value during my specific timeline.  It can be fun, playful, and light vs serious and stressful when a coin doesn’t do what I want it to.

If I want a million dollars from an investment, am I comfortable receiving a million dollars outside of that investment?   Would I be comfortable or ok with receiving a million dollars all at once in my day-to-day life?  If not, then a million dollars all at once might stress me the fuck out.  There was a time where after hearing that I would have been like “yeah right…give me a million dollars and see if I’m stressed out”.  It gets real though.  I’m in Telegram groups where a few people’s $100-$1000 investments are all of a sudden worth anywhere from $10K to $300k.  I see the hate and jealousy that gets thrown their way.  I see that owning a coin that shoots up in value could be stressful depending on the way they frame it.  Do you sell that coin and cash out only to see it rise 80X more in value?  Do you hold it and watch it crash to ground in value?  Do you go half and half?

  • If you do cash out…how much (if any) do you give to others?  What about homeless people you see on the street?  What about charities?
  • If you don’t cash out… are you watching the charts 24/7 to see when you should sell or what the price is currently?  Stressed when the number goes down, euphoric when it goes up?

I looked at the definition of trauma – a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.  It’s weird to think that having a lump sum of money placed in your lap can be distressing, but I can see it now.  Add to this the fact that many of those people who’ve seen their coins skyrocket in value don’t know wtf their investing in, and it was just a lucky gamble or a call from someone who does know about that coin.

Security is an Illusion

Nothing is static.  This includes investments, the value of money, the trends of different markets, etc.  There’s no need to let those fluctuations manipulate your emotions – but they will if you’re needing investments to somehow “save you” from looking at other parts of life you don’t want to address – like the job you hate that you can’t take a break from and/or the time and effort it might take to learn a skill that’s more valuable to the marketplace and one that is more enjoyable and provides you with more fulfillment.

One of the reasons the crypto space is shaking things up is people are waking up to the fact that the security they thought they had in money is being yanked from under them.  The USD has continued to decline in value while Bitcoin and Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies have risen in value over their short history.  Printing money out of thin air doesn’t help the cause for the security-in-money case. In the long term I can see the writing on the wall for fiat money.  In the short term, I don’t know wtf this shit gonna do.

I’ve noticed friends try to approach me looking for me to give them a sense of security in their crypto investments in the short term.  I decline that responsibility.  The best I can do is invite you to  be an active participant in learning about your crypto investment and also explore the idea that the best security is to learn to not need security as much…kind of like the real work in investing is learning to not need investments.  ?

BTW…This is not financial advice, and I am not a financial advisor.  I learned to say that from the Youtubers.

Lessons I’ve Learned From Investing In Crypto since 2017 150 150 admin

Lessons I’ve Learned From Investing In Crypto since 2017

Crypto has taught me a lot overall about investing – not only in coins, but in everything.  With this article I wanted to share some lessons from the mistakes I’ve made.  I’m doing well in it now, but there sure were some expensive mistakes I made to learn these lessons.  If you’re reading this, you don’t have to make these mistakes.

Short story on how I got involved in crypto

In late 2016, I went to a conference on making passive income in a more heart-centered, courageous way.  I was working at a pretty shitty job, and I was getting frustrated with it, so I took some days off to go to this conference.

The conference wasn’t about crypto at all, but I met up with some people who were invested in crypto.  They not only showed me how to get into crypto, but why I should get into crypto, so I did.  I signed up with Coinbase, and I bought about $100 worth of Ethereum (ETH) when it was then trading at $448.64 on December 7th, 2017.  Within a month it had doubled and almost tripled.  Ethereum had skyrocketed and was selling at almost $1200 per coin.  I remember lookin at this like I had hit the jackpot.   Up until then, I had not made any other investment that had almost tripled my money, and so fast.

I. told. everyone.

Everyone who was in my world at the time knew I invested some money in crypto because I shouted it from the rooftops, and I had friends that jumped in too.

What I didn’t realize about the market, was that that was the peak.  Bitcoin and the rest of the market, including Ethereum, tanked and went down in value for the next two years.

This is when I learned my first lesson, and it continues to be the most important lesson to this day – Fomo will get you wrecked.

Lesson 1:  FOMO will get you wrecked.  

FOMO stands for Fear of Missing Out.  When a coin or stock is going up in value and everyone is talking about it or it gets heavy news or attention, people are like “damn…I don’t wanna miss out!  I gotta invest now!”.  Many times new people invest from this pressured, emotional place, and it might take you getting wrecked to learn not to FOMO into an investment.  The danger in investing when all the excitement is happening is that that coin or stock or other investment could easily dip or even crash in value right after you invested, because you may have invested at a peak.

When everyone is excited and talking about an investment – whether it be stocks, real estate, crypto – anything, it’s way better to be ahead of the herd.  Be in it before everyone starts talking about it.  There are always opportunities to be ahead of the herd – to get in before things go up in price and value and attention, but it means you have to take your focus AWAY from where everyone is right now (the news), and being able to predict where things are going.  You can even wait until things die down and buy the dip, but don’t FOMO in.

Buy low, sell high.  Accumulate in the bear market when nobody is talking about what you want to invest in, so you’ll be positioned to take profits when the bull market inevitably comes and every one is talking about it.

Right now, everyone is talking about Bitcoin,  but there are amazing opportunities in certain alt coins (every coin except Bitcoin) to make life-changing profits if you’re willing to learn and be patient.

One thing that we did in that conference mentioned above was made a list of trends that would be important in the future, so we could be ahead of the curve.  We listed things like online education, self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, robots, cyber security, cloud computing, e-books and audiobooks.  These are trends that are going to be important in the future.  These are places where you can be ahead of the herd.

Lesson 2:  Only invest what you’re willing to go to 0.  Don’t invest more than you’re willing to lose. Do not bet the farm!

I lumped all these together in one lesson.  I ignored them all starting off.  I said to myself, “if this investment is going to triple, why would I not put everything I own into it?”.   Here’s why.

Having a significant portion of money and cash flow outside of your crypto (or any other investment) will lesson your sense of neediness.  You won’t be constantly looking at it every day to see  whether it goes up or down or left or right.  You can leave it alone and not think about it so much because its not a huge part of your net worth.  You can have strong hands when you see your investment take a slight or heavy dip in value and you won’t panic sell.

ALL MY CALLS WERE RIGHT in 2020! but I put almost all my money in crypto.  This was the mistake.  When I needed cash, I had to sell my crypto – giving away all my early positions.  It wasn’t very fun to see the whole crypto market as a whole rise like crazy while I had almost nothing invested in it.

Lastly, if you haven’t bet the whole farm on crypto, you’ll have cash to invest in opportunities you see.  If all your money is in crypto and the crypto market dips, your overall money will dip as well.  If you have cash, you can take advantage of the dips and buy on those dips.

Lesson 3:  Start small, find good projects and be patient enough to let it grow

It doesn’t take much to start investing in crypto.  I put $200 in PAINT and it gave me a little over 100,000 coins.  If PAINT goes to being worth $1, in maybe 2-5 years then that’s $100,000 off a $200 investment.  If it goes to being worthless then I’m out $200.  PAINT is in the NFT space and NFT’s are on fire right now, so I think it’s a good bet, but I’m willing to be wrong.  (This is not financial advice and I’m not a financial advisor.  Also, PAINT has not sponsored me.  I just like the project).

That same $200 isn’t going to get you very far if you just invested it in Bitcoin.  I would bet bigger if I was investing in Bitcoin or Ethereum because they’re the safest bets.

Good projects have a good team, solid roadmap, good use case.  It takes time to sift through and find the solid projects amongst the thousands of coins – that’s why they’re called gems.  The lower the market cap, the higher the risk of the investment.  I start with low to mid-size market caps and play the waiting game for them to rise in value.  Coin Gecko and CoinMarketCap tell you market cap information on coins and much more.  I use them all the time.

I start with YouTube.  It’s in a YouTuber’s interest to give you good, solid information that’s valuable.  It helps their channel grow.  That being said, I only use it as a starting point.  I do my research on specific coins AND the YouTuber that mentioned the coin and put it against my own knowledge and reasoning.  You are ultimately responsible for your profits and losses.

Lesson 4:  Take profits

You’re not going to want to do this.  When you see your investment rising in value, it will be hard to sell a portion and actually take some profits because you think it will continue to rise.  It might, but nothing goes straight up and continues to go straight up.  There are twists and turns and peaks and valleys – lots of them in a relatively new and emerging market like crypto/blockchain.  WHEN to take profits is a personal choice, but take them.  In 2018 many crypto investors, including myself, learned this lesson the hard way when the crypto market came crashing down and we rode those coins all the way to the ground.

Lesson 5:  Look at the world like a sea of opportunity

How you see the market and how you relate to the market will affect how you trade.

If you look at the world like a sea of opportunity, then you won’t panic sell or be stressing out when a coin doesn’t do what you want/expect it to right when you want it to.  You won’t be dejected and down in the dumps when another coin that you don’t have rises in price.  You’ll know there are opportunities that come along all the time, so there won’t be any need to stress about an opportunity you think you missed.   Jay Z said “There’s a million ways to get it…choose one”.  If you can see the ocean of opportunities that are always there, you won’t be as attached to the outcome of any one particular investment.  You won’t be hanging on its every move.

Imagine you’re a surfer and you’re trying to catch a good wave (your investment).  If one wave doesn’t go how you want it to, just wait.  There are plenty of good waves comin.

Lesson 6: Develop trust in yourself

Notice I said “develop”.  You’re not going to start off with trust in yourself, but it will come with time and more engagement with the market.  You’ll be able to see the places you can get in early.  More importantly, if you’ve developed a string of small wins (meaning you’ve done a lot of step #3 already), you can start to trust yourself to bet bigger, and thus bigger profits come.  Trust will come from learning what to look for and conditioning yourself to buy good projects low and early and sell high.

Lesson 7: The gold is in private communities.  Pay to be in them if you have to.

Private communities, private telegram groups, and private memberships are all ways to get exclusive information.  Many times people have done research in those communities for you and are trying to help everyone do well and/or find the hidden gems.

You’re going to need to learn the language.  Here’s a great article on some common phrases and what they mean.  I would also give Coinbase Learn an in-depth look.  They might seem boring now, but learn about them again when nobody else wants to learn.  If you don’t take away anything else from reading this, take this message away – be ahead of the curve.

That’s all I got for now!  Have some fun investing!