In this podcast, Threadguy and Ansem raise and discuss several core questions:
1. Which round of the cycle are you currently in? Are we still in a bull market?
2. You were publicly bearish on the market not long ago. What is your logic and what are your main positions now?
3. How do you think SocialFi will develop next? Did Pump.fun “kill” meme coins? So will any meme coin surpass Doge’s historical high in this cycle?
4. Is it a wise choice to focus on trading meme coins? How to put down roots in a bear market, lock in Solana and keep the faith?
5. Discuss the occurrence of the Neiro incident and your views on celebrity ginseng and cryptocurrency?
TL;DR
Current cycle discussion : Ansem believes that the current cycle is in the early stages of the second or third inning, and believes that cryptocurrency adoption will increase and new things will explode like never before.
Why the market was bearish some time ago : The market did not fluctuate much after the probability of Ethereum ETF approval soared.
How to view the poor performance of L2 tokens : Ansem believes that if you want a more efficient blockchain than Ethereum L1, you should no longer use EVM, and believes that people underestimate the trend of moving from CEX to DEX.
How will SocialFi develop next : Meme coins are the original form of SocialFi. Meme coins are not dead. I believe its super cycle will continue.
Why bet on Solana : Ansem has been paying attention to the Solana ecosystem for a long time and understands its entire development process. Its characteristics are cheaper and faster.
Ansem recalled his experience in the Neiro incident : he shared how to deal with the spread of false information on social media and the ensuing "protagonist effect." He also reflected on his responsibilities as a public figure in the cryptocurrency space, especially the pressures and challenges he faces when sharing investment opportunities.
Trader mentality adjustment and how to turn over : Novices must learn to be the first participant in every opportunity.
The following is the original text of the conversation (the original content has been deleted and edited for ease of reading and understanding):
Cyclical discussion, looking forward to the outbreak of new things
Threadguy: How is your mentality lately?
Ansem: I feel great. This should be the third cycle I have gone through. The transactions are going very well, and it has increased from 100,000 followers in December to almost 500,000 now.
Threadguy: Do you think your follower count reflects how many new people are joining the circle?
Ansem: I think it’s okay. I grew by about 400,000 in the first six months, and then at a certain stage, the weekly growth started to slow down. When it started to slow down in March and April, I thought it might be because the market was starting to concentrate, but recently it has started to pick up a bit, which is indeed a good indicator of the retail market. Looking back at the last cycle, the growth of fans of some large-scale fans is also exaggerated. When their growth stalls, you know it doesn't seem like many people are in the market anymore.
Threadguy: Where do you think we are in this cycle? Are we still in a bull market?
Ansem: I think it's the second or third game. It's still in the very early stages. The reason why I say that is because there haven't been many major events yet. In previous cycles, we would experience a rotation of various Altcoin, but now we are not seeing a broad rise in various fields. Although Solana and some meme coins are performing crazy, and there is some action in the AI field, DeFi is almost non-existent. Movement and sound, L2 hasn’t changed much either.
The public awareness stage of this cycle will be different. Now many mainstream institutions are promoting cryptocurrencies in a high-profile manner and emphasizing the future of cryptocurrencies. With passive inflows into these ETFs, I think market attention will be more stable.
Threadguy: How do you think cryptocurrency adoption will change this time?
Ansem: The market value of gold is about $13 trillion, while Bitcoin is now only about $1.2 trillion. The contrast between Bitcoin and gold is quite strong. Stocks have been rising because funds need to find places to invest, and this situation It will also happen in the cryptocurrency space.
Threadguy: Do you have any current investments other than cryptocurrencies?
Ansem: I have done some diversification a little bit, recently bought Galaxy stock, and some Robinhood and Coinbase stocks, but I haven't diversified too much outside of cryptocurrencies yet.
Threadguy: What do you think of the 2024 cycle?
Ansem: I have changed my mind many times. The rebound at the beginning of the year was very strong, almost a V-shaped rebound, but not all Altcoin hit new highs. I think it may have to wait until later in 2024 before there will be a bigger one. Quotes.
What I'm really interested in is whether there will be any sudden explosions like NFT and DeFi in this cycle. Because every time something like this comes along, no one sees it coming. While the performance of meme coins is strong this time around, we have seen this happen before with Dogecoin and Shib.
Threadguy: Do you think unknowns like DeFi and NFT must change every cycle?
Ansem: I don’t think it has to change every cycle, but there will always be some new things that have never been seen before that will go up like crazy. Because there is nothing to refer to and no historical data to compare with, its upside potential is unknown. There are many protocols in DeFi today that do have good income and have stable teams and financial support behind them, but their performance is not that outstanding. If we look back from 2019 to 2020, Aave increased by about 2,000 times. That was the first time that everyone had seen such a thing.
Why bearish the market
Threadguy: Not long ago, you were publicly bearish on the market at a good time. What was your logic? How do you feel about risk now?
Ansem: I turned bearish after the Ethereum ETF approval probability surged from 20% to 80%. When there was only a 20% probability, the ETH price was around $3,200 or $3,300. When the approval probability soared to 80%, market sentiment suddenly became optimistic, and ETH immediately rose from $3,300 to $3,900, close to the year's high.
I became very bullish and thought everything was going to hit new highs, Bitcoin was going to go to $75,000, Ethereum was going to go to $4000 or $4500, I thought the whole market, including meme coins, was going to hit new highs. However, there was not much movement that week, and the following week, the market only consolidated, hovering near the highs.
I thought, no way, there is so much good news, the regulatory environment is improving, presidential candidates are discussing cryptocurrencies, institutions are vigorously promoting Bitcoin ETFs, and there is sufficient liquidity. But the market never broke through the highs, and I became bearish. I think maybe Bitcoin and Ethereum will continue to consolidate, while meme coins continue to rise.
My strategy at the time was to keep most of the SOL and meme coins, and then short some ETH to see what happened next. But the meme coins went up a little bit and then fell back, and I thought, no, it looks like the whole market is going to go down. After all, we didn't have a big retracement at that time. Bitcoin only retraced 15% to 20% at most, and there was no major retracement of 30% or 40%.
I wrote a long article at the time, telling everyone that we were close to the top of the range. You can choose to sell part of it and wait until it returns to the low of the range before buying, or hedging risks through other means. If you do nothing, you could lose 40% of your portfolio when the market pulls back and then get stuck not wanting to sell at support. I diversified some risks around the beginning of June. When the market pulled back, I bought some assets, then short, and repeated the operation. Now I'm not taking risks, it's more about waiting. I remain very optimistic about the end of the year and into 2025, and patience is key right now.
Related reading: " From top meme KOL to speechless, Ansem: Why doesn't it work?" 》
Threadguy: What are your main holdings now?
Ansem: I will be long on Solana relative to other currencies. If I am long on the trading pair of Solana and Ethereum, then I can hold SOL spot and short Ethereum at the same time, maintaining the ratio of long top positions. My current position is neutral. In addition to Solana, I also have some Helium and meme coins.
Threadguy: Are you Ethereum’s “Public Enemy No. 1”?
Ansem: They really don’t like me very much. When I pushed this idea last year, everyone thought it was impossible. Now, SOL’s market capitalization has reached a new high.
Which narratives do you like?
Threadguy: If we were in the second or third phase of a bull market right now, what are some of the important narratives that you feel are unfulfilled?
Ansem: There are several big narratives that have not yet fully unfolded. One of them is the L2 token that no one is paying special attention to. It has performed very poorly this year, and the market sentiment of Ethereum is now slowly turning negative. I think L2 based on EVM actually doesn't make much sense. If you want to build a more efficient blockchain than Ethereum L1, you should no longer use EVM, but should use other virtual machines so that Rollup can process more transactions. , the cost is also lower, so I think those non-EVM L2 will be more promising.
I also feel that DePIN is undervalued, which is why I hold Helium. The use cases of this type of network are very reasonable to outsiders. Utilizing resources from different regions and using incentive mechanisms to let them work together can significantly reduce costs.
Another point is that people underestimate the trend of moving from CEX to DEX. If you look at the ratio of on-chain transactions to CEX, the difference is very big in this cycle, and many teams are paying attention to this area, not just automatic market makers. , also includes on-chain perpetual contract trading, etc. This is because we now have a good enough infrastructure to compete with CEXs like Binance.
Meme coins are the original form of SocialFi
Threadguy: What’s next for SocialFi?
Ansem: I also like SocialFi very much. The meme coin is the original form of SocialFi. It shows people's enthusiasm for community buying and selling. You compete or collaborate with others in a group. Add to that the fact that everyone wants to issue their own tokens now, and there's bound to be a social app that jumps at the opportunity to financialize anything that goes viral. Pump.fun may be that app, but there are definitely some apps that will continue to capitalize on this trend.
While some people have some issues with these SocialFi apps making too much money from the Solana ecosystem, that will always change. In the crypto world, if a platform makes a lot of money and finds a clear product-market fit, but the community thinks they are harvesting it too hard, there will always be competitors or the existing team adjusts its strategy to let the Better user experience. This is how the crypto world works. It’s too easy to copy a product or build a new one in a similar way. This kind of competition will always happen and the end result will be towards the most efficient direction.
Threadguy: Do you think Pump.fun "killed" the meme coin?
Ansem: I don’t think Pump.fun “killed” meme coins, meme coins are not dead, and I still believe the super cycle of meme coins will continue and they will continue to be a good risk position for all these L1 and L2 . But I think what people don’t realize is how rapidly meme coins have risen, and there will always be a cooling-off period afterwards, and the market will go sideways, and either the price will fall directly back, or the price will rush up and then go sideways and rise again. Now I believe in this super cycle more than before.
The reason I initially thought BONK would do well was because Bonk was the only risky position token on Solana at the time, and there were almost no other Altcoin on Solana at that time. I have always said that if you use DeFi in the Solana ecosystem, you will eventually be rewarded because no one was using these protocols at the time, such as Jupiter and Jito, and they were all undervalued. At that time, Solana's price had just topped $30, and it had been there for almost a year. When it breaks out, I know people are going to start moving to Solana, and once they get to Solana, they're going to buy BONK.
Meme coins as a risky position for Solana is not a crazy idea. Since then, I have become even more convinced of the meme coin super cycle as they have far outperformed other Altcoin, but that is not to say that they will not fall, any coin that has risen a hundred or even a thousand times will. Pullback, this is the norm for cryptocurrencies.
Threadguy: Do you think that meme coins will surpass Doge’s historical high in this cycle?
Ansem: If the total cryptocurrency market value in this cycle reaches US$10 trillion, then I think it is possible. When the market capitalization of these coins approaches the level of Ethereum, some very exaggerated situations will indeed occur.
Threadguy: Although DOGE is an old currency, it seems to be a bit outdated now. Does anyone else you know is actively discussing Doge?
Ansem: There is really no one left. The influence of old meme coins has dropped a lot compared to new meme coins. There are a lot of old money in the cryptocurrency market, and they usually drive the fluctuations of Doge, but if you look at Elon Musk posted a meme about Doge two days ago, the price of the Doge coin did not move at all. This is just like Bitcoin and Ethereum have good news but no movement. If a major event should cause fluctuations but does not cause any reaction, it means that the market sentiment is no longer good.
Threadguy: What do you think about old players becoming extremely bearish just because of the crazy rise of meme coins?
Ansem: I think their point of view is reasonable. In the past, when meme coins and small Altcoin surged, it meant that the market was close to the top, but this cycle is a little different. Except for meme coins, no other sectors are particularly crazy. So I feel like we're still in the early stages of the cycle right now. Additionally, Bitcoin and Ethereum have yet to break out of their all-time highs, and it would be outrageous to peak now.
Threadguy: What impact will Pump.fun have on the meme coin space?
Ansem: It definitely dilutes those meme coins with low market capitalization. When the Solana ecosystem first became popular, some coins could maintain a market capitalization of $1 million for several days or even weeks, but now this almost does not happen anymore.
Threadguy: How to find the next WIF in this current meme coin craze?
Ansem: I usually focus on coins with a market capitalization of $5 million to $10 million, and I also look for meme coins that stand out from the crowd. If a coin is themed around a specific animal, its market capitalization ceiling is usually the highest market capitalization of similar coins currently on the market. If you find a new topic that is different from existing coins, and a community forms around it, then there may be a "crazy rise" situation.
Threadguy: Will funds move from meme coins to infrastructure coins that have more practical value?
Ansem: Personally, I still think that meme coins will have another wave of rise. But think about it, if the market value of memes reaches 30 billion or 40 billion, and multiple meme coins have reached this level, will they really rise to one trillion? In that case, I'm not sure what percentage of the overall crypto market is memes, but I feel like once they become a large enough percentage, it might be time to start thinking about reducing risk and moving into other areas.
Threadguy: What is the best way to issue coins in 2024?
Ansem: Being on a platform like Pump.fun is fine, but the key is not to issue tokens at ultra-low market caps. Because once the market value is too low, there will always be people who take advantage of insider trading, leading to massive selling on the first day. If you have enough influence, the token should be issued at a higher market cap. Ideally, even if they do decide to issue a token, I feel like they wouldn't necessarily have to circulate it right away, but rather lock up the supply for a period of time. This at least ensures that they will put more effort into the project and not just focus on the first day or first week performance.
Threadguy: Because cryptocurrency has been a bit depressed recently, everyone has begun to turn their attention to sports gambling. What do you think of cryptocurrency, sports gambling, and the future of gambling?
Ansem: I think meme coins are a bit similar to sports betting. When you buy ultra-low market capitalization coins, the hit rate is a bit like you bet with five times the odds. Most of the time you will not win. But the difference with meme coins is that although the hit rate is also low, the return rate is much higher. As for sports betting, unless you bet on compound bets with dozens of times odds, it is impossible to achieve this kind of return.
Threadguy: Will meme coins replace low-end sports betting?
Ansem: I wouldn’t say replacement, but I think they will become just as common and people will “bet” on low market cap coins in the crypto space the same way they bet on sports betting.
How did you discover the “Solana opportunity”?
Threadguy: If you don’t make 10 million now, or even make million-level profits, is it a wise choice to focus on meme currency trading, or should you focus on other places now?
Ansem: I would not recommend that you go all-in on meme coins. For someone new to cryptocurrency, the best portfolio would be 70% "safe" assets, for me it's Solana, but it could also be Bitcoin, Ethereum, Coinbase stocks, which are relatively safe in the cryptocurrency space investment.
I also think there is a big opportunity now to focus on Altcoin that have fallen significantly from their highs or Altcoin that are new but haven’t received much attention. Because all the attention is now on meme coins, almost no one is paying attention to other areas. If you can do enough research in other fields and find those potential Altcoin, it is also a good direction.
This was the case with my Solana trade last year. Everyone thought Solana was doomed after the FTX incident. As a result, a few people seized the opportunity and it ended up being one of the best trades in this cycle.
And there will always be opportunities like Solana, because a lot of people don't do their own research and rely too much on what the market is doing and what everyone is talking about. When a field gets a lot of attention, prices rise quickly and people move quickly. But if you can find these opportunities before they really explode, that's when you can earn a hundredfold return.
Threadguy: Is Solana your most profitable deal ever? How did you find this opportunity and be so confident? If you were to do this again during this market cycle, what would you focus on?
Ansem: Yes, this is actually a combination of many aspects. I am lucky to be able to follow the Solana ecosystem for a long time and understand its entire development process. I bought SOL when it was still only $1.5. In early January 2021, I saw Ethereum and DeFi on Ethereum doing well. I think if the crypto market is going to become bigger, there will definitely be multiple L1s. It was possible to succeed, especially at a time when Ethereum had begun to suffer from congestion and high fees, and Solana’s narrative was “cheaper and faster.”
I was involved in a lot of Solana things at the time, witnessed the growth of the entire ecosystem, and saw the troubles it encountered. I followed up on all the early technical upgrades of Solana, and also participated in the 2022 Breakpoint conference. At the meeting, I talked with many developers and members of the Solana community. Everyone is talking about the progress they've made behind the scenes this year, and even though some of Solana's early projects haven't performed well, the team is still working hard.
At the end of 2022, the public's view of Solana was very negative. Everyone felt that Solana often crashed. However, at the Breakpoint conference, what I saw was completely opposite to the outside world. I also remember they announced a partnership with Google Cloud, which raised the price of Solana to $39. I went to the last party at Breakpoint and everything felt good, so I decided to go all in, thinking it was a good opportunity in the next market cycle.
Later, FTX was hit by thunder. I remember that I was still in the club and someone told me that I needed to withdraw funds from FTX. I didn’t pay much attention at the time. After I got off the plane, I realized that the situation was getting worse. Then someone told me, CZ Just bought FTX. SOL fell from $20 to $8.
After experiencing the Breakpoint conference and the collapse of FTX, I know that if we will usher in another bull market, those developers who still stay on the chain and continue to build will definitely promote the development of this chain. In the end, the negative impact caused by SBF will always be It will pass. I thought to myself, if Solana was going to rebound, now would be the best time to buy, but I didn't buy it yet. I'm waiting to see if it could go down to $2 or even lower. I waited until the price returned to around $15 to $20 before buying. Starting around May 2023, I began to be more openly optimistic about Solana.
Threadguy: What’s the next crypto trend that excites you right now?
Ansem: I think the trading of meme coins and Pump.fun is like a small game. It is not a complete game, but the kind of small game where you guess which coin will explode and then quickly enter the liquidity pool. I think in the crypto space, you can be more creative with these little games, and Solana is a great platform to implement those ideas. Because Solana can handle a large number of transactions and is very cheap, users can easily perform a large number of micro-transactions.
Small games like Flappy Bird have exploded on iPhone and Android, where players simply pursue high scores with no financial incentive at all. But in the encryption field, we can create similar on-chain mini-games and add financial elements. Coupled with the participation of the community, everyone is competing with each other on the chain, and I feel that there are many creative ideas that can be realized in this space, and no one has really touched this area yet.
Threadguy: So you think of Pump.fun as just one of the millions of apps in the App Store, right?
Ansem: Yeah, to me, Pump.fun is one of the clearest examples of Solana's product market fit. Pump.fun makes more money every day than Solana itself, and it does that because Solana can Easily process large numbers of on-chain transactions with low transaction fees. There can be many applications similar to Pump.fun because Solana is designed in a way to support this kind of parallel processing. Even if a high fee occurs in one area of Solana, it will not affect the execution of applications elsewhere. Its parallel processing method allows many different applications to exist at the same time.
The cumulative revenue of the Pump.fun protocol has reached nearly US$100 million. Source: DeFiLlama
Threadguy: In the early iPhone era, developers were like entering a gold rush. Everyone was rushing to develop applications and put them on the App Store. Do you think we will see a similar gold rush appear on high-performance chains such as Solana or Monad? ?
Ansem: I think so. There is a big difference between encryption applications and applications in the app store. Although some applications also have financial elements, applications in the encryption field are more likely to be financial.
Threadguy: It is true that traditional applications are difficult to monetize. They either charge 99 cents for downloading or make money through micro-transactions like "Clash of Clans", but it is difficult to make money on a large scale.
Ansem: In theory, the profitability of applications on blockchains should be much better, especially executing on these high-performance chains, so I feel like this is really a completely open design space that is not fully explored yet.
Neiro storm
Threadguy: Tell us about the Neiro incident, how did it happen?
Ansem: I was on vacation with my family at the time, and I saw everyone on Twitter discussing Neiro. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, so I asked everyone which was the correct Neiro coin. Someone sent it to me (lowercase Neiro) and I thought that was the right one, so I shared it. As a result, someone told me it was a scam and invited me to join a Space. I joined the discussion and told everyone that you can buy any coin, because I don’t want to endorse any coin in particular, for fear of making everyone dissatisfied by supporting a certain coin. Although I emphasized this many times in the discussion space, it obviously had no effect.
Related reading: " Review of Meme's New Coin Neiro: Its Market Value is Nearly 50 Million US Dollars in Two Days, with Order Master Ansem Entering the Game to Boost "
Threadguy: : Do you think you "killed" Neiro yourself?
Ansem: I may have done it, but I knew this would have been the way it would have gone if I had done nothing.
Threadguy: I feel like this is some kind of "Cabal Coin" with a crazy narrative, the second Dogecoin or something like that. However, you launched the cat coin Pups as a joke, and the market value is actually more high.
Ansem: This is one of the things I mentioned when I tweeted. The second coin reached a certain height. I remember it was 800 million or 9.8 billion, but my cat coin suddenly rose to a market value of 10 billion.
Threadguy: This "protagonist" phenomenon is very interesting. It's an awkward position to be in, and you can't act like a victim. But in fact, there are only three possible outcomes of being the "protagonist": first, you start something, become a unicorn, and succeed; second, you collapse in the spotlight and are completely destroyed; third, you disappear .
Ansem: Not many people have the experience of getting so much attention in a short period of time, with countless eyes on you, and you have absolutely no control over the stories that other people make up at will. For example, when what happened to Iggy, I stood up to express my support, but a week later someone released a fake AI video of me and her chatting on the road.
Someone told me at a party that they had met my friend Drew, but I had no idea who Drew was? He also said that he had been chatting with Drew for an hour, and Drew had been making up various stories, saying that Ansem wanted to cooperate with me on this project, and that he was helping my company do this and that. As a result, this person actually believed Drew. I was just wondering, how many times has this happened?
Threadguy: Was the interaction between Arthur Hayes and Pups planned in advance?
Ansem: I swear not, I was surprised that he messaged me. We did talk before, but we didn’t plan anything together.
Celebrity coin chaos, KOL is really not easy to be a leader
Threadguy: What do you think of celebrity coin issuance in this cycle?
Ansem: When I first saw celebrities joining the crypto world, I thought it was quite reasonable. Meme coins were exploding. I originally had ideas about social tokens. These celebrities have a large number of fans. If they join cryptocurrencies, they should be able to earn a lot. money, their fan base will also be incentivized to interact with these artists and celebrities.
I was also very active in tweeting about these things. The first celebrity was Iggy. I remember she announced her CA. The market value should be around $10 million. I tried to buy it, but the first transaction failed. I didn't even realize I had failed until much later. Later, when the price came down, I bought it again.
Then she tweeted and asked me what should I do with the supply, whether she should burn part of it, and then we chatted in Space, and I suggested that she burn part of the supply. We chat about celebrities getting into crypto, her thoughts on crypto and her plans. That’s when I learned that she was telling us that there was someone maliciously operating these coins, talking to people, and then trying to launch the coins in her name. She said "No, I'm going to do this myself."
Iggy talks about his meme coin MOTHER on the Podcast. Source: Zach Song Show
The other one is Caitlyn Jenner. I didn't really participate in that project, I just asked a lot of questions in Space.
Then came DeVito, which really hurt me. I was very motivated because he was a super influential artist, and I knew that if he was active in these crypto applications it would bring a lot of new users, and if he got his entire community to join the crypto space, that would be even more powerful.
So I helped him register and hosted Space with them, and someone said they were selling coins from the developer wallet, right now. I was confused. I was still talking to him when this happened. Then I said to them on Space: "If you start selling the currency on the first day of issuance, no one will trust you." Many people in the team don't know much about cryptocurrency, but they know that in the field of encryption, they can quickly make money.
Threadguy: If a celebrity enters the crypto space just to risk their brand and issue meme coins without actually investing any capital, then they are probably just doing it to make a buck.
Ansem: I agree, it bothers me that as long as you have even the slightest connection or interaction with something, whether you were actually involved or not, people will take it as your stamp of approval.
Even if you think celebrities, social tokens and the social economy have potential, they should not be those who are eager to issue coins just to make 300,000 quickly. So this is where I was wrong. I thought at the time that these people had such great influence outside of the crypto field, and it was impossible to just start a project and run away. But it turns out the results are the same every time.
NFT will not die, Ordinals will lose money
Threadguy: Is NFT over?
Ansem: I don’t think NFT is dead. It will rise again with the rise of GameFi. Many long-term development games will be integrated with NFTs, which are either used within the game or provide additional rewards to holders. In this cycle, meme coins have performed strongly. I think they have similarities with NFTs, especially in terms of community interaction and gamification experience, such as the strategic sense of early buying. I believe that someone will find a way to combine gamification and NFT in the future. In fact, there may already be a team trying to do this.
Threadguy: What do you think about Ordinals and Bitcoin?
Ansem: I lost a lot on Ordinals. I participated in some projects and got stuck.
Regarding the Bitcoin ecosystem, my view is that the Bitcoin market is very large, and Bitcoin DeFi and other ecosystems will perform well because many Bitcoin holders have a lot of cash in their hands. Those old Bitcoin whales, who hold Bitcoin, may use things like DeFi or Ordinals. That was my initial idea, but I'm not sure now if this will appeal to new markets. Because many old Bitcoin whales have actually participated in various projects on Ethereum and Solana. Therefore, the key to the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem is whether it can attract Bitcoin holders who never do any operations on the chain.
Threadguy: Have you ever thought about putting all your money into Bitcoin and then not doing it for 2 years?
Ansem: I have definitely considered it. Sometimes I just want to tell everyone to sell other assets and put all the money into Bitcoin cold wallets.
Quick question and answer session
Threadguy: What do you think of the current status of angel investing in the crypto space in 2024?
Ansem: I think the current situation of angel investment is quite good. I didn’t make any investments in the last cycle, but I heard that a lot of investments in the last cycle were in the infrastructure sector. I think the opportunity for that $10 billion infrastructure project is basically gone, unless you can prove it's worth that.
In the last cycle, if you invested in an L2 project at a super low price, you almost certainly knew that it would increase in price because someone would always find it. But when it comes to apps, investing is much harder. You need to know whether the founder is good and whether the application has prospects. This thought process is more complicated for people. But if you have access to deals like this, you'll probably do well because this is the area most likely to explode in this cycle.
Threadguy: There was a popular saying a few months ago that the only way to make money is to participate in those secret deal flows. Do you think you can still make money without participating in angel investment in this cycle?
Ansem: I think it can, especially now that this idea has become a consensus. Many people are now reluctant to invest in infrastructure projects with high valuations. When these projects come to market, the valuations will be lower. If a team is building an ecosystem and some product explodes while the valuation is lowered, you can buy it at a price lower than when it was first released.
Threadguy: Under what circumstances do you think a new chain will be able to surpass Solana?
Ansem: I think time is the biggest factor. Even if a powerful L1 chain like Solana is launched now, it can build the same applications as Solana. It still requires the developer community, users and traders to be active on the chain. stand up.
One of the things I've been thinking about this cycle is that I think Solana will perform better than people expected, and that's already happening. And once it performs well, there will be many projects launched later in the cycle, and many new projects that have not yet been launched. If Solana rises to $1,000 or more, and then new projects are launched at one-tenth of its valuation, many people will want to lock in these profits and look for new investment opportunities.
In the last cycle, all the projects were launched at almost the same time, and I could quickly rotate between Solana, Luna, Avalanche, etc. But this cycle is different. Solana may break out first, followed by Monad or other L2 chains. These new projects will not appear at the same time.
Threadguy: Do you really think Solana can reach $1,000?
Ansem: I really think so.
Threadguy: So how high do you think Bitcoin will go?
Ansem: I think about $250,000.
Threadguy: Is it time to readjust, reset your mentality, change your perspective, and prepare for the mid-to-late stage?
Ansem: I think so, especially if you feel like you've been underperforming before. We are now in a sideways phase, with little movement for months, most Altcoin peaked in March, and even Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana have not hit new highs in five months. I do think now is a good time to rethink.
Threadguy: Assuming you are starting from scratch and all cash, how do you allocate in the crypto space?
Ansem: Don’t think about things like “it has increased 7 times or 10 times”, but start from scratch and consider how to allocate assets according to the current market environment.
Threadguy: By the way, what was it like for Vitalik to retweet you?
Ansem: I have never met him or talked to him. I was really shocked when he forwarded it. I thought, no way, how could Vitalik pay attention to me? He never gets involved in anything.
Threadguy: If you are a new trader, is now a good time to learn leveraged trading?
Ansem: If you have a little money, sure.
Threadguy: You said before that you made it from $3,000 to $100,000 through leveraged trading?
Ansem: I actually made most of my money through contract trading, and I also made a lot of money on Luna, which went up about 10 times at that time.
Threadguy: Do you think good on-chain traders should turn to contract trading?
Ansem: No, I don't think so. If you want to survive in this field for the long term, you have to be able to do both. Spot trading is definitely better than the others, but it’s also important to be able to manage the risk.
Threadguy: What are the best and worst deals you’ve ever made?
Ansem: The best one is Solana. I made a lot of money on Solana this cycle. The worst was Luna's short trade, which was a huge loss.
Threadguy: Which coin do you think will "die" in this cycle?
Ansem: Probably Cardano, because there are many strong L1 chains now with good communities and technology, but Cardano has not kept up.
Threadguy: Which coin do you think is the most undervalued?
Ansem: I think it is MetaPlex. People may only think of it as an NFT platform, but it has many application standards in the entire ecosystem. In addition, the team is also very stable and has been operating on Solana for a while. They may be working on a token buyback, which is a very undervalued project.
The other one is Kamino, which is also a good project and everyone is talking about it recently. If Solana continues to rise, people will continue to use its DeFi applications. Although most funds are currently focused on meme coins, Solana's DeFi space has not really exploded yet.
Threadguy: Do you think you are a hero or a villain in this cycle?
Ansem: I think it's probably a 50-50 split right now, and I'll end up being the hero. But the problem is that there is a big gap between what the outside world thinks and what I actually do.
Threadguy: What advice do you have for young crypto players, how to “turn around” in this cycle?
Ansem: Just like my previous example, if you want to start from scratch to 1,000 times or 10,000 times the income, you must be the first participant in every opportunity. If you're always first on the scene, you're bound to eventually seize a big opportunity. Also, it's important to stay active and find a small group of like-minded people doing research together who will see things you don't notice. Finally, do not rely solely on CT information, which is often lagging behind.
Be active in the project community, join Discord groups, various chat groups, and even contact people you don't know but want to communicate with. That's what I did in the first cycle, try to talk to as many people as possible. No one knew who I was at the time, so I just interacted with others on Twitter and posted comments. Let’s be honest, interactions like this will open up a lot of opportunities for you.
Threadguy: In the last cycle, you were the first participant in almost every new project. How do you balance personal and work when you are deep in the bull market?
Ansem: It’s really impossible. The hardest thing for me about the last cycle was staring at charts all day and barely living in the real world. This is one of the reasons why I will lose money in 2022. Even if you are very active in the crypto field, you need to maintain some real-life relationships.
