Here's fun:

Another major argument against thematics - always launching at the peak and then...well....see for yourself.

But

Look what the Don has done for BTC!

And ETH.

I thought it would be a good time to re-visit the whole world of crypto and DeFi

I have posted elsewhere, and have no chance of finding, that I lost a fair chunk on DeFi a few years ago. I accepted that the first 5k was a learning experience - it was an opaque system and challenging to work out how to actually use the bits of machinery required to even enter the space. After that I was almost certainly gambling. I don't like to look back on it and realise it as such, but that was pretty much what it was.By someone that never gambles.

But one thing I did work out was that there were a number of possibilities to profit from others like me. The usual way is it be a) well informed and ahead of the "retail investor"

or b) be "the house"

a) was never going to happen

b) was actually really easy

there are a number of "perpetual exchanges" which allow "traders" to take leveraged positions on the future movement of numerous crypto tokens. As in the casinos of the real world, the house always wins. There are certain aspects that are quite different - one usually is better off holding a basket of the tokens that are traded in a "pool". Your holdings are not your own - ie they are held on an exchange, which carries significant risk both of being hacked (the exchange) and also of contract failure (inter-web-blockchain-stuff).

So.

3 years later, having lost ~$70k USD in my initial disastrous foray (yup you heard that correctly), I had a review of my current situation to find I am now actually comfortably in the black.

Primarily this is due to the increased Capital value of my BTC and ETH holdings. @Strawman will correctly point out the benefits of merely having held Gold, I mean BTC! (had I done so - I too would have been able to afford a house in Sydney) But the other winning aspect has been the amazing yield off these perpetual exchanges and pools. I only hold pools/holdings in BTC/USDC, ETH/USDC and AVAX/USDC, plus the GMX token ( as a product of bonus payouts). These are relatively conservative holdings, at least, for the DeFi/crypto world.

Over the last 4 years, I have average ~20% APY, re-invested every 1-3 months.

Can't do the maths accurately but the compound interest on this has been quite good, even when the capital value of the tokens has largely been stable or sinking. And now finally It is rising, and goodness me things have taken off!

What to learn from this:

1) being the house when there is foolish retail is an easy win. This applies to any asset class, but the yields in DeFi are considerably higher than in RW assets

2) certain exchanges have proven to stable and trustworthy and rewarded those that have held their nerve. Of course this may change. But you are able to hold their tokens/pools in cold wallets.

3) it was was the best of times, it was the worst of times: this is volatility on steroids. I would a) never have even ventured there and b) never would have stuck it out, if it wasn't for my highly informed and invested brother, who re-assured me throughout he swings. He has been through 3 cycles now = 15 years.

4) It really is gambling money - I was an idiot to put so much in and am probably an idiot to still have so much still in! But there is a certain logic to it: I am relatively well off, I have done and re-done the spreadsheet; and can retire and be reasonably certain that no matter what the markets throw at me, my quality of life is unlikely to change too much. If I lost everything I have in crypto, my lifestyle still wouldn't change much. However if it fulfils its wildest expectations, then my lifestyle would change significantly: perhaps there are certain circumstances where swinging for the fences actually make sense.

I apologise if this comes across as a humble-brag. It is not my intention, merely to reflect my evolution in thinking about crypto in general, and as a record for myself to document my thought processes for continuing to hold a high risk "asset." Perhaps that should read - for continuing to speculate.

I will finish with a story of a lotto win. In 2004 my brother was flogging supplements on the internet in the first iteration of ecommerce. Website optimisation was relatively easy in those days and mostly involved writing copy with lots of keywords and links to high reward references. So, I scribbled a bunch of text about the merits and studies supporting certain nutraceutical and anti-aging supplements referenced to medical journals. Which worked really well. For a few years. And then didn't: Google's spiders evolved to more advanced methods of ranking websites and our nascent ecommerce site slowly drifted into irrelevance, folding in 2013 with the princely sum of $2000 in profit. Which I had completely forgotten about.

Bruv phoned me up a few days ago to say that he had bought BTC with the proceedings and that he wanted to pass on to me my 50% holding.

That was nice.

Do the CRYPTO stars in this forum believe we are approaching the bottom of this freefall yet?

I'm thinking it must be close now... but what do I know?

Article is behind a paywall so all I got was this :

Switzerland will soon have a cryptocurrency exchange. SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) will let investors, via regulated institutions, trade, settle and store digital tokens through one venue, underpinned by the "highest Swiss standards of oversight and regulation".

Proof that crypto is a tradable commodity.

I thought this was one of the better informative non sensationalist articles on Crypto that I'd read in a while - on livewire

Cryptocurrency is moving into the mainstream but valuations look much too high