Digital Slowmad newsletter
6 September 2024
Crypto portfolio update
Exposure: 100.0%
Net return: 636.9%
Comments: Summer break is over and people are expecting market activity to pick up into October with a bullish bias towards the end of the year.
This is because BTC has historically made its largest gains in October and November.
While I can appreciate this outlook, I'm skeptical about relying on past cycle patterns for future guidance.
After all, BTC has already deviated from many such patterns this year (eg. made new ATH before the halving, longest ever consolidation below previous ATH, altcoin dispersion, etc).
In other words: This cycle is playing out differently than previous cycles. So why should we keep referencing past cycle patterns?
If we're objective about it, there's little reason to.
But of course, people being people, most will continue to rely on old (irrelevant) models because it gives them a feeling of familiarity and predictability, albeit a false one.
PlanB's Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model comes to mind. 3 years ago everyone relied on it because it fit past patterns so well. Today, it's clear that the model failed terribly.
I suspect this time will be no different. People will keep following useless historical patterns until they learn not to, or wipe out.
The only practical way forward is to operate on first principles and think for yourself.
Last cycle, many thought BTC would hit $100,000 according to S2F and ended up destroying their portfolio. This cycle, the majority will once again lose their shirts following attractive but ultimately useless models of past patterns.
Current allocation:
⚔️ Parallel TCG vs Hearthstone
I'm not sure how it started, but some Hearthstone (HS) and Parallel TCG (//-TCG) players started beefing with each other.
As far as I can tell, some high level HS players were playing //-TCG and live streaming their games... which made other HS players unhappy and kicked off the whole thing.
Many HS players started claiming that crypto is a scam, that no one actually plays //-TCG, and that people are only in it to shill the token and NFTs.
On the other side of the argument, //-TCG players say they actually enjoy the gameplay and at least own their cards (that they can transfer to someone else or even sell), unlike HS players who paid for their cards but can do neither and thus don't actually "own" them.
And the best part? Just as the debate was heating up, Blizzard Entertainment (HS developer) launched Hero skins for $60, much to the annoyance of their fanbase.
Naturally, this gave the //-TCG camp more fuel to tease HS players with.
This was such an amusing development that //-TCG founder, Kalos, stepped in.
And of course, as with all debates of a tribalistic nature, almost no one in the HS camp changed their minds as they kept insisting that crypto is all a scam and no one actually plays //-TCG.
The "fight" continues on but it seems to me that people are overlooking the most important thing.
First, consider that HS is built by a world class developer (Blizzard Entertainment) and is the top online card game played by hundreds of thousands of people daily all over the world.
The fact that this "debate" is happening at all is good for //-TCG because it means that HS players see it as big enough of a threat to be arguing about which game is "better".
//-TCG has everything to to gain from this "fight" as it gives them huge exposure to the HS community, especially those who have never heard of //-TCG prior to this.
Overall, this is a positive development for //-TCG and web3 gaming as a whole.
Kudos to //-TCG and Kalos for leading the charge.
Admin update
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🌃 City walk (Nightcity version)
I'm a fan of city walk videos, especially in Japan.
Example:
Recently I've been watching hyper-realistic Cyberpunk 2077 videos, and they are so close to the real thing!
It's truly amazing how far game graphics have come. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.
💭 Idea of the week
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.
Cheers,
Slowmad
P.S. If you have any questions or feedback, let me know at: chris[at]digitalslowmad[dot]com
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