Crypto portfolio update

Exposure: 100.0%

Net return: 430.8%

Comments: It's been 3 months since the A.I. narrative peaked and the whole altcoin market has been down-only since then.

And with altcoins demolished, Bitcoin down -30%, S&P500 down -12%, and now with Trump kicking off a tariff war... calls for further price declines - if not The cycle top - are the loudest they've ever been.

This is understandable as both the fundamental landscape and price action have been poor... so the common narrative would not be anything but bearish.

Ultimately though, the big question is: Is the bull run over?

A quick glance at the BTC chart suggests the top might be in:

And if we look at the price structures of ETH and SOL (closer proxies to altcoins), they suggest that altcoins could be done this cycle:

So does this mean we should sell our altcoin bags?

My view is: It depends.

If you're holding vapourware coins (eg. memecoins, projects with no real use case) or likely overvalued coins from last cycle (eg. certain L1s/L2s, SocialFi, most NFTs etc), it's probably not a bad idea to drop that bag.

But if you're holding altcoins of fundamentally sound projects with real use cases, good tokenomics and a relatively low valuation, it might be worthwhile to ride out the downside volatility.

Like I said in the previous newsletter: Crypto is growing up. The ghost chains and nonsense projects that pumped to sky high valuations in prior cycles will no longer pump hard in this one.

By now, the industry has a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't... so I wouldn't expect coins with 'pie in the sky' narratives to perform.

On a related note, there's growing evidence that this cycle won't play out like past ones. And with institutions entering the space + increasing deregulation, a credible argument can be made for prior cycle patterns to be irrelevant from now on.

In other words, I'm watching out for the possibility of the usual 4-year cycle no longer playing out.

As an example, here's what might happen instead:

• BTC chops around for most of 2025 and makes a new ATH in 2026
• Altcoins in general stay depressed while specific sectors pump at different times over different durations

This is just one idea out of many possible ones. The point is to keep an open mind and operate from first principles instead of blindly following past patterns.

Current allocation:

🔫 GUN token

The hottest web3 game - Off The Grid - has officially launched its $GUN token.

I'm surprised at the timing, given that altcoins have been tanking non-stop across the board.

The game is good (I've been playing it), but even then I can't imagine the token launch doing well in this environment, especially with gaming tokens being some of the hardest hit.

Combine this with the low float / high FDV dynamic plus no significant utility for the token currently... and a disappointing launch is practically guaranteed.

So to absolutely no one's surprise, the token has been down-only since it started trading.

I have a soft spot for web3 gaming and want the sector to do well, but so far nobody has been able to crack the formula for sustainable token prices.

Admin update

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🪐 ANDOR season 2

ANDOR is one of the few decent shows in the Star Wars universe since Disney took over.

The second season is coming soon so I'll be re-watching season one to prepare for it.

 Quote of the week

Modern luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly, and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four.

- Justin Welsh

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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