KART and Kujira-relaunch: lessons learned

Whilst working on my daily portfolio reports, I ran across this bit of research I did.

Remember when I said that $KART was a risky investment, even at 98% discount? And showed my numbers? And was savaged on X?

$KART-buyers: are you okay today?

I feel sad for being right.

And it's not that "Oh! This and that unexpected thing happened! That's why $KART went down! Not your analysis!"

It is that my analysis supported prevailing wisdom: new things break in unexpected ways. That was my point, all along, and the data supports that, across the board.

What I'm sad about being right is that many chose to take my analyses personally, and let their emotions rule their responses to me and their investment-decisions.

New stuff takes time to settle. Please don't be a β tester of a token at launch, no matter how smexy its marketing.

"Oh, but didn't you get burned in the Kujira-crash?"

Yeup. I sure did. And in the Terra-crash, and in the Harmony bridge-hack, and in the $USDC 10%-dip that splat Fantom.

Yeup to all of that.

I learned from those crashes, and honestly and openly share lessons learned.

So: lessons learned.

• Terra has crashed again-again?
• Fantom $FTM is rebranding as $S, ... with how much destruction?
• Harmony is ... 'trying' (?) to recover?

All are much larger chains than Kujira, which is getting how much funding to stand up on a new blockchain, again?

Before considering responding emotionally, remember what my $KART-analysis showed. What was the response? What, actually, occurred?

Dispassionately: is Kujira a viable investment now? Or does it need (a lot of) time to mature?

DYOR. Invest according to your tolerance to risk.

Announcement: removing liquidity from Kujira

Announcement.

I am destaking and removing all liquidity from @TeamKujira. I'm now no longer using that blockchain nor its assets in trading and arbitrage. Same for @cosmos $ATOM.

Kujira was supposed to be 'grown-up defi,' learning its lessons from the @terra_money-crash.

It's ironic, then, that $LUNA, and associated assets, have faired much better than $KUJI, $ATOM, and $OSMO these past few months.

Not a funny irony: a sad irony, and a painful one.

"Rugged by Kujira" was not on my crypto bingo card, but nor was rugged by Terra, rugged by Harmony, and rugged by Fantom.

Am I bitter? No. I am resolved. I'm going to make it, and I'm going to prove I'm going to make it, despite these crashes, unfortunate, imprudent, or no.

Erudite asks:

"Not excited about the migration?"

Fair question.

No. I am not excited by the migration. Every migration has cost me more than 95% of my investiture.

I am now focusing on blockchains and assets that have proved they can weather the storms: top-15 by market cap. They'll go down, sure, but they come back up.

I've yet to see a migration from any of these alt-chains that have provided a solid business-case of their utility, nor have provided a reason to place my trust into them.

"We screwed up, but we're in a new sitch, so you lost all your liquidity, but give us more because NEW!"

Under my own value-metric, 'new' is not a value-contributor, but a value-inhibitor. A token of value has history and durability. A migration does not prove either. Time does.

I'll give the new-Kujira (and new-everything else), time to gestate AND mature.

Then I'll evaluate them.

2023-12-09 ETHBTC-THANG! Day 195

Let's do the ETHBTC-THANG!

BEFORE we do the ETHBTC-THANG! let me just say...

WHA DA WHAAA???

Somebody overstepped their $iETH mint on @Indigo_protocol: I received 117 $ADA in the ensuing liquidation.

@Indigo_protocol gives you synthetic $BTC and $ETH that produce $ADA-yields!

I record the $ETH and $BTC prices from @Levana_protocol and the $ADA price from @Indigo_protocol.

The EMA20s show a strong 'sell $ADA, buy x'

   where x ∈ { $iETH, $iBTC }.

I'll let the ETHBTC-THANG! tell me which synthetic to buy-then-stake on @Indigo_protocol. 

2023-12-09 ETHBTC-THANG! Day 195

The ETHBTC-THANG! 

• no swap: no BTC available

After swap:

ETH: 4.34609 BTC: 0.0000

Total: $10,196.26 TVL EMA-20:

n.b.: TVL EMA-20 indicates that ETHBTC, itself, is cruising!

ROI: -0.96% APR: -1.79%

Indigo

Let's turn our attention to @Indigo_protocol on @Cardano.

I have both $INDY and $ADA yields to harvest, so I do that. 

The combined $INDY and $ADA yields are over $100. That's on $4.4k invested in 3 weeks, my frenz.

ROI: 3%; ~50% APY

on staked synthetic $iETH $iBTC and $iUSD 😱

Let me say this loudly for those in the back:

🚨I AM MAKING ~50% APY ON STAKED (synthetic) $iETH and $iBTC, AND THE APY IS $ADA (and $INDY). 🚨

Where else can you do this with your $ETH and $BTC, frenz?

And that's ON TOP of the benefits of HODL'n $ETH and $BTC.

Just sayin' 😎

I really like @Indigo_protocol. There are some things I don't know nor like about this protocol.

• Can I long or short these synthetics? If so, where? If not, why not?
• What is the (real) utility of $iUSD? Where can I use it? Why isn't it the "Stable of Cardano"?

Then: $INDY.

The Problem of $INDY

What is the value-proposition of $INDY?

Not governance: that doesn't impart value to a token, IMO.

I'll tell its value:

Down 36.91% vs. $ADA in the last 4 months.

That means if you stake this token, you bleed money, hard.

AND there's no impetus for $INDY growth that I see.

A token's price tends towards its value.

Until $INDY has a necessary function, e.g.:

• higher yield-rates depending upon $INDY staking tiers

then its price will continue to plummet, and you are punished for staking this token. The longer you stake, the more value you lose.

$INDY in v2. What will be its utility?

@Indigo_protocol: the ball is in your court.

Until then, I will swap $INDY-yields to $ADA.

Thus: I unlock and withdraw my $INDY-stake to that end. 

I will continue to do this until $INDY demonstrates real value.

I swap $ADA to a synthetic.

Why?

Because The $ADA EMA20 charts show a strong-buy for the synthetics using $ADA. See the tweet earlier in this entry.

Now: which synthetic: $iETH or $iBTC?

For that, we consult the ETH/BTC EMA20 chart.

Answer: $iETH.

EMA.

I then stake the $iETH into @Indigo_protocol stable pools. 

My @Indigo_protocol portfolio settles thusly (and, yes, we have already established 'thusly' is now a word): 

2023-12-09 Indigo portfolio

incept date: 2023-07-27

invested: $4,465.58

$iBTC: 0.0137 $601.87

$iETH: 0.6939 $1,628.01

$iUSD: 2,969.28 $2,969.28

value: $5,199.16

total fees $44.828

total yields $329.396

net yields $284.568

APY: 17.23%

ROI: 22.80%

APR: 61.64%

Analysis

This looks great, right? The desired effect, and all that: portfolio value goes up.

But recall, this is only because there were MONTHs of "portfolio goes down."

You MAKE your gains during the market downturn.

And

You SEE your gains during the market upturn.

Remember that.

Should I stake $KUJI, el geophf?

el Volfostey asks on the twitterz:

"hello ser, been thinking about buying a good bag of KUJI, should I? And if yes why? Would love to know your opinion on that"

The answer I give is easy and not so easy.

• Easy: yes, buy $KUJI if you're using it like me, or if you have a use for it.
• Not so easy: ... maybe?

So, first of all, I don't do predictive analytics against the markets, because the predictive analysts are zoodoo gurus if they're honest.

Where is the accountability for predictions, have you ever seen any? There are some, but none that I've seen that show prior predictions' performance with any reliability: "See, I was right about $BTC!" 

Okay, but what's your right/wrong ratios across all your predictions?

So my answers are based on a priori analysis and current use-cases.

If you have a use for $KUJI now, buy $KUJI.

I do.

What is my use for $KUJI now?

Staking?

Don't make me laugh-puke! 

What are your returns on staking for $KUJI?

Unless you're @SumoKuji, and a few others, you've made what I've made, staking $KUJI: nothing worth mentioning.

That doesn't mean I don't stake: but I stake, not for the yields nor for the (imaginary) retained value, but to thank validators for doing the awesome job that they do.

THINK about it!

... and I'M PISSED that $ampWHALE hit the markets before $ampKUJI did, but so it goes.

So, which are the most numerous order books? And where can I make the most net gains?

That's the question I ask when I ask: "Should I buy x?"

And that question is super-easy to answer: I buy @TeamKujira's protocol token:

$LUNA.

jk 😅

But the order books don' lie.

Cleaned up we have:

Token	#books
USK	30
axlUSDC	16
ATOM-ish	10
KUJI	8
LUNA-ish	7

Then I go to the 24h-volumes/order-book to see what's viable.

And THAT's why I'm buying $KUJI, ... and $USK, and $ATOM, and $LUNA, because there are so many HAPPENING order books (volume-wise) with so many inefficiencies (or: 'trade-opportunities') that having $KUJI and these other tokens on hand makes me money.

Today.

Postlude

Now, what if you're not going to be using $KUJI, or any of these tokens, for trading?

Then you have to do a different analysis.

1. What are the stake-returns (APY) of $KUJI verse staking something else ($ATOM? $EVMOS?)
2. What's your outlook on $KUJI verses other tokens? Is $KUJI what you want a year from now more than, e.g. $ETH?

If you're a fire-and-forget kinda guy (like I am, too, ... sometimes? 😅🙄), then you may consider liquid staking, e.g.: @stride_zone and pick the token you love. Or @eris_protocol, same.

Then you can loop on @demexchange or @Umee_CrossChain and add to stable LPs on @osmosiszone

And you have to consider the value to a token if you're staking or long-term HODL'n it. 

Crypto will be okay, and so will you: DeFinalFantasy round-table

My man @DeFinalFantasy hosted a very interesting Twitter sound space yesterday: "Crypto will be okay, and so will you." I wish you came.

What did he talk about? He didn't, much; he listened, and he let leading lights in #cryptocurrency talk.

Okay, so what did THEY talk about?

They talked about the utility of crypto: its real use-cases. And NFTs. And educating kids about crypto, and, importantly: finances and how to manage them.

What is the 'utility of crypto'? Importantly, if your use-case is 'price-quote goes up,' then your crypto DOESN't have value. Value is something I've been preaching on for months now, so I'm glad it's (finally) entered the conversation. 

They talked about NFTs, and ownership, and how to get ownership OFF AWS and Goggle and IBM and ONTO the individual owners. Same for crypto: how to get it OFF CEX and ONTO your OWN wallet.

YOU own your crypto when YOU hold the keys.

But you don't when AWS or a CEX does.

This got into education. @DeFinalFantasy said he wants to set up crypto-clubs in high schools around the country and let kids get exposed to crypto and learn how to use it and not get burnt. Somebody added that this can be extended to managing not just crypto, but finances, too.

This turned into a long conversation about crypto-familiarity. Squid (?) talked about working with small businesses and gifting crypto, and having THEM figure out how to get the liquidity from the ledgers: education crypto-competency by learning-by-doing.

One of the members asked how to get to crypto-competency and avoid the scams and rugs? @DeFinalFantasy jumped in here and recommended reading every book on crypto and watching every youtube you can get your hands on, then YOU'll be the expert in the room on crypto.

@DeFinalFantasy also mentioned that @AaveAave and @Uniswap: they don't change much, do they?

Why? They know their business case, and they provide a VALUable service. They don't HAVE to change: they are doing their job.

Crypto needs to find its job to do, and do that.

Another extended conversation is: if you're 'in it' for the money, you're gambling, even if you're a huge crypto EX. "Price goes up" isn't what makes crypto useful. You have to have a project (a service) and a passion: value comes from that.

Gambling is what gets people broke.

Crypto will be okay, and so will you.

Find a project and a passion, and put yourself to work. Crypto CAN get you rich, quick – it has for me – but that's because I work at it, hard, every day, and make myself useful on projects of worth and of value.

The. End.

A coin is a measure of value

Satoshi Nakamoto launched $BTC and all #cryptocurrency with the rallying cry: "A coin is a unit of work."

I'll go one step further: a coin measures value. 

Consequently, a coin's price adjusts to its perceived value. 

Coins that are tied to a real, underlying value are performant, I've noticed. That's why tombstoning is working for me as an investment: these coins are tied to the protocol token, a token of worth to many people.

Coins that tank are usually not tied to anything. YMMV

Value: a Dialog

Thesis

I'm sad.

I'm really sad.

A lot of you equate price, and price movement, to value.

You know how to get rid of anxiety in your life? Look at the value of what you're buying, and not its price. You look at the price, you'll buy high and sell low.

You look at the value, you'll buy.

Antithesis

This begs the question: "Do you have any criteria for selecting farms and coins to farm?"

Glad you asked.

1. durability: has it survived AND RECOVERED from a crash?
2. utility: how many different ways can yields be generated from it? (must be more than 2)
3. company: what are its pairings? Good coins or bad ones?
4. parsimony: what are the expenses of earning money from this coin?
5. viability: what will this coin look like next year?
6. community: is its community growing or dying?
7. value: is this a pretty-boi or a wannabe? No? Good. Then what is its unique contribution to the world?

Synthesis

(this is the part where you prove out if the above criteria actually work by showing the principal growth and yield returns that this coin has generated for you over the past year).