Crypto Titan Alpha

Earlier today, a user attempted to buy AAVE using $50M USDT through the Aave interface. Given the unusually large size of the single order, the Aave interface, like most trading interfaces, warned the user about extraordinary slippage and required confirmation via a checkbox. The user confirmed the warning on their mobile device and proceeded with the swap, accepting the high slippage, which ultimately resulted in receiving only 324 AAVE in return. The transaction could not be moved forward without the user explicitly accepting the risk through the confirmation checkbox. The CoW Swap routers functioned as intended, and the integration followed standard industry practices. However, while the user was able to proceed with the swap, the final outcome was clearly far from optimal. Events like this do occur in DeFi, but the scale of this transaction was significantly larger than what is typically seen in the space. We sympathize with the user and will try to make a contact with the user and we will return $600K in fees collected from the transaction. The key takeaway is that while DeFi should remain open and permissionless, allowing users to perform transactions freely, there are additional guardrails the industry can build to better protect users. Our team will be investigating ways to improve these safeguards going forward.

🚨 I’M INVESTING MILLIONS INTO THIS It’s not gold. It’s not silver. It’s something nobody is talking about. The world of anti-inflation and anti-currency-devaluation assets is vast, and it’s far from limited to gold and silver. Of course, precious metals are excellent long-term bulwarks against the coming wave of negative real interest rates and inflation. Gold will no doubt go much higher than $5,000 in a few years, and if you’re holding it physically without leverage, the current price movements won’t worry you all that much. But don’t forget that alongside gold there’s oil, gas, coal, palm oil, iron ore, agricultural commodities, fertilizers. And plenty of undervalued stocks in these sectors, still at the bottom of their cycles, unlike gold and silver mines. You could even say that a good undervalued classic industrial small-to-mid cap deserves the label of anti-inflation asset too. At current prices, I feel far more at ease buying oil companies than gold mines. The oil companies / gold mines ratio is at its HISTORICAL lows. Oil services ETF: OIH (tracks oil services companies. Think drilling, equipment, services) Energy sector ETF: XLE (tracks the broader energy sector. Integrated oil & gas, E&Ps, services, etc.) That doesn’t stop me from holding the physical gold portion of my portfolio for probably quite a few more years. Remember, I called every market top and bottom of the last 10 years publicly. When I make a new move, I’ll say it here for everyone to see. Many people will regret not following me sooner.