Aylo

I've been having quite a few conversations with a friend that has life changing money in crypto currently. He's been in this position before, but lost/rode it all down last cycle. Here are some thoughts from those conversations: I don't know how long this bull market lasts. I would guess we are at about 60-70% of the way through at this stage. However, I don't have a crystal ball, no one does, and I do believe you should remain humble in the fact that you can't predict the future. There are simply too many variables and unknowns. If you are an individual that finds yourself in a position where if you cashed out/rebalanced to less risky assets today that it would completely change your life, then you are now in a position where you can only lose going forward. Let me explain. Once you have enough money to take away all/most worries, then in general, more money makes very little difference to your happiness. If you are very materialistic then you might feel differently, but for most humans this is the case. More stuff is just more stuff. It doesn't really have a multiplying impact on purpose, well being and happiness. So, if you find yourself with life changing money at stake, then I would argue you can only lose by continuing to hold a large position in crypto. I don't really think you can "win more", as more gains will make very little difference to your overall wellbeing or happiness. Once you have secured the bag, then by all means come back and speculate to your heart's content, but securing some form of financial freedom is the biggest upgrade you can possibly make in life. It sets you up forever and puts you in a position to explore boundless opportunities in the future. Greed and arrogance is really the only thing that stops humans from taking the chips off the table, even when they have already won and beaten the market. There's also an ever present narrative that "this is the last chance to make it" and it will be impossible to have chances to make outsized money again. This irrational fear and logic also drives people to just keep holding even when they already have unrealized life changing gains. Most are simply unable to overcome this imagination of missed gains in the future, and it's why we see most crypto participants losing life changing money on a consistent basis. It's also not a popular thing on CT to tell people that "selling early" is ok & the right decision even if it is going to have an outsized impact on your life in the real world. I have an immense respect for anyone that sticks to their own plan and isn't swayed by external influence/noise, and is able to step away from the perceived gains that the majority says is a certainty in the near future. Just a little ramble, maybe it helps you in some way now or in the future.

Can honestly say that trading assets in a bear market that I thought were great and going much higher at a later point was always a bad decision and a waste of time. Pendle my biggest example from the previous cycle. You feel like a genius for a few weeks/months and then you feel like a total moron a year later. Repeatedly selling and buying back assets you believe in is extremely difficult. You will likely end up with less size in the asset and underperform having simply held. Bear markets are not for getting cute. They are the best possible time to position at attractive valuations for longer time horizons. Of course, you must be good at asset selection, and if you aren’t then selling bear market rips on vapour will of course be the right decision. The previous cycle favoured traders. I lean towards this cycle favouring holders as we get much more concentrated flows into a few winners for longer periods of time.

To add this well made point, I do believe the majority of people who are still believers in crypto are tired of being traders and just want to hold a few things that make sense now. We have played endless speculative games, and run the euthanasia rollercoaster enough to finally understand what has value and what doesn't. Maybe it's just me.

@Credib1eGuy It is. Few things are in a better position fundamentally with this chart structure.

@alpha_pls That chart is insane

And there is your good move upwards. Nice breakout for $NEAR here. Starting to see a lot more talk about what they've built, and what the protocol is doing, which is encouraging. Price had previously disconnected from the progress being made, which tends to make for a strong catch up move.

@game_for_one @rodeo_crypro All being reinvested into growth supposedly. They did build and fund their own data centre.

@rodeo_crypro @alpha_pls What goes into the token? They haven’t done any buybacks for ages no? Where is all that revenue going

I'll address $GRASS again. From a fundamentals POV it continues to execute against the original vision and the revenue is huge relative to almost any other crypto project. There is a lot going right on the business side. However, I became insanely frustrated with their total lack of comms, which remains an issue. This makes it pretty much impossible for investors to do due diligence, so the token doesn't trade anywhere near where it would if they were communicating effectively with a regular cadence. This is fixable, but there seems to be a lack of urgency/willingness to do it. I'm unsure why. My best guess is that there is a bit of a naive fear of open comms as a crypto project because they work with legitimate AI labs and hyperscalers. It's also illiquid onchain, and there have also been no attempts by the Foundation to do anything about this. It could be a giant crypto project, if they actually want to embrace the crypto side of their business which makes their business possible in the first place.

@Roh0517 I don't disagree. Attested third parties would also be fine in this case as the revenue is offchain. It's very frustrating.

@alpha_pls The only reliable way to properly verify a crypto company's real revenue is to prove it onchain

I wish that was the easy explanation, but it's not the case. All the contracts are signed directly with the foundation and funds are wired to the foundation bank accounts. Value doesn't accrue to the equity. Token holders are technically the chief beneficiaries here. Wynd Labs are a service partner, and and best they earn a commission for sales. This is my understanding unless they have lied.

One of the most frustrating projects, could have been great if there was any sort of alignment with the equity holders As of now the structure is pure Helium playbook - use token incentives to bootstrap a real business, inflate participation to harvest data, then let equity holders eat while token holders get nothing of real value back. You’re being used to generate the data asset. The token is the carrot to keep you running the node. The equity is where the actual upside lives.

@gumsays Will also add that its going to take much much longer for NEAR to go to the numbers where you will feel like it paid off holding.

I can't tell you what to do ofc, but last time it broke out of this range was end of 23 it did nearly 400% with much worse fundamentals/worse tokenomics. Macro is in a more precarious place, which remains the risk here, but NEAR does seem to be becoming important crypto infrastructure. I think I'm going to keep believing that certain crypto assets are finding PMF and forging their own path. If BTC remains rangebound then I think this can hold true. BTC below 60k and its likely macro has gone to shit, and we have 0-1 correlation events again.

@gumsays It’s understandable as holders, as opposed to traders, haven’t been rewarded in crypto for a long time. Personally think that’s changed for a few assets like ZEC.

@alpha_pls You nailed it tbh, pretty much what I've been struggling in 2026 I develop a thesis, take my time to study, but as soon as I deploy everything goes to shit mentally need to fix indeed

I bought my ZEC at $350 and sold at $580 Did not catch any of the recent upside, only the singular move I suck at trading and should've held it, gonna do better next time

@waterbongo Let’s go

@alpha_pls well done aylo, let's ride

Out of all of the people I told irl to buy hyperliquid:native on day 1 of TGE I am the only one that held the majority of their stack from that purchase. How did I manage to hold? Best fundamentals (product, revenue, growth, team) tokenomics combination I've ever seen in crypto. I truly believe this is an historically unique asset due to the programmatic buying back of finite supply with 99% of protocol fees. This is unprecedented. After so many years in logging into this place I couldn't let myself sell this asset, despite knowing we were in a bear market. We only have a handful of examples where diamond handed holders were rewarded over multiple cycles. I continue to believe HYPE is going to take its place in history, as another one of those examples. Optimistic delusion is an important trait of the most successful traders/investors. Don't be afraid to dream a little bigger ($800 per point). Hyperliquid.

@reetesheth The fact you have put HYPE next to NEO, SUI, AVAX, QTUM, ALGO shows you have no idea what you are talking about.

@alpha_pls eventually will die just like we have seen NEO,SUI,AVAX,QTUM,ALGO many L1 comes and goes after few years in trending one part of prep yeah CEXs and many L2 like Lighter will slowly et the pie. good for those print huge money but always be safe in crypto.

hyperliquid:native hitting an ATH against a bearish crypto majors backdrop is great. Long term fundamental investors are being rewarded. Been a while since we've seen that in crypto. Great signal to send. Very healthy for the asset class.

@rektdiomedes Unlikely to have a more meaningful trade in my life. Certainly in terms of the risk I took, and how much runway I had at the time. All it takes is one good idea, well executed, to change your life forever :)

@alpha_pls I vividly remember you being hard in on $SOL at the absolute bottom in 2022 man - gud times (and great call!) :)

Every bear market I have done well because I just pay attention to the most dominant narratives/products with the potential to grow immensely and buy them with a 2 year time horizon. 2019 - LINK 2022 - SOL 2026 - HYPE ZEC I've been told repeatedly every bear market that the coins I hold are consensus/I'm a retard despite there being like a few people left onchain willing to step in to take risk, whilst everyone else says crypto is dead forever or going much lower. Smart consensus is not the same as general consensus. As I've said a few times, I think flows will be more concentrated than ever before in crypto going forward.

@BTCnPEPE HYPE FDV is totally irrelevant. One of the biggest bull cases here.

@alpha_pls Agree with what you're saying Personally not interested in hype anymore due to how big the fdv is The fuck you dream roi is no longer there and it's currently fairly valued based on revenue to current mc: pe ratio of 22 Revenue to fdv is 80 Hype is no longer undervalued imo

The tricky thing about this bear market is you were forced to get into position for the winning alts much earlier than previous ones. Neither hyperliquid:native nor $ZEC are in a bear market. They have decoupled whilst BTC, ETH and SOL are technically bearish when looking at the structure. Usually, there are always a few alts that do well in a bear market into the new bull market, but it has tended to happen after BTC has more definitively entered an uptrend (not including small caps). This is the first time I've witnessed such strength from large caps of this size whilst majors remain in a bear. They bottomed early and reclaimed structure while majors didn't. HYPE at 15B+ and ZEC at $11B doing this while majors are 35–55% off ATH is the part that's genuinely new. LINK + BNB did it in 2019, but was much smaller, but I guess you could say crypto TOTAL market cap was much smaller, so maybe it is similar to that. Timing buys in bear markets when you have conviction that assets will eventually be much higher in the coming years is silly. You get positioned, and you stomach some potential downside if it comes to that. I've always hoped that crypto assets would trade on their own fundamentals/catalysts/narratives rather than being totally beholden to BTC PA (of course extreme vol will still cause correlation, which is no different in equities land). Maybe we have matured to the point where this is possible because we have additional flows from ETFs (Hype ETFs seeing huge inflows) and tokens with real PMF. It's a new era (crosses fingers).

HYPE could run 2x or more higher before that happens, and then correct to a price higher than today. You are certainly not getting 20s again. It's not like you don't have the option to hedge IF you see danger on the horizon too. As I said: "Timing buys in bear markets when you have conviction that assets will eventually be much higher in the coming years is silly. You get positioned, and you stomach some potential downside if it comes to that."

@alpha_pls I would reserve final judgement until Q4 this year. Equities have not broken down yet. If the stock market at ath rn breaks down, I really don't think zec or hype can hide from overall macro weakness and shock to stock market. That my opinion, I expect crypto and stocks lower