It’s quiet out there . . . TOO quiet . . .
Is there anybody out there?
I had a unique experience recently. My portfolio went up, substantially . . . and I didn’t FOMO in more. I just enjoyed the sensations of bubbling back up toward the surface. I felt zen, very calm.
Hopefully, you had the same feeling. Judging by the way most people have reacted to the total crypto market rising 30% in July, I don’t feel like I’m alone. Or maybe it’s less zen than it is people waiting to poke the cat after it stops bouncing to see if it’s dead.
Or, maybe it’s like the grizzled cowboy holed up for his last stand, peeking outside the safehouse with the muzzle of his six-shooter and declaring around a spit of tobacco, “It’s quiet out there . . . too quiet.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about this while I’ve been floating, and I’ll write about it later. But since it seems that nobody’s here right now, I have a small confession I hope I can slip by unnoticed.
In every one of these installments, I have disclosed that I had personal stakes in the investments I discuss, and in many cases would continue to do so. But I forgot one crucial asset: Coinbase itself.
I bought COIN near the lows in mid-May figuring it to be a long-term HODL. But I’ve basically bagged a double in 2½ months and, given that they’ve caught the eye of the Panopticon, I went ahead and cashed out.
Ironically, I feel like I’ve done more wrong here by failing to disclose than Coinbase has, even though I netted less capital than you probably have sticky-welded to your car’s cupholder.
🪙🪙🪙🪙🪙
I really want to be somewhat neutral with this month’s picks. Clearly waiting several days to see which way the wind was going to blow didn’t provide any assistance.
Accordingly, there’s still a strong base, but a couple of higher-flyers in the list in case we do break out into a full-blown altseason.
As always: I have likely owned all of these coins at some point, own most of them now, and will likely own several of them whenever you’re reading this. Not enough to matter.
1. Ethereum (ETH) — $35
July: ⬆️ 56.9%
Alright, Ethereans, you want a #flippening, you got one.
Ether positively ripped in July, in part because it had nowhere else to go after being unwound through all the shenanigans in June.
But also, the Merge continues apace, with the final testnet, Goerli, due to go live later this month. The true merge will happen in September, but the hype train is clearly leaving the station. This may be the last chance to board.
2. Bitcoin (BTC) — $25
July: ⬆️ 16.6%
In any other month, the announcement that Coinbase was partnering with the planet’s biggest money manager to provide clients with Bitcoin exposure would probably have been far bigger news. But the king crypto was still contending with the capitulation of one of its biggest backers. Elon Musk sold off nearly all Tesla’s Bitcoin stash to the tune of a $189 million loss.
In lieu of writing 1000 words more about it, enjoy this caricature from CoinTelegraph:
Technical analysis also puts ETH in the driver’s seat compared to BTC, with the #2 coin still 23% off its recent highs when measured against digital gold.
3. Polygon (MATIC) — $10
July: ⬆️ 92.9%
Polygon’s primary bull case has been how it . . . wait, did that say up 92.9%?
Well, I’ll be damned.
Anyway, Polygon’s primary bull case has been how it functions as an express lane for the Ethereum network, making transactions faster, cheaper and more scalable.
This would suggest that Ethereum’s merge will consign Polygon and its layer-2 brethren to obsolescence. But even though ETH has bounced, MATIC has come along for the ride and then some — because even if the Merge is everything it’s been hyped up to be, Polygon’s tech can still improve the experience.
Plus, they haven’t exactly been staying in their lane:
“Win no matter what” is a good place to put your money.
4. Uniswap (UNI) — $8
July: ⬆️ 66.4%
Uniswap continues to keep its long-term thesis as the #1 decentralized crypto exchange. As n00bs continue onboarding to centralized exchanges like Coinbase, many of them continue tumbling down the rabbit hole and eventually land at automated market makers like Uniswap.
In fact, according to one researcher, Uniswap is already approaching parity with Coinbase.
But the n00bs can get in on the action, too. Not only can you buy UNI on Coinbase, last month another player jumped in:
5. Filecoin (FIL) — $7
July: ⬆️ 81.1%
The modern world generates a staggering amount of data, and as everything gets metaversed and tokenized, that trend will only continue.
Have you ever thought about where we’re going to, y’know, put it all?
Storage is getting cheaper, but much like how it’s faster and more convenient to access your movies via downloaded copy than over DVD, it will just be easier (and probably safer) to store them on the blockchain.
Filecoin exists as a storage and retrieval system for data, with the token FIL as currency on the platform. Think of it like those storage facilities, just the web3 version.
6. The Sandbox (SAND) — $5
July: ⬆️ 16.5%
When the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, the first people who feel it are those buying houses, as the banks now have to charge them a fatter mortgage rate to continue making a profit. Eventually, the market bottoms and with it, so many of the other raw materials that go into home construction (check how much lumber’s tumbled recently), contributing to the sought-after cresting in inflation.
Now, I’m not saying that the virtual real estate market will be tied to the real real estate market, but . . . actually, apparently that is what I’m saying. Huh. I wasn’t really trying to make that connection, I promise.
What they have in common, though, is both scarcity and long-term interest. There’s plenty of land in places nobody wants, but there’s only so much to go around in the most desirous areas. Similarly, the metaverse might be infinite, but there’s only so many pixels that are where people want to be. Secondly, long-term interest hasn’t wavered that much — in fact, some valuable virtual parcels have gone up over the last year in USD despite the calamitous fall in their tokens.
Nobody knows when an asset class that has never had a bottom will bottom, so get your bottom into one.
Why SAND? Well, ask your older relatives why Blu-Ray beat HD-DVD and then ask your parents why VHS beat Betamax, then go to The Sandbox’s homepage for this:
Yeah, I know, by itself it ain’t much (who knew Playboy was still a thing? not me. nuh uh. no sir), but brand ties get new people into the space.
7. Function X (FX) — $4
July: ⬆️ 48.5%
I’m still a believer in cross-chain functionality, and Function X is rolling out a big one: their f(x)EVM chain went live last month, providing compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. This allows decentralized app developers to build their dapps on a lighter, faster network but still maintain functionality with the #1 smart contract platform.
f(x) is backing that up with $20 million from its Ecosystem Genesis Fund to attract developers and build up its platform.
Twenty million dollars. Twenty million dollars. WHY AM I WRITING WORDS IN ENGLISH, WHICH I LITERALLY PAID THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO LEARN TO DO GOODER IN COLLAGE AND HAS PAID ME BACK APPROXIMATELY JACK FRACKIN’ SQUAT? I NEED TO LEARN TO CODE. &%#$.
8. Quant (QNT) — $3
July: ⬆️ 91.4%
Some of the biggest corporate winners of the last quarter-century have been businesses who’ve existed to get other businesses to scale up into the Internet. Think Cisco, Oracle, Amazon Web Services.
Quant wants to do the same for web3, providing companies the mobility and cost savings of blockchain tech through its Overledger system. Since it’s “blockchain-agnostic,” Overledger also promises future cross-chain compatibility — hey, look, there’s that theme again. If scaling up companies sounds hard, Quant is already hard at work scaling up all of Latin America.
QNT has run an absolute ton in July, and the early returns in August are also voluptuous, so you may want to wait for this to calm down a second. If it ever does.
9. QuickSwap (QUICK) — $2
July: ⬆️ 64.7%
This is a pretty easy one. I like DEXes. I like Polygon. QuickSwap is a DEX that runs on Polygon.
10. Numeraire (NMR) — $1
July: ⬇️ 13.8%
What if I told you there’s a tournament that makes March Madness look like child’s play — and it happens every week?
A company called Numerai hosts a weekly tournament where gigabigbrains compete to crack the stock market. The bounty — aside from the market wins, of course, is Numeraire, the in-game token.
If you’ve got a million bucks, you can invest in Numerai Supreme, the high-risk high-reward algorithm-of-algorithms uberstrategy. But if you, um, don’t have that much lying around, you can buy NMR. Be really careful, though — apparently, this token can go down even in a fantastic month.
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