So, crypto is at all time low for the past 1 year. Most L1 coins are at a loss of 50 to 70%, and most alt coins are at a bigger loss.
While i do not have any Luna or UST in the portfolio, the portfolio is still down -73%.
Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria.
Sir John Templeton
On hindsight, 2021 was the year of crypto euphoria. Terra(Luna) surged close to 12000% in 2021, from less than a dollar in Jan 2021 to $8x in Dec 2021. $100 invested became $12,000. Many became crypto millionaires, and many others followed in, but how could Luna do another 12000% at a marketcap of $30B at the end of 2021. At its highest peak in 2022, there was another 50% to be made, if you had bought at end of 2021, not a bad ride indeed for followers.
I went in, at the euphoria stage towards the end of 2021, not wanting to miss all these speculative gains that others have made, even though there was no way to calculate the values of what I was buying.
If you’ve been playing poker for half an hour and you still don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy.
Warren Buffett
For Crypto, it is a zero sum game. Zero-sum is a situation in game theory in which one person’s gain is equivalent to another’s loss, so the net change in wealth or benefit is zero.
For people who came in late 2021, we became the exit for many who were sitting on huge paper gains, and not too greedy to overstay. It is always never wrong to take profits, you could be earlier, later, but profits are profits, just more or less. To buy when others are selling and hold it for quite some time, and to sell when the market is in euphoria mood.
I still believe in what I believe in, Blockchain tech and cryptos are here to stay for good, it is like the dot-com bubble, most IT companies will be gone at the end, but the really good ones will remain. A lot of the Alt coins are doomed to fail, as there are no good reasons to buy and hold, while your holdings are diluted as more coins are minted out from thin air. Project profits are kept to the team, while shareholders get nothing, only hoping for the next buyer to come and buy at a higher price while getting some attractive staking yields, which cannot withstand the falling prices in a crypto winter.
Like domino blocks, when one realised that the price cannot go up anymore, and there is no more foolish takers, the only way is down, and a fast fall it will be.
Human greed is always within us, and there will always be another ponzi scheme major investment opportunity. it will be harder for people to trust alt coins like they do in 2021, where every coins or tokens just boom. Many of us will have a good laugh many years later at how worthless NFTs are, yet once upon a time, we were happy to paid 4 to 5 digit figures for them, because there are others out there willing to pay us more to have that worthless NFT. For every ponzi scheme, there are money to be made, especially for people who entered early and do not overstay. The key here is, did you entered knowingly or did you followed others in?
Crypto to me is still highly speculative, and i put in a small amount to speculate.
My investment philosophy is, no stock/crypto investments that i made should make me lose any sleep over it, if i do, then either it is not suitable for me, or i allocated too much into that single investment. Once in a while, i will do some silly investment decisions, but it is always small enough, and i do not get overly attached to it.
My Retirement portfolio (100% invested in SG stocks) is at 2%, while STI ETF is at 4.1%, under performing by 2%, not too bad, as I was under performing more than 10% at STI ETF’s peak in 2022 few months back.
Going into crypto has make me more self conscious of my investing temperament, I would made decisions that I will never do in stocks, and also made all kinds of silly mistakes.
It has been a steep learning curve, and I have simplified it to a bare minimum, I continue to look forward to the long term future of the crypto sphere, and hopefully I will make some right decisions in the future, to hold on to the gems of cryptocurrencies for many years to come.
JB durian season has started, and I am looking forward to having some value for money MSWs, one of my pricey guilty pleasure in life.
Till then.
Chief Family Officer, Singapore 