If you've been in crypto for any length of time you've felt a mix of fomo and cope. It's a deep unseated feeling that the shiny new coin your friends are talking about, is something you need to get into ASAP. It's the thought that 'if only I would have bought $10,000 worth when I first saw it.'
Let's take your desire to get into every hot project the timeline is talking about and take it to its best possible end state.
You catch every token CT is talking about early. The WIFs, the BONKs, the PEPEs, and even the NFTs. You make 50 million in the market cycle, roughly 2 years of work.
This becomes what you’re known for. It’s how people introduce you. They say, ‘meet Jeet, they’re an incredible trader. They made X dollars for selling X NFTs.’
Is this what you want?
Not if you're an artist. If you're an artist you want to be known for what you've made. You don't want to have a conversation about how you spotted WIF early when you meet someone.
Now let's take your desire to make great art to its best possible end state.
You publish 2,000 word essays consistently every week. They are passed around and shared by strangers. You're invited to give talks, to invest in angel rounds in founders who are familiar with your work. More than all of this, you find it easy to make fast friends. Your work does the heavy lifting of broadcasting what your deepest interests are. There is no guarantee of riches or making money from your art ever.
You can’t have both. These two paths are incompatible. One dictates you need to spend most of your time scouring charts, group chats, Twitter, and data to find projects. The other requires long stretches of time off the internet, sitting alone thinking. Most good things simply require a lot of time and trading is a jealous master.
The biggest choice we make in crypto is the choice of what game we're playing. If you do not choose, one will be chosen for you. The default game is that of the speculator, eyes glued to a screen for more hours of a day than not. Most people have no interest in becoming a world class trader. They’re content creators, company builders, investors with long time horizons who can’t resist the siren call of picking up free money off the ground.
I imagine this is why Michael Lewis puts his money in boring bonds rather than in hot investments despite being friends with famous investors. His game is to write, not to invest. Any investment process that gets in the way of the writing, no matter how lucrative, is wrong.
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