Thesis Review: Part 2
It’s time for another Thesis review, where I examine my thesis on crypto by taking a hard look at my own portfolio and asking tough questions:
- What am I buying / holding / selling?
- Why am I buying / holding / selling?
- What am I not buying / holding and why?
- What am I learning and what am I still curious to learn more about?
Before we jump in, a required caveat: nothing in this post should be considered financial advice. This post is being shared purely for educational and entertainment purposes. Let’s dive in…
The Portfolio
The chart below shows how my various crypto positions are categorized as of end of May 2024, compared to how it looked in March 2024.
SOL Yield continues to be my largest bucket of holdings, and is basically the same share as it was two months ago. This bucket includes native staking as well as what I consider to be lower risk liquid staking token (LST) strategies on Sanctum, Kamino, and Meteora. Many of these strategies are accumulating points for possible governance token airdrops/claims, but the primary purpose of these positions is to preserve my SOL holdings while earning safe yield. Why? Because I still think we are early in this next bull market so I want as much SOL exposure as possible (more on why I’m bullish $SOL here).
SUI Yield bucket is unchanged, but has dropped in share as SUI has greatly underperformed SOL over the last two months. But I still want exposure as a long-term alt-Solana bet that has very generous native token farming incentives.
USDC Yield is the biggest gainer in my portfolio, nearly doubling from 6% to 11.4% of the portfolio. This portfolio includes USDC in Kamino Lend as well as positions in JLP (Jupiter Perps) and FLP.1 (Flash Trade). The latter two aren’t technically stablecoin positions, but I feel like they are stable-enough to park funds during this bull stretch and a) earn way more yield than other USDC options and b) potentially position me for the next round of airdrops from Jupiter and Flash Trade.
The increase in this part of my portfolio came from rotating out of altcoins that I was less confident in long-term, including TNSR, ZEUS, PYTH, and Cosmos ecosystem coins.
NFTs still have a significant place in my portfolio, though the share has dropped from 22.5% to 18.9% as NFTs continue to underperform (and I’ve sold a few as well). I think NFTs will perform poorly as long as SOL is pumping, so the only options are to sell at brutal rock bottom prices or hold until we crest the top of the bull market and maybe see a pump on the way back down on the interest of new crypto adopters and buys from people who see NFTs as a hedge on declining SOL prices.
I’m not in a rush to sell at these prices for two reasons, mainly because prices are already extremely low and my NFT portfolio features collections that offer solid weekly rewards. Most of my portfolio consists of Famous Fox Federation, which yields 30–50% annually in current floor value (and is expected to launch an updated rewards system by end of Q2); and Flash Beasts, which may position holders for a future airdrop for Flash Trade.
I do hold a few NFTs that I have no hope will return to relevance, but they are so low I might as well hold them in case a miracle happens and they have a revival (or I’ll just sell in December for a tax loss).
Altcoins still sit at 7% of my portfolio, and the strategy here is to hold moonbags of projects that I legitimately believe have a chance to be “killer apps” in the ideal future where Solana dominates crypto rails. The only altcoins I feel strongly about with the above framing include:
- $JUP. I think Jupiter may very well be the strongest team / product in all of crypto. They dominate Solana as the universal front-end for swaps, built the leading perpetuals market, coordinated an incredibly ambitious JUP token launch, built an impressive token launchpad that will launch some of the most exciting tokens in the ecosystem, and have created actual utility around governance by incentivizing voting participating with a 100M JUP reward pool plus 75% of launchpad fees. They also have a mobile app and plans to build out tokenized stock trading on the roadmap. Definitely a group I think could be the next Amazon/Google.
- $KMNO. This is one of the few airdrops I staked rather than sell. I think they are one of the best DeFi teams on Solana, and I love that they launched staking from day one to encourage people to hold their $KMNO and receive point boosts in their next season of their points program. $AAVE has a $1.4 billion market cap, $COMP has a $500 million market cap, and $KMNO has a $60 million market cap (yes, fully diluted is $600 million, but that won’t fully unlock for many years). This feels off considering Solana offers a better DeFi experience.
- $W. I was lucky enough to get Wormhole airdropped, and it’s one of the few airdrops I’ve chosen to hold for two reasons. First, they raised $225M from VCs, which tells me VCs believe the token will be valuable. Second, they are the leading interoperability layer for crypto, which gives me some confidence that they can continue to tap into the airdrop narrative while it fizzles out for other groups. Monad is the crown jewel of this airdrop speculation.
- $BONK. I know WIF has stolen the show recently, but I’ve come around to the idea that meme coins are a fixture of crypto/web3 and that each major network has a major meme coin. No matter how much WIF performs, BONK will forever have the narrative of savings Solana, first at the peak of the bear market and then later as the catalyst that sold the first batch of Saga phones. Their contributors have also built a wide range of revenue-generating tools and community activities that have rewarded users and further strengthened the OPOS narrative. I’m firmly in the camp that BONK is one of those coins you want to hold if you are bullish SOL.
I’m also very intrigued by Sanctum, which is dropping a token soon on Jupiter Launchpad. There’s no one else like them building a liquidity layer for liquid staking tokens, and they have done a fantastic job with their points program “Wonderland” that incentivizes more teams to launch LSTs and more people to diversify across LSTs. This is an airdrop I plan to baghold as well.
Pending Airdrops have declined in my portfolio, mainly because I claimed several since my last post. I’m still hoping for allocations of Marginfi, Magic Eden, Deepbook (SUI), Grass, Sanctum, and Jupiter Round 2. I’m not expecting much, but anything I do get is gravy.
Cashed Out is the newest addition to my portfolio. I want to capture funds that I have truly offboarded from crypto markets, and as you can see, I did a bit of that over the last two months, mainly to pay for my tax bill in April. The ultimate goal is growing this over the months ahead and rotating into major savings goals on the home front for my kids’ college, retirement, and other investment opportunities.
Buying and Selling
I’ve covered what I currently hold, so let’s get into what I’m looking to buy and sell over the next 3–6 months. I’ll list three in each category so this post doesn’t run exceptionally long:
BUY: BONK
- ETH / SOL market cap: $450B / $80B
- SHIB / BONK market cap: $15.1B / $2B
Solana is worth 17% of Ethereum’s market cap, while BONK is worth 13% of SHIB . Despite the fact that Solana has arguably emerged as the primarily destination to trade meme/community coins in 2024. Add to this that BONK has an ironclad narrative as the savior of Solana culture during the darkest of bear markets, has an eye-popping 660k holders (almost 10x WIF), and has created a wide range of useful and revenue generating products/integrations, and you’ll see why this is the community coin I’m looking to stack on the dips during the early part of this bear market, especially since my current exposure is very small.
BUY: JLP / FLP.1
As prices continue to go up, I plan to rotate out of altcoins and SOL and into JLP/FLP.1. I love the yield, greater price stability, and potential to increase exposure to the next round of JUP airdrop.
MAYBE SELL: $W. I know I sounded bullish earlier in this post, but $W is on a short leash for me right now. I’m very disappointed that staking has not been launched yet, and the airdrop narrative could turn out to be a total dud (either because Monad won’t airdrop to $W holders as speculated OR it will only airdrop to top wallets that may not include me). I bag held PYTH and DYM for too long and that cost me significant potential profits, and I don’t want to make the same mistake here on a coin that may be too tied to the airdrop narrative.
MAYBE SELL: Famous Fox NFTs. I hate selling foxes at these prices, but I do think we can still go lower if crypto has a blow-off top. I need to be mindful of this scenario and be open to opportunities to sell if the right offers present themselves. And if they don’t, I’m fine holding and enjoying the weekly rewards.
SELL: SOL. What?! Look, I’m as bullish on Solana as anyone. But I don’t intend to be a round trip bag holder like I was in 2022. I’m eyeing $225 as an area where I will sell a small percentage of my SOL holdings. I think the ATH levels near $250 will offer some major resistance and want to make sure I realize some profits prior to that point.
Parting Thoughts
The most important thing for me over the next few months is “focus”. I think we are in a bull market, and my #1 goal is to exit this bull market with in heavy profit. So my goal is to stay focused and keep the portfolio as narrow as possible on the assets I am most confident will overperform. This is not the moment to overly diversify across a bunch of random tokens, gamble, or double down. My bags are packed, and the task now is to stay calm, enjoy the run-up, and pick smart moments to take profit.
