Top 10 Cryptos to Buy on Coinbase for March 2023
Feeling lucky?
I’m a bear until the Fed and/or Arthur Hayes tells me different.
— me, last month
I made a . . . mistake with my recent financial markets forecast . . . All aboard the S.S. Bitcoin, en route to a final port in Sh*tcoin City.
— Arthur Hayes, also last month
Well.
To be fair, the Black Ghost also thinks there’s going to be a run and then a stiff correction:
But let’s be real: “I think markets will go up and then back down again” is a 50/50 proposition. The flip side is just as likely, which is why a winning long-term strategy is to get your money in every month by dollar-cost averaging.
Because in the long term, crypto will go up. How do I know? Because this guy is cracking down on it:
. . . and this guy thinks it’s “sh*t”:
. . . and this guy thinks the war between crypto and fiat is already over, and that fiat has won:
What do these three have in common? For one, they’re all old. Not to be morbid, but it’s likely none of them will be alive to see 2050. Gary Gensler is collecting Social Security, Charlie Munger will literally be a century in ten months, and Agustín Carstens . . . well, let’s be diplomatic and say he’s the spring chicken of the group at 64.
Something else they have in common is that they have all played roles, however small, in the f*cked-up-ness of the modern world economy (despite what my spellcheck says, I declare that that is a word). Before chairing the SEC, Gensler worked at Goldman Sachs, whom you may remember from the 2008 housing crisis. Berkshire Hathaway bought $5 billion of preferred stock in Goldman as they were being recapitalized, and while the trend toward hyperconglomeratization (also a word) was independent of Berkshire and Munger, they certainly did their part. And before his work at the Bank for International Settlements (which is the central bank of central banks), Carstens was Mexico’s Secretary of Finance. During a food inflation crisis in 2007, Carstens spun it as a positive for the Mexican agricultural business.
Their hubris in thinking they can successfully run the world is matched by only two things, first of which is their incompetence in actually doing so. Gensler is trying to crack down on an asset class for whom escape from government crackdowns is part of the ethos. By ranting about technology he doesn’t understand, Munger is probably driving more people to it, considering he almost certainly also doesn’t understand the Streisand Effect. And as for Carstens, he doesn’t realize victors don’t generally have to declare victory. The Kansas City Chiefs didn’t have to declare victory over the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII — it was obvious. Meanwhile, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush famously declared victory, and look how well it turned out for them.
As Hayes put it in an earlier appearance on Crypto Banter:
I think we’re going to reevaluate how the world works over the next decade . . . I think that we are finally going to get away from our belief that central bankers and these central planners have any clue about what finance is about on a global stage — that we’ve built up all this debt (and there’s various reasons for it) and we’re going to see this artifice hopefully not spectacularly implode but it’s going to change, right? And so I think a relationship with fiat currencies, maybe we rediscover what it means to have a currency like gold and Bitcoin that isn’t someone else’s liability and whose use doesn’t depend on a particular system functioning.
Unfortunately, the other thing that matches the central planners’ hubris and incompetence is the damage they can do along the way.
Up-down? Or down-up? Stay steady. Here’s 10 coins you can buy on Coinbase right now that I feel have short- and long-term potential.
As always: next to each coin is how much I’d allocate out of a $100 position. However, I Am Not A Financial Advisor™, and I don’t know your specific investment needs. Assume that I have 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. #DYOR
🛶🛶🛶🛶🛶
1. Bitcoin (BTC) — $35
February: ⬆️️ 0.08%
Woohoo, Bitcoin NFTs!
. . . except the price for the month was flatter than Florida. What happened?
Some consolidation was bound to happen after sculpting a 40% green candle in January. Most of the macro news has been bad, although the king crypto seems to be out of Gary Gensler’s crosshairs:
But while the wicks wobbled, BTC held at break-even. How? Twitter theorist @tedtalksmacro has a theory: the economic impact of China awakening from its “zero-COVID” policy.
And indeed, several altcoins that have significant Chinese influence have roared YTD, and that trend may still not be done.
You’ll see one of them later. Yes, that’s a tease.
2. Ethereum (ETH) — $20
February: ⬆️ 1.3%
Ether was also flat despite the NFT market reawakening. Surely SEC Chairman Gensler’s shadow casts its pall, but the bullish case suggests this is consolidation for ETH:
Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade is set to go live this month, which will finally allow ETH holders to withdraw all the millions of tokens they staked into what used to be called “Eth2.” Those billions of dollars’ worth of ETH could finally hit the market, in theory creating sell pressure.
But maybe not. According to research done by Binance (assuming we can trust them anymore), ETH won’t dump post-fork for three reasons. First, between Lido, Binance and Coinbase, millions of ETH stakers have already been liquid, since they could exchange their ETH for stETH, bETH or cbETH respectively. Second, many stakers knew they were locking up tokens for a year or more, and are therefore likely long-term HODLers.
Finally, about two-thirds of staked ETH was locked in at a price higher than now, which means most of their holders are underwater. A significant fraction of the ones who are up are sitting on 2.5x-4x gains if they want to cash out — but they’re the diamond-hands who locked in early, pre-Lido and especially before Binance and Coinbase engaged the newer investors.
I ain’t skeered.
3. Polygon (MATIC) — $12
February: ⬆️ 7.9%
The O.G. layer-2 has broken big news in the last year mostly by integrating itself in the current tech space through partnership deals with corporations like Mastercard, Starbucks, Disney, and Meta. In fact, they’re such a go-to that other brands have spontaneously launched on Polygon’s blockchain.
“I think last week I saw Doritos launched on Polygon doing something,” Polygon Labs’ president said in a Fortune feature (here’s a non-paywalled version). “We never even worked with them. They come right in, they know how to use the protocol, they know how to deploy [and] build off of it.”
But their new announcement is a little more left-brained: this month Polygon will launch their zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine mainnet. That’s a mouthful, but while Polygon didn’t invent the zk-rollup (it was actually invented in 1985, if you can believe it), they’re going to be the first to bring it to the Ethereum Virtual Machine, hopefully making their express lane even faster. And ETH whales are splashing into MATIC.
Polygon also wants to bring zero-knowledge — where transactions only have to share snippets to prove validity — to its own chain, again proving that MATIC provides value both within and without its relationship to ETH.
But it knows where its heart is:
4. Chainlink (LINK) — $10
February: ⬆️ 3.5%
ZK is fast becoming a new narrative for crypto investors and — like a lot of other narratives — Chainlink has a piece of that action:
NFTs? They’ve been on that:
Cross-chain? They’ve been on that:
And they recently announced Chainlink Functions, integrating even more current web2-based tech into web3:
I’m probably not bullish enough.
5. Stellar Lumens (XLM) — $8
February: ⬇️ 3.9%
Another month, another handful of countries noodling over the idea of central bank digital currencies: Australia, Japan, Brazil . . . the United States?
Uh-oh.
Either Ripple or XLM will be the backbone of CBDC tech (Brazil’s specifically used Stellar). And while XRP is not on Coinbase, according to one analyst, XRP and XLM move in tandem. And besides, Stellar is cooking up a Plan B: their Soroban upgrade will turn them into a fully-functional smart-contract platform.
And Stellar is also making a name for itself in global charity with Stellar Aid Assist, which enables rapid donations to world hotspots on the Stellar network. Not saying that they’re only doing it to put their name out there, but they put themselves in the New York Times to put their name out there.
6. Tezos (XTZ) — $5
February: ⬆️ 7.5%
Why am I back for more XTZ after last month? LMGTFY:
7. Aave (AAVE) — $4
February: ⬇️ 6.4%
The DeFi lending program finally launched its V3 on Ethereum’s network last month after debuting on other chains last year. Another February development was the launch of its stablecoin, GHO.
And yet . . . 6.4% in the red for the month as the hype chasers looked for the next big thing.
So the whales bought.
Which do you want to be?
8. Filecoin (FIL) — $3
February: ⬆️ 24.2%
Filecoin’s primary investment thesis — storing the world’s data on-chain — remains evergreen as ever, but there’s a new narrative in town:
Filecoin is one of the primary beneficiaries of the recent Chinese awakening. And as the above tweet alludes, Filecoin is also partnering with Ethereum this month, moving their launch date up from March 23 to a bona fide nerd holiday because they know their audience:
FIL had a huge February and an even huger January ( ⬆️ 73.9%). After starting 2023 right around $3, it damn near touched ten bucks on February 19, but has corrected more than one-third since then.
’Bout time to get back in.
9. The Graph (GRT) — $2
February: ⬆️ 71.9%
The Graph also has a more-or-less permanent bullish case, and not only can I make an elevator pitch, I can make an even-before-the-elevator-doors-close pitch: the Google of blockchains.
I would explain it, but I can’t explain Google, either. If only I had an expert . . . hey, ChatGPT, how does The Graph work?
Here’s how it works in simple terms:
1. Data is stored on the blockchain in a decentralized manner, which means that it can be difficult and time-consuming for developers to access and use this data in their dApps.
2. The Graph solves this problem by allowing developers to create and deploy “subgraphs” that index and organize blockchain data in a way that is easy to query.
3. Subgraphs are essentially custom APIs that allow developers to access specific data on the blockchain, such as transaction histories, user profiles, or token balances.
4. Developers can use The Graph’s query language (called GraphQL) to request specific data from subgraphs, which will return the requested data in a structured and organized format.
5. The Graph uses a decentralized network of “indexers” to index and store subgraphs, which ensures that the data is always available and accessible to developers.
Overall, The Graph provides a simple and efficient way for developers to access and use blockchain data in their dApps, which can help to accelerate the adoption of decentralized technology.
Good enough for me.
10. Optimism (OP) — $1
February: ⬆️ 24.5%
Yes, of course I was going to mention it.
The month’s loudest announcement was one simple blue dot:
And Coinbase delivered pretty huge news: Base will be their on-chain home, potentially bringing dApps, DEXes and games to the 110 million Coinbase users, and they’re using Optimism to pull it off.
But it’s not like OP needed this announcement to deliver happy returns: overall, it’s tripled year-to-date. However, after the Base hype died down, it’s given back almost 18%, which feels like a good place to plant a flag.
OP also has a solid long-term bull case as a level-2 that uses rollups to combine thousands of transactions to fast-track Ethereum processes. But unlike typical rollups or zk-rollups which still have to prove authenticity, Optimism’s network assumes all transactions are true unless proven otherwise — hence their name. This has proven cromulent because almost all transactions are legit — it’s tough to B.S. something open-source for long.
I want to get a little in here in case it uses this new level as a floor to shoot back up.
Full disclosure: After buying in the low 40s, I dumped most of my COIN stock when Gary Gensler started beating his chest some more, pulling out my basis and letting the profits go. But with Binance’s trouble, COIN may be the last man standing, so I’m debating entry points to get back in.
LFGOOOO! 🚀🚀🚀
Follow me on Twitter. Get in the game. And as always,
New to trading? Try crypto trading bots or copy trading on best crypto exchanges
Join Coinmonks Telegram Channel and Youtube Channel get daily Crypto News
