Top 10 Cryptos To Buy on Coinbase in May 2023
Just as we predicted . . .
Last week at Consensus 2023, Balaji S. Srinivasan more or less threw in the towel on his June call for BTC to be $1,000,000 due to a fiat crisis resulting in hyperinflation of the dollar.
“I think we have a 10% chance of a very serious issue in months,” the former Coinbase chief technology officer said, concluding his expectations of a crisis as “70% in years, 19% in decades, and 1% it takes a century or so.”
As one can expect for anyone who might say something that might not be 100.00% accurate, this “clarification” angered some on Crypto Twitter:
But there’s two things wrong with this complaint:
1. a one-in-ten chance of the USD hyperinflating — and the worldwide financial extinction-level event that would accompany it — is horrifying, and worth hedging against by any means necessary, and
2. Balaji did not accept the bet because he thought he would win. In fact, as I wrote last month, he stacked it so that he would lose. The point was never the bet, it was the tweet he wrote in self-reply:
Let’s make a different analogy. The Titanic has just hit the iceberg. Balaji estimates the ship will sink in 90 minutes. At minute 91, are you going to be like @Pledditor up there, bitching because Balaji rugged you? Or are you going to say “hey, the smartest guy in the room said the boat is going to sink, and whether his 90-minute prediction is right or not, the safest thing for me and my family is to get in the f*cking lifeboat”?
The boat is sinking: the banks are failing, including the second-biggest bank failure in American history. (If that sounds familiar, it’s because First Republic just bounced Silicon Valley for #2.)
As Arthur Hayes explains in a tweet thread, this leaves The Powers That Be in a pickle. Not enough bailing out and it’s 2008. Too much and the inflation dragon won’t be slain.
And as everybody knows but won’t say, Washington is going to choose them and not you.
Now then, what to do about it? Hayes and a whole bunch of other people think BTC will be $1 million by 2025 or 2030. Balaji is betting on it, too:
Could it be that it takes 900 days or even 90 months? It’s possible . . .
In 900 days it will be 2025. In 90 months it will be 2030. The wronger Balaji was about his initial call, the more time you have.
Spend it wisely.
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If, after reading the above, you have joined Balaji in the ranks of sudden Bitcoin maximalists, then by all means, plow your entire month’s buy into the king crypto; I’ll bless it.
But this is kind of a “top-10 list,” so ten it is. All of these are available right now on Coinbase. 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) — $55
April: ⬆️️ 2.7%
I’ve obviously covered the bull case for Bitcoin fairly exhaustively, and Glassnode hits all the technical high points. The bear case, on the other hand, is much quicker:
Of course, two years barely makes a trend. In 2019, BTC jumped from $5,265 on May 1 to nearly $14K at its June peak. And in 2020, flush with stimmies, thousands of new investors pigpiled in and blew Bitcoin up nearly sixfold from May forward.
“Sell in May and go away” might be decent market advice, but finally Bitcoin’s price is divorcing itself from Wall Street:
The markets might be sliding into an inevitable recession, but Bitcoin has other catalysts. First, it responded to the initial reports of First Republic Bank’s demise by jumping 8%. It has no ties to any bank, so it will likely continue to spike if (when) other banks fail.
Second is the continued fleeing from the U.S. dollar by the BRICS nations. If they don’t accept the Chinese yuan as their reserve currency, they will need another choice. Gold is likeliest, but as Arthur Hayes convincingly argued last year, whatever is good for gold will likely be just as good for digital gold, i.e. Bitcoin.
Orange is the new yellow.
2. Ethereum (ETH) — $9
April: ⬆️ 2.7%
Following the Shapella upgrade, ether rocketed up to an 11-month high of over $2,100 and then, just about when CoinDesk asked this:
. . . people did. Especially at the top, where many investors who’d locked their tokens in at the $1500-$2000 range found themselves suddenly in profit.
Ether doesn’t have the utilitarian utility of Bitcoin, so it’s not going to move in lockstep with the king. But it does have two potential tailwinds BTC doesn’t have. First, now that staked ether isn’t locked anymore, investors are continuing to stake, especially into liquid staking derivatives like Coinbase, which returns cbETH for ETH.
Second, ether continues to be deflationary, potentially making ETH more and more scarce, unlike some other currencies one can name.
3. Litecoin (LTC) — $8
April: ⬇️ 1.6%
Litecoin had huge news in April:
Just kidding, of course. Here it is:
We’re under 100 days from Litecoin’s next halving, and while past performance doesn’t determine yadda yadda yadda, previous price action is tough to ignore:
LTC has pumped the hardest in the six months before its halvings occurred.
There does not appear to be a distinct pattern in LTC’s price performance in the year following each event. But the six months leading up to both halvings were eerily similar.
· LTC peaked at about 320% gains roughly 45 days out from each halving.
· It gave up most of those returns in the month directly after.
· LTC rounded out the year after each event up between 80% and 110%.
Of course, there are always people who want to grab headlines:
4. Chainlink (LINK) — $7
April: ️️️️️⬇️ 7.4%
Did you hear that new collabo between Drake and The Weeknd? Of course, by now everyone has heard that it was AI recreating their voices.
In a world where anybody can get ChatGPT to falsify a résumé, or turn any song into a Yeezy track, or tweet bogus pictures of Donald Trump’s arrest, how will we tell what’s real and what’s fake?
As ever, Chainlink might just hold the answer:
As an oracle network, Chainlink takes data that’s off-chain and incorporates it into smart contracts. But the reverse can also be true: cryptographic proofs of off-chain data.
The only way to catch up with the tech is with tech.
5. Polygon (MATIC) — $6
April: ⬇️ 12.3%
According to their blog, Polygon’s zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine beta is exploding:
. . . while MATIC keeps gas fees at one-seventh the rate of Ethereum. Polygon is also continuing their pattern of partnering with err’ybody:
6. Stellar Lumens (XLM) — $5
April: ⬇️ 15.8%
blah blah blah “crypto doesn’t really do anything”
Here’s what Stellar thinks about that:
XLM enables cheap, liquid cross-border transactions to anyone. For people stuck in war-torn nations or the Third World, Stellar puts cash in hand right away.
And just in case you’re more interested in earning money:
7. Solana (SOL) — $4
April: ⬆️ 7.2%
After being left for dead in the aftermath of the FTX implosion, SOL has flared for a 2.5x YTD, and they’re not done. Solana’s DeFi and NFT ecosystems are surging, according to Messari, and they’re throwing some serious resources into AI:
And Helium, the Internet-of-Things coin which my unrequited love Coinbase apparently will never honor, just bailed on its own blockchain and took its talents to Solana:
Plus, Solana still has an ace in the hole with its just-launched Saga phone. According to this review, the web3 elements are still a little wonky, but it’s “a very good Android phone” and “a pretty sharp offering.”
It’s not going to kill the iPhone, but if Solana gets first-mover advantage in mobile dApps, that opens a whole new network of features, one of which is Helium’s wireless program.
And if that weren’t enough?
8. Injective Protocol (INJ) — $3
April: ⬆️ 63.9%
Last month in my review of my first year of picks, I mentioned offhandedly how INJ had doubled since November and then . . . didn’t mention it as a screaming buy.
Well, it just posted another huge month, officially tripling in half a year, and I’m probably late to the party, but I want in.
For what it’s worth, Injective isn’t sitting on their laurels:
And while I’ve devoted a lot of space to Polygon’s partnerships, this one might be the biggest:
Fine, I’ll buy the pump for three bucks.
9. Polymath Network (POLY) — $2
April: ⬆️ 14.6%
Polymath by no means has a monoPOLY on tokenization of real-world assets, but still that’s a long-term trend that’s boring yet inevitable. They now also have a stamp of legitimacy: as denizens of the Great White North, they recently joined the Canadian Association of Alternative Strategies & Assets, and also presented about tokenization at CAASA’s conference.
10. Blur (BLUR) — $1
April: ⬆️ 6.3%
It seems like ancient history when OpenSea was the unquestioned leader of NFT sales, but only because time moves incredibly fast on the bleeding edge.
Shortly after Blur airdropped tokens to users of its zero-fee platform, it overtook OpenSea in trading volume. (After rebranding as OpenSea Pro, Blur surrendered the lead — for a couple of days.)
Blur continues to innovate in the space, introducing Blend — a word blend of “Blur Lending” — allowing holders to post their NFTs as collateral for loans or purchase digital art on installment plans.
The BLUR token has lost almost 70% since the post-airdrop hype, which seems like a good place to grab a toehold. I’m long-term bullish on the NFT space, and just in case you’re not, carve out 2½ hours and listen to punk6529 make the point:
Follow me on Twitter. Get in the game. And as always,
