Top 10 Cryptos To Buy on Coinbase (while you still can!)

Touched grass for a while . . . did I miss anything?

[Kraken] is now out, and [Coinbase] and [Binance] officially have to watch their ass.

— me, February

Washington is going to choose them and not you.

— me, last month

Legitimately, I didn’t think I would be proven correct so quickly.

First, and to nobody’s real surprise, the U.S. government granted itself permission to continue carrying the insane, mindboggling amount of multigenerational debt it has spent itself into like a man who knows his end is coming soon. In return, it vowed to only raise spending by 1% in FY2025, which is exactly the sort of believable promise made by politicians of both parties who have a 90+% chance of getting reelected anyway.

Second, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission launched back-to-back lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase on consecutive days, their biggest salvo against the nascent crypto market to date. This, despite SEC chairman Gary Gensler (allegedly) attempting to join Binance as an advisor in 2019, and the SEC having no qualms about Coinbase’s public listing on the Nasdaq beginning in April 2021.

Excellent.

This led to other exchanges, like crypto.com and Robinhood, taking their own steps to avoid future legal action. Mass withdrawals resulted in a major cryptotastrophe:

Could have gone to a million different people for this tweet, but I wanted @patato_ass.

Gensler’s action is as pathetic as it was unsurprising. They can barely prove their case against Ripple. Even if everything they allege against Binance is true, they’ve also gone after Coinbase, the exchange most willing to color within the lines. Even crypto investors who stay far away from centralized exchanges are now united.

The SEC is fighting a war on two fronts. Actually, if you add in all the coins or tokens they’ve named as illegal securities, they’re fighting a war on 69 fronts.

nice

For its part, Coinbase has come out swinging hard:

Sticking a middle finger in Gary Gensler’s eye.

Where Binance.us has stopped all USD deposits and other providers like Robinhood and eToro are preemptively knuckling under, Coinbase is not only continuing to serve U.S. customers, they’re not even temporarily halting the staking-as-a-service value-add that’s got the SEC’s knickers in a twist.

This obviously isn’t Brian Armstrong, as there’s way too much hair.

That said, I’m treating the 67 names on the SEC’s naughty list as no-gos for a while, at least until it becomes obvious to all involved that Gary Gensler has overreached. If you are an aggressive investor with a long-term time horizon, though, this may be a good time to be greedy when others are fearful. That choice, as is the choice to continue buying on Coinbase, is yours and yours alone to make.

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

Along with May’s profit/loss, I’m also including a special number measuring the amount each coin puked peak-to-trough during the bloodbath on June 9–10. To be a dick, I will call it the “Night of Gensler Misery Index,” or NGMI.

🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆

1. Bitcoin (BTC) — $50
May: ⬇️ 6.9% (not nice)
NGMI: ⬇️️ 4.0%

No-brainer here, as the king crypto has never been confused for a security. Gary Gensler and his counterpart at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Rostin Behnam, are both on record as labeling BTC as a commodity, more like gold and less like a stock.

BTC did post a significant red candle during the Night of Gensler Misery, but that was mostly paper-hands and panicky n00bs jumping ship, according to Santiment. Whales are buying the dip.

What do they know that you don’t?

Altcoin holders also presumably dumped their suddenly suspect positions and flocked to Bitcoin, which explains why BTC only bled while altcoins, especially those on Gensler’s sh*t-list, hemorrhaged:

Binance Coin (BNB): May ⬇️️ 9.2%, NGMI ⬇️️ 12.3%***
Polygon (MATIC): May ⬇️️ 9.1%, NGMI ⬇️️ 35.85%
Cosmos (ATOM): May ⬇️️ 9.2%, NGMI ⬇️️ 22.8%
***this is after BNB dropped 11% from the previous day’s high when the suit hit

BTC’s dominance, or the amount of the total crypto pie belonging to the O.G., spiked hard as altcoins gagged, and recently crossed the 50% threshold for the first time in approximately a million years.

Remember April 2021? When gas was $2.88/gal and eggs were, like, $1.70/dozen?

Bitcoin may not be regulation-proof, as the climate nannies are still out there. But that’s not the wolf at this particular door. The more BTC is seen as a flight to safety — from holders of either alts or USD — the more flights will land.

Also — and it feels like I’m saying this every month these days — if you want to just go HAM and shove all-in on BTC this month, I’m into it.

Happy #BitcoinPizzaDay.

Make mine with no ordinals, please.

2. Chainlink (LINK) — $14
May: ⬇️ 7.8%
NGMI: ⬇️️ 18.2%

If there’s one entity with even more pull than the SEC or even the Federal Reserve, it’s SWIFT.

After those ticket prices, she probably has more money than the damn U.S. Mint.

Of course, I’m talking about the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, the cooperative group known for facilitating international transactions and/or cancelling Russian banks.)

Last September, SWIFT announced a partnership with LINK for an initial proof of concept using Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol to facilitate communication and movement between member banks and participating blockchains — then quickly went out and proved it.

Now, SWIFT is ready for the next level: incorporating some of their member banks in the next test run. We know this because, for the first time, SWIFT mentioned Chainlink on their website.

As I said last October:

If they pull this off, it will be huge. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the price of LINK will 100x (at least not immediately, nor in a straight line), but it means LINK will be made. What I mean by that is that even if there’s an extinction-level event in crypto or even TradFi, LINK is all but guaranteed to survive. As of right now, that’s a club that has — at most — two members.

With the SEC on the warpath, I’d currently put that number at 1, BTW.

She’s probably not wrong.

3. Uniswap (UNI) — $8
May: ⬇️ 7.85%
NGMI: ⬇️️ 22.9%

Decentralized exchanges were a clear beneficiary of FTX’s demise, and automated market maker Uniswap is the biggest, baddest one on the block.

*nods like I know what any of this means*

So it’s no surprise that DEX traffic grew 88% in the immediate aftermath of the SEC’s suit against Binance. Uniswap alone doubled its trading volume to more than $3 billion, accounting for half of all DEX volume.

UNI is the governance token for the exchange, which is much like holding shares in a company’s stock. UNI’s holders can vote on changes made to the protocol.

Unfortunately, it got dragged down with everything else over the last six weeks. However, it’s showing signs of strength, being one of the first blue-chip coins to regain everything it lost in the NGMI:

“Losing the least” is about all you can ask for in this market.

4. Litecoin (LTC) — $7
May: ⬆️ 2.5%
NGMI: ⬇️️ 17.7%

It’s dawned on just about everyone that (at least thus far) the SEC is avoiding declaring proof-of-work tokens as securities. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Securities and Exchange Commission v. W. J. Howey Co. (1946) created what’s now known as the “Howey Test.” A security is:

1) a contract, transaction or scheme
2) whereby a person invests his or her money
3) in a common enterprise
4) and is led to expect profits solely from the efforts of the promoter or a third party.

This provided clarity to the Securities Act of 1933. Yup, 1946 and 1933, that’s how long ago we’re talkin’.

The older I get, the more I relate to Peter Falk’s character and the less I relate to Fred Savage’s.

By this plain test, every memecoin in existence is a security, and PoW coins that have to be mined aren’t.

This is great news for LTC, which keeps its long-term investment thesis (the more accessible form of Bitcoin), its short-term catalyst (its halving), and doesn’t have to worry about the SEC snooping through its underwear drawer.

Pictured: Gary Gensler’s long-term plan.

5. Ethereum (ETH) — $6
May: ⬆️ 0.2%
NGMI: ⬇️️ 7.5%

And at last, we arrive here.

Ethereans might have been fist-pumping when almost every so-called “Ethereum-killer” of the past got swept up in the SEC’s dragnet:

Solana (SOL): May ⬇️️ 8.3%, NGMI ⬇️️ 31.7%
Cardano (ADA): May ⬇️️ 5.45%, NGMI ⬇️️ 29%
NEAR Protocol (NEAR): May ⬇️️ 18.8%, NGMI ⬇️️ 23.1%

. . . but any enthusiasm should be short-lived. Gensler & co. didn’t let ETH off the hook — they just kicked the can down the road. Sooner or later, they’ll have to answer The Ethereum Question, and unless they’re sufficiently chastened by their current actions, they don’t seem likely to answer positively. Ether has far more in common with SOL, ADA and NEAR than it does BTC, LTC and Dogecoin.

If DeFi really catches fire, you don’t think they’re going to go to war to defend TradFi? You bet your ass they will.

Pictured: Gary Gensler’s short-term plan.

6. Stellar Lumens (XLM) — $5
May: ⬇️️ 1.95%
NGMI: ⬇️️ 11%

The Federal Reserve’s swear-it’s-not-a-central-bank-digital-currency service, FedNow, is set to launch in July.

If you think the SEC’s actions aren’t with the intent to clear the battlespace for this, you haven’t been paying attention.

Oh yeah, and the Bank for International Settlements — which is owned by the world’s central banks — successfully executed Project Rosalind, testing a whole slew of CBDC use cases this month.

XLM could very well be the base layer for a national — hell, maybe even a global — CBDC. Which means all cash transactions will be on a permanent ledger owned and/or controlled by the central banks.

Yes, call me a tinfoil hat-wearer if you want. Bet your future on it?

Every computer is only as good as its code. Fortunately, FedNow will answer to the U.S. government, who famously couldn’t get the ObamaCare website running smoothly for weeks.

7. Quant (QNT) — $4
May: ⬆️ 0.2%
NGMI: ⬇️️ 13.85%

And speaking of which.

The more benign the project codename, the more sinister the project.

8. Immutable (IMX) — $2
May: ⬇️️ 26.1%
NGMI: ⬇️️ 25.2%

Before altcoins munched it during the Night of Gensler Misery, GameFi was experiencing a renaissance, according to narrative trader CryptoKoryo:

I ❤ graphs that look like a ✔️.

But IMX intersects another potentially bullish trend. In a recent post, Arthur Hayes envisions the Chinese market blowing up.

You may learn more from Hayes than me, but my posts have more than one funny image.

If his thesis is right, then coins with exposure to the PRC should especially rip. And Immutable has as one of its backers Chinese-based multinational tech conglomerate Tencent, who owns “League of Legends” and pieces of a bunch of other game heavyweights.

GameFi might also come back into vogue thanks to one killer app, which I’ll discuss in a minute.

9. Fetch.ai (FET) — $2
May: ⬇️️ 19.4%
NGMI: ⬇️️ 24.9%

If I really knew what I was doing, I would have told all these altcoins nobody knows about to f*ck off and bought Nvidia’s stock. You might have heard that it detonated an incredible 26% after reporting a gangbusters quarter and “surging demand,” mostly due to AI.

Earlier this year, FET tripled in one month as trend-catching investors swarmed to anything that had the letters “A” and “I” in it. Fetch happened in February, too, adding nearly 120% more at one point and nearly polishing off a 5x for the two-month stretch.

And then . . .

I do not ❤ graphs that look like📉.

The selloff is being blamed as AI-related tokens cooling off now that they’re no longer the hot trend, with FET falling apart the most:

I also do not ❤ charts with this much left and red. (Reilly Decker/CoinDesk Indices)

But AI has legs as a trend: Nvidia’s performance proves it. It’s up more than 10% since its earnings report, and that’s after rocketing 109% YTD before then. If NVDA had done what FET did, I’d be buying it hand-over-fist.

As ChatGPT told me about Fetch.ai in February:

Fetch.ai is a blockchain platform that aims to advance artificial intelligence (AI) by creating a decentralized digital economy where AI agents can interact with each other and with the world around them.

The platform provides a decentralized infrastructure that allows AI agents to securely share data and collaborate to solve complex problems.

That tracks with what Bloomberg writer Tyler Cohen described as the ultimate use case for both AI and web3:

Apparently he collaborated with a co-author named “Get Alerts.” Don’t know who he is, but he’s everywhere on Bloomberg.

10. Render Token (RNDR)
May: ⬆️ 5.6%
NGMI: ⬇️️ 13.4%

Nvidia didn’t blow up because they invented ChatGPT or they’re some sort of metaverse hangout; they just make the chips that will — hell, already are — powering the AI future.

They’re a classic “picks and shovels” play, an investment maxim named for the theory that in a gold rush, the ones who make the most money aren’t the ones who find the most flakes or the biggest nuggets, but the ones who sell the picks and shovels.

You might have noticed Render as the third-worst performer of the month in that graphic up there, right above Fetch.ai and The Graph. But while the “cooling off” article threw FET under the bus, it had high praise for RNDR:

I am in no way alleging that this is a P2P article, but if I were Render, this is exactly how I’d want it to read. “All of these coins suck now except RNDR.”

But that’s because RNDR is a picks and shovels play. Render isn’t making a metaverse or even the chips — they provide spare graphics process rendering.

The metaverse is going to take a hella-load of graphics processing, but not everybody is online at the same time. Enterprising investors with computer downtime can lend spare processing power and receive RNDR tokens as compensation. In this way, Render is more like Uber or Airbnb, which earned revenues of, respectively, $31.9 billion and $1.6 billion in 2022.

“Wait a minute, the metaverse?” I hear you asking. “Didn’t that die with web3 and that crypto-bro who humiliated himself on ‘Jeopardy!’?”

He would have said LUNC, but Twitter still has a character limit.

But even though the two biggest metaverse plays got Genslered . . .

The Sandbox (SAND): May ⬇️️ 7.8%, NGMI ⬇️️ 32%
Decentraland (MANA): May ⬇️️ 14.7%, NGMI ⬇️️ 27.8%

. . . allow a trillion-dollar company to reintroduce themselves:

Apparently they rejected my idea of calling it the “iSnorkel.”

Among all the tech going into the Vision Pro is Octane, made by the team behind RNDR. (To bring this full circle, Octane has Nvidia video cards under the hood.)

Yes, the Vision Pro’s ridiculously overpriced. Yes, you look like a dweeb for wearing it. And yes, Apple has laid some turds in their history. But they don’t miss much.

If this takes off, expect a gold rush of immersive, metaverse-type displays and video games. And bet on RNDR to help power all that.

Also, expect Google, Samsung and Solana to get in on the action.

If SOL lasts that long.

💀💀💀💀💀

Follow me on Twitter. Get in the game. And as always,

Do you ever say to yourself, “What the heck am I doing here?”