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Crypto: Down. Stocks: Down. Inflation: Up. So What Do You Buy?

Here’s yet another post with a couple blatant caveats: (1) THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE and (2) NOBODY KNOWS WHAT’S GOING ON.

We’ve had a couple weeks here in CryptoLand. You name it, it’s down. Take our 2022 Growth Portfolio: a hypothetical $10,000 investment with $1,000 each in ten different crypto assets. Thank God it’s only hypothetical.

Screenshot from May 20, 5:30 a.m. CDT

It was a bloodbath. It still is kinda sorta a bloodbath, in that nobody knows if BTC saw the bottom, or if ETH’s move to Proof of Stake (known colloquially as “The Merge”) is going to be all that, or if stablecoins will stabilize.

And whether or not you’re better off throwing darts.

At Least the Stock Market Is Okay, Right?

Let’s answer the question in the meme with a screenshot.

Stock market, one-month performance.

The problem, though, is that to keep propping up the stock market, The Fed is going to need to thread the needle on interest rates. Too much of an increase and the stock market tanks. Too little of an increase and you can’t catch up with inflation.

So you’re painted into a corner because the stock market is so important to everyone’s 401(k) plan and the inflation rate — which is caused, DUH, by ALL THAT PANDEMIC MONEY PRINTING — is so important to everyone’s standard of living that it really REALLY stinks to be Jerome Powell right now.

Now, Let’s Talk Inflation. Cue Karen Carpenter…

“We’ve Only Just Begun…”

As David Stockman — President Reagan’s former Budget Director, native Midwesterner (shout-out to Michiana!), and future guest on my YouTube channel (call me!) — told us on Doug Casey’s Dispatch a couple weeks ago, we are collectively screwed. And it’s mostly thanks to central bankers.

That part about J-POW having a rough job is not an understatement; the corner we have been painted (printed) into is troublesome. Investors don’t know which assets to invest in, and the average Joe is more worried about real-life things like gas prices or the cost of food.

So…What DO You Buy?

We follow a few financial people on Twitter, on YouTube, and elsewhere. We’re nailing Jell-O to a tree here.

Here’s Joe from Heresy Financial, telling us (SPOILER ALERT) that Treasurys might be the way to go. Here’s another YouTuber — one we found from typing in “where to invest 2022” into the YouTube search bar, then going with the first one we found from the month of May — suggesting individual stocks. And here’s CNBC, taking a break from its “How This [NUMBER] Year-Old [JOB DESCRIPTION] Made [LARGE AMOUNT] By [ZAGGING WHEN EVERYONE ELSE ZIGGED AND/OR INHERITING MONEY]” template (shown here) to give us a whole host of ideas of where to invest in an inflationary environment.

Feel free to grab any of these ideas and batten down the hatches, right?

We’d refer you back (AGAIN) to our series called SHTF. Volume 1 is here and Volume 2 is here. But these are *mostly* crypto-related ideas (with a break for some precious metals and cash on hand). And that isn’t even guaranteed, if the last few weeks are any evidence.

TL;DR: See Elmo

Elmo Fire

Buckle Up. Good Luck.

When the Growth Portfolio Doesn’t Grow

We’re on a mission with the 2022 Growth Portfolio. We’re just not yet sure what that mission is.

When we jumped into the fray with our own mix of ten tokens to potentially invest in — and of course you should DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH — the thought was as follows: get a basket of tokens and ride out the 2022 market with it.

Up? Down? Sideways? Stalwarts like Bitcoin and Ethereum? Up-and-comers in Web3 like $ENS and $MAGIC? Yes.

So maybe the mission depends on the markets; a basket like this can help you ride the ups and downs.

And, So Far This Year, Lots of ‘Downs’

Meh Performance.

So we’re taking one on the chin so far.

That, my friends, is an understatement. Bitcoin’s doing fine when compared to the others — but still down nearly 20 percent — and Ethereum has been down and then a little back up but still down in 2022. To wit:

The roller coaster that goes down first

No time to do any touchdown dances or victory laps: this is not good performance. What gives?

We Don’t Know Why. Time to Catch the Falling Knife?

This is the question I get pretty often: have we hit bottom, or is it time to catch the falling knife? And, from the school of “IDK, DYOR,” I can posit a guess or two but invite you to study this on your own.

Guess One: Global Unease Equals Meh Performance

If I see one more post about “this is the time for Bitcoin” using the context of global geopolitical events as proof that this is the time for Bitcoin, I’ll scream.

However, you *could* guess that people in places like Canada who have had their bank accounts frozen might see a little truth to that. If you can’t even get money out of your bank then, well, this may be the time for Bitcoin.

(Also, if governments don’t understand how these things work, they may only choose to regulate them further. Will that push any and all coins into an oblivion? Will that lead to a black market for all things? Will that drive everything higher?)

Guess Two: Is There TOO Much Crypto Noise?

Is it possible that the ads from Larry David and Lebron James have rendered some of us inured to the noise around the subject? I mean, not the OGs like you and me, natch, but the rest of the world.

Nobody really knows what constitutes a good deal these days, so the newbies jumping in might not care if Bitcoin is $35K or $25K. And so on: for assets without earnings seasons and dividend payments, you’re flying blind.

Celebrating Our Only Good Pick So Far…

“Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.”

We got lucky with $MAGIC. Somehow, at treasure.lol — that’s the web address! — they’re building a pretty cool…ah…uh…whatever they’re building. But trust us, it’s at the intersection of NFTs and gaming and crypto writ large, so we’re there for it.

We had mentioned it a couple times before on these pages, most recently in this post: How to Spend $1000. And we’ll ride this for as long as is feasible.

Today’s Takeaway…

We have mentioned this is not investment advice, right? And that you should do your own research?

Yes, that. Also you may or may not be better off being lucky than being good.

Rocks and Bored Apes; AlphaBettys and Prison Raccoons; and Our Own #Sketches2021

Welcome to the wonderful world of NFTs. The alternate title for this post is “NFTs are crazy, right?”

As we have discussions with people in and around the cryptocurrency universe, we feel we’re almost always needing to provide evidence of our own bona fides. Typical conversations:

“Oh, you got $4,000 from Uniswap? Well, have you ever made $150,000 off of airdrops?”

“I bought my first Bitcoin at $20!”

“Gee, you shouldn’t have sold your $ETH; I met Vitalik once and he’s the real deal.”

These discussions remind me of the typical indie-rock tropes, like “well, I saw Arcade Fire when I was a student at McGill,” or “I saw Fishbone at the Lost Horizon in Syracuse in 1991.” (The second one is true for me; for the record, though, none of the crypto ones are my own story.)

The subsets of crypto have developed their own parlance, and the early adopters are known by the lingua franca of “yield farming” and “LPs” (for DeFi) and, for today’s it girl, NFTs, things like “1:1” or the “Floor” or “Up Only.” (To say nothing of the overriding crypto lingo that is, simply, the word “Few.” As in: “Few understand.” As in: “check out this LP from the band Morphine, they’ll be bigger than Pearl Jam. Few.”)

Enter the Rocks and the Bored Apes.

Item: someone paid a lot of money for a picture of a rock. These rocks (all of which can be found here: Ether Rocks ) would be “selling like hotcakes” if there were tons of them but there are only…wait, you’re telling me there are 100 of these? Hold on one second, someone paid $2m for a JPG of a rock?

A couple things should be noted here: one is that this is a limited supply JPG — only 100 total here, which is REALLY limited — and it’s also what’s called a “1:1,” or “1 of 1.”

Other projects have decided to make their artwork limited but not limited to only one piece. Like this collection, from a startup called DADA, which has five or ten of each piece of artwork.

Well, it appears we missed the boat on the rocks. Maybe there’s another project we’re not too late on…ah, I see here there’s something called the Bored Ape Yacht Club and we might be able to get one of these beautiful Bored Apes?

Oh, you have to call Sotheby’s?

Good thing we got in on THIS one early…oh…wait…we missed it.

N.B. these are limited to 10,000 different 1:1s. So it’s possible a lot of people are sitting on a lot of money today; it’s also possible that you aren’t one of those people.

What to do, what to do…

Not Too Late For THESE NFTs, Are We?

Still time to jump into the pool with both feet. Right? Here we go…AlphaBettys!

One of these didn’t cost us too much — 0.19 ETH for this one, number 7888 in the collection — and there’s a chance that the market will heat up. Or maybe it won’t, and we’re holding onto an asset class that’s going to be like our POW Tokens. Time will tell.

Other projects we’ve dived in on include something called Space Shibes (DISCLOSURE: we were part of the early group of investors in this project) and Shael Onions and some sort of panda/raccoon prison/pool party mashup. (See below.)

If You Can’t Make Sense Of It All…

Neither can we. So we launched another project of our own.

The Official Logo

The first couple projects were lower-price experiments with NFTs. We began our journey with the Obvious Statement Collection. Next was the “One Hundred NFTs.” Both were more graphic design projects than art projects.

And the above projects are best described as NFT Avatars: if you get a Crypto Punk, your goal is to use that punk as your PFP (profile photo). (In case you’re wondering, we missed the boat on that one, too.)

Actual NFT artwork, like DADA or the work of someone like Meg Thorpe, is the same animal but a little (or a lot) different.

Our goal with our own project, “Sketches2021,” was to create one-of-a-kind pieces; modern, simple sketches with bright colors. We’d also make it a limited number (we settled on 256 thanks a little to a suggestion from our friend Von who calls himself “Lazy Crypto Guy” on Twitter) and we’d go for a floor of 1 ETH.

We’ve released the first 100 pieces and they’re all on OpenSea as we speak. The entire set is complete — we worked on them during Summer 2021 — and the rest will be launched in short order. Perhaps with a giveaway or two, stay tuned. (For now, we started with the first dozen on the web page here: Sketches2021 on Metacoin.

What’s The Point?

We’ve been asking that question about a lot of what’s in the crypto universe since it launched. Will Bitcoin really disintermediate the banks? Will Ethereum really have a layer that allows for transactions and tokens everywhere? Will these DeFi lending platforms do anything? Will these digital avatar JPEG thingies make me rich?

Time will tell, folks. Time will tell.

Time For Our Own NFT Collection

As we’ve been telling you from the get-go, this site is mostly an experiment. How much of this cryptocurrency stuff is for real? (Turns out…a lot of it.) Does Bitcoin have staying power? (I think the answer to that one is yes.) Should we invest in that “crap”coin? (In most cases, no. In some cases, maybe.)

One Hundred NFTs

So we’re experimenting, again, and this time it’s with NFTs. We’ve bought a few — we’re not “OGs” but we did pick up some two years ago — and sold a couple along the way. No riches gained. But lessons learned.

Our first experiment started a couple months back; we called it the “Obvious Statement Collection” and we enjoyed that; but it’s not the reason for this post. Today, we have a fully baked collection and we’re ready to rock and roll with it.

Behold #OneHundredNFTs

The mission was simple: create 100 pieces of artwork, each different, and each numbered from 1 to 100. No more will be created in this collection of artwork; each item will only have one minted.

The entire collection is linked to here: One Hundred NFTs.

When we soft-launched the collection a month ago, we decided to follow a formula that goes like this (with some exceptions we’ll note):

  • Items 90-100: 0.025 ETH
  • Items 80-89: 0.05 ETH
  • Items 70-79: 0.075 ETH
  • Items 60-69: 0.1 ETH
  • Items 50-59: 0.125 ETH
  • Items 40-49: 0.15 ETH
  • Items 30-39: 0.175 ETH
  • Items 20-29: 0.2 ETH
  • Items 11-19: 0.225 ETH
  • Items 1-10: Auction, with minimum sale price of 1 ETH.

The exceptions:

  • Every fifth item, starting with the 15th, is auctioned (minimum 1 ETH).
  • Every ninth item, starting with the 18th, is to be given away (save for 99, kept by the founding team).
  • Numbers 13, 42, 43, 52, 66, 77, 85-88, 91, and 99 are reserved for “Friends, Family, and Fools.” (We’ve given a couple of those away already.)
  • There’s a TEST item; we’re not sure what to do with that one yet.
  • AND we semi-deliberately lowered the price of a couple of them.

It’s Early, So…We Don’t Know Yet

We’re honestly not all that sure what happens next: we’ll continue, as they say, to test and learn. That means an ad campaign, some more Twitter posts, perhaps some Facebook marketing.

But we like how they look and would love to get your feedback.