Daily discussion thread 2025-02-25

gm what's on your mind today?

On my mind today is obviously the market. We have dropped quite significantly, and we are testing support zones again for Ethereum and Bitcoin and other assets, and the obvious question is whether the bull market is over and whether we are going back to a bear market. Of course I can’t say for sure. I find it interesting that there are many key opinion leaders who are quite set on the idea that this is the end of the bull market or the cycle.

What’s also interesting is that while they pose as traders, as successful traders actually, they seem to rely on making most of their money by shilling uninteresting technological projects — what we call in Germany Schleichwerbung or covert advertisement. They really seem to love to tap into it. I’m not going to mention the brands that they shill, but there are a lot of those, and if you’ve ever followed a key opinion leader, you will know these brands and you will also know how to ignore them. Why would they have to rely on covert ads when they‘re such good traders?

I think the key insight is that these people somehow have managed to market themselves as key opinion leaders but they haven’t really been right on anything. How did your investments into memecoins go?

To me they are deeply unserious. When they talk about the cycle is over, it feels disingenuous to me because it feels everybody involved in the crypto space is somehow a grifter. They make it sound like none of what we’re doing is useful and that we just have to convince people momentarily to buy our bags.

Most builders are committed on a multi-year basis to implement their dreams of a new society with cryptocurrencies, and these people make it feel like we are selling some kind of greater fool’s gold.

We the serious people, we want to build a better world and we want to create better assets and we want to create better technology, politics, and so the idea that there’s a hot potato that we have to pass on to somebody else, already thinking in this way, it exposes that you are deeply unserious and not worth anybody’s trust.

I wonder, how much the drop mentioned priced in the retreat of globalisation. As potentially worldwide and permissionless solutions the classic cryptocurrencies seem to be in contradiction with nationalistic block-building and its emphasis on control, especially on borders.

(A better term for worldwide/global? What happens when the Moon will be integrated?)

I personally would have credited the Bybit hack with the price drop today.

Also, sentiment over the last few days was exceptionally bad. See my posts in the daily threads just being extremely pessimistic and negative about Ethereum and being extremely optimistic about AI.

Personally, I think sanctioning the free markets or imposing tariffs is a tool yet to be measured in production for its efficacy.

My estimation on the situation with Russian oil is that the free market has built a supply chain for mixing Russian oil with other oils in jurisdictions that are neutral. And so, goods just take another extra leg where the origin value is manipulated through some laundering practice.