Stop Scrolling
Stuff I try to do to escape Twitters trap
As someone who has now spent many years slowly losing my mind in this space and other web-based ecosystems, my attention span has started to dwindle.
There are times when I find myself scrolling through Twitter on my laptop and realising I'm not getting enough of an instant gratification dopamine hit.
So, clearly, the only solution is to pull out my phone and scroll Twitter there instead.
This is insanity, and I bet a lot of you do this too.
The cool part about writing this blog is that it forces me to think somewhat deeply about how I spend my time in this space. I reflect on the processes I use and, ultimately, how they lead to the relative success or failures of the trades I make.
As part of this reflection, I've realised that for me personally, Twitter and other short-form content spaces are mostly negative time sinks.
Yes, there is the very occasional piece of Alpha, but in my experience, it is few and far between, and the reward vs. time spent doesn't stack up.
Now, maybe you could argue that my timeline is simply not tailored well enough, that I'm following the wrong people, or I'm looking in the wrong places. Maybe you are correct, and maybe I'm just bad at this. But in my experience, Twitter is tailored towards farming engagement, rather than high-quality nuanced discussion.
280 characters or whatever the current number Elon decides to allow is brilliantly suited to blunt outlandish statements designed to garner a reaction, but it's not remotely a good medium for detailed intricate discussion.
So where do I go to find trade ideas, new projects, airdrop information, and thought-provoking insights that inspire me to find new potential avenues for profitability?
Because I'm full-time in Crypto, I try my best to treat this part like an actual real-life job. This means I'll try to prioritise focus in areas that give results, rather than optimising for what is most fun or entertaining.
However, I'm not very good at this, so please don’t assume I’m some kind of Robot God who is productive 100% of the time and never has lapses in concentration or does dumb things. I do dumb things ALL the time. Probably more often than you.
Specific Discord Servers
Early in the 2021 NFT cycle, the Crypto Punk public Discord was a goldmine for alpha. You had lots of people who suddenly found themselves very ETH rich after holding punks for so long and even more people looking to copy trade them.
One strategy I undertook was studying this Discord to determine who the key influential figures were within this microcosm. These individuals held influence within this community, and this community held influence in the wider NFT space.
As a result, you could, with relatively high conviction, copy trade these individuals, knowing that their credibility alone would solidify the legitimacy of the projects.
This had a ridiculously high hit rate.
Mutant Garden Seeders originated from here; they went from a mint price of around 0.4 ETH to around 15 ETH. Also, a number of early art blocks began to moon after the key thought leaders started declaring certain squiggly lined pictures better than other squiggly line images.
After a while, however, this strategy stopped working. Other people figured this out and joined the server, and quickly the collective IQ diminished. Not long after, the key individuals stopped posting and likely started their own private group conversations elsewhere.
However, other Discord channels become massively beneficial at certain times. In an NFT bull run, there is no better place to spend your time than in an NFT-focused Discord dedicated to finding the latest projects.
Alternatively, you can find small groups of hardworking individuals to work together with to research and scout out profitable opportunities.
The Crypto space is getting so big now that you cannot possibly be an expert in all areas, so joining up with a group of others is hugely beneficial.
Dune Dashboards
Dune dashboards, if you know where to look, are fantastic for providing tons of hidden data points that allow you to make informed decisions.
For example, let's say you think Layer Zero is going to do an airdrop because you've seen 100 trillion threads telling you this.
Now, either you could copy line for line what the tweets tell you to do and likely get flagged as a sybil, or you could dive into the Dune data and make a plan for yourself.
Looking at the Dune Dashboards, you can quickly tell what dollar amount bridged would put you in the top 10% of users. This is probably useful information because bridging more than this amount will at least put you in the upper percentiles of users.
You can also see from the number of unique wallets bridging on L0 that this is a hugely crowded trade and likely being sybiled harder than any airdrop we've seen before.
Using this information, you can infer that it's likely the very smart team is cognisant of this and will work on methods to heavily filter this behaviour.
Knowing this, you could consider how to maximise your possible airdrop while mitigating risk.
Digging into the Dune data, you will notice that none of the airdrop farming L0 dashboards take into account how many users are LPing, nor do many of the Ctrl C + V Twitter threads.
Considering this is a bridge, and the amount of money deposited to support this purpose is critical to the success of the project, and it's very hard to sybil because it takes actual capital to do so. You can infer that maybe LPing on Stargate is a more optimal approach than blindly bridging back and forth across ten chains, never once interacting with anything outside of the Stargate contract, and then sending it to a fresh account to do it again.
Podcasts
Podcasts are by far my favourite way to find new information, have my existing views challenged, or simply reinforce a trade idea I had myself.
Because podcasts are long-form, usually one or two hours in length, you have the ability to have unfettered access to the minds of some incredibly smart people, with skill sets or backgrounds that are very uncommon in the regular world. As a result, you get to hear really nuanced, granular takes on topics that would be impossible to convey on Twitter without causing outrage or hatred.
Podcasts constantly remind me that everything is a shade of grey; there are no certainties, and it is possible to hold two diametrically opposed positions in your head simultaneously that you can pivot to when presented with new information.
This has really helped with my trading. Listening to the way people far smarter than I think about topics, and the pathways their brains take to offer contrarian perspectives on information that is often regarded as absolute truth is fascinating and something I've tried to emulate. Of course, being contrarian for contrarian's sake is stupid, but time and time again, fading conventional wisdom in Crypto turns out to be a profitable trade.
Of course, not all podcasts are created equal; you need to pick the right ones, and you need to be able to listen and take in the information properly. I tried for a long time to listen to them while scrolling Twitter or engaging in Discord, but my mind doesn't allow me to take any of it in or truly listen. I would just end up pausing it and getting sidetracked with some other random task.
To combat this, what I do now is either go for a walk or run outside while listening or play a game on my second screen. For some reason, I can take in and really listen to information when my hands/body is focused on movement or some other menial task.
Some good Crypto Podcasts I regularly listen to include:
Scenius Studio
Empire Podcast
1000x Podcast
Specific guest-based podcasts on random channels
For example, I recently got some alpha from the 1000x podcast when Avi mentioned Pepe and said that he'd bet it would become the Shiba of the next cycle.
At that time, Pepe was trading at around $100 million. For me, this was a pretty solid buy signal.
Shortly after the podcast aired, the price of Pepe shot up and rapidly continued climbing into the billions.
Avi giving it validation as a legitimate trade and not just some dumb meme token signaled to a wider audience that this is something to at least consider owning.
I imagine that the typical listener of a podcast like this is probably deploying with far greater size than the average Twitter giveaway retweeter and likely also holds more social influence within their respective circles.
Books & Blog Posts from non-financial people
Although it may seem unrelated to crypto, books and blog posts from non-financial people can be valuable in understanding human nature and psychology, which are crucial aspects of the crypto space. By learning how people work and think, you'll realise that patterns repeat, and while technology and topics change, how crowds react to certain stimuli rarely does. This is why financial bubbles continue to occur. Human beings are fundamentally not good at valuing or predicting the future.
One book I highly recommend, despite its lack of direct relevance to crypto, is "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari. It provides insights into collective shared stories and helps explain why tokens that may seem nonsensical but garner attention tend to increase in value.
Other Blog posts that have helped structure my thinking include Waitbutwhy by Tim Urban and Meditations on Moloch by Scott Alexander.
Defi Llama Raises Page
The Defi Llama Raises page is another great resource for finding new projects. Checking this page daily allows you to discover projects that seem interesting or have solid investors. You can join their Discord and ask questions to the team, as well as search for the founders on YouTube to see if they've been on any podcasts.
By doing this repeatedly, you'll develop a sense for which teams are serious, driven, and likely to succeed. You can then focus on those projects while discarding ones that don't meet your criteria.
This strategy often allows you to be very early, well before Twitter influencers discover the project and before an influx of bots arrives to airdrop farm. Being early gives you a great opportunity to build your reputation within the project and increase your chances of accessing sales or receiving airdrops.
Ultimately though, you need to decide for yourself which information repository feeds best into your trading set up. If you’re someone who leverage trades breaking news events, then scouting Defi Llama probs isn’t for you.
Determine where your skillset lies and try to make an active effort to focus on where you gain the largest benefit. Try to avoid dopamine based time draining activities and maximise your earnings relative to your time spent in this disturbingly strange and mentally challenging online space.
Then you can spend more time doing fun outside things with real life human beings and less time talking to pretend cats on the internet.
If there are some blindingly obvious places I’ve missed above, or any Podcasts you’d recommend please DM me on Twitter or reply in the comments below :)