New article and article format : October recap ! Main events, narratives, best-performers, and coins to watch

https://cryptonarratives.substack.com/p/october-recap-narratives-best-performers

Just a reminder :
When you see PnL cards with gains in %, and high leverage

They don’t mean anything

You can take a "100X leverage trade" on a tiny amount with unified collateral and it would be the exact same as taking a 1x long on 100X the size

And obviously these % gains give you zero information about the real risk that has been taken, which corresponds to the sizing of the pos

I am not saying this to shit on people that post %PnL cards, I could do that too

But just don’t start believing that you can take over-leveraged trades as a gamble with positive EV

And more generally don't get psyopsed into thinking that everybody is winning but you

People only share their winning trades

The day before Arbitrum announced its token launch, there was a spike in volume and in "yes" bets on the Polymarket "$ARB launch by March 31st" market.

Some traders speculated it was insiders, and they were probably right.

There’s a similar spike on Polymarket today about LayerZero.

It might be insiders, or it might only be people speculating on this SSL certificate thing.

If my calculations are correct, Galaxy already sent (and likely sold ?) 3.5M $SOL tokens to exchanges.

And 3.5M liquid $SOL remain in the same wallet.

I don't know exactly how many liquid tokens remain in other FTX wallets, but iirc there were about 20M tokens to sell.

Long $ARB / short $OP chart

The "Arbitrum incentives" effect

Recap of the week + good tweets :

You know that the market is hot when you have an endless list of things to write about the moves and narratives of the week.

https://cryptonarratives.substack.com/p/narratives-of-the-week-november-5

Current narratives :

- $BTC consolidates around $35K and lets a tiny bit of room for $ETH to catch some attention ($1900 reached today for 1st time since July)

- $SOL remained a top-performer (+30%) despite Galaxy selling SOL tokens.

- $RUNE (+35%) and $INJ (+20%) are two other "winners that keep winning".

- Ongoing rotation into $ARB ? It is up +20% this week while Arbitrum-native tokens shine : $GRAIL $DMT $WINR $RDNT => Arb incentives catalyst

- The other ETH-adjacent coins performed well too : $LDO (+11%), $OP (+9%), $MATIC (+8%)

- Some gaming coins are showing strength : $ILV $SFUND $IMX

- Cosmos ecosystem : $ATOM outperforms (+15% this week, rare event) and a few Cosmos coins had good gains too => $OSMO $JUNO $KUJI $EVMOS

Other noticeable pumps :

- $CAKE is up +80% in a revenge comeback (Binance ecosystem revival ?)
- $NEAR and $XRP are both outperforming before their conference
- $EGLD up +40% in a day thanks to Koreans
- $KAS and $RLB, two of top-performers of 2023, are in price discovery

Now we're up to 4.25M $SOL sent to exchanges.

OpenAI DevDay today

BTC is letting much room for alts to get attention

Maybe too much

At some point it will have to steal the spotlight again if we want some form of sustained pump for the whole market

List of coins that are either in price discovery or very close to :

$KAS
$KUJI
$ATOR
$TAO
$PAAL
$RLB
$DUBBZ
$HILO

Most of my portfolio is in long-term spot positions that I don't trade actively.

And I trade perps for short/medium-term. Recent and ongoing strategy is as follows :

- Big $BTC long at least until the ETF approval

- Long winners / strong coins : $SOL $INJ $LINK $RUNE $PEPE [the list can change depending on PA]

- Long coins based on narratives/short-term strength : $BLUR (NFT volume has bottomed) $YGG (gaming is hot + conference EOM) $ARB (L2 rotation from SOL + STIP) [fast-changing and not exhaustive list]

- Event-driven shorts as hedge that could end up being profitable : e.g. $XRP and $NEAR as sell the news for their conference

- Short weak + over-valued coins as partial hedge : this can be dangerous and naturally reduces profit when the core bullish thesis is correct

I also have on-chain short-term trades, that are mainly memecoins : just long the winners with good vibes, $JOE for example

Make sure to measure the wicks on your favorite alts to get an idea of where to place bids for the flush scenarios in a trending environment, like what happened yesterday

It's only dangerous if we get a really huge dump in which case your bids will be knife-catching

Being an already pumpedooor in a risk-on environment can be extremely painful

Of course there is an element of hindsight bias but look at this

The winning coin basket is following a clear uptrend with almost no drawdown, and that is paired vs $BTC [+120% in USD terms]

The gaming sector has been one of the hottest this week (after having been one of the most devastated during the bear) :

$ILV : +77%
$GALA : +34%
$IMX : +54%
$PYR : +53%
$MC / $BEAM : +55%
$PRIME : +52%
$SFUND : +56%
$UOS : +33%

ZOOM OUT

The more you zoom on the chart, the more likely you are to fuck up and do something stupid

When you try to trade the 1min chart you are sooo likely to lose money

Trade higher timeframes with less leverage

Ride the pumps

Chill

$TIA

Interesting to see that nobody was excited about it at $2.5

Now after almost 2X, everyone and their mother is screaming about it

But the absurdly great r/r was below $2.5 :

$2.5bn FDV for a major L1/L2/rollup when some vaporware L1s like $APT and $SUI trade above $5bn... the downside looked small on TIA

Anyway, this is a good reminder that prices drive narratives

Once $TIA crossed the $3 mark, I saw 10x more tweets about it on the timeline

We are trading attention

Breakout + price discovery for a mid/large cap = a lot of attention

It remains a very good strategy to take longs when these situations happen

New coins are very hot today :

$WLD
$TIA
$MEME
$NTRN
$MAV
$SEI
$CYBER
$ARKM
$BIGTIME

Recap of the week + good tweets :

https://cryptonarratives.substack.com/p/narratives-of-the-week-november-14

Current narratives :

- ETHBTC finally bounced after the $ETH ETF news

- $SOL remained the fastest horse this week after reaching $64, but might have locally topped. The $BONK Solana memecoin has done 15x in a month too

- Besides SOL, $RUNE and $LINK were 2 of the winner basket coins that have been very strong this week again

- Is $MATIC taking over $SOL ? +35% this week, ETH beta / L2 coin / ZK coin, and underperformed for too long ?

- The new Cosmos+rollup coin $TIA pumped more than 2x this week, leading the market to pump many recent new coins : $WLD, $MEME, $SEI

- The good ol' SOLUNAVAX trio revival : $AVAX (+34% this week), $LUNA (+58%), $LUNC (+20%).

- $SUI and $KAS are two other L1s that performed well this week.

- Gaming remains one of the hottest sectors this week again, with runners such as $ILV (+35%), $IMX (+43%), $PRIME (+47%), $RON (+27%), and $MC (migrating to $BEAM, +80%).

- BTC beta coins are disappointing, except $ORDI (main ordinal coin) that is up +80% this week and 6X in a month

- Memecoin land : $GROK pumped to $150M MC, while most other ones are heavily struggling

- Other noticeable moves : $DYDX, $FTT, $KUJI, $ZRX, $GRAIL

Just a reminder that you can buy coins spot and not have to pay insane funding rates

Example : $BONK

And you don't even have the excuse of high gas fees on Solana