Sometimes you really don't have to make things too complicated

Chart of BTC.D, step by step :

1. Oct 16 - Oct 24 : CoinTelegraph intern tweet wakes up everyone to the fact that the $BTC ETF is coming and that they will be under-allocated. BTC pumps and outperforms (alts simply follow the move), BTC.D goes up.

2. Oct 24 - Nov 16 : $BTC slowly moves up in an ascending range, alts catchup and outperform on the way up, BTC.d goes down.

3. Nov 16 - Early Dec : Both $BTC and altcoins are mostly stable

4. Dec 3 - Nov : $BTC pumps and outperforms the market again, BTC.D goes up. [=> same as step 1.]

5. ???
Are we running step 2 again ?
Either we do, and $BTC remains stable while altcoins go up (ie BTC.D down)... or BTC dumps and altcoins probably dump even more (ie BTC.D up).

Useful exercise you should do :

- Take a look at the list of the best performers of the last 30 and 60 days (for the top 300 coins for example)

- For each one, make a list of the reasons for their pump

- Sometimes, you won't find solid and logical explanations, those are too unpredictable pumps, you can ignore them

- But for other coins, you will find a few rational reasons for their performance, and realize that you could have developed the bull thesis for them quite shortly after they first started to move up [and so you could have profited off the pump]
=> These are very good examples to keep in mind, because your goal is to find the next coins that have a similar bull case

AVAXBTC being strong while $BTC goes down

I like to have an index of strong/winner coins among large caps, and until now I mainly had in this basket : $SOL $RUNE $INJ $LINK

$TIA is a new coin, but I think it will be included in that index too

And now I am thinking if $AVAX should join the basket too, especially given its most recent pump is not a laggard effect to $SOL (but it was in October / November)

Main narratives of the whole ETF-driven pump :

- $BTC and Ordinals
- $SOL and its ecosystem
- Basket of strong coins
- Gaming
- AI
- Memecoins
- New coins

Recap of the narratives of the week :

https://cryptonarratives.substack.com/p/narratives-of-the-week-december-7

Narratives of the past week :

- $BTC green candle : breakout of the $38k resistance and went straight to $44k with BTC.D new yearly top at 55%

- Ordinals pumped massively : 3X for $ORDI in a week. The other BTC beta coin $STX pumped a lot too.

- Memecoins have been hot : $DOGE (+15%) $BONK (+150%) $PEPE (+40%) $SHIB $MEME

- New coins gud : $BIGTIME (+170%) $TIA (+57%) $BEAM $MEME $TAO $SEI $NTRN

- $ETH reached again its local bottom against BTC (0.051) before strongly bouncing today, alongside its beta coins ($OP was the strongest)

- Other noticeable strong moves : $AVAX $CFX $LUNC & Pudgy Penguins in NFTs

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

$TIA
$JTO
$SHRAP
$BONK
$PRIME
$CROWN
$SEI
$TAO
$PAAL
$KAS
$MEME
$NTRN
$AXL
$INJ
$PYTH
$ORDI

A list of traders you should follow on Twitter :

https://twitter.com/thedefivillain/status/1733072528594043141

Good tip that I heard a few weeks ago in a DonAlt stream :

He said that usually, when a coin climbs into the top 100, you can dump it once it reaches the top 10.

I did not have time to check how true this was, but I wrote down this piece of advice.

It could be useful

Short $JTO from $4 :

- $4 was a good TP place for longs... ie good entry for short ?
- Initial v optimistic target for longs was $5, so shorting at 80% of that target looked okay, I can even add if it goes higher
- Acts as a hedge for my alt longs while the market is showing froth
- FDV is a meme but 2X higher than $LDO is a joke

I like to have several good reasons for a short, and taking shorts on high FDV coins greatly reduces the risk even if the trade goes horrendously wrong

Is this a trade that keeps on giving ?

$SOL -> $AVAX rotation

The r/r of shorting at $3.2-$3.3 (at support) is not that good anymore compared to >$4 btw

TP'd 25%, and I will keep the trade open mostly as a hedge.

More generally, I almost never take naked shorts but only hedge shorts, so if they go against me, I am usually up on my longs too.

This is why I agree with the stance "don't try to short in a bull run", but rather in the sense of : "don't be net short".

Shorting selected altcoins against longs is not particularly dangerous.

Some Telegram-exclusive on-chain "alpha" :

- Cobie bought 2 days ago a small bag of $DOG, the token related to "The Doge NFT project" (on his public wallet)

- A wallet that I think is related to GCR bought $RBX today (he usually only holds during a few days before getting out. And it's very small size so I don't know... maybe an intern lol ? It has always been quite hard to track GCR on-chain, and not at all a surefire road to profits fyi !)

The current sentiment on the TL is more and more shifting to :

- "Not a bad place to TP if you are up a lot"
- "Nodoby would have expected $44k so early, be more defensive"
- "If everyone's plan is to sell at $48k, it probably won't happen so easily"

Just noticing.

It is definitely true that you shouldn't crank up the risk on perps here after almost 2 months of up only.

One thing you should always do is imagine two rather extreme scenarios, both bullish and bearish :

In what situation are you going to suffer more ?
Can you stomach a dump back to $30k in 3 days ?
Are you going to get mad if we get to $50k next week ?

You must :
1. know where *your* personal "max pain" situation is
2. be absolutely certain that you won't get wiped out if the market does something extreme, one way or another

Post-flush strong coins :

$INJ
$AVAX
$TIA
$OP
$IMX
$SNX

Some of the usual suspects are in this list.

AVAX and TIA now definitely join my winner coin bucket consisting of [SOL, INJ, LINK, RUNE]

"Healthy reset" of altcoin funding rates

$ARB / $OP printing a new all time low

OP FDV getting closer and closer to ARB FDV

Rules for short selling :

- I only use them as hedge trades against my longs => when I am unsure of the market direction or want to play it safer, instead of closing the longs, I increase the size of the shorts

- I short a basket of altcoins, which massively reduces the risk that my losses on shorts get too large => basically what this means is that you won't get rekt by only shorting one alt that pumps like $APT in January, because the risk is diluted

- I don't short coins that are "too small" : a $300M market cap coin can go 20x, or scam pump 4x in a few days, this is too risky

- I mostly target old coins that still have a very large market cap but are expected to underperform (BCH, LTC, XLM, XRP, ZEC, VET, HBAR, ADA, ALGO) and also unjustifiably high FDV coins (WLD, APT, SUI... riskier plays).

- I mostly trade on cross margin, because I think about these shorts as an aggregate, and I certainly don't want to manage each trade individually with their own liquidation price, etc.

If you follow these rules, you can short in a bullish environment, without taking any significant risk. However, for most people, it is probably way easier to just avoid the red button, which will simplify the trading process.

I have the feeling that there is a lot of confusion regarding the potential ETF "sell the news"

From what I see, there are 2 important dates :

1. ETF approval (Jan 5-10 ?)
2. ETF launch (later)

I don't know exactly how long it will take for the ETF to launch once it is approved, but I think something like 2 months.

2 dates means 2 potential catalysts, and 2 potential "sell the news" events.

On ETF approval, we will definitely have a green candle in the first 15 minutes, but what happens next is unsure.

Remember that "sell the news" only happens when there is an uptrend leading to the event.

I think that it is very likely that we sell off during something like 2-3 weeks after ETF approval, because there is room to sell off ($28k -> $42k uptrend, at least for now... unless we go way lower even before January, which does not seem likely imo).

But then if we have a date for the ETF launch and it is around 2-3 months later, then this could potentially act as a new positive catalyst.

If this happens and we go up before the ETF launch, then the post-launch market reaction will depend on the magnitude of the ETF flows, which I think might be disappointing, at least in the first few days.

[If ETF is not approved, we nuke bad, obviously, remember that it is not strictly impossible neither]