Where the bull market stands, with DeFi Dad

Transcript

how to capitalize on the final 50% of this bull market are you wishing you made more during this bull market so far or maybe you just entered and are sitting at a loss with this current pullback well in today's episode we're going to help you make the most out of what is left in this bull market which by the way we believe there's still plenty of the way to go I brought in none other than defi dad to give us his insights on how to play the next year in crypto defi dad is a longtime super user in crypto he's an educator and an investor doing Angel Investing and part of 4 RC he's also the co-host and producer of The Edge podcast so this man knows a thing or two about crypto welcome to milk World radio the easiest path to get smarter about crypto I'm

kyriad your host for today's show and I believe that onchain is the next online this is the opportunity and we're here to help you capitalize on it all right let's waste no time let's get into the episode crypto will go up more than 100x in both users and value over the next decade if you're listening to this right now you're extremely early and have an incredible opportunity to capitalize at milk Road our mission is to make you smarter about crypto that's why we're doing today's podcast and why we send you a daily newsletter for free but if you're ready to level up as an investor then let me tell you about milk Road Pro we crafted this resource for investors who are already smart enough about crypto and are looking for more actionable insights on how to invest successfully in one of the fastest growing Industries on Earth every week

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script to get you on the other side and start interviewing you but before we get into that why don't you quickly just give our listeners a bit of a background of kind of who you are and and how you got into this space yeah yeah thanks again for having me so my career in crypto started around 2017 and I had a background that you know I was working in Tech and I kind of like spent all my time trying to like sell and piece together pieces of software like crms and marketing automation so like when I first learned about crypto even the idea of the money Lego which I think that came about more in 2018 2019 it all started to click and so I did the usual thing I listened to podcasts and and

started to realize that like hey the finance system doesn't make as much sense to me I I think I was actually fortunate I didn't have a strong background in finance and uh in 2018 I got a job with consensus got to work with a bunch of companies like metamask infura gitcoin it's just like wild cuz like nothing worked back then you know these were like the few things that were working there wasn't defi was so early that like you had heard of compound and maker but maker was really the one thing that seemed to be making sense anyways things really came together in 2019 2020 I was putting together these Live Events called ethereal through consensus and I was interviewing and meeting people like

you know privately I was just interviewing them and asking questions like would you want to give a talk at these Live Events to help Inspire the Next Generation or maybe the first generation of builders in ethereum and uh it all clicked I looked at Defi and was like wait a sec like I know how to use metamask I can see on compound that there's there was something like 10 or 20 million in it at the time and I noticed that you could earn Maybe like 20% interest on die and it just like blew my mind cuz I was playing with like really small amounts of money and realizing like what the big dogs were doing you know how much money they were able to earn there and um man from there

it just took off I started tweeting about it I I was just trying to share examples of how I use Defi and eventually that led to joining zapper in 2021 no 2020 I joined zapper in 2020 as like the second or third higher and then I ended up moving on from there to where I am now at Fourth Revolution capital and and so I've just over the years continue to try to demonstrate how easy defi is to use that like crypto is not that complicated if anything I think it's a reflection of the complications of traditional finance and it's better because it's permissionless it's trustless it's in the best case it doesn't matter what goo you're in you

should be able to have access to it as long as long as you have access to the internet and um you know nowadays I focus my time I actually Focus most of my time on the storytelling element I really enjoy being in your position interviewing folks through the edge podcast so we try to interview all of the the best Builders and investors in the space and I spend just a tremendous amount of time though thinking about how do you make Defi and crypto digestible for like the average person and then I get the privilege of investing in teams as an angel and through the fund so anyways yeah that's how I ended up here today awesome so super user and still super user today I would say turned into

angel investor which is I think a fairly common Trend in crypto right you use the stuff you play around it you fall in love with it and then you're okay now I'm gonna give back by investing Capital do you also do a lot of work with the businesses that you're investing in in terms of like helping them or whatever that might be yeah I think I'm most proud of I'm I'm very proactive with any team that I invest in whether again as an angel or through 4C I I think my Edge in the space is I'm still a power user I am transacting I would say on the order of like I'm doing maybe a dozen transactions a day sometimes it's just simple stuff I'm claiming rewards and I'm you know selling it on a

DEX for profits but I just spend a lot of time playing with applications and I've heard others in the space you know other investors talk about this and sometimes I I think there is a bit of laring that goes on everybody claims they're a user now but I I think getting into the weeds of that application like with reaking I've spent a lot of time on reaking over the past year and reaking wasn't really a thing until really the end of 2023 and start of 2024 but nomadic my co-host through the edge podcast and we we co-invest as angels and through 4C it was just so obvious at the end of that year because

we were like thinking as as someone who held a liquid staking token you know like steep by Lio we were excited to be able to earn more yield and we could kind of see where the puck was going we we had the privilege of course of interviewing Founders in the staking space and and so then we started to invest like we really had the privilege of just thinking and interviewing these people all of 2023 and into 2024 and then that's when we were able to start to actually put money to work that today is that's my driving thesis as an in as an investor I really just keep myself busy playing with as many

applications as possible sometimes I stumble into stuff just you know I would argue it's because I'm just I'm playing around with it and realizing myself that there's like a gap in the user experience Pendle might even be another great example we were playing around with that in 2023 and felt like we were late to the game but then when Pendle started supporting all of the different points programs like we knew that it was Prime Time like we understood how the mechanism worked we knew as users how addictive it was to use it and and so it made sense like these LRT Protocols are just going to blow up and everything else after it like Athena is is going to get really really big just by using that

hub for speculating I think a lot of our listeners try to figure out how can I get in first how can I get in early and I think W just said to start off this episode is the best way which is just use this stuff right if you're sitting there trying to get more yield you're trying to do better in defi it was pretty obvious that liquid reaking was a way to get more yield and also earn some air drops right but it's difficult if you're not actually using this stuff every single day so it's it's quite interesting to hear like that's just that's how you became as good investor as you are just literally use the stuff and then it's not too hard to get to get in early so really cool let's step back a bit let's zoom out and um before we

get into I do want to talk about some air drop stuff some reaking stuff but first let's just talk about where we are in the cycle do you think we're in a cycle just like we've been in you know the past three cycles that we've had in crypto and if so where are we at what are you kind of thinking in terms of your timelines for maybe the top or just how this all plays out yeah so back at eth Denver in February I was asking everyone this like everyone I interviewed I'm like where do you think we are in this cycle and there was a general consensus that we were 50% of the way through however I believe it was at eth Denver right around that time Bitcoin hit a new high which I'm sure threw you and me and everyone else for a

loop like we're not used to seeing Bitcoin hit a new high until after the having so that's probably been the hardest part of this cycle is I think as simple and maybe dumb as it sounds that has been a milestone that we hit after the having and it's made a lot of us question are we further along than expected I think if you were to zoom out though like one of the big differences of course is that we have just huge inflows of capital into Bitcoin through the Bitcoin ETF um the Bitcoin ETF is something that we've all gotten used to but it's a milestone that we shouldn't Overlook and there's just so much money that's seeing the state of inflation

across the world and it's looking for a store of value and I think Bitcoin clearly has like the best brand in the world you know it's the most recognizable it's got traditional Finance influencers if you want to call them that like they they don't get called influencers but that's what they are you know they're out there talking about what they hold and they're going on CNBC and Fox Business I actually thought we were 50% of the way through maybe a few months ago and I'm starting to wonder if now we're 50% of the way through which would take us to like let's say the end of 2024 into 2025 I think with an election year it's hard to imagine it not being bullish through the end of the year for the

reason that is as simple as in an election year in the United States or any country that's paying attention there's a hope and optimism that like your candidate can do better I think we have two of the worst candidates in the history of the United States running but regardless of that there tends to be some bit of optimism no matter how you vote and that tends to get priced in uh to the market and then I'll just say that I think that defi is has really Advanced it's evolved to a point where we see these like use cases that are native to defi which are really exciting but we also see really powerful use cases like you can go to an auction

onchain for fixed term loans through like a term finance and that's smearing like really mature infrastructure and traditional finance and I think when that scales you know you're talking about hundreds of million billions and eventually trillions transacting so it's just hard to imagine that like this cycle ends anytime soon when we've come so far there's so many folks that are not using it on a whim you know this isn't like hey I just discovered a meme coin and I bought some for the first time and I'm still new to crypto there are a lot of folks who are are very accustomed to using it now and then you

have the top of the funnel being fed by things like meme coins you know like you can criticize it all you want as like maybe it doesn't have like the nerdy utility that defi presents it but meme coins are simple and I I do think they're a great introduction for someone you know as long as they don't bet more than they're willing to lose I think it's just like a great way to to show someone do you want to see what happens when when you can trade 247 365 no no questions asked all you need is The Bravery to be able to click and transact and to know how to self- custody through a wallet it's pretty cool so anyways I yeah the tldrs I think we are are I think we have a ways to go

here I think we're going to definitely get through this year and I I personally think the cycle is going to carry into 2025 I definitely agree I think we're also around the 50% Mark that's what I've been saying is we're right there I think the key catalysts is there's two one is the ethereum ETF like whenever that goes we're GNA have a big run just like we did when the Bitcoin ETF went but I think the biggest one and this has to do with politics a little bit is regulation the regulation in the US is coming and I think it's going to be my guess anyway is that it's going to be beneficial part of that is going to depend on who gets elected I think is it going to be Trump or is it going to be Biden if it's Trump probably more beneficial and if it's Biden then I have

honestly no freaking idea but like if those C if we get that ethereum ETF especially if it happens in May here I think no one is ready for that and so like we're gonna just pump like crazy don't really think that happens but if it did that'd be nuts and then I think if Trump gets elected and we have some good regulatory regulatory put into place I think that this cycle could continue for much longer than most people are anticipating because like you said defi is ready but mainstream like retail people I don't know that they're ever GNA really use defi because they don't even use the normal financial side of things in the traditional Finance but institutions will and they just can't right now and so whenever that gets cleared up there's a lot of capital that's going to come on chain I think to use defi because like

you said there's so many use cases and it's so ready I don't know if that can happen until we have regulation what do you think yeah I I am extremely bearish on the Biden Administration ever being favorable towards crypto which has taken me by surprise I I thought there was a a chance and I think that given some of the recent statements that were made in relation to the SEC as well like we never seem to get any reprieve I will say that I think it's very important you know if you are able to vote I think this is an important election to think about how you vote in favor of the industry I'm not a single isue voter but crypto has a humongous impact on a lot

of people's lives not just mine and I am I'm at a point where for whatever reason you know the likes of like a senator Warren and others like her and and then you've got of course uh Gary gendler who have just they've politicized crypto you know and they've I think they've been extremely dishonor given the fact that they're supposed to represent the best interests of citizens and if you look at polls of citizens like who holds crypto now I mean the numbers are pretty staggering like I I don't know what the latest is today as of you know may 2024 but we're at a point where it's something like what 30 40 50% of folks hold some form of crypto or at least

know what it is and have like a positive impression of it and then they they are out there really using crypto almost as like a scapegoat they're treating it like it's the boogeyman that people don't quite understand and I think that's just extremely unfair I think it's a sign of how incompetent like the people are that like run our government so you know this cycle there's there's no doubt like when that election comes I mean I'm voting in favor of crypto at this point I think Biden is clearly anti- crypto unfortunately I I don't see how I could vote for him anyone could vote for him you have Trump who's clearly Pro crypto but then you also have someone like an RFK and I I wish we

had other choices because I I think the choices are just abysmal um this this cycle so yeah I mean I'm not American so I don't have a vote I don't have a say here but I completely agree with what you're saying you're you're lucky this is this is a failed Dow at this point this is not a a high functioning Dow anymore so no doubt okay well let's talk about the cycle I mean it sounds like at some point in 2025 where you think it's the top whether regulation plays a role in this we'll see um we kind of have to wait and see what happens with with the election what do you think happens right now we've had a Bitcoin dominated cycle for the most part Bitcoin dominance continues to rise even today as we're recording Bitcoin continues to dominate altcoins bleed out eth bleeding out I think no one really

expected this long for Bitcoin to be leading what happens rest of cycle is it Bitcoin Remains the winner or do you think ethereum has a moment or is it like salana is now taken over and ethereum's just going to continue to left or like in terms of the majors what are you seeing or what are you thinking yeah no you made a great point that was another thing that really has stood out this cycle it it's a bit odd to see Bitcoin so dominant and to not see any sort of like moment in the Sun for ether ether normally has has broken out okay I will zoom out on this and say that ether did have an amazing bear cycle I think that like with the merge it did extremely well well it ran up the entire

industry was extremely bullish on it and then I think it's fair to say that it took a backseat to soul and salana to their credit I mean talk about a blockchain community that was really at at the point of wondering like will they survive I know the builders will tell you no we never questioned it in the long the long-term Soul holders did but I sure as hell did and I hold soul and I I probably Saw The Light there in October yeah it was actually it was early October 2023 I just remember seeing the price action saying like Okay I think it's finally over I I think that like Soul has survived the worst of it the worst is

behind and and so I'm excited to like start to invest in the community and play with all the defi applications that are working there so then I I would say that since then Soul surging clearly has had an impact on ether ether for whatever reason I I mean e ethereum has always been this like middle child of the space you have Bitcoin which is the most recognizable brand the most like well understood Mission as just like a digital gold I I know it's changed over the years but I think nowadays it's clearly digital gold then you've had all these other like new l1s that are faster and cheaper meanwhile ethereum has an extremely comprehensive sort of road map

the L2 road map has actually delivered now I mean like you can transact on most of the l2s now for less than a cent like I I am transacting regularly on ZK sync mode optimism arbitrum like ever since the denune upgrade it's gotten that cheap on ethereum again you know that cheap and what's crazy is main net is now like I'd have to look at it it's been sitting at about 10 guay which means that you can send ether for less than let's say like 10 cents on Main net I would still recommend anyone like look to l2s like that's where like you're going to have the most fun something like a bass or or something like ZK sync

or mantle whatever any of these so from a user standpoint I started with ethereum mainnet we we go into the bare market we've seen all the ups and downs of the 2020 2021 cycle ethereum does incred incredibly well it was the best bear cycle that ethereum ever experienced it was the worst for salana and it was actually I would argue it was a pretty brutal bear cycle for Bitcoin Bitcoin Drew down to a new low in November 2022 and ether did not and that was shocking I think to all of us but again it just feels like crypto always is happy to surprise you with the least

expected sort of result and so now we're at a point where you know Bitcoin I think there was a lot of folks that thought that the ETF had already been priced in and that it would probably like cool off for a bit and I've been really happy to you know I hold Bitcoin as well I've it's you know something I just will continue to hold over the years and so it's been fun to watch that like melt everyone's faces and so anyways I think that leaves us with your your original questions where do we end the cycle eventually or like how do things play out the rest of the cycle I think you just look at how these little like mini cycles within the bull cycle play out eth hasn't had its time in the sun crypto is EXT extremely

reflexive so at some point when ether takes off I'm sure we'll look back and say I just can't believe I didn't buy more of that why why did I question whether it would see a new high and that's that's just it ether has to see a new high once it does then it can go into price Discovery I don't know it's it's weird it's like all the fundamentals are so strong and I say that as someone who's extremely invested in salana I constantly am looking for new ecosystems like I'm excited for manad to eventually launch to be able to use that I've enjoyed what little I could do on you know the likes of uh SE I play around with as much of Cosmos as

I can I'm not like hoping that eth just pumps at some point I know it as a user there's just too much going on there it's too much activity but this cycle is a little different with meme coins I feel like we've we've dropped a few IQ points as a community just like throwing money at at meme coins at times no offense to everyone that loves them like I said I'm cheering you on I hope you make lots of money but I think it's important that we have lots of blockchains and lots of applications to cater to everyone's individual needs and what's cool is we've gotten there now like we've got all these different blockchain communities that are thriving I I think again it's Bitcoin and the Bitcoin L2

space is starting to take off some we have ethereum being the largest of these and then we've got salana that's really set like a great standard in terms of they've got users that are extremely active and loud and proud to use it and onboarding more folks into the space we've got base as like a newer L2 so I don't know it's weird like I'm so bullish on the pie growing but we just need we need more time and I think I read someone tweeted out today something like my timeline is Amateur hour I think it's his name's Avi from the 1000x podcast and I I kind of feel the same way people are euphoric and happy when times are bullish and they don't seem to

recognize how ridiculous you know it gets how overheated but then when times get a little bearish that's a gift you know that's an opportunity to be able to get into a new position or in my case I tend to think about what am I holding that is looking less likely to be able to outperform I'm better off like harvesting a loss or taking what tiny profit is there and reallocating into something like eth that hasn't taken off or Bitcoin that is absolutely poised to take off more Soul you know and so on by the way full disclosure clearly hold those three tokens yeah no doubt I I actually tweeted out just the other day because thinking over the weekend and I

was like think about how euphoric you were 60 days ago think about how many things you fomed into 60 days ago and now think about how wrecked you just got and it's like but we're gonna most people are just gonna do it all over again you know what I mean like the next leg up is coming and everyone's gonna get super euphoric and that's why I always say like investing is I don't know 80% 90% psychology you know and like 10% research because it's just so hard for people to control their emotions and this stuff and so I agree with you completely on that and then the other thing I just want to comment on that you said is it is a bit wild that we're not at alltime highs on eth when you think about the last time eth was at alltime highs was October 2021 something

like that I think yeah and um we didn't have the burn we didn't have the merge we didn't have any l2s that were live like so much of what exists today in ethereum ecosystem wasn't even there back then so it would be crazy to me if ethereum does not make all-time highs and much much farther I would say but uh yeah it's good good and great to just hear kind of your your thoughts around where the majors go let's zoom in then now you know you're using all these different protocols and so you're using a ton of different applications you're playing around different use cases what are the use cases that you're sort of eyeing right now obviously defi is is kind of your main thing your name is defi dad so I assume that's that's a big one you talked about reaking already is

there more or is reaking kind of your big your big BET right now that's a great question okay so yeah I think I've made clear that I think reaking is still very nent you know we haven't seen all of the major protocols launch a token ethery launched their token and full disclosure I I am invested in them I again had the privilege of knowing Mike for nearly a year and and participating in ethery and then realizing I still had an opportunity to invest there so no-brainer there Renzo recently launched a token and I I believe that Renzo has actually done despite like there's clearly been some setback there with their easy eth D pegging I put that in air quotes because I I mean it really

like it just dropped in price for a very short amount of time and it seems to have mostly recovered so you have two multi-billion dollar protocols there and then we've got all these others that haven't launched a token yet we have puffer Finance we have uh swell there's kelp there's Genesis is a smaller one right now but one I'm keeping an eye on so anyways re reaking is early I think the question of whether or not those tokens will all like rage for the rest of the bull run like who knows they're new narratives though so I clearly put my money where my mouth is there and I've made bets on them and I've farmed all these protocols and if I haven't earned an airdrop there I'm banking on airdrops with unreleased tokens I would

say the other narrative or I'll call it like an in an investor theme of this cycle is the intersection of crypto and AI it's extremely messy and confusing like I just think it's so difficult to discern right now like what are the Lego building blocks if you can start to understand them gosh like there's some real Edge there just to understanding what that stack looks like and how they play together I'll just briefly share that I think that I'm kind of just paring talking points here from David Johnston who is an open source contributor to Morpheus and I'm I'm not an investor there I I farmed it but it's at more.org

that is a decentralized network for AI agents and so if you thought the unibot thing was really cool like it kind of dumbed down the whole like dii ux and you just use Telegram and type in commands and it kind of prompts you that was really cool but we were all riant on telegram which I would never ever sleep well at night I don't care what they tell you about how it's self- custo and what sort of like Exit Plan they have if things were to go to ship but if it can be pulled off if a similar ux can be powered through something that is a truly like decentralized censorship resistant network of AI agents that's powerful and all those buzzwords

basically will just mean that I think that in the very near future a lot of the defi ux that we're used to navigating manually or using like you know power tools like instap or defi saver or summer.i a a lot of that gets further abstracted away by just using AI so now you're you're using an AI agent to find like where's the best staking yield and how do I get into it for the least amount of gas and everything I'm mentioning here like it's just going to figure that out it's going to be so dummy proof and so there's a lot of asymmetric opportunity right now before this AI interface like hits crypto

everything thing that you can do in web 3 or defi crypto related I think will eventually have some sort of AI interface and and Morpheus is one really you know cool example of this it's interesting if you've been around in crypto for a while you've you've heard about the defi mullet I think bankless was the one who started this which was like fintech in the front and defi in the back and this is kind of the first time I'm hearing well maybe it's not fintech in the front it's just AI in the front and you just speak to an AI and it does all the in the back that's actually quite interesting I just I I never really thought about before because I always preach I was like look at the way we use D5 will be different which is what you said but I always think of it

as we'll just use fintech apps and stuff and they'll figure it all out in the background Forest but maybe it's not the fintech apps maybe it's AI or maybe it's a combination of all three I'm not sure so is there a lot that you're I mean the one thing with the AI crypto stuff is there's just a lot of crap in that space there's a lot of people trying to capitalize on the hype and so I mean you just named one Morpheus is there a lot of other good ones that you're kind of playing around with you're using or you're investing in or like what's your overall if you were to talk about the landscape of AI you talked about maybe the Legos and that is there specific things you're looking into when you look at this AI crypto space because I feel like it's very daunting for a lot of

people to get into that narrative I will say I've got a pretty short answer here I will say that like Morpheus as a decentralized network for AI agents it's one of the very few that is making a lot of sense to me right now from a user standpoint and again I probably spend again the majority of my time I'm playing with applications and kind of looking for like what's missing here what do I wish would be built what exists somewhere else like I still think like web 3 coms drives me nuts because it feels like something that like should be more popular but there's so much adoption of using like Telegram and Discord that I think there's just friction to like the incumbent that is

already there and so yeah with with AI I think we're still just that early like I I know the vision that I just Des described is what everyone wants like we can onboard a billion people to crypto if we have easy reliable easily retrievable but yet difficult to hack self- custody wallets like that's huge we know like the history is the more power you give someone the more like Risk has actually been there that they could harm themselves if they just lose access to their keys even though if they're properly storing those keys like it's incredibly powerful for them and so we're trying to I don't know we're

trying to get to a point where all of those benefits that I think we fantasized about having without the barriers to onboarding that's what I think AI enables and um actually I'll stick with I really feel like Morpheus is one of the few that's exciting to follow if anything if you were looking for like some bit of credibility there outside of myself flagging it Eric vores you know has been intimately involved in it since the start and so for me that was an early signal that like these guys clearly are going to they might not do things in a way that allow them to grow the fastest but they will build it in a way that it aderes to the principles of like building it right in crypto Eric

has always kind of stood for that you know I think shape shift was a great example of of that so awesome very interesting let let's jump out of the AI side and let's just think about portfolio in general so let's say someone's looking at I don't know AI or they're looking at reaking or you know whatever else is out there there's so many different narratives and things you can invest in what advice do you give for someone who's like coming in and they're GNA buy up a bunch of tokens do they allocate to a small amount and that's it or do you typically like just spray across as many as you can and hold a bunch and obviously this might be different when you're talking liquid versus your private investing but walk me through just sort of your thesis around that and how you think through

allocating I keep it pretty simple my liquid portfolio I adhere to holding you know what I think are the best stores of value I would say that I'm I'm at times painfully overallocated to eth this cycle I wouldn't have said that in previous Cycles I've actually continued to kind of seize the opportunity that for all that I said there and why I think eth will go to an all-time high and go into price Discovery I've kind of used this opportunity while feels like everyone in their mom is on eth as a story value I've I've used that as an opportunity to continue to average in coin is just a no-brainer it just again it's so dominant thanks to the Bitcoin ETF and the long history of it and it

just has such a simple value prop so I would say actually on any given day I I can't say it's exactly this but I tend to sit like 60 to 70% in those store value tokens so like mine is ranking is still probably eth at the top soul is actually my second largest holding that's one that has just grown so much like I I took the opportunity when it was at low prices to average into it I've you know participated in all the different airdrops like jeto and Camino and and Wormhole and tensor and I'm still excited for margin fi so that has really grown very organically on its own without having to put more money to work

there thanks to those airdrops and then there's Bitcoin the rest of it I do believe like when you're in a bull cycle you do have to be willing to make those bets that there's going to be opportunities to invest in stuff that goes you know 10 to 100x but it's it's not often and and I'll say my biggest regret in previous cycles and probably would have been this cycle if the cycle wasn't going the way it is because Bitcoin has been so dominant I think because Soul was so dominant and um that part of my portfolio is clearly benefited I I haven't had to regret making the high-risk bets on like every new shiny coin you know like I am blown away by what the whiff token has done

and it feels so obvious now because it's it was just such like a clever name it's cute it plays off the dogcoin idea it had like huge backing I'm not one to really tweet about those meme coins but like I recognize the influence that like onom and other folks have and uh it's standout though I think it's proven that like not every coin is whiff everyone wanted to invest in the next whiff and we've seen those meme coins really drop off so for me I am continuing to focus on I would say like holding those like those Majors that I'm extremely confident in I'm looking for ways to borrow against them which like I tend to

use you know a I love using instap fluid now fluid is like a it's a newer borrowing protocol it's got higher ltvs super low liquidation penalties still has a lot of risk of course like any sort of borrowing protocol and so anyways I'm trying to hold those stores of value I'm trying to borrow with extremely low leverage I don't know what other folks are borrowing at but like I personally tend to never go more than like 2x leverage myself borrowing against like large stores of value because I don't want to be a forced seller when the the markets down I want to be in a position to be able to to buy more because we're in an uptrend or in a

bare cycle get the hell out and look for a bottom to get back in and then i' I'd say the final piece of my portfolio is you know I'm I'm obviously very fortunate that I get to invest as an angel at this point I'd say it's a combo of I'm investing as an angel whenever I can I would definitely say like as an angel or as a fund I'm a little less confident that there's much time to invest this cycle I just I don't know if token launches have that much more time this cycle like I I think like easily in three to four months like it will feel potentially silly to be looking at launching a token this cycle I just you don't want to launch a token at the top

of the cycle it can just be that brutal when there's that little liquidity and everyone and their mother is selling everything you know there's there's no Rhyme or Reason when you're going into the bare Market everyone's selling everything that they have there and so I feel for those protocols you know trying to make that decision and we've had I don't know 20 30 40 different token launches in the last few months right like at some point right there's just too much Supply in the market and you can't keep putting more and more yet there's still a lot more to come I mean if you think about it and actually I wanted to transition into the airdrop side of things as well because it is still hot there's tons of points programs whether we're talking reaking l2s whatever else D5 protocols both on salon and otherwise there's so many and

even the ones that launch tokens they've got season two and season three and so there's more tokens coming and so I guess a few questions you kind of answered it like it sounds like you're saying in a few months or whatever that is eventually this Buzz isn't going to continue and I mean right now tokens do quite well when they launch maybe not over the last couple weeks just because we've been I mean in a pullback so it is what it is but a few questions one is this an area that people still should be earning and farming for air drops because you think that's where the opportunity is like I believe and it goes off with your strategy which is stay with the store of values which is eth and soul but then use that to farm air drops you know if you can take your

eth you're going to hold on to that to get exposure and then use it in reaking protocols like that's an amazing idea same with soul in Camino and in margin fi Etc you still get your exposure to these Majors where you you really limit your risk but now you can just earn these other tokens so I think that that's um to me that's the best play right now I don't know if you still think that or if you think maybe it's too late I I agree yeah I think that because of the fact that I am wanting to sit in very large bags of those majors in my portfolio I want to put those to work I do think a lot and I would caution anyone who like is still like newer to farming like you really want to think about how you size a position that

goes into any defi protocol because just remember like you could lose everything there again not giving you Financial advice to like put it into any one protocol but like there's real risk there like I always assume like I could lose everything that I'm putting into this one protocol and so if I can put to to the point we were making there if I can put wrapped Bitcoin or solve BTC or any sort of tokenized form of BTC eth Soul if you're a say bull like you know you want to look for ways that you could put say to work you know if you're a manad bull in the future like you want to look for ways that you can continue to sit long in some of those tokens and so it's such a dream when you're looking at these LRT protocols that have been

launched or supported on Pendle Finance I think Pendle has probably had some of the biggest impact to this bull cycle it is basically a hub for speculating and they've got three different players in there who work extremely well together and so last cycle we didn't have this you can buy those yield tokens yts for let's say e if you were buying those before season one ended or now season two still still happening you're basically buying a a lottery ticket to their airdrop except you're guaranteed winnings it's just a question of how much you're going to get you're so you're buying it and those YT tokens go to Zero by the time they fully mature

and normally those are like two or three months out so you buy that you know you're going to get an airdrop and as you do that I'm the other side of the equation you have the second player involved which are people who want to earn a fixed yield so the more people that bought up the yte eth token let's pretend it was expiring on June 30th the more people buying it the more buying pressure the price of the principal token which is basically like a discounted version of e keeps dropping and so now you're basically you're buying discounted e eth think of it as just like I'm buying it and I'm locking in a fixed rate so as yts went crazy and

speculative Mania went like berserk on the other side of it you have people who are extremely conservative who just want a fixed yield they don't care about the points they're not worried about the airdrop that is such an amazing example of like incentive design like they've really figured out how to marry the most conservative fixed yield earners who really never had a protocol that was as reliable as Pendle with the most hyp speculative users out there and then somewhere in the middle is the LPS that are holding both of them they don't experience much impermanent loss I'm pretty sure it's near zero so that has been for me I kind of to bring It full

circle here I think for me like my portfolio grows from participating in Blue Chip airdrops I've again looked at the likes of ethery and ren Enzo and puffer and you know everything else that's still coming swell swell is another big one that I'm trying to earn with and I'm I'm trying to earn tokens that I think you know will launch at an extremely high value or could potentially you know go higher because the protocol is doing the right work to you know sort of grow the space there's one more Point here just to make though with one mistake that I made last cycle and I would caution anyone who lives in a similar jurisdiction is when you earn

an airdrop or if you earn like let's say you're farming XYZ as long as you're earning something in real time or you're you're going to earn like a chunk of income at some point like an airdrop in the United States that's generally viewed as income and so you get taxed as income which means that I'll just give an extreme example I've never earned this but if you earned a $100,000 of a new token and you claim it that day like once it hits your wallet my understanding and I'm not an accountant but my understanding is you owe that income tax on that amount priced in US Dollars and if that token literally goes

to zero it does not matter you now you can harvest the loss a capital gains loss like now you've got a nice big capital gain loss to you know put against whatever your gains were but you still owe the income tax so if your income bracket your income tax bracket is like let's say 40% someone would owe $40,000 on a token that is worth zero and I really you know I was I'm fortunate like nothing too disastrous but like I don't think I like fully understood the risk that we were all taking as farmers in the last cycle I've really thought about that I think the market has clearly matured I think that's why these airdrops you're seeing a healthy selloff and that selloff is a

great opportunity for people who are like why the hell would I want to buy a multi-billion dollar token I want to get in it at a lower price and be able to like be like a long-term holder of this new protocol yeah it's great advice I think a lot of new entrance don't typically think about the tax implications of crypto and a lot of a lot of times people get I guess wrecked or or they learn their lesson pretty quickly in some countries many they just haven't even thought about it it's still not even really a thing they don't tax it or they just don't even really I it but it's coming for sure especially as we talked about with regulation okay as we wrap up here we talked about where we're 50% of the way through the cycle at least that's what we both believe

just give the listeners a quick advice for your thoughts on what they should do or or how they can best perform over the last 50% of the cycle any just quick tips you have anything that can can just help them navigate the rest of the cycle oh yeah ju just a few simple things one of course is I think it pays to be patient so I I think this is in my portfolio it relates to those store of value tokens um I'm not interested in selling my soul my eth or my Bitcoin into the next shiny object I know that there's still upside ahead I mean I guess it's not inevitable but it's very likely in my opinion that we have more upside ahead and I'm I'm grateful for

that and I'm I'm going to like look to continue to you know realize that upside there so I think there's there's a patience there I think one thing is just thinking a lot in terms of planning like I am constantly writing down if the cycle were to end like what would I do next like what are some of the steps I would take if I'm constantly writing down takeprofit goals thinking about like where that is I had some ex extremely I think unrealistic takeprofit goals last cycle I recognize like the air of my ways there you know the cyle doesn't give a about where my takeprofit goals were it was just me hoping and praying that I that I would

get to there I love crypto Twitter's really actually good at this there's a lot of discussion about just like what are those top signals and I'm constantly writing down like my like priority list of like what are some of those top signals and thinking like if more than a few of these were to flash you know like red like uhoh it's it's over what am I going to do I'm just like really trying to mentally prepare myself I I'm someone who likes to like I'm clearly extremely bullish like I work in the space fulltime I think I've been in crypto now like seven eight years and I don't plan on leaving anytime soon it's extremely hard for me to sell versus like wanting to just sit long and be bullish on on everything so

yeah so I guess there was the patience there's planning to plan I guess is the way to say that you know really preparing a plan and then I guess yeah the last one is just being continually curious like what I described playing with these applications I definitely fall short certain weeks like I will fall out of the habit of playing with enough I I've got some habits built in because I'm writing tutorials like blog posts whatever and so I have to and I I've actually truthfully continue to do that because it's like a forced habit it it right means that like I can't ever stop doing it I mean I've basically committed to newsletters that I will

continue to write and so that that's something I think that is extremely difficult I talk the talk about being curious and using all this but I I don't want to downplay it is extremely challenging to continue to actually do that you just you get burned out is is what I mean so like try to do your best to like find find a friend I've got for me it's um nomadic from The Edge podcast it's why we do do the podcast together he just digs into so much stuff that I don't I dig into stuff that he doesn't and we not only through work check in but like we check in almost daily just to be like hey I farmed this last night I claimed this I did that like and I

can't tell you like how many times we've sort of Saved ourselves from like oh wow if I don't claim that token right now like it's I'm not going to be able to claim it soon so yeah finding a good friend like that is really key absolutely listen thanks so much for uh for sharing your insights I think this will help our listeners navigate the rest of this bull market if they want to continue to follow you and and learn from you throughout this um bull cycle and Beyond Where can our listeners learn more from you yeah Kyle thanks for having me on and just you guys do such a great job with uh milk road so I mean actually that's one of my recommendations would be like get subscribe to a newsletter like milk Road the defiant wealth mastery there's quite a few out there obviously Bank list does

a great job there there's a lot out there if you want to follow me though or learn more about all the stuff that we talked about here follow me at defiore dead on Twitter if you just go to dad.com all the links there to like YouTube and the podcast are there and then again it's called The Edge podcast which you can watch it on YouTube listen to it on Spotify we publish it in a bunch of different places including Twitter we'd love to get your feedback and would love to hear from you if you enjoy listening to the podcast awesome well def thanks so much for joining us we really appreciate it listeners good luck out there hopefully you all can capitalize on the rest of this bull market with some of the insights that Dad shared today otherwise take care everyone thanks for listening thank you

for listening to milk Road radio the easiest path to get smarter about crypto if you like this episode share it and hit subscribe or follow so you don't miss out on the next one there's also a link in the description to our free five minute daily newsletter where we simplify crypto for you well making you laugh and if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game then we'll leave a link to milk Road Pro as well your number one resource to help you invest successfully in crypto one final note this podcast is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice crypto is risky so you should never invest more than you're willing to lose thank you friends and we'll see you in the next one