Cobie

Links

• Cobie
• Web

Show Partner

This episode is presented by FTX. Trade on an awesome mobile interface fee-free, and still get all the great portfolio tracking features you know and love: https://uponly.tv/ftx

Show Notes

UpOnlyTV Notes

Introduction & Early Days

⁃ Bought Bitcoin first in 2012 but really down the rabbit-hole through 2013 onwards

⁃ Only other original CT person still active is Bob Laxative (formerly KingBTC)

⁃ Being early turned people into survivors. Cryptsy, MtGox etc hacked. Everything going to zero, only self custody BTC felt safe

⁃ Started with £200-300 ($500) and didn’t put any more fiat in other than one investment in 2020 (that went to zero)

⁃ Got shilled QuarkCoin by Bill Still on cryptsy and accidentally sold the top. Got a DM from Jebus911 about another coin that went 70x

⁃ Up significantly in BTC early but down in USD in bear market. Lost a lot of BTC on things like BTCBuilder

⁃ Sold Cryptsy listings via API for months while at uni for free multiples before the alpha got leaked

⁃ Saw BTC as the solution following the financial crisis and levels of corruption and incompetence

MtGox

⁃ Gox was the main exchange and allegedly had a bot to buy back BTC that had been lost

⁃ Constant buy pressure caused the price to run

⁃ Unsure what the outcome would have been on the state of the market if it hadn’t happened

⁃ Some friends got completely wiped by Gox

⁃ Psychologically put a lot of people off BTC having to consider the cost of buying the BTC they had lost

Trading & Making It

⁃ Wouldn’t consider ever having been a full time trader

⁃ It was more of a hobby or side hustle. Decisions mostly based on instinct and prior cycle behaviour

⁃ It’s become much harder to call cycle bottoms and tops

⁃ People create narratives to rationalise things it’s easier to learn from your own mistakes with time looking back

⁃ Above average at most things when actually trying, except League of Legends

⁃ Deep down believed he would eventually be a millionaire. Without crypto this would still have happened from acquisitions/startups

⁃ Opens you to being more risk tolerant in other areas of life e.g. taking stock vs salary

⁃ Easier to have conviction when you don’t sit through large drawdowns and can gauge risk. “HODL is for poor people” unless disciplined you’ll let your gains evaporate and might become a forced seller at the bottom

⁃ Tries to estimate probability of it being over on every dip. Wants to sell as close to the top as possible, can buy back higher if wrong. Won’t work if you do this on every dip

Supercycle

⁃ Idea of a Supercycle described by Su in earlier episode is probably right

⁃ If crypto becomes integrated into society and BTC becomes the store of value then it’s the only thing that makes sense

⁃ Thinks it’s not the right time for it to happen, integration is tertiary

⁃ If crypto disappears now how many lives are actually impacted

⁃ Unless you run ...say a crypto podcast? (pls sir my family)

⁃ Maybe it is now but maybe it needs another boom/bust first before it reaches that level

⁃ Top 10/20 assets on CoinGecko right now – are we really ready for a supercycle??

ETH

⁃ ETH DAO hack, ETC fork, ICOs put off. Didn’t buy more ETH because conviction was low with all of this. Still held original ETH but could have rotated into buying much more

⁃ Instead of focusing on ponzification it’s best to focus on change in products available e.g. genuine use case like lending on chain being built

⁃ Building blocks add value to the ecosystem because they enable future building blocks. OG DeFi protocols and things like MetaMask responsible for leading that change

Founding Lido & ETH 2.0

⁃ Co-founded Lido but says Konstantin and Vasily are the real brains behind everything along with the core teams. Fought to not call it dPool. (Fought with Ledger to not have UpOnly called TokenTalk)

⁃ When PoS was created there was no real concept of DeFi

⁃ Staking Ethereum is just a better form of wrapped Ethereum and risk free yield is the bottom brick of DeFi

⁃ Thinks merge will be Q2/Q3 or later. Beacon chains have been live for a whole

⁃ People will think it’s bullish but $35B on the beacon chain will become unlocked too

⁃ Wider ETH community attitude to scaling is bad in level of acknowledgement it’s atrociously bad right now. Optimistic roll ups have felt like a disappointment so far and ZK aren’t EVM compatible yet

⁃ Misaligned incentives between people who got rich holding ETH and the usab...