Did not see that coming ! I had already sold my POLIS tokens, but bought some back last night ! Anybody knows what's happening ? This project had lost some serious money with the FTX collapse  and I thought it was all over for them, but it seems I was wrong ! I guess it goes back to fundamentals... Star Atlas is a heck of a project, with a huge following and I think most of us want to see it succeed. I did not see the Atlas token following though, for some reason only the DAO token is pumping.

Found it !

A few preview screenshots:







Youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjNC97cjNz8

gets interesting from 7 min. onwards

I know, but SBF presented himself as a trader who became a billionaire through arbitrage. Not only this but he claims he did it within one or 2 years ! I have not heard of anyone else who has become rich through arbitrage in such a short amount of time. For those who bought lots of Bitcoin around 2010, yes, it is possible to make a fortune but not for arbitrage traders.

Could it be ?

Some influencer posted very incriminating information on YouTube recently... can't find the link anymore, but it talked about the alleged murder of Nikolai Mushegian, CEO of Maker Dao and how Nikolai was about to blow the whistle on SBF and had received death threats and all. The video goes on about alleged connections of Epstein to SBF and Alameda Research.
It's mostly speculation at this point but if you think about it, Epstein may have been behind SBF's sudden and unexplained fortune around 2018. No doubt Epstein had heard of crypto by 2018, and he may have tried to establish a dominant presence through SBF... let's face it, SBF becoming a billionaire through "arbitrage" within a year is the most ridiculous thing you could ever imagine. You needed several 100 million dollars to begin with, and no bank would lend money for high risk crypto trading even today.

Anyway, I will keep searching for that video link and update my post if I find it !

I just sold my 150 Solana out of FUD ( thinking I might buy it back at $5 soon ), and I am now worried many other projects were backed by Alameda Research. Are these projects doomed too, or can some of them ( like Helium ) survive and eventually thrive again ?

Well Band Protocol is an Oracle project, so like Chainlink it's solid technology that is not likely to go away even if Bitcoin goes to 5K. Let's also remember than the crypto market is fairly irrational sometimes, like when Cardano introduced smart contracts and everybody thought the price would at least double after that, and it just kept going down like it had before. So you can have great news or events happening and your favourite token can still go down... but you can also have the opposite happen in a bear market. Of course it will never take off the way it would in a bull run, but you can still have a 3X sometimes, like what we saw with Quant a few months ago.

So this is one of the few tokens that seems to be in a hurry to get back up. Of course the market will push it down like it is doing right now, but it will bounce right back up as soon as Ethereum or Bitcoin hint an upward move. I've compared it's behaviour with other "highly volatile" tokens like Solana and Helium and Band manages to outperform these most of the time.
So why is this happening ? I don't see LINK or other Oracle projects pumping ? Or is it because people think BAND could be the next Matic or Quant ? I personally don't think so, but I got me a solid position in it  because I see it as a strong project with at least 10X potential.

Well I wouldn't put it all on luck... I've put countless hours into my investments learning as much as I can, going long term on some projects, trading on others.
And sometimes you just have to dump some projects that are not showing any signs of strength for others that are ( I recently dumped some low performing low caps for a solid position in Quant. I'm still in profit, inspite of the dip )

So given the Bitcoin rally I thought I would update my position: My portfolio still holding strong with the same dollar value it had when BTC was 30K. ( BTC is still under 21K ) 

I've only started noticing the Trading Volume stats on my favourite projects. I am a little intrigued as to what this exactly means, does it really matter much ? Some lesser known projects like Yield Yak have barely $4,000 in Trading Volume, yet the TVL is something like $50 million, whereas a better known project like Raydium has a Trading volume of more than $6 Million, with a TVL of only a little more than triple the TVL of Yield Yak  ( $160 Million TVL )
I'm also surprised that some lesser known gaming projects like Vulcan Forged have a high trading volume , whereas others ( like Axie Infinity ) have a relatively low trading volume.
The way I interpret it right now ( correct me if I'm wrong ) is that trading volume is high when an ecosystem is very active and adoption is growing relative to other projects, so it's a good indicator to buy into that project.

By that, I mean the whole Terra Ecosystem: Luna Classic, Terra, Mirror Protocol, Anchor Protocol and even their stable coin UST !! ( Now renamed USTC )
 
So news of Do Kwon now getting arrested, his assets frozen etc, pretty much as bad as you can get.. yet the whole Terra Ecosystem is pumping !?
WTF is this !!
I think this is something so odd that may have never been seen in the history of trading ? I am aware that they are burning tokens but the supply is still ridiculously high... also Luna Classic is ranked 33 ? Ahead of many amazing projects with a clean record, huge volume and high revenue like AAVE !!

There is something going on here, and I don't think Do Kwon is involved anymore as he's pretty much on his way to prison, so what do you guys think ? Binance is behind this ? Luna fans ?
Worth noting we're not in a bull run, we're in fact very near the bottom of a brutal bear market ! This makes this story all the more unbelievable.

I used quotation marks for the term "hidden gems" to emphasize the sarcasm of that remark by the way.
Never thought it would be taken literally and misquoted so many times !
Anyway, there are a few coins who have fallen below negative 100% and are still in the game. Klima DAO one of such ( still forging ahead with their roadmap ) which currently sits at negative 99.9 %. LABS Group another I can think of, which was recently at negative 99.4% and still making moves trying to recover. This particular one is tackling the Real Estate niche ( not virtual Real Estate, actual Real Estate ), so I'm looking to buy into this project myself. So don't assume because a project has hit negative 100% it's a "dead" project, it might be just an extremely low cap project hitting rock bottom. Even Bitcoin fell from $30 to one cent at one point.
By the way, Celsius is another project that officially went bankrupt, yet it rallied pretty good since that happened. The way I see it, this is crypto... anything can happen. I wouldn't invest in these bankrupt projects though... but someone else may make a profit from it.

Okay so Terra LUNA probably the most notorious collapse, but ... were there any other tokens you thought would do well and fell below negative 100% ?

Here's one that was hyped by a lot of Influencers earlier this year: The Neighbours
Supposed to be a realistic game / metaverse where you could buy and furnish your own real estate.

Went from a peak of $147 to an unbelievable $0.006203  !!

Checked their page, they're still in business

Any other hidden "gems" ? 

With DeFi projects struggling to regain trust since LUNA's collapse, and the current bear market I think this was the perfect time for the play to earn gaming sector to explode, or at least to gain traction in the way Axie Infinity did in early 2021. Sadly just there aren't any exciting offerings right now that I can see... Illuvium and Star Atlas, two of the first "AAA" games in the space are still in development, and may be for another year or so. I heard Marvel was getting into the space with their own breed of games soon, but so far ... nothing, same goes for "Swords of Blood", another AAA game that is still in development.
I mean, it looks like 2024 will be a great year for crypto play to earn games when these games get released, but what do we have now, 2022 ?  DeFi Kingdoms ? TownStar ? My Neighbour Alice ? Gods Unchained ? Yes we have those ( unless I'm mistaken ) and they kinddaaa look interesting but to be honest they can't possibly compete for users with the mainstream games currently out there, which will cost you money and won't earn you a penny. Let's face it, some of us older gamers here don't have many spare hours a day , maybe one hour, and if that hour will earn me $20 and looks kind of lame or childish, I rather spend that hour playing something that looks amazing or intricate or fun , even if it costs me money. So it's a long shot for Gaming studios like Gala Games or Vulcan Forged to try to lure new gamers into the space in 2022 -2023 with the current lineup of childish and lame games we have.

Maybe not... but it's as close at it will get   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu697hc37Xc

Speaking of Luna... WTF happened to the airdrops they promised ? Many investors were completely unprepared for the collapse and the airdrops were a form of "compensation". I wasn't expecting much but to this day I got nothing.

Yes... no need to FOMO into projects that have ruined thousands, maybe even millions of investors. Just grab a quality project like Helium while it's still under-priced. Biggest gainer in my portfolio, up 35% today !

Terra Luna Classic and Voyager are two projects nobody expects to attract a lot of investors anymore. Yet they're going parabolic ? Right at the bottom of one of the worst bear markets crypto's ever had ??
This is madness.

Yes but it is a fact that you can make more money than some of these JP Morgan traders with crypto. I believe a Quant would make around 300K a year, and that's considered extremely well paid in the finance world. In crypto, 300K is nothing to brag about.
For me a professional trader / investor would be someone who makes enough from his investments to not need to worry about a 9 to 5 anymore, although even rich investors these days seem to always want more and end up running multiple businesses and working even longer hours than before.

Maybe I did my numbers wrong ?    Well it did help to buy a lot of Ethereum when we hit 18K, and also I have a good, early position into projects like Optimism that went 3X at one point. So if we go back a few days ago ( when BTC hit 24K ) I was actually in profit compared to mid-May by quite a nice margin because many of my Alt positions did very well.

Thanks for the feedback people. I made a lot of mistakes along the way but you've got to accept that as part of the learning process. I moved all my crypto funds into Pax Gold because I wanted an asset that was uncorrelated to Bitcoin and Ethereum, and noticed Gold held its value pretty well through early 2022. I also feel a real investor should have exposure to precious metals, even if these are tokenized assets and Pax Gold is backed by real Gold. Also I've heard some really bad things about Tether and how it's basically a "house of cards" and could collapse at any time. That said, I still need to have some Tether and USDC in my portfolio but Pax Gold could be another way to exit the bull market later on. If you own over a certain amount you can redeem it for real Gold by the way. I am also looking into Silver Stonks, another crypto which lets you access the Silver market and redeem it for real Silver. So even at the bottom of the bear market as we are now I am already planning my exit strategy for the next bull run .
My portfolio is now very diversified, I've used this time to learn to use DeFi , DEXs, hardware wallets and all about new promising projects. I also invest in some large cap trusted projects like Binance and Ethereum. I'm trying my hardest to buy each project at their lowest point but this is near impossible as nobody really knows where the bottom will be.
So to recap, I exited the market with a good amount of capital but realized I needed to put myself in a position that would allow me to grow exponentially whether the market goes up or down.

If the market goes up, my portfolio grows stronger, if the market goes down, I can acquire projects that have the potential to go 5X or 10X in the next bull run. It's risky, but I figured you can't be an investor if you hide your cash indefinitely.