Original title: "Ansem's Secret To Getting 10x Richer In Crypto NOW"
Guest: Ansem, well-known trader
Original translation: zhouzhou, Ismay, BlockBeats

Editor's note: In this podcast, well-known trader Ansem explains why he was bearish on the market some time ago, and shares how he discovered and is optimistic about Solana and Solana's trading strategy and his views on the current status and future of memecoin. He also discussed the NFT market. In addition, Ansem has unique insights into the decline of crypto celebrities, crypto investment opportunities, and the relationship between cryptocurrencies and sports betting, and has explored in depth the future trends of the crypto industry.

In this podcast, Threadguy and Ansem raised and discussed several core questions:

1. Which round of the cycle are we in now? Are we still in a bull market?

2. Ansem was publicly bearish on the market not long ago. What is his logic and what are his main holdings now?

3. How do you think SocialFi will develop next? Did Pump.fun "kill" the meme coin? So will there be a meme coin that surpasses Doge's historical high in this cycle?

4. Is it a wise choice to focus on meme coin trading? How to take root in the bear market, lock in Solana and strengthen your conviction?

5. Discuss the occurrence of the Neiro incident and your views on celebrities' participation in cryptocurrency?

TL;DR

Discussion on the current cycle:Ansem believes that the current cycle is in the early stages of the second or third inning, and believes that the adoption rate of cryptocurrencies will increase, and unprecedented new things will explode.

Why was bearish on the market some time ago:The market did not fluctuate much after the probability of Ethereum ETF approval soared.

How to view the poor performance of L2 tokens:Ansem believes that if you want a blockchain that is more efficient than Ethereum L1, you should no longer use EVM, and thinks that people underestimate the trend of shifting from CEX to DEX.

What will happen to SocialFi next:Meme coins are the original form of SocialFi. Meme coins are not dead, and I believe their super cycle will continue.

Why bet on Solana:Ansem has been paying attention to the Solana ecosystem for a long time and understands its entire development process. Its characteristics are cheaper and faster.

Ansem recalls his experience in the Neiro incident:Shared how to deal with the spread of false information on social media and the "protagonist effect" that followed. He also reflected on his responsibilities as a public figure in the field of cryptocurrency, especially the pressure and challenges he faced when sharing investment opportunities.

Traders' mentality adjustment and how to turn things around:Newbies should learn to be the first participant in every opportunity.

The following is the original text of the conversation (the original content has been deleted and reorganized for easier reading and understanding):

Discussion of cycles, looking forward to the outbreak of new things

Threadguy: How is your mentality recently?

Ansem:I feel great. This should be the third cycle I have experienced. The transaction is progressing very smoothly, and the number of fans has increased from 100,000 in December last year to almost 500,000 now.

Threadguy: Do you think your number of fans can reflect how many new people have joined this circle?

Ansem:I think so. I increased by about 400,000 in the first six months. Later, at a certain stage, the weekly growth began to slow down. When it started to slow down in March and April, I thought it might be due to the market starting to concentrate, but it has started to pick up a bit recently, which is indeed a good indicator of the retail market. Looking back at the previous cycle, some of the big followers also grew dramatically. When their growth stagnates, you know that it seems that not many people are entering the market again.

Threadguy: What round do you think we are in this cycle? Are we still in a bull market?

Ansem: I think it’s the second or third round. It’s still in the very early stages. The reason I say that is that there are not many major events yet. In previous cycles, we would experience a rotation of various altcoins, but now we don’t see a broad rise in various fields. Although Solana and some meme coins are performing crazy, there is also some movement in the AI field, but DeFi has hardly moved, and L2 has not changed much.

The awareness phase of this cycle will be different, and now a lot of mainstream institutions are promoting cryptocurrencies and emphasizing the future of cryptocurrencies. I think the market attention will be more stable because of the passive inflows of funds from these ETFs.

Threadguy: How do you think the adoption rate of cryptocurrencies will change this time?

Ansem:Gold is worth about $13 trillion, and Bitcoin is only about $1.2 trillion now. The contrast between Bitcoin and gold is quite strong. Stocks have been rising because money needs to find places to invest, and this will also happen in the cryptocurrency field.

The price performance of gold against Bitcoin in the past nearly 15 years, source: Woobull

Threadguy: Do you have any investments other than cryptocurrencies now?

Ansem:I've diversified a little bit, recently bought Galaxy stock, and I also have some Robinhood and Coinbase stock, but I haven't diversified too much outside of crypto.

Threadguy: What do you think about the 2024 cycle?

Ansem:My thoughts have changed a lot, the rebound at the beginning of the year was very strong, almost a V-shaped rebound, but not all altcoins have set new highs, and I think it may take until later in 2024 for a bigger rally.

What I'm really interested in is whether there will be something sudden and explosive in this cycle like NFT and DeFi. Because every time something like this appears, no one can foresee it. Although meme coins have performed strongly this time, we have seen this happen before with Dogecoin and Shib.

Threadguy: Do you think that unknowns like DeFi and NFT must change every cycle?

Ansem：I don't think it has to change every cycle, but there will always be some new things that have never been seen before that will rise wildly. Because there is nothing to refer to, there is no historical data to compare, and its potential for growth is unknown. There are many protocols in DeFi now that do have good revenue, with stable teams and financial support behind them, but their performance is not that outstanding. If you look back at 2019 to 2020, Aave rose about 2,000 times at the time, and that was the first time everyone saw something like this.

Why are you bearish on the market

Threadguy：You publicly bearish on the market at a good time not long ago. What was your logic? What is your attitude towards risk now?

Ansem tweeted that he lost about $250,000 in the last month, which is a quarter of his assets, and is seriously considering cashing out and leaving the cryptocurrency market forever. Ansem admitted that he had completely lost his advantage in the current market, felt lost, and had been trading like dog shit recently, making a series of wrong decisions.

Ansem: I turned bearish after the probability of Ethereum ETF approval soared from 20% to 80%. When the probability was only 20%, the price of ETH was around $3,200 or $3,300. When the probability of approval soared to 80%, market sentiment suddenly became optimistic, and ETH immediately rose from $3,300 to $3,900, close to the annual high.

I was getting really bullish, thinking everything was going to hit new highs, Bitcoin was going to $75,000, Ethereum was going to $4,000 or $4,500, I thought the whole market, including meme coins, was going to hit new highs. But that week there wasn’t a lot of movement, and the following week the market was just consolidating, hovering around the highs.

I was like, this can’t be possible, there’s so much good news, the regulatory environment is getting better, presidential candidates are talking about crypto, institutions are promoting Bitcoin ETFs, and there’s plenty of liquidity. But the market never broke through the highs, and that’s when I started to get bearish. I thought maybe Bitcoin and Ethereum would continue to consolidate, while meme coins would continue to rise.

My strategy at the time was to keep most of SOL and meme coins, and then short some ETH to see what happened next. But meme coins rose a little and then fell back, and I thought, no, it looks like the whole market will fall. After all, we didn't have a big pullback at that time. Bitcoin only pulled back 15% to 20% at most, and there was no big pullback of 30% or 40%.

I wrote a long article at the time, telling everyone that we were close to the top of the range, and you could choose to sell some and wait until it returns to the low point of the range before buying again, or hedge the risk through other means. If you do nothing, your portfolio may shrink by 40% when the market pulls back, and then you will be in a dilemma of not wanting to sell at the support level. I diversified some of the risk in about early June, and I bought some assets when the market pulled back, and then shorted them again, and repeated operations. Now I am not taking risks, but more waiting. I am still very optimistic about the end of the year and the end of 2025. Patience is the key at present.

Related reading: 《From the top meme KOL to losing money, Ansem: Why doesn't it work? 》

Threadguy: What are your main holdings now?

Ansem: I would be bullish on Solana relative to other currencies. If I am bullish on the trading pair of Solana and Ethereum, then I can hold SOL spot and short Ethereum at the same time to maintain the proportion of long positions. My current position is neutral. In addition to Solana, I also have some Helium and meme coins.

The SOL/ETH exchange rate has maintained a strong rise since the end of last year

Threadguy: Are you Ethereum's "Public Enemy No. 1"?

Ansem:They really don't like me. When I pushed this point of view last year, everyone thought it was impossible. Now, SOL's market value has reached a new high.

Which narratives are optimistic about?

Threadguy: If we are in the second or third phase of the bull run, what are some of the big narratives that you think have not yet been realized?

Ansem:There are a few big narratives that have not yet fully unfolded, one of which is the L2 tokens that people are not paying much attention to right now, which have performed very poorly this year, and the market sentiment of Ethereum is slowly turning negative now. I think that L2 based on EVM actually doesn't make much sense. If you want to build a blockchain that is more efficient than Ethereum L1, you should not use EVM anymore, but use other virtual machines, so that Rollup can handle more transactions and the fees are lower, so I think those non-EVM L2s will be more promising.

I also think DePIN is undervalued, which is why I hold Helium. The use case of this type of network makes a lot of sense to outsiders, leveraging resources from different regions and using incentives to make them work together can greatly reduce costs.

Another thing is that people underestimate the trend of moving from CEX to DEX. If you look at the ratio of on-chain transactions to CEX, the difference in this cycle is very large, and many teams are focusing on this area, not only doing automatic market makers, but also on-chain perpetual contract trading, etc. This is because we now have a good enough infrastructure to compete with CEXs like Binance.

Meme coins are the original form of SocialFi

Threadguy: What will happen to SocialFi next?

Ansem:I also like SocialFi very much. Meme coins are the original form of SocialFi. It shows people’s enthusiasm for community buying and selling. You compete or collaborate with others in a group. Plus now that everyone wants to issue their own tokens, there will definitely be a social application that seizes the opportunity to financialize anything that goes viral. Pump.fun may be that app, but there will definitely be apps that continue to take advantage of this trend.

While some people have issues with these SocialFi apps making too much money from the Solana ecosystem, this will always change. In the crypto world, if a platform makes a lot of money and finds a clear product-market fit, and the community thinks they are taking too much, there will always be competitors or existing teams will adjust their strategies to make the user experience better. This is how the crypto world works. It is too easy to copy a product or build a new product in a similar way. This kind of competition will always happen, and the end result is to move in the most efficient direction.

Threadguy: Do you think Pump.fun “killed” meme coins?

Ansem: I don’t think Pump.fun “killed” meme coins, meme coins are not dead, and I still believe that the super cycle of meme coins will continue, and they will continue to be a good risk exposure for all these L1 and L2. But I think what people don’t realize is how fast the rise of meme coins is, there is always a cool down period after that, and the market will go sideways, and either the price will fall directly back, or the price will rush up and then go sideways and rise again. Now I believe in this super cycle more than before.

The reason I thought BONK would do well in the beginning was because Bonk was the only risk exposure token on Solana at the time, and there were almost no other altcoins on Solana at that time. I’ve always said that if you use DeFi on the Solana ecosystem, you’ll eventually get rewarded because no one was using these protocols at the time, like Jupiter, Jito, these protocols, they were all undervalued. At that time, Solana had just broken through $30, which it had been for almost a year. When it broke through, I knew people would start to move to Solana, and once they got to Solana, they would buy BONK.

Meme coins as an exposure to Solana was not a crazy idea. Since then, my view on the meme coin super cycle has become more solid because they have outperformed other altcoins by a large margin, but that’s not to say that they won’t fall. Any coin that has risen 100x or even 1,000x will fall back. This is the norm in crypto.

Threadguy: Do you think there will be meme coins that surpass Doge’s all-time high in this cycle?

Ansem：If the total cryptocurrency market value reaches $10 trillion in this cycle, I think it is possible. When the market value of these coins is close to the level of Ethereum, there will indeed be some very exaggerated situations.

Threadguy：Although DOGE is a veteran currency, it seems to be a bit outdated now. Do you know anyone who is actively discussing Doge?

Ansem：There really is no one left, the old meme coins are much less influential than the new meme coins. There is a lot of old money in the crypto market, which usually drives the volatility of Doge, but you see Elon Musk posted a meme about Doge two days ago, and the price of Doge coin didn't move at all. It's just like Bitcoin and Ethereum had good news but nothing happened. If a major event should cause volatility but it doesn't cause any reaction, it means that the market sentiment is not good.

Threadguy：What do you think of those old players who have become extremely bearish just because of the crazy rise of meme coins?

Ansem：I think their point of view is reasonable. In the past, when meme coins and small altcoins soared, it meant that the market was close to the top, but this cycle is a little different. Apart from meme coins, no other sectors have been particularly crazy. So I think we are still in the early stages of the cycle. Also, Bitcoin and Ethereum haven’t broken their all-time highs yet, and it would be ridiculous if they peaked now.

Threadguy: What impact does Pump.fun have on the meme coin space?

Ansem:It definitely dilutes the low-cap meme coins. When the Solana ecosystem first became popular, some coins could maintain a market cap of $1 million for days or even weeks, but now this hardly happens anymore.

Threadguy: How to find the next WIF in this meme coin craze?

Ansem:I usually look at coins in the $5 million to $10 million market cap range, and I also look for meme coins that are unique. If a coin is themed around a specific animal, its market cap ceiling is usually the highest market cap of similar coins currently on the market. If you find a new theme that is different from existing coins and a community forms around it, then there may be a "crazy rise".

Threadguy: Will funds move from meme coins to those infrastructure-type, more real-value coins?

Ansem：I personally still think meme coins will have another wave of rise. But think about it, if the market value of meme reaches 30 billion, 40 billion, and multiple meme coins reach this level, will they really rise to 1 trillion? In that case, I'm not sure what percentage of the entire crypto market is meme, but I think once they account for a large enough proportion, it may be time to start thinking about reducing risk and turning to other areas.

Threadguy：What is the best way to issue coins in 2024?

Ansem：It's good on a platform like Pump.fun, but the key is not to issue tokens at a super low market value. Because once the market value is too low, there will always be people who take advantage of insider trading and cause a large sell-off on the first day. If you have enough influence, the token should be issued at a higher market value. Ideally, even if they do decide to issue tokens, I don't think they necessarily have to circulate them immediately, but should lock up the supply for a period of time. This at least ensures that they will put more effort into the project, rather than just focusing on the performance of the first day or first week.

Threadguy: Recently, because of the depression of cryptocurrencies, people have begun to turn their attention to sports gambling. What do you think about cryptocurrencies and sports gambling, and the future of gambling?

Ansem:I think meme coins are a bit like sports betting. When you buy ultra-low market value coins, the hit rate is a bit like when you play a bet with five times the odds. Most of the time you will not win. However, the difference with meme coins is that although the hit rate is also low, the return rate is much higher. With sports betting, unless you bet on the kind of compound bets with dozens of times the odds, it is impossible to achieve such a return.

Threadguy: Will meme coins replace low-end sports betting?

Ansem:I wouldn’t say replace, but I think they will become just as common, and people will “bet” on low-cap coins in the crypto space just like they bet on sports betting.

How did you discover the “Solana opportunity”?

Threadguy: If you haven’t made 10 million or even millions of dollars now, is it a wise choice to focus on meme coin trading, or should you focus your attention elsewhere now?

Ansem: I wouldn't recommend going all-in on meme coins. The best portfolio for a crypto newbie would be 70% in "safe" assets, which for me is Solana, but it could also be Bitcoin, Ethereum, Coinbase stock, which are relatively safe investments in the crypto space.

I also think there's a lot of opportunity right now in altcoins that have fallen sharply from their highs or that are new but haven't received much attention. Because all the attention is on meme coins right now, almost no one is paying attention to other areas. If you can do enough research in other areas and find those altcoins that have potential, that's also a good direction.

My Solana trade last year was like this. Everyone thought Solana was finished after the FTX incident, but a few people took advantage of it and it ended up being one of the best trades of this cycle.

And there will always be opportunities like Solana because a lot of people don’t do their own research and rely too much on what the market is doing and what everyone is talking about. When a space gets a lot of attention, prices go up very quickly and people move very quickly. But if you can find these opportunities before they really explode, that’s when you can make a hundred times the return.

Threadguy: Is Solana your most profitable trade ever? How did you find this opportunity and feel so confident about it? If you were to repeat this trade in this market cycle, what would you be looking for?

Ansem: Yes, it’s really a combination of things, and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to follow the Solana ecosystem for a long time and understand its entire development process. I bought SOL when it was only $1.50. In early January 2021, I saw that Ethereum and DeFi on Ethereum were doing well. I thought that if the crypto market was to become larger, there would definitely be multiple L1s that would succeed, especially since Ethereum had already started to have problems with congestion and high fees at the time, and Solana's narrative was "cheaper and faster."

I was involved in a lot of Solana things at the time, witnessed the growth of the entire ecosystem with my own eyes, and saw the troubles it encountered. I followed all of Solana's early technical upgrades and attended the Breakpoint conference in 2022. At the conference, I talked to many developers and members of the Solana community. Everyone was discussing the progress they had made behind the scenes during the year, and although some of Solana's early projects did not perform well, the team was still working hard.

At the end of 2022, the public perception of Solana was very negative, and everyone thought Solana was often down, but at the Breakpoint conference, I saw the opposite of the outside world. I remember that they announced a partnership with Google Cloud, and the price of Solana rose to $39. At that time, I attended the last party of Breakpoint, and everything felt good, so I decided to go all in and thought it was a good opportunity for the next market cycle.

The atmosphere at the Solana Breakpoint event in May 2023, source: Solana Foundation

Then FTX collapsed. I remember that I was still in the club at the time, and someone told me that I needed to withdraw funds from FTX. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. I didn’t know that the situation was getting worse until I got off the plane. Then someone told me that CZ had just bought FTX. SOL fell from $20 to $8.

After the Breakpoint conference and the FTX crash, I knew that if we had another bull run, the developers who stayed on the chain and continued to build would definitely drive the development of the chain, and eventually the negative impact caused by SBF would pass. I thought to myself that if Solana was going to rebound, now would be the best time to buy it, but I didn't buy it at that time. I was watching and felt that it might fall to $2 or even lower. I waited until the price returned to around $15-20 before I started buying. Around May 2023, I started to express more public bullishness on Solana.

Threadguy: What is the next crypto trend that excites you now?

Ansem: I think things like meme coins and Pump.fun trading are like a small game. It's not a complete game, but the kind of small game where you guess which coin will explode and then quickly enter the liquidity pool. I feel like in crypto, you can get a lot more creative with these kinds of mini-games, and Solana is a great platform for that. Because Solana can handle a lot of transactions, it’s very cheap, and users can easily do a lot of micro-transactions.

Small games like Flappy Bird are popular on iPhone and Android, and players are just chasing high scores, with no monetary incentive at all. But in crypto, we can build similar mini-games on-chain and add financial elements. Add to that the involvement of the community, and everyone is competing against each other on the chain, and I feel like there are a lot of creative things that can be done in this space that no one has really touched yet.

Threadguy：So you see Pump.fun as one of the millions of apps in the app store right?

Ansem：Yes, for me, Pump.fun is one of the clearest examples of Solana product market fit, Pump.fun is even more revenue per day than Solana itself, and it can do this because Solana can easily handle a large number of on-chain transactions, and the transaction fees are very low. There can be many applications like Pump.fun because Solana is designed in a way that supports this parallel processing. Even if there are high fees in one area of Solana, it will not affect the operation of applications in other places. Its parallel processing allows many different applications to exist at the same time.

Pump.fun protocol has accumulated nearly $100 million in revenue, data source: DeFiLlama

Threadguy: In the early iPhone era, developers were like entering a gold rush, and everyone was rushing to develop applications and put them on the app store. Do you think we will see a similar gold rush on high-performance chains such as Solana or Monad?

Ansem:I think so. There is a big difference between crypto applications and applications in the app store. Although some applications also have financial components, financialization is more likely in the crypto field.

Threadguy: Indeed, traditional applications are difficult to monetize. Either they charge a 99 cent download fee, or they make money through micro-transactions like Clash of Clans, but it is difficult to make a profit on a large scale.

Ansem:In theory, the profit margins for applications on blockchains should be much better, especially running on these high-performance chains, so I think this is really a completely open design space that has not been fully explored yet.

Neiro Incident

Threadguy: Let's talk about the Neiro incident, how did it happen?

Ansem：I was on vacation with my family and saw everyone on Twitter talking about Neiro. I was confused about what was going on, so I asked everyone which Neiro coin was the right one. Someone sent it to me (lowercase Neiro), and I thought that was the right one, so I shared it. Then someone told me it was a scam and invited me to participate in a Space. I joined the discussion and told everyone in it that you can buy any coin you want, because I don’t want to endorse any particular coin, because I’m afraid that supporting one will make people unhappy. Although I emphasized this many times in the discussion space, it obviously didn’t work.

Related reading: "Review of Meme's new coin Neiro: Market value of nearly 50 million US dollars in two days, Ansem, the master of leading orders, joins the game to boost it"

Threadguy: Do you think you "killed" Neiro yourself?

Ansem: I may have done it, but I know that if I did nothing, this would have developed like this.

Threadguy: This matter feels to me like some kind of "cabal coin" with a crazy narrative, the second dogecoin or something like that, but you, a cat coin Pups, which was launched as a joke, has a higher market value.

Ansem:This is one of the things I mentioned in my tweet. The second coin reached a certain height, I remember it was 800 million or 9.8 billion, my cat coin suddenly rose to a market value of 10 billion.

Threadguy: This "protagonist" phenomenon is very interesting. It's an awkward position, and you can't act like a victim. But in fact, there are only three possible outcomes when you are a "protagonist": First, you founded something, became a unicorn, and succeeded; second, you collapsed in the spotlight and were completely destroyed; third, you disappeared.

Ansem:Few people have such an experience, getting so much attention in a short period of time, countless eyes are staring at you, and you have no control over the stories that others make up at random. For example, when the Iggy incident happened, I stood up to express support and so on, but a week later someone released an AI fake video of me and her chatting on the road.

Someone else at a party told me that he had met my friend Drew, but I had no idea who Drew was. He also said that he talked to Drew for an hour, and Drew kept making up stories about how Ansem was going to work with me on this project, and that he was helping my company do this and that, and the guy actually believed Drew. I was just wondering, how many times has this happened?

Threadguy: Was the interaction between Arthur Hayes and Pups planned in advance?

Ansem: I swear it wasn’t, I was surprised that he messaged me at the time, we did talk before, but we didn’t plan anything together.

Celebrity coin chaos, it’s really hard to be a KOL

Threadguy: What do you think of celebrity coin issuance in this cycle?

Ansem：When I first saw celebrities joining the crypto world, I thought it made sense. Meme coins were exploding. I had ideas about social tokens. These celebrities have a lot of fans. If they join crypto, they should make a lot of money. Their fan base will also be incentivized to interact with these artists and celebrities.

I also tweeted very actively about these things. The first celebrity was Iggy. I remember she announced her CA, which should be worth about $10 million. I tried to buy it, but the first transaction failed. I didn't even realize it failed at the time. It took a long time to find out. Later, the price came down and I bought it again.

After that, she tweeted and asked me what to do with the supply, whether to burn part of it, and then we talked about it in Space. I suggested that she burn part of the supply. We talked about celebrities joining cryptocurrencies, her views on cryptocurrencies and her plans. That’s when I found out, she told us that someone was maliciously operating these coins, talking to people, and then trying to launch these coins under her name. She said, "No, I’m going to do this myself."

Iggy talks about her meme coin MOTHER on the podcast, source: Zach Song Show

The other one was Caitlyn Jenner, I didn’t really participate in that project, I just asked a lot of questions in Space.

Then DeVito, I was really hurt. I was really motivated because he was a super influential artist, and I knew if he was active on these crypto apps, it would bring a lot of new users, and if he got his entire community into crypto, that would be even better.

So I signed him up and co-hosted a Space with them, and someone said they were selling coins from the developer wallet right now. I was stunned, I was still talking to him, and this happened. Then I said to them on Space, "If you start selling on the first day of the token launch, people will not trust you." A lot of the people on the team don't know much about crypto, but they know that there is a quick way to make money in crypto.

Threadguy: If a celebrity enters crypto and just launches a meme coin at the risk of their brand, without really investing any capital, then they are probably just trying to make a quick buck.

Ansem:I agree that as long as you have a little bit of connection or interaction with something, whether you are really involved or not, everyone will regard it as your stamp of approval, which bothers me.

Even if you think that celebrities, social tokens and social economy have potential, it should not be those who are eager to issue coins just to make 300,000 quickly. So this is where I was wrong. I thought these people had such a big influence outside the crypto field that they couldn’t just run away with a project. But it turns out that the result is the same every time.

NFT will not die, Ordinals lost money

Threadguy: Is NFT over?

Ansem:I don’t think NFT is cold, it will rise again with the rise of GameFi. Many long-term games will be integrated with NFTs, which are either used in-game or provide additional rewards to holders. Meme coins have performed strongly in this cycle, and I think they have similarities with NFTs, especially in terms of community interaction and gamification experience, such as the strategic sense of early buying. I believe that someone will find a way to combine gamification and NFTs in the future, and in fact, there may already be teams trying to do so.

Threadguy: What do you think of Ordinals and this piece related to Bitcoin?

Ansem：I lost a lot of money on Ordinals, and I participated in some projects, but I was stuck.

For the Bitcoin ecosystem, my view is that the Bitcoin market is very large, and Bitcoin DeFi and other ecosystems will do well because many Bitcoin holders have a lot of cash. Those old Bitcoin whales, who hold Bitcoin, may use DeFi or Ordinals and other things. This was my initial idea, but I am not sure now whether this can attract new markets. Because many old Bitcoin whales have actually participated in various projects on Ethereum and Solana. So the key to the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem is whether it can attract Bitcoin holders who never do anything on the chain.

Threadguy：Have you ever thought about putting all your money into Bitcoin and not moving it for 2 years?

Ansem：I have indeed considered it. Sometimes I think about telling everyone to sell other assets and put all the money into Bitcoin cold wallets.

Quick Question and Answer Session

Threadguy: What do you think about the state of angel investing in crypto in 2024?

Ansem:I think the state of angel investing is pretty good right now. I didn't do any investment in the last cycle, but I heard that a lot of investment in the last cycle was in the infrastructure sector. I think the opportunity for infrastructure projects to reach a valuation of $10 billion is basically over, unless you can prove that it is worth that price.

In the last cycle, if you invested in an L2 project at a super low price, you almost certainly knew that it would increase in price because someone would always find it. But on the application side, investing is much more difficult. You need to know whether the founder is good and whether the application has prospects, and this thought process is more complicated for people. But if you can get access to such deals, you may do well because this is the area that is most likely to explode in this cycle.

Threadguy: A few months ago, there was a popular saying that the only way to make money was to participate in those secret transaction flows. Do you think you can make money without participating in angel investment in this cycle?

Ansem: I think you can, especially now that this idea has become a consensus. Many people are now reluctant to invest in highly valued infrastructure projects. When these projects go public, the valuations will be lower. If there are teams building an ecosystem, while the valuations are lowered, some products will explode, and you can buy them at a price lower than when they were first issued.

Threadguy: When do you think a new chain will surpass Solana?

Ansem: I think time is the biggest factor. Even if there is a powerful L1 chain like Solana that can build the same applications as Solana, it still needs the developer community, users and traders to be active on the chain.

One thing I have been thinking about this cycle is that I think Solana will perform better than people expect, in fact, it is already happening. And once it performs well, there will be a lot of projects launched later in the cycle, and there will be a lot of new projects that have not yet been launched. If Solana goes to $1,000 or even higher, and new projects are launched at one-tenth of its valuation, there will be a lot of people who want to lock in this part of the profit and look for new investment opportunities.

In the last cycle, all the projects were launched almost at the same time, and I could quickly rotate between Solana, Luna, Avalanche, etc. But this cycle is different. Solana may explode first, and then Monad or other L2 chains may explode. These new projects will not appear at the same time.

Threadguy: Do you really think Solana can go to $1,000?

Ansem: I really think it can.

Threadguy: So how much do you think Bitcoin will go?

Ansem: I think about $250,000.

Threadguy: Is it time to readjust, reset your mindset, change your perspective, and welcome the mid- to late-stage?

Ansem: I think so, especially if you feel that you have not performed well before. We are in a sideways phase now, there has been no major volatility for several months, most altcoins peaked in March, and even Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana have not set new highs in five months. I do think it is a good time to rethink.

Threadguy: Assuming you are starting from scratch and have all cash, how do you configure it in the crypto field?

Ansem：Don't think about "it has increased 7 times, 10 times", but start from scratch and consider how to allocate assets according to the current market environment.

Threadguy：By the way, how does it feel when Vitalik retweets your tweet?

Ansem：I have never met him or talked to him. I was really shocked when he retweeted. I thought, it's impossible, how can Vitalik pay attention to me, he never intervenes in anything.

Threadguy：If you are a novice trader, is now a good time to learn leverage trading?

Ansem：If you have a small amount of capital, of course you can.

Threadguy: You mentioned before that you made $3,000 to $100,000. Was that done through leveraged trading?

Ansem: Actually I made most of my money through futures trading. I also made a lot on Luna, which was up about 10 times at that time.

Threadguy: Do you think good on-chain traders should switch to futures trading?

Ansem: No, I don't think so. If you want to survive in this field for a long time, you have to be good at both. Spot trading is definitely better than others, but being able to manage risk is also very important.

Threadguy: What are the best and worst trades you have ever made?

Ansem:The best one is Solana, I made a lot of money on Solana in this cycle. The worst one was the short trade of Luna, which I lost a lot of money.

Threadguy: Which coin do you think will "die" in this cycle?

Ansem:It may be Cardano, because there are many strong L1 chains with good communities and technologies, and Cardano has not kept up.

Threadguy: Which coin do you think is the most undervalued?

Ansem: I think it's MetaPlex. People may only think of it as an NFT platform, but it has many application standards in the entire ecosystem. In addition, the team is also very stable and has been operating on Solana for a while. They may be doing a token buyback. This is a very undervalued project.

Another one is Kamino, which is also a good project and everyone has been talking about it recently. If Solana continues to rise, people will continue to use its DeFi applications. Although most of the funds are currently concentrated in meme coins, Solana's DeFi field has not really exploded.

Threadguy: Do you think you are a hero or a villain in this cycle?

Ansem: I think it's probably 50-50 now, and I will be the hero in the end. But the problem is that there is a big gap between what the outside world thinks and what I actually do.

Threadguy: What advice do you have for young crypto players on how to "turn over" in this cycle?

Ansem: Like my previous example, if you want to go from zero to 1,000 times or 10,000 times the return, you must be the first participant in every opportunity. If you are always the first to arrive, you will eventually catch a big opportunity. In addition, it is important to stay active and find a small group of like-minded people to do research together. They will see things that you have not noticed. Finally, don't just rely on information on CT, which is usually lagging behind.

Be active in the project's community, join Discord groups, various chat groups, and even contact people you don't know but want to communicate with. This is what I did in the first cycle, trying to communicate with as many people as possible. At that time, no one knew who I was, so I interacted with others on Twitter and posted comments. To be honest, such interactions will bring you a lot of opportunities.

Threadguy: You were one of the first participants in almost every new project in the last cycle. How do you balance personal and work when you are in the deep bull market?

Ansem: It is indeed impossible. The hardest thing for me in the last cycle was staring at charts all day and hardly living in the real world. This is also one of the reasons why I lost money in 2022. Even if you are very active in the encryption field, you need to maintain some real relationships.

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