Thread by @notsofast

remember when I understood defi yeah me neither

thinking about 2019-20 when (as @AgentChud correctly recounted) I dumbly and deliberately faded it until the blowoff bull summer where I paid way too much tuition being brutally late but still fortunately had some transferrable shitcoin-aping skill plus bro connections (s/o tism boyz) who propped me up, and I was able to do some damage AS WELL AS catch up and rotate everything into cryptopunks and nail the NFT meta

I still like defi but owing to seeing a close collaborator blow up high 8 figs from (among other things) contract risk I never actually bothered paying attention closely enough to doing the things I know make you $$$ in the defi trade:

farming new protocols (gay tbh since like 2022 or so, hyperliquid excepted)
yeeting early into capped pools that print outsize
looping (this to me is like leverage PLUS contract risk)
um yield or vaults or something idk

thing is I still have some near unmatched defi exposure but it's basically just @ethena_labs via pure luck (lore:)

also some seed round stuff from 2023 era but all that stuff is either in the valley of head-down progress or struggling at end of runway/life

thing about defi is nothing really stands out in my mind from anything else. I get core primitives like curve and aave, but I couldn't tell you why CRV is down only while aave is doing kinda good and I certainly haven't seen anything seed round investable that looks more like a new core primitive, everything looks like Just Another Vault

maybe that is the thing, most of it is. but for example my eyes glaze over when I try to figure out why liquity or maple is Not Just Another Vault

idk fuck all in Ethena I guess until I figure out more

I'm much more in tune with what AI can/will do, and social tokens

RWA obviously will be big but my thesis on that is that crypto people are btfo on the best opportunities for this. it's locked up by the late-to-crypto institutional entrants who are (ab)using their existing power in the real world space to both push the narra that RWA will be big while also blackholing talent and most importantly only letting their own insiders found and seed something kingmade

RWA is Not For Us, it's the late big-money catch-up trade

meanwhile I'm just gonna keep trench grinding over the summer and doing core self sovereign crypto bagbuilding stuff like always

fuck I didn't mean to write a whole ass thread

poop balls