Timeless advice for everyone in crypto. Jason worked with me for 3+ years so we share alot of the same ideas and principles about investing and life.

https://twitter.com/mrjasonchoi/status/1455888139927515137

The only point where I have a different view is the one about upgrading your lifestyle. You should absolutely treat yourself better. If you invest well, you can afford to live better and also still have a lot left over from the last cycle to compound over subsequent cycles.

We are only at new ATH for BTC, and I am already seeing people talking about taking profits. Either we have a bunch of people who have never experienced a real crypto bull market or some people are so scarred by the FTX saga that their investing psyches are permanently damaged. Another short story... I got in crypto in 2017. Prior to that my only brush with crypto was meeting Arthur Hayes in early 2015 when he was raising his seed round for Bitmex. A friend of mine had introduced Bitmex as the Goldman Sachs of crypto so I had to meet him. He pitched me Bitmex and shared his data room with me. I liked Arthur and I thought he had a good business. But he wanted to to raise at $20M and that was steep given where his revenues were at that time. I offered to invest at $10M hoping we would settle at $15M, but he never took the bait. So I didn't pursue the deal further.

I agree with this tweet but have a slightly different view of how this plays out in Asia. Literally every family office I talk to in Asia is loaded with real estate. why? Because many of them (their grandfathers) made their wealth in real estate and this asset has been a reliable store of value/wealth generator for a long time. They are familiar with it and they know how to manage it. Most of these family offices do not have crypto exposure and are highly suspicious of it even thoug they have not really spent much time looking into it. They see that the SEC is going after FTX and Binance. They hear "experts" like Warren Buffet and Jamie Dimon thrashing crypto and they think these guys know better.

March 12, 2020 - exactly 4 years ago and one of the craziest days in my life. The Western world woke up to the threat of Covid-19 that day and markets went into a tailspin. Markets had already been somewhat jittery a few days leading up to Mar 12, but the crash was still unnerving when it came. On that day, the Dow fell 10%, the biggest single day drop since the Black Monday in 1987. The Nasdaq fell 12.3%. BTC was down 35%, while ETH fell 43%. Most altcoins were down 60–80% that day.

I recall during the 2017 bull market, I was in a TG group with a bunch of crypto folks and there was a cartoonist in the group that would draw a new cartoon to commemorate every time BTC crossed the next thousand mark. He was doing this in this spare time, out of goodwill. So he drew a nice cartoon in May 2017 when BTC first crossed the $2K mark. He drew another one in Aug when BTC crossed $3K. He had to do another one later in Aug when BTC crossed $4K. The next one was in Oct when BTC hit $5K and within 2 weeks another one when BTC crossed $6K.

For those of you who are still unsure about where we are in the cycle, we are firmly in a bull market now. Private deal space is getting hyper competitive for infra deals even large ticket sized ones. Serious signs of FOMO appearing and there is a frenzy to deploy.

https://twitter.com/TheBlock__/status/1760651964809929132

Even deals in the Bitcoin ecosystem are heating up quickly. Many investors who were skeptical about activity in the Bitcoin ecosystem only 6 months ago are now convinced, given the relentless momentum of activity and the abundance of capital willing to fund new startups. It's a real sea change in mindset.

So the FED said it is unlikely to cut interest rates in March. Big deal. If not in March, then it will likely happen in May or June. The cuts are coming. They are inevitable because current rates are too high. And with China teetering, housing and commercial real estate markets in many places on edge and inflation coming down, the cuts are just a matter of time. I started Spartan’s hedge fund in August 2018 during the depths of the previous bear market. At that time, I knew we were getting close to the bottom of the market but I had a nagging long term concern. Can crypto survive if interest rates rose sharply at some point?

Had a very upbeat and encouraging meeting with a senior Hong Kong government official yesterday.

The key message is that Hong Kong is opening up in a big way after being "closed" for more than 3 years ands losing some of its historical competitiveness. Besides beinng the financial hub of Asia, Hong Kong wants to be the Fintech and crypto hub of Asia.

To facilitate this, the government will be rolling out a series of business friendly policies that target businesses, family offices, funds, and expats.

The FED put forward a 25bp rate hike yesterday inline with market expectations. It also indicated two more similar rate hikes will follow and the need to stay restrictive for some time. Powell discounted the prospect of a 2023 rate cut, but swaps are pricing in 50 bp reduction. For the first time in over a year the FED did not surprise the market by being more hawkish than expected. With inflation comps getting easier in the coming months, we believe the macro and FED will likely be less of a factor for crypto markets for some time.

0/ With Genesis filing for CH11, market concerns about further contagion effects within crypto are dissipating. With the worst case scenario averted, the market is rightly reflecting this and focused on the improving macro picture outlook instead. 1/ The CH11 filing was the outcome the market was hoping for as it means that there is no risk of a disorderly unwind of Grayscale Trust and hence a need to sell BTC/ETH/ETC into the market putting further pressure on asset prices.

Exactly 4 years ago we launched our first fund - a fundamentals driven crypto hedge fund. At that time my biggest concern was whether crypto assets would hold their value if interest rates rose sharply as crypto assets have never existed in a normalized rate environment. 1/11 While we were deep in crypto winter then, I was convinced that the market would recover in time as adoption and growth returned. Even in winter enough builders stuck around to give me this conviction. 2/11

0/ Interesting question about VC’s exit strategies. Here’s my 2 cents.

https://twitter.com/ASvanevik/status/1533322459767746561

1/ At Spartan, we manage multiple funds that have different strategies. We have a liquid fundamentals-focused hedge fund and 2 venture funds. The hedge fund is meant to give investors broad base exposure to crypto without being locked up for multiple years.

0/ I had the fortune of meeting @mrjasonchoi when he was looking for a crypto role in HK 3.5 years ago when I had just launched our first fund. I liked him instantaneously and offered him a job on the spot and I never regretted that decision.

https://twitter.com/mrjasonchoi/status/1531648174305136640

1/ Jason’s been one of my best hires (and I have easily hired over 100 people harking back to my GS days). I saw in him a Diamond in the rough who was hungry to learn and someone with great passion and work ethics.

0/ Been speaking with a number of founders the past week and it is apparent most still have not processed what the LUNA/UST meltdown means for them. In fact someone just asked me last week whether we might get another market high soon. Time for a wake up call. 1/ The market has radically changed vs a week ago. In case you haven’t noticed, public market valuations have collapsed and I am not certain we are going to get a quick bounce back like we did post March 2020 or post May 2021.

0/ The Otherside land sale yesterday was pretty crazy. All 55k plots sold out in under 3 hours (on Ethereum no less) for the price of 2.3 ETH each plus an average gas cost of >1 ETH per mint. Notwithstanding the price point, minters should be happy given the floor is now >5 ETH. 1/ To put things in perspective, this was the largest NFT mint ever, raking in >$300M just for the primary sale, illustrating the demand for a slice of the most sought after NFT collection. Another land sale is planned later this year for another 100K plots.

0/ In Hong Kong club memberships are a status thing. Many of my friends have at least one, but some have multiple. The good ones cost US$100K-1.5M upfront. Despite the cost, some have a waiting list of 2-5 years as the memberships are highly sought after.
savvyinhk.com/best-club-memb… 1/ Despite having lived here for many years, I have never owned one even though I can afford it. I have never felt compelled to get one. Yet I recently paid 113 ETH (~$340K) for a BAYC NFT which is essentially membership into a virtual club.

0/ Since we are all licking our wounds from the walloping we got the past week (few were left unscathed from what I can tell from CT), I am going to share my war story from 2018. 1/ My partners and I launched Spartan in Dec 2017 having spent about 6 months prior researching, networking, advising and investing in the space during the 2017 ICO bull market.

0/ Haven't seen too much commentary on Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard so here's my 2 cents. In a nutshell the deal is a game changer, so much so that Sony's (Microsoft's main rival) share price fell more than 10% (~$20B) on the announcement. 1/ Microsoft announced its $68.7 B acquisition of Activision yesterday, the biggest acquisition in its history and far in excess of the $26B it paid to accquire LinkedIn in 2016. The acquisition is also the biggest ever in the video game industry.

0/ I have many friends that suffer significant angst from their kids spending too much time on screen playing games and wondering if there is some effective measure to stop it. I always say to them that they should let their kids play. 1/ I tell my friends that they might be doing their kids a disservice by trying to restrict them. Today, games are how kids socialize, just as we used to play board games or other outdoor social games.

In 2021, 8 of my Top 10 predictions materialized.

The 2 that didn’t play out were:
1) $BTC surpassing $100K and
2) $XRP getting delisted from Coinbase.

Thought I should share my Top 10 predictions for 2022 again.
Here we go… Prediction #1: I am not an Ethereum maximalist but I believe $ETH’s market cap will finally flip that of $BTC in 2022. I expect the flippening to take place as we approach the Ethereum Merge event.

0/ In the past few weeks I have been asked repeatedly by investors when crypto winter will come. The last 3 crypto winters have so traumatized the collective psyche of crypto investors that everyone is cautious after a strong 2021. 1/ Perhaps because of this, we have seen investors take profits after every significant run up in prices. Hence, we haven’t seen the type of FOMO and parabolic move in prices that have characterized the last 3 cycles (2010-2011, 2013-2014, 2016-2017).