Portfolio Review - Apr 2022

Full article on Substack (including my life journey!) can be found here. My substack profile here. My Twitter profile here. March's Seedly opinion article (on Crypto and Equties) can be found here.

Please feel free to scroll to the sections you find interesting.

Equity Portfolio Breakdown

Green: Value as % of my portfolio

Orange: Cost as a % of my total cost invested into equities

This chart simply visualises the divergence between my investment thesis and the current market expectations of the company. No hard rule on % cost allocation for stocks yet, nor a threshold where I will trim them.

Equity Portfolio Performance

Time-weighted returns (IRR) - Past 12 months

*As of 28 April because Saxo can’t update my performance for the 29th.

Cumulative IRR returns

*As of 28 April because Saxo can’t update my performance for the 29th.

CAGR* Performance

Note: Brokerages and most investors use IRR (time-weighted returns) as a metric. A crude but also widely used measurement is CAGR, which is basically value as a % of cost, annualized (i.e. $1 invested at the start will be $x now). Given our monthly DCA strategy that isn’t as accurate.

It’s a good measure for non-investment savvy folks who just want to know how much money they take out vs they put in. Value over cost. My chart is an attempt to simulate this by using MoM returns of classic benchmarks to compound my cumulative additions into stock markets. I’m doing this bc investment calculators for NASDAQ & SP500 isn’t as accurate I would like them to be.

Equity Portfolio Changes

Added: $SNOW (2x), $NVDA, $DDOG, ROKU

Started: nil

Trimmed: nil

Sold: $TSLA, $TDOC

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Crypto Portfolio Performance*

Charts start from end of November 2020 when I started recording my crypto portfolio. Summarizing:

2020 performance: 2.7x-ed my portfolio

2021 performance: 5.5x-ed my 2020 portfolio

Lifetime performance: 13.57x my cost

Lifetime result:

• Outperformed BTC by 2.46x (13.57/5.51)

• ETH outperformed me by 1.60x (21.65/13.57)

Goal is to try and outperform BTC and ETH from here on out. 👍🏻

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% of Net Worth (direction change from previous month) in:

Stocks: 12.9% (🔽🔽🔽)

Crypto: 78.9% (🔼)

Net worth excludes fixed assets (e.g. house)

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Equities

This month was a slightly lighter month of updates for me because I was busy with a few life matters (see Life section for more updates). Note that the various strikethroughs below are because I’ve written the commentary on about 23Apr2022, and since then NASDAQ experienced one of its worst months in terms of performance. My portfolio drawdown for the month is also astounding, but I remain hopeful as I’ve got some cash injection to buy the crash (if it hasn’t already happened). The market is clearly in trouble, but businesses will survive and thrive in the future.

I hate to use the same words, but uncertainty Doom and gloom has been the name of the game for 1-2 months now ever since Russia moved into Ukraine, China shut down Shanghai and Beijing, inflation skyrocketed and god knows what catalyst that materialized. There’s plenty of macro events to focus on, none as important as what the Fed has to say. Will they press on to hike rakes aggressively or will they blink and go dovish (aka not tighten so fast)?

The good thing about macro events is that it won’t last forever. Even the Russian-Ukraine war will end somehow, and lockdowns in China will end. When that happens, and inflation drops, some economic related things we need not know about, Fed will be tightening / raising rates into a slowing economy, which will surely do more harm than good. How much more does the market has to tank before Fed will loosen it’s grip on our necks?

The crash in markets are no doubt accelerated by the biggest companies releasing earnings. I’m talking about the FAANG companies of course, + Microsoft, Tesla etc. economically relevant companies.

On the night of 19Apr2022, Netflix reported a net reduction in subscriber count for the first time in a decade. The next day 20Apr2022, markets opened lower, seemingly following $NFLX’s -26% drop overnight. Eugene provided a great summary of the earnings (and many other companies too). Tesla reported the next day with a surprise beat over earnings per share (EPS). Prices popped about 10% to around $1090 before settling down at $1000 (22Apr2022) and about $880 (26Apr2022), which is likely due to insert event. Stock then crashed to $825 (27Apr2022) before rallying to $910 (27Apr2022) , then settling back to $870 (29Apr2022). Related, I managed to sell of my remaining share of Tesla at $1077 having bought at $897 as I felt:

a) I didn’t have high conviction (partly swayed by TSLAQ bears)
b) Cost basis too high to justify IRR return in 3-5 years
c) Better opportunities elsewhere with beaten down SaaS names.

It’s a really great company with clear moats though; I’m just not comfortable buying $TSLA near ATHs. I also note that Amazon had a 14% dip which for a large cap means the markets also go down together with it. Here’s my portfolio companies (excluding Tesla) for reference.

It has NOT been a good April, even though I was rather busy to think about it. Here is my % performance on a MTD basis for 2022 (up till 28 April):

Good stuff, but I don’t expect markets to crash another 30% (ok maybe worst case scenario) and a 30% after that. That equates to a 51% drawdown. With so much money in the world being tied up in equities, a 51% drawdown means a shitload of margin calls, liquidations which threatens the financial stability the Fed so desperately needs to maintain. Now that your realistic downside (from prices end of April) is capped, what’s the most economically sensible thing you can do?

Buy great companies at fantastic prices.

Recession in the markets are probably here a month ago, and recession in the economy may be coming. Having listened through Peter Lynch’s lecture in 1994 about investing, pontificating about whether recession is just around the corner is a waste of time. If it comes, you’ll be happy because you can buy cheaper. If it doesn’t, it’ll go up and you’ll enjoy capital gains.

I greatly recommend listening to this guy (applies to crypto too) at least up till 22:57. Some timeless wisdom he shared:

• Most important organ in investing is your stomach
• Stock markets go down (10%) once every 2 years, and 25% around every 5-6 years.
• Know what you own (very, very important)
• You only need a few winners in your life
• Focus on metrics that are relevant to the business

If you look around and articles are blasting the headline of WORST MONTH / PERFORMANCE EVER, it likely means a sense of extremity is taking place. Just as the pendulum swings from bull to bear, it doesn’t stay very long at extreme points of bull and bear. Since stock market appreciates along the same rate as corporate profits, the pendulum likely stays in bull zone longer than bear.

TL;DR: Stonks go down if Fed is not printing money. But they shouldn’t go to 0 (but you’d feel like they’re pretty near). Once the selling is over, the stonks (the good ones) will continue to go up.

What does all these mean? If you’re a young investor looking inject capital into stocks, being patient will pay off, but having a plan will pay off-erer. Limit orders Market orders, but if you’re worried about not being filled, then I think a general intuition is to buy when there is panic. Though, in the twitter-sphere, the echo chamber that is fintwit can be loud and not related to the actual smart money/algos that are dictating market movements. Lastly, you can buy companies at very cheap, but that doesn’t mean the company will be the next 10x.

In any case, prices for many companies, including my portfolio stocks are really, really cheap right now. You just have to look at $TDOC $ROKU and $SE for example. Is the business doing well? Yes. Are revenues/profits growing? Yes. _Does the company enjoy some sort of sustainable competitive advantage (such as via network effects)? _Yes. Edit: I clearly did not completed my due diligence as I declared $TDOC devoid of any sustainable moat (because their telemedicine or mental health services are a commodity), and sold post earnings.

Why do you worry then? Most times, the buying opportunity will never feel like a buying opportunity, but after a few months/years it will look like one as clear as day. Of course, realistically speaking, I don’t buy the idea that we will have a V-shape recovery in the markets like March 2020, but I am _very _confident of positive long-term returns in the next 2-5 years.

Only time will tell if we are right, but as mentioned multiple times over the past few months, cash is a good mental anchor in a sea of uncertainty panic. You never want to be caught at a generational buying opportunity with no cash available to deploy. I am even withdrawing some cash from my crypto portfolio to back up the truck.

In any case, there are certainly juicy opportunities if you look closely. My wish list (written on 23/24Apr2022):

• NVDA: $175 / $150
• TSLA: $900 (200DMA) / $750 (local low)
• SE: $75 / $65 (my first buys in Q2 2020)
• ROKU: $85 / $75 (near Covid lows @ $56)
• SNOW: $155 / $140 (10-20% lower)
• NET: $75 / $65 (prior touch of 200DMA before run up to $220)
• TDOC: $50 (Covid low) / $45
• TWLO: $110 / $100
• DDOG: $100 / $90
• U: $65 (~IPO price) / $55
• CRWD: $175 / $160 (local low)

I spent about 15 minutes thinking about which stocks to buy first (assuming hypothetically that all stocks were already at the price), but couldn’t come to a conclusion. Honestly, I would probably lean my buys to SaaS plays, whilst Covid beneficiaries like TDOC and SE will probably experience a few more quarters of normalization before bright bull targets get painted on them again. Separately, I have implemented a quarterly DCA plan for Nvidia (will add more quicker if it dips lower) as I wanted it to be an anchor stock in my portfolio and thus it should carry a higher weight in the portfolio.

Got cash?

Addendum 1__: Not long after I wrote down the wish list (23/24Apr2022), I succumbed to minor FOMO and added to SNOW ($180.9), NVDA ($196.1), DDOG ($122.9) on 25Apr2022. Perhaps should have just stuck with limit orders huh? I’ll probably look back at these orders at the end of year and chuckle at how dumb I must be to catch falling knives. Eh, I’m very comfortable with the longer-term horizon with these companies. That is, until they falter during their quarterly earnings. Funny how I’m writing about my own behavior of second guessing myself, which probably stems from a lack of an investing framework.

Addendum 2__: Teladoc’s earnings after market closed on 27Apr2022 cracked open the floor underneath them, plunging them further into the abyss. I sold at the open; my thoughts and rationale for selling can be found here. I don’t feel sad tbh about this, but was pretty surprising as it was my largest realised loss (3.5k USD) and largest % drawdown (-77% including the massive haircut of 45% post earnings dip). One for the history books but many lessons to take away from this on the journey of long-term investing. Moving on as there’s no reason not to expect losers in your portfolio. It was about 10% in cost and was 5% in value before I sold, so meh, was used to cutting bags at huge losses in my crypto side anyway. Probably rotating it into $ROKU (bought some at $96) or just leaving as cash in limit orders for my wish list above.

Addendum 3: __I was frankly disappointed with my brokerage’s slowness to update account balances for the next day. Since 29th April was a Friday, they should have updated my portfolio performance either timely (aka immediate) or at least 1 day after. It’s 1st May and my performance is still stuck as of 28th April. Above all that, their fees are also higher than the common platforms like Interactive Brokers, which is what I will be trying out over the next months. If all looks good, then I’ll transfer my shares over. Just need to find a way to properly document returns from inception…

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Crypto

I had a short conversation on Twitter with @SatoshiAlien about prices in Goblin Town (Goblia: fictional town full of bears), and thought that prices won’t break the 2021 lows post-May crash. There’s a lot of talk about correlation going to 1 during risk-on events. That has been true for crypto since the top of November 2021, but it does feel like crypto has been resilient and the massacre in equities didn’t quite translate 1:1 to crypto.

It is hard to be long-term bearish crypto because there is money flowing into crypto on a cumulative basis. Here’s the source if anybody’s interested.

Kidding of course, but here’s the Digital asset fund flows report from CoinShares where they update the metrics weekly (As of 22 Apr).

Granted, outflows are expected especially when volatility is high, but when you generalize over the entire chart, the net flows does indeed look positive, which kind of gels up with the broader sentiment around metaverse and crypto and NFTs and Web3 have taken center stage in the tech spotlight.

The overall crypto sector, with retail participation few and far between, is an obvious choice for funds/banks/institutions to swoop in at depressed prices, accumulate, and then farm the incoming retail investors (aka top buyers) for exit liquidity sometime in the future when crypto goes into another boom/hype cycle.

This is also supported by a survey conducted by Nasdaq where fund managers cite regulatory constraints as the limiting factor preventing those dollars from flowing into crypto. As @knowerofmarkets put it very apt in his tweet here.

I am long-term bullish, but short-term bearish. Will continue to allocate more cash into projects I wish to support long-term, but I don’t have huge stacks of stables, and so there needs to be an element of timing when buying-the-dip. Nobody got rich buying the bottom and selling the top anyways. There’s no need to do that to get rich. Case in point: buying $SOL at $30 and selling at $100 (now), $240 (at the top), $160 (last year).

Being early helps, but having a long-term time horizon also helps too because price can detract very far from the project’s fundamentals (how do you even value a crypto token anyway, when they’re all ponzus?) especially due to sector rotation, law of small numbers, and overall risk sentiment. It is my belief that crypto can find its footing amongst the global markets as a genre much like commodities, equities, bonds. But it’ll take some stumbles along the way for sure.

By the way, here’s a very, very timely thread on the bear market, written by the OG himself. His thread hits hard, because it is true, and we’re all bagholders.

Anyway, here’s my portfolio breakdown:

Token holdings

Holdings not in order of size, degen plays (if any) excluded:

L1s: LUNA SOL AVAX (incl. XAVA JOE) NEAR Cosmos (ATOM JUNO OSMO)
ETH L2s: METIS
Gaming: MC RAIN JEWEL (incl. CRYSTAL) PYR MMA
Infrastructure: SHDW POKT OCT RNDR HNT
Large caps: BTC ETH
Others: BASIS SD ANC FTT (sorry forgot to include in past month)

Not financial advice. I may rebalance my portfolio at any point of time.

Main changes

I made a few portfolio changes which were rather considerable; For the sake of transparency I will briefly explain the rationale behind the my sell decisions:

1. XAVA
2. RNDR, HNT and ANC
3. LUNA (~half my stack)

The general reasoning underpinning the sells is that I wanted to get defensive (less speculative) and raise cash for future opportunities in core projects which I will support for the long-term.

XAVA

The XAVA token allows the owner to stake it in Avalanche’s IDO platform (aptly named avalaunch). This provides a base yield of around 8% (as of 27Apr2022), but importantly also gives the user an allocation to purchase tokens in projects who wish to conduct their IDO on the platform. From the time I staked in October 2021 (which is a looong time), the IDO returns (previously have seen 10-50x from IDO price) have been diminishing. The only clear winner for me was Platypus Finance, which aimed to be the veCRV of avalanche by providing optimized yields for participants who lock up their PTP tokens.

Whilst having an allocation is great in that the opportunity for 10x was quite evident, the amount in USDC granted was pretty small, and the absolute gain was not that much. Thinking back, XAVA hit a high of $20, and I didn’t sell like the retail pleb that I am. That was a mistake, innit? My cost basis was somewhere around $3-4 I think, but yet I sold at a loss. Shame on me.

RNDR, HNT and ANC

The Render Token (RNDR) and Helium token (HNT) are different form usual protocols in that it exhibits real-world usage which brings about real-world utility. The Render Network® is the leading provider of decentralized GPU based rendering solutions** **Render token is used to render projects by utilizing the GPU power of other users who receive RNDR as payment. Helium is a global, distributed network of Hotspots that create public, long-range wireless coverage for LoRaWAN-enabled IoT devices. The Helium blockchain is a new, open source, public blockchain created entirely to incentivize the creation of physical, decentralized wireless networks.

They serve very real use cases, but I was not able to answer my own questions regarding value capture. It’s one thing to have a token for a protocol, but it’s another for that protocol to accrue value, and for the value to be captured by the token. It’s a delicate issue that I think is under discussed by crypto folks.

They don’t actually capture the value of the underlying network. For Render (based on whitepaper albeit dated 2017), the cost of the token is pegged to 256 seconds of work at the OctaneBench (I assume some compute tasks that requires GPU). Moore’s law dictates that the number of transistors in a chip will double roughly every 18 months). The point is that compute power will always get cheaper (if the token price is still pegged). What does that mean for the Render token?

For helium, the token does not seem to capture the value of the decentralized network. In fact, I think it is purely created as an incentive mechanism to bootstrap the network. Of course, I think you need to stake helium tokens to be an operator, so there is some latent demand for the token (for RNDR as well). The emissions will dilute your holdings over time so either you got in early or you leave it in cold storage for 5 years.

The value accruing to the tokens are nowhere near enough to justify my funds in the tokens right now so I sold it.

Anchor protocol is the beloved crypto savings account offering ~20% interest rates on UST. The token, as far as I can tell, only offers the holders governance votes to steer the decision of the protocol. I said in last month’s article that I thought the token could appreciate in value if there were proposals being passed that would allow $ANC to accrue value from the protocol itself. Here’s what I said last month:

Guess that token of gratitude was a short one, haha. I sold all 3 tokens at about 30-50% loss. If there’s one thing about me that I improved from the previous crypto cycle, it’s that I am more merciless in dumping my bags. E__dit: They did re-evaluate ANC tokenomics by submitting a proposal for ve-style emissions to make the token more valuable. It’s a shame the tokenomics isn’t tied to UST (they can’t), which is why I think it’ll underperform majors or at the very least, LUNA.

LUNA

I was lucky to have bought a large amount below $50, and so have been slowly trimming my stack (about half was in conventional staking with 21 day unstaking period, the other in Stader Lab’s liquid staking). I sold quite a fair bit already almost routinely, in $90, $100, $110, $118. Most recently (26Apr2022) I sold the entire chunk that was in liquid staking to raise cash at around $95.

While I still believe Luna/Terra can be a premier L1 chain of the future (especially with the adoption (if it happens) of UST), there is no sustainable adoption in the Terra ecosystem; much of the TVL is stuck with anchor protocol, which itself is highly unsustainable (requiring top-ups from the foundation). Lunatics will disagree with me, but it is what it is. I still have a large amount of LUNA being staked, and I think the 21-day unstaking period will deter me from selling that bag.

The sells netted me quite a bit of USD which is also chucked into anchor to earn the best risk-adjusted yield in town (for now).

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Degods/NFTs

Over the past few months, you’ve probably seen my NFT stack rise from the ashes. I took some profits during the Solana boom in the later half of last year, and dabbled my profits (aka throwing money) into Solana NFTs. Not gonna lie, the cheap gas fees made it so much easier for that dopamine hit where your NFTs can just flip 2/3x just minutes post mint. There surely was considerable elements of retail mania as even I aped into some mints (sacrificing my precious sleep to try and mint live). There’s so much that I’ve learnt since then (actually got scammed for 4k USD via NFT scamsite).

Fast forward to Dec/Jan 2022, the bubble had burst, most of my mints where stuck at <1 SOL. The most expensive NFTs I purchased was Solarians (39 SOL; now 3 SOL floor; have sold), Galactic Gecko Space Garage (45 SOL; now 10.7 SOL floor). I also played around with ETH NFTs but unfortunately not the blue-chips. Let me be transparent and show you my buys.

As you can see, these are mostly losers (you can google them), but there are indeed some which came on to become winners or at least stayed semi relevant (kudos to their community). Part of my disillusionment with NFTs was that I couldn’t find a tribe that I easily fit into. I don’t particularly enjoy being active on discord all day (felt unproductive) and the time zone difference. Also, I just can’t hype myself up constantly, and prefer to cheer on from the background. As such, months flew by and I forgot about them, determined to write the whole portfolio to 0. That is, until Degods staged a renaissance.

Even till now I’m not plugged into the community due to the reasons I listed above; but with a floor price of 266 SOL (30Apr2022), I am beyond lucky to have scored a decent multiple for my NFT bought. Degods are a set of 10,000 of profile pictures (pfps). The min was 3 SOL, but anybody who sold below 3 SOL (or below what they bought it for) had to pay a tax of 33% (called paper-handed b*tch tax). However, the experiment didn’t work and people sold below the 3.33 SOL price anyway. Shortly after (which was also near the depths of the Solana NFT bear market), the team re-strategized and came up with an even bolder roadmap: $DUST and Deadgods. You can take a look at the project’s timeline thus far, here.

DUST is a token with no monetary value that can be farmed by staking your Degods (to burn them into Deadgods, you would need 1000 DUST) and Deadgods, which earns you 10/30 DUST respectively. The DUST can be used to purchase raffle tickets for upcoming whitelist or for NFTs acquired by the team’s treasury. DUST can also be used to purchase NFTs in an auction.

Deadgods are new set of pfps being drawn by the same Degods artists. These images depict how the Degods pfp would look like, if it was _dead. _The metadata remained the same (along with rarity), and users can switch between the two images if they choose to. Mine looked like this.

DUST has a maximum supply of 33mil, and the DUST rewards/day will be halved once the tokens mined reaches a particular threshold. You can take a look at the community-built tracker here. We all know the strong impact on price that halvings will have. The upcoming halving is scheduled for early-June (but will probably be earlier). It sounds like a worthless governance token, but that’s impossible given the utility that the token has:

• DUST used to transcend Degods Dead gods (sink #1)
• DUST integrated by other SOL projects like accepting another payment methods (sink #2)
• DUST to purchase physical merch (sink #3)
• DUST to purchase raffle tickets or to auction for blue-chip NFTs (sink #4)

I don’t know about you, but I see a very strong case of value capture here. To clarify, this token holds no monetary value, but it _is _being traded on a DEX which has a price associated with it. 😉

The first time I thought about selling the NFTs was at 80+ SOL and I told myself I’ll sell when it hits 120 SOL. Now the floor is 2x that and I’m earning DUST every day. The team is on fire with their developments for the DUST ecosystem, and I will be here for it… 0 or valhalla.

33.3

Addendum 1: They bought a basketball team which I thought was bonkers; tweet here.

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DeFi Kingdoms (JEWEL)

The journey of a heavy bagholder is never-ending; the way forward is littered with false promises and broken dreams. This is a price chart of Jewel/USDC (annotations from someone else); the last pump/dump was due to it launching Crystalvale, which is an expansion of DeFi Kingdoms on the Avalanche network.

Everybody flocked there for the liquidity rewards (albeit locked for 1 year, with locked % lower every epoch (about 1-2 weeks). The pump was mainly due to you needing JEWEL to farm there (JEWEL-xJEWEL; which earns CRYSTAL), but shortly after they released another CRYSTAL-AVAX pool. CRYSTAL (like JEWEL) is the token used for summoning heroes and whatnot in the game. As CRYSTAL-AVAX and CRYSTAL-USDC became another demand for liquidity, JEWEL demand dropped on a relative basis; people just sold and thus price dumped. The APRs (which will drop) as of 24Apr2022 were still decent:

• CRYSTAL-AVAX, -USDC, -JEWEL: ~1100%
• JEWEL-xJEWEL: 900%+

In hindsight, I should have sold my JEWEL tokens at the launch of crystalvale, but the perhaps the allure of those APRs gave me a false sense of profits (10,000% APR is 100x after 1 year). These APRs was never sustainable, and if your token ends up being down 95% from ATHs (for JEWEL that’s 50 cents), you need a whopping 20x just to break even. Anyway, I’m still bullish long-term on the project (could be wrong at which point it’ll be somewhat painful for my portfolio).

The team is still in active development and have quite a lot of features (as annotated in the chart, albeit not in a good way) planned for DFK. Projects like this don’t usually complete their execution in a year and it is often a multi-year horizon, which is a view I’m prepared to hold.

Having already bought more at $5.3, I’ll probably add more JEWEL as a final DCA when it hits $3 or when there’s too much doom and gloom on CT, then its just chilling in the Gardens (where users manage their farming) for me for the long-term (or when JEWEL goes to $20 again).

Addendum 1: Added another stack at around $3.15, but did so in CRYSTAL for the CRYSAL/USDC pool which currently yields around 1100%. The equivalent JEWEL price was about $2.81 (25Apr2022) as I had unlocked CRYSTAL that was also used as ‘free’ tokens and so cost basis was lower. On 28Apr2022 price was $2.78.

Addendum 2: Rumors came out that their leader (Frisky Fox in discord) made some less than transparent moves when bootstrapping liquidity for the start of DFK. Price experienced a rug (not that price didn’t already crater from $20) and is now at $1.38. Maybe I will add a final tranche around $1 or sub $1 and just hodl through this winter.

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Mirror Protocol

Thinking that I can time the market + feeling like I didn’t put my stablecoins to good use like a proper degen, I tried Mirror Protocol as it was one of the few places where aUST (which is what you get for depositing UST on Anchor Protocol) is accepted as collateral. I also wanted to _hedge _a little bit of my equities portfolio, and Mirror seemed like a decent place to do it as they provide synthetic assets that you can either long or short.

Conveniently, shit started to happen due to my lack of due diligence and diving in head first to try out protocols. I first borrowed mTSLA (Synthetic Tesla stock), then quickly closed the trade when I felt something amiss, incurring a 1.5% fee on a notional value of ~$5000. Then common sense struck me and I realized that borrowing mTSLA is a de facto short position (because you can sell mTSLA for UST, then if mTSLA drops in price your UST can buy more units). The UST can even earn a decent 0.77% in UST for 2 weeks which is higher than what banks give in an entire year. The premise is simple enough, but it’s always not how it works in practice.

Mirror allows you to deposit your stock in a farm which pays rewards in the form of $MIR token. Think of it as the protocol printing actual money to pay users to use the protocol (for the yield). No wonder people have the idea that everything’s a ponzi. To a long-term Tesla fanboi, depositing TSLA stock to earn an extra 10-30% yield is a no brainer. You’re basically printing money, brah, and your cost basis drops accordingly. This is the price of 1 share of mTSLA on the protocol vs the actual price (18Apr2022 1 hour after markets open).

The final nail in the coffin was that even the protocol documentation didn’t mention a 1:1 peg with the actual Tesla share. This means that the price of mTSLA while starts off at peg, quickly deviates from it due to supply/demand imbalances of mTSLA. Selling is non-existing because retail investors love being a bagholder, and one that yields $MIR (free money) at that.

Long story short, do your research before ape-ing into such protocols, and if you really want to dive in head first, do make sure that it’s money you’re comfortable with losing. My UST is locked for 2 weeks; my losses would just be marginal given that Tesla is still hovering around $1000. I eventually sold the day when $TSLA crashed from $1000 to around $900. Could have saved probably a $100 if I waited till the next day to close the borrow position, but it is what it is. Moving on.

Compass Mining

My fourth miner came online mid-April, and I decided to churn out a few more stats. Here are the amount of days my miners have been online. This excludes downtime of about 20 days worth (?) but as time passes the % of downtime days become negligible too.

The above shows the topline of my miners before any added cost. The bottom line of my mining operations can be found below, in a neater chart. The realized profits include the dollar value gained from the sale of BTC mined, either to cash or to some other token, as well as any BTC that I decide to keep.

Going forward, I will simply sit and wait for my other 4 miners to come online over the next 4 months, and to start paying for the facility costs which puts my breakeven at around 1.5 to 2 years. It’s for sure a game of patience, but it’s something I have a lot of.

Life

Not shown here. If interested, please visit my substack article.

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Conclusion

Thank you for reading thus far. I hope you learnt something amongst the ramblings I have written every month. Times are surely tough in the markets now, but the sun will always come out, and prices will always appreciate over longer periods of time.

Long-term, the direction is up. Don’t fumble the bag (in both life and investments).

Cheers,
Joey