The Ether And The Real

This blog is an attempt to show that markets can be beaten if one takes an intelligent and systematic approach to investing, then sticks with it through down periods. I won't write about my philosophy of value for now (especially since there are no returns yet to show here), but over time I may share bits and bobs so there could at least potentially be some worthwhile takeaways.

Currently my portfolio is 100% invested in Web3 tokens. No net-nets, no spin-offs, no NASDAQ-listed compounders, just the unholy world of the cryptosphere and all that's conventionally unacceptable across the value investing landscape. My thesis on Web3 is relatively simple. Web1.0 (Netscape, Hotmail, AOL) disrupted basic services like what your library, phone book, or mail deliverer, would previously have provided. Web2.0 (Amazon, Facebook, Google, Uber, Airbnb) disrupted areas from shopping, to search, to social gathering, to travel, and beyond, creating a quite seamless on-demand experience compared to the days of dial-up modems. Web3.0, it would seem by common sense reckoning, is disrupting finance from payments, to brokers, to mutual funds, to currencies, and more. If one includes the metaverse, it's also perhaps disrupting things like copyright tradition, digital identity, storytelling, and computing intelligence.

It's worth noting that I don't subscribe to the "Web3 is rat poison" perspective, but at the same time I'd argue that seeing lazer eyes on a Twitter profile is almost always a sign of a dogmatic mindset and shallow thought-process. In reality, I believe the truth of Web3 is far more likely to lie somewhere in between those two idealogical extremes. It probably won't take over the entire world of finance (not for many decades anyway), but just like previous tech booms created trillion dollar giants so this one too will in all probability make a huge dent in the space and create lots of real world value along the way.

I'll leave things there for now, in terms of my fundamental investment thinking on the topic. In the future I'll see about posting more often on the Web3 space in order to elaborate on my reasons for why I'd say this might be a "generational" moment to be wisely putting money to work across this nascent sector. That will all need to wait though, since today I'll simply post my portfolio holdings and weightings so any reader can see and verify the contents. As is always the case, none of this is investment advice and you should do your own research and due diligence.

Q1 2023:

Ampleforth - 69.3% holding (token price $1.37*, market cap $58.3m)

Euler Finance - 15.8% holding (token price $3.44, market cap $46.3m)

Dia Data - 5.8% holding (token price $0.28, market cap $25.1m)

Celer Network - 5.4% holding (token price $0.01, market cap $54.4m)

Centrifuge - 3.7% holding (token price $0.14, market cap $52.1m)

[* Ampleforth is a rebasing token where price is somewhat constant but the supply changes significantly over time, therefore its token price is substantially irrelevant for portfolio information purposes while market cap is the meaningful factor.]

The NASDAQ seems like a reasonable benchmark to use for measuring returns against. It currently sits at 10466.48 as of January 1st, 2023. Happy New Year to you all, and may the year ahead bring its fair share of valuable returns.