January 2023 - Monthly Market Update
/Monthly Update || January 1, 2023
“As I’ve written many times about the economy and markets, we never know where we’re going, but we ought to know where we are.”
Opening Remarks
Greetings from Ikigai Asset Management¹. We welcome the opportunity to bring to you our fifty-second Monthly Update and hope these are helpful in better understanding some of what we’re doing and what we’re seeing. We have the privilege of deploying capital on behalf of our investors into a new technology and asset class that already has and will continue to fundamentally change the world – continuing to create trillions of dollars of value in the process.
We believe we are obligated to be shepherds of this technology – to help the world better understand the powerful potential of DLT and crypto assets, and to fund and be an ambassador for DLT projects that will change our lives forever.
To that end, we arrive at the conclusion of the most destructive year in the history of this entire crypto experiment. $1.4tn of market cap was erased. Many of the largest, most critical businesses in crypto collapsed. Several of those committed fraud. Over the course of 2022, the crypto industry was discovered to have engaged in rampant reckless lending, intertwined with fraud, used to heavily lever long to speculate on vaporware. Those paying attention already knew all of these factors were present in the crypto markets. But the degree to which they were present was deeply underestimated by nearly everyone.
Here on January 1st, 2023, we find ourselves mired in the aftermath of the collapse. There are more shoes to drop near-term that will likely have a material impact on price. At some point in a few months or a couple quarters, the dust will likely settle some and the crypto market will begin to look inward to ascertain what exactly is left over.
Honestly that’s a tough one to answer right now – “what exactly is left of crypto?”. The biggest reason it’s so tough to answer is because you really don’t know what actually happened the last couple years. Like what “organic” vs what was “rampant reckless lending, intertwined with fraud, used to heavily lever long to speculate on vaporware”. Crypto is supposed to iterate from cycle to cycle, at least that’s always been pitched as the gameplan. But how much did we actually learn about how to best iterate over the last few years, with how distorted risk-taking was? It’s like we’ve been flying a plane in a heavy fog the last two years - you really have no idea what the ground looks like below you. The “Lending/Fraud/Risk-taking Trifecta” had such an undoubtedly strong influence over reflexivity, that you don’t know how reflexive this market would be without that Trifecta’s presence. That Trifecta affected how others in the market started taking risk, and it snowballed from there. What we’re experiencing now is the hangover. At some point we’ll get through the hangover, and new, more positive narratives will emerge. Again, I struggle at the moment to identify what those specifically will be and over what time frame. More time needs to pass to better understand what’s actually left.
As such, I don’t really know what to expect from 2023. It’s easy for me to imagine the crypto market going sideways the entire year. Sure it’ll have some rallies and some drops, but ending up around flat would not surprise me. Macro will likely matter some, but we really don’t know how much it will matter, in either direction. Since the FTX collapse, crypto’s correlation to traditional has declined significantly, and for good reason. Crypto has its own serious set of idiosyncratic problems right now, and a large portion of the capital that would actually trade the correlation has likely left the market. That capital might come back but it’s hard to bet on when and to what degree. So if traditional goes risk-on in 2023, I would guess that would be a slight boon to crypto prices, but it's hard to expect a raging crypto market even if tech stocks rips. And if traditional remains mostly risk-off in 2023, I think crypto will likely struggle to be flat on the year.
Crypto regulations, both in the US and abroad are going to be worth watching. Crypto looks really bad in basically the entire world’s eyes at this point. How could regulators not be chomping at the bit to get overreaching regulations in place? Who could blame them? So there’s definitely risk there. Specifically in the US, like many things it will likely come down to politics. It’s not clear how much ability there is for a crypto regulatory bill to get passed with the current makeup of Congress. If it doesn’t get done in the next 12-18 months, it will likely slip to after the 2024 elections. At this point I’m not even sure how to think about crypto regulations. We sure do seem like we desperately need some. There is certainly a chance that regulation gets passed that is so heavy-handed that it severely impairs the use case of crypto. But if we’re going to continue having trusted middlemen as critical parts of this ecosystem, we probably need regulation there. I’m certainly Libertarian leaning, but we have failed so completely at self-regulation. Either the entire ecosystem migrates on-chain and trusted middlemen are removed, or you need regulation. There’s no reason at this point to think we can effectively self-regulate, and this in-between is literally destroying crypto.
As painful as this year has been for the entire ecosystem, for Ikigai, for our investors, and for me personally, I still find myself wanting to stay in this fight - the fight for crypto to deliver on as much of its potential to make the world a better place as possible. I do still deeply believe it’s a fight worth fighting. I hope you do too. The good guys have been unequivocally losing to the bad guys in crypto. The pain of this past year must be used as a catalyst for change. We must do better.
Invest
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We accept new investors on the 1ˢᵗ and 15ᵗʰ of every month.
Contact us to see if you qualify.
December Highlights
Sam Arrested by Bahamian Authorities at Request of US Govt; Charged with Wire Fraud, Securities Fraud, Money Laundering, etc.
Sam Held In Bahamian prison for 10 Days; Extradited to US; Released to His Parents on $250mm Bail, with Only His Parents’ $4mm House Posted for Bond
Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison Flips on Sam in Exchange for Plea Deal, Testifying to Large Scale Fraud Led and Perpetrated by Sam; Ellison in FBI Custody
Alameda Co-Founder Gary Wang Flips on Sam in Exchange for Plea Deal, Testifying to Large Scale Fraud Led and Perpetrated by Sam; Wang in FBI Custody
FTX CEO Ryan Salame Flips on Sam Two Days Before Bankruptcy Filing, Testifies to Fraud by Alameda
Binance Experiences >$10bn of Net Withdrawals; Temporarily Suspends spot BNB Borrow; Temporarily Halts Withdrawals of ERC USDC; Is Said to Be on the Verge of Being Charged by DoJ
Binance Proof of Reserves Auditor Mazar’s Pauses All Crypto Work, Removes Binance Attestation
BinanceUS Temporarily Halts Withdrawals of USDT and USDC
The Block Was Secretly Funded with Millions Funneled by SBF in Hidden Deal with Block CEO Mike McCaffrey; McCaffrey Resigns
The Future of DCG in Limbo as Portfolio Company Genesis Teeters on the Verge of Bankruptcy
FTX CEO John Ray III Testifies Before Congress for >3 Hours
Sam Invited to Testify Before Congress, Confirms and Then Backs Out; Congress Stops Short of Subpoenaing Sam
Canada to Prohibit Leverage Trading in Crypto, Require Segregated Custody for Canadian Assets
Well Known Crypto Trader Avi Eisenberg Arrested by DoJ, Charged with Market Manipulation
TP ICAP, the Largest Inter-dealer Broker, Receives FCA Approval to Offer Crypto Services
3AC Liquidators Begin Taking Control of Fund Assets
Publicly-Traded Bitcoin Miner Core Scientific Files for Chapter 11
Nexo to Phase Out US Offerings in Coming Months Due to Regulatory Pressure
Orthogonal Trading Liquidates Due to Insolvency from FTX Collapse
Amber Group Raises $300mm Led by Fenbushi to Shore Up Balance Sheet After Large-scale Losses and Rumors of Bankruptcy
Fir Tree Sues Grayscale Over GBTC
Silvergate and CEO Alan Lane Sued in Class Action Suit for Their Role in Transferring Customer Deposits to Alameda
Signature Bank Announces Caps on Crypto Exposure
Donald Trump Launches NFT Collection, May Have Stolen Stock Images
Document from September 2022 Written by Sam Emerges Where He Contemplates Shutting Down Alameda
Voyager Digital Announces Agreement for BinanceUS to Acquire Its Assets
Bybit Introduces More Stringent KYC Requirements
| Asset Class | Dec | Nov | Oct | Q4-22 | Q3-22 | Q2-22 | Q1-22 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | Instrument |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | -4% | -16% | 5% | -15% | -2% | -57% | -2% | -64% | 60% | 303% | BTC |
| NASDAQ | -9% | 6% | 4% | 0% | -5% | -23% | -9% | -33% | 27% | 48% | QQQ |
| S&P 500 | -6% | 5% | 8% | 7% | -5% | -16% | -5% | -19% | 27% | 16% | SPX |
| Total World Equities | -5% | 9% | 6% | 9% | -8% | -16% | -6% | -20% | 16% | 14% | VT |
| Emerging Market Equity | -4% | 15% | -2% | 9% | -13% | -11% | -8% | -22% | -5% | 15% | EEM |
| Gold | 1% | 10% | -2% | 10% | -8% | -7% | 6% | -1% | -4% | 25% | GLD |
| High Yield | -3% | 3% | 3% | 3% | -3% | -11% | -5% | -15% | 0% | -1% | HYG |
| Emerging Market Debt | -4% | 11% | -1% | 7% | -7% | -13% | -10% | -22% | -6% | 1% | EMB |
| Bank Debt | -2% | 1% | 3% | 2% | 0% | -7% | -1% | -7% | -1% | -2% | BKLN |
| Industrial Materials | -3% | 14% | -2% | 9% | -8% | -25% | 16% | -13% | 29% | 16% | DBB |
| USD | -2% | -6% | -1% | -8% |
7% | 7% | 3% | 8% | 6% | -7% | DXY |
| Volatility Index | 9% | -23% | -18% | -31% | 10% | 40% | 19 | 26% | -24% | 66% | VIX |
| Oil | 0% | -2% | 10% | 7% | -19% | 8% | 36% | 29% | 65% | -68% | USO |
Source: TradingView. As of 12/31/22.
| Symbol | Dec | Nov | Oct | Q4-22 | Q3-22 | Q2-22 | Q1-22 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTC | -4% | -16% | 5% | -15% | -2% | -57% | -2% | -64% | 60% | 303% |
| ETH | -8% | -18% | 19% | -10% | 24% | -67% | -11% | -67% | 399% | 469% |
| XRP | -14% | -15% | -3% | -29% | 45% | -59% | -2% | -59% | 278% | 14% |
| BCH* | -11% | -4% | -4% | -18% | 7% | -67% | -13% | -75% | 6% | 71% |
| EOS | -9% | -17% | -3% | -27% | 28% | -67% | -7% | -72% | 17% | 1% |
| BNB | -18% | -7% | 14% | -13% | 30% | -49% | -16% | -52% | 1269% | 172% |
| XTZ | -30% | -28% | 0% | -49% | 0% | -62% | -14% | -84% | 116% | 49% |
| XLM | -21% | -18% | -4% | -38% | 2% | -51% | -15% | -73% | 108% | 184% |
| LTC | -12% | 44% | 3% | 31% | 0% | -57% | -16% | -52% | 17% | 202% |
| TRX | 0% | -13% | 3% | -11% | -6% | -12% | -2% | -28% | 181% | 101% |
| Aggregate Mkt Cap | -8% | -15% | 9% | -16% | 7% | -58% | -5% | -64% | 186% | 301% |
| Aggregate DeFi* | -13% | -16% | 4% | -24% | 25% | -74% | -8% | -77% | 581% | 1177% |
| Aggr Alts Mkt Cap | -11% | -15% | 10% | -16% | 12% | -58% | -7% | -64% | 479% | 274% |
Source: CoinMarketCap. As of 12/31/22. BCH includes SV. Aggregate DeFi from Coingecko.
A Look Back At 2022
For the past three Januarys, I’ve written re-caps of some of my calls during the prior year, with the benefit of hindsight. You can read them here, here, and here. In keeping with that tradition, what follows is one Good Call, Bad Call, Interesting Call and TBD Call from each month in 2022.
January 1, 2022
[Good Call] “There are paths I can see where crypto performs well in 2022 – I could easily imagine $75k BTC and $10k ETH. There are other paths where crypto prices are flat or down in 2022. In my view, the determining factor for which path comes to fruition will be how aggressive the Fed is with tightening, which will likely be a function of CPI inflation, mixed in with some good ol’politics.”
[Bad Call] “One of the safest bets I see is that the Fed won’t let things get very bad for very long. They have no appetite to weather a 20% decline in the SPX that stays down there for very long. They have no appetite to see any sort of sustained GDP contraction. So when things start to look ugly, I think it’s a safe bet to assume they’ll come to rescue with rate cuts and QE – in whatever quantity is needed to get things moving up and to the right again.”
[Interesting Call] “Those last two in particular – the growing distrust of institutions coupled with rampant appetite for speculation – feel dominant for crypto. The emergence of Web3 is a direct rebuttal of the powers that be of Web2. And without strong speculative tendencies, the marketcap of crypto would undoubtedly be much smaller than it is currently.”
[TBD Call] “In any case, looking out over a multiyear timeframe the broad direction is clear. Crypto Web3 adoption and market cap will grow by an order of magnitude from current levels. It will grow from being ignored to being the elephant in the room to being the room. It will eventually make its way into many parts of everyday life. It will change the way money works, governments work, big tech companies work. All of that is on the agenda in the coming years and decades.”
February 1, 2022
[Good Call] “We may chop heavily in the $29k-$45k range for the next few months. I don’t think BTC necessarily HAS to retest the yearly range lows sub-$30k, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”
[Bad Call] “When I look at the team of builders at Solana, FTX/Alameda and Jump, that’s a group that I have about as high a degree of confidence in as possible in this space. This bodes well for Solana’s long-term future.”
[Interesting Call] “For years now I’ve offered the simple rule of thumb that “Bitcoin loves QE and detests QT”. That adage has been on display since November 30th when Powell said it was time to retire the word transitory during his Senate Banking Committee testimony. Since then, Bitcoin and crypto have been DownOnly and in January equities fell into the same trend.”
[TBD Call] “While public crypto prices oscillate with macro and regulations, capital continues to plow into private crypto deals with a fervor unlike anything the venture landscape has ever seen in any industry.”
March 1, 2022
[Good Call] “Misinformation is going to be a defining challenge in the coming years and decades – What is the actual truth? We can’t trust what people say is the truth. People are already feeling this to an increasing degree. Younger generations feel this more acutely than older generations. Younger generations know Fox News and CNN are both equally full of shit. That’s why they listen to Rogan. Digital information moves instantaneously via internet and social media. Everyone has a video camera in their pocket. How will Truth without Trust be obtained? I believe decentralization can play a pivotal part.”
[Bad Call] “It’s too early to say, but Bitcoin may be having a decoupling [from traditional] here.”
[Interesting Call] “When assessing the above from the lens of “whether decentralization can help”, I strongly believe it can, it will, and in some ways it already is. A decentralized approach seems to carry a higher likelihood of not abusing the immense power that will be bestowed upon tech companies in the coming decades. It has a higher likelihood of avoiding the democratic and free market capitalism rot that is so apparent in 2022.”
[TBD Call] ”Likely even more important is a similar path that plays out but with developers. You know, the people that are actually going to build the stuff that’s going to lead to change. Because for as much as I love Bitcoin, it’s probably not all going to happen on Bitcoin. We’re not going to solve the Joe Rogan Spotify 1st amendment issue with Bitcoin. But we could do it with a Layer 1 smart contract platform and a dApp. There’s still a lot of technical innovation that needs to happen between now and then to get us there. So we need great devs to be inspired enough to be motivated to build the stuff that will enable change. If they’re neck deep in building whatever else they’re building, they might miss the spark that leads to the inspiration… unless they get hit over the head on social media for a few days about why decentralization matters. And then the wheels start turning. Next thing you know that killer engineer is quitting their FAANG job and heading to Web3 because the writing is on the wall about why it is worthwhile work. You get enough of that and you’ll change the world.”
April 1, 2022
[Good Call] “While LUNA’s price has been increasing faster than UST has been created, it has allowed the ratio of the two market caps to increase. But if they were to reach parity or UST market cap were to exceed LUNA’s, a “bank run” of sorts could occur as the market might lose faith in the mechanism’s ability to hold the $1 peg. If this feels a bit like a Ponzi to you, you’re on the right track. It certainly has some Ponzi-esque characteristics to it. But then again, so does Social Security and the US Dollar and bunch of other things, so you just have to assess the risks and act accordingly. But it is a bit of a coordination game or a Prisoner’s Dilemma of sorts.”
[Bad Call] “Not a great backdrop for risk assets by any means. But where is capital going to go? The outlook for bonds couldn’t be worse. So the NASDAQ is 13% off the lows and only 11% away from ATH. Perhaps tech stocks are the new store of value? Their collective revenue growth and defensible business models might be one of the safest bets around in any asset class. What else can grow fast enough to keep up with the highest inflation in 40 years? Well… crypto has a growth rate like that. And look at the capital raises from the Monthly Highlights from this month and prior months. How could that growth rate NOT continue with so much capital pouring in?”
[Interesting Call] “We must accept this responsibility not only with the appropriate level of passion but with the appropriate level of soberness. For all the fun of cryptodickbutts and $10mm price bets on Twitter, the eventual outcomes produced by this technology and asset class are set to be of tremendous importance to humanity – whether positive, negative, or somewhere in between. It appears highly likely to me that crypto/web3/distributed ledger technology will be a core component of our existence in the decades and centuries to come.”
[TBD Call] ”For the many, many hours we’ve been spending researching Metaverse, P2E, gaming, gamefi, in-game NFTs, guilds, etc we’ve generally struggled to find projects we really love that have tokens that currently trade at a reasonable market cap… We find this current landscape to be encouraging rather than discouraging. It just means we’re still super early. We are still highly convicted this broad sector will become massive over the course of this decade.”
May 1, 2022
[Good Call] “For traditional asset classes, some sort of Sell In May slide followed by 3+ months of sideways “crabbing” makes sense to me. For crypto, a Sell In May event may look like a mini-crash followed by several months of crab.”
[Bad Call] “There are plenty of market participants calling for much lower near-term prices in both equities and crypto. There’s growing chatter of <10k NDX and <$24k Bitcoin. Yeah it could happen, but it wouldn’t be my base case. Even if that type of “Goblintown” price action were to materialize, it would still be incomparable to the 2018 bear market.”
[Interesting Call] ““Don’t Fight The Fed” is an adage that’s been around since at least 2009 and “It’s All One Trade” has been around for at least the last two years. They both speak to the same backdrop – central bank actions in the current monetary regime have such an overwhelmingly powerful impact on all asset prices that everything else is just an afterthought.”
[TBD Call] ” The other critical factor for the current situation is that the cat is out of the bag in terms of what you want to own when the Fed eventually slows tightening. There’s nothing on planet Earth that will move faster off the bottom than crypto when the Fed even hints at slowing down. There has never been wider agreement on that fact than there is now. It’s nothing like 2018/2019 when most of the world’s capital had no idea what to think about this asset class.”
June 1, 2022
[Good Call] “Bitcoin is yet to complete a full 5 wave structure and is probably at the end of its wave 4 with another wave down to come.”
[Bad Call] “If we are currently witnessing an Upthrust (UT), the DXY is poised to pullback meaningfully from here.”
[Interesting Call] “Generally speaking, it is easier to pump (short-term) financial utility. But only by strengthening the application utility can an in-game economy be sustainable and serve the long-term interests of all stakeholders. The path from financial innovation to gameplay innovation is crucial and can be a “Great Filter” differentiating successful games from failed ones. It is important for projects to work on adding real utilities and integrations to their in-game assets, in a manner that is tied to the game mechanics. It is very dangerous for the team and investors and other stakeholders to stay complacent when the token price is high. A good economic design is not a silver bullet, and a strong in-game economy is in service of the fun part. The economy alone is not the main goal of the game. The game itself has to be fun to play, such that there are real for-fun players that generate sustainable & organic demand for native assets. Projects whose application utility cannot pick up will die, and its financial utility will converge with its real utility at zero.”
[TBD Call] ”Do Kwon’s attitude and communication towards the market is worth thinking about. Is that how we want leaders of major projects to act? Is that in the best interest of the ecosystem? There’s a fine line between a visionary and a psychopath. Steve Jobs and Ted Kaczynski. We need boldness in this ecosystem, but at what price?”
July 1, 2022
[Good Call] “Based off the data in front of me, I am expecting a bottom similar to the December 2018 and probably dragging on until October or November of this year. My base case is drawn out below, with a Bitcoin bottom around $15-16k.”
[Bad Call] “I believe we will manage through whatever cyclical bottom may present itself in the coming months and have a good chance to crush this next cycle.”
[Interesting Call] “Many crypto funds over the years have lost enormous percentages of their AUM, but the Three Arrows Capital blowup is nearly unimaginable in its scale and surprise. These were guys that were in the Top 10 of everyone’s list for the best investors in crypto. 3AC was a group that virtually everyone strived to be more like, at least from an investing perspective. It felt like they were playing a different game than the rest of us. The strength of 3AC’s reputation made us all examine how we could be better at our jobs. It was that reputation that allowed them to leverage their collateral to unthinkable levels and blow up in movie-worthy fashion. It now appears they have liabilities which exceed their assets by billions of dollars and there is a good chance criminal charges will be levied against them.”
[TBD Call] “While Bitcoin the network has performed perfectly, Bitcoin the asset faces a narrative challenge. It did not work as an inflation hedge. It did not work as an uncorrelated asset. It did not work as collateral. Within crypto, Bitcoin did not act as a safe haven, as Bitcoin Dominance remains only slightly above its all-time lows. The “Toxic Bitcoin Maximalist” crowd has turned to bitter infighting and lashing out in a way that is damaging to Bitcoin.”
August 1, 2022
[Good Call] “I have been vocally, publicly bullish on ETH and the merge catalyst since at least May 2021. I hope I have also clearly laid out the risks around the event, but as we move even closer to the merge, I want to lay them out again. There are many risks to the price of ETH going into, during and after the merge. Technical design risk. Technical implementation risk. Hack risk. Value accrual risk. Price manipulation risk. Illiquidity risk. There’s a lot of risk. I think the risk is priced attractively but I don’t intimately understand all of the risks. I could be mispricing one or more, potentially grossly. I may learn some new information and very rapidly decide the risk isn’t attractive anymore for any number of reasons. If you’re long ETH, you need to understand these risks. Price could do literally anything, including go down 50% in straight line. It just did that six weeks ago. Price could go up a lot then go down a lot (fade the news) and then go up even more. The merge could technically work, and price could go up a lot, but value accrual could eventually fail, and ETH could bleed out into oblivion like EOS. It’s not my base case, but it could happen.
Should ETH thread the needle with implementation. Should ETH value accrual hold. Should the Fed slow tightening. Should QT not implode some corner of the US financial market. Should the global financial markets remain reasonably stable. Should Taiwan not cause WW3. Should Ukraine not hold the EU hostage over natural gas and cause a continent-wide economic collapse and potential collapse of the Euro… Then ETH should work well. That’s a whole bunch of qualifiers though.”
[Bad Call] “There are some indicators that are not yet implying a recession but most of them are known to be lagging not leading - namely the labor market. Jobs have remained relatively strong, although there has already been a trend shift there. I would expect the labor market to weaken meaningfully through year-end and into 1H-23.”
[Interesting Call] “We believe the Soulbound framework has a good chance to be the solution to that need. Vitalik et al.'s Soulbound framework offers an alternative to current identity primitives used in Web3, and it has the potential to enable more transformative use cases on-chain and in real world applications. We believe more theoretical and practical innovations will emerge in the coming years. A decade from now it could easily be transformative.”
[TBD Call] “I believe asset prices can bottom before a recession is even officially acknowledged, and certainly before a recession ends. The market is observing that the Fed may be nearing the end of its interest rate hikes, and asset prices care more about monetary policy these days than GDP growth.”
September 1, 2022
[Good Call] “At time of writing, asset prices across the board look vulnerable and crypto is no exception, as the correlation remained stifling in August… For as big of a narrative as the Merge is (I believe it’s the most significant catalyst in crypto history), if traditional markets are in turmoil, it would be my base case the positive price impact from the Merge would be delayed at best and cancelled at worst.”
[Bad Call] “The DXY chart looks like it could go test the dotcom highs, which would make sense in the context of the current macro environment.”
[Interesting Call] “I’m pretty highly convicted the asset class will continue to be worth more in the future than it was in the past, and we can argue about the pace. I’m pretty highly convicted the technology will continue to gain adoption, and we can argue about the pace. Whether the technology ends up making the world a better place I’m less highly convicted on. That one could go either way.
The degree to which the world decides decentralization matters is still up in the air. How that plays out is partially a function of how egregiously damaging centralized alternatives are – whether that be big tech or the guys in charge of fiat money. It’s also partially a function of how credible and functional the decentralized alternatives are. “Decentralization Theater” might not cut it and we have plenty of that going on in crypto at the moment. 13+ years on into this magic internet money thing and the world is still deciding what do you need decentralization for and how decentralized is decentralized enough. The failures of centralized power and control act as a forcing function. But that’s only half the battle. If there’s not a compelling decentralized alternative, folks may just not care enough to switch.”
[TBD Call] “At its core, X2E is just the reimagination of human coordination. Humans have been using tools and structures to coordinate for as long as we’ve been around. Now we have this new thing called a token and this new thing called a blockchain – what new ways of useful human coordination can we come up with? If structured correctly, we believe an X2E token can accrue significant value and unlock human coordination in exciting new ways. We need innovation on this front. Ikigai wants to fund this innovation. Over time, we think we can be helpful on token structures.
Overall, we are thinking long-term here. Over the course of this decade and into the next, we’re hopeful to see significant innovation in the abovementioned categories. A decade from now, I would expect these categories to be as unimaginable as Uber was in 1999. We’re excited to be a part of it. We’re diving in headfirst and will be writing more about early-stage crypto/Web3 in the quarters to come. Hopefully we can all figure out some of this stuff together.”
October 1, 2022
[Good Call] “Perp Funding Rates have been a hard read lately. One would expect a much more extreme negative funding reading on BTC at these low price levels. And while funding is indeed negative and shorts are paying longs, it’s not nearly to the extent of previous bottoms. This may point towards further downside in price to push the maximum number of participants short in an almost “bearish euphoria” type of event.”
[Bad Call] “I struggle to see how [EURUSD] doesn’t head lower in the coming months. Europe is up against the ropes.”
[Interesting Call] “UK Gilt Crisis and Yield Curve Control. Nord Stream Pipeline Attack. Ukraine Conflict Escalation. EU & UK Natural Gas Crisis. Yen Intervention. Yuan Intervention. Dollar Wrecking Ball/DXY Milkshake. Fed Tightening & US Inflation. Public Company Earnings Set to Decline a Lot. Extreme Bearish Sentiment, But Positioning Less Clear. BTC Running Out of Sellers?
That’s a lot to consider. I’m not alone in seeing the difficulty of the current setup. The best investor in the world says now is the hardest environment to forecast he’s ever seen. I believe the near-term outlook is very dark but so are expectations. There are numerous potential VaR shock events lurking nearby. The market is priced for a lot of bad news, but there’s likely bad news on the horizon.
In any case, we are likely nearing an exceptionally attractive time and price level to increase exposure to crypto assets. If you have cash, you should get ready. If you don’t have cash, you should get some and get ready.”
[TBD Call] “The winds of change are constantly blowing in crypto and no time harder than bear markets. Bear markets are where narratives get tested under a microscope and many crumble under the weight of dispassionate examination. The willingness to ignore a lack of compelling value accrual mechanisms suddenly goes away when everything is down 70%+ from the highs. The market actually starts asking hard questions. This is a good and necessary thing . Bear markets are for change. For innovation. For advancement. For keeping what works and cutting what doesn’t.
From that perspective, you’d almost prefer this bear market to drag on longer. So we can separate even more wheat from the chaff. A couple more quarters or maybe even all of 2023. It’s not like the space is going to run out of money to fund startups. That’s a laughable prospect at this point.”
November 1, 2022
[Good Call] “It doesn’t make much sense to me that Jay would want to rally risk assets right now. Easing financial conditions at this point would be self-defeating. Yet it seems like the Fed, barring very high inflation readings in November, is set to decrease the pace of tightening from 75bps to 50bps in December and likely indicate a further step-down to 25bps in Jan. Thus, Powell is left trying to communicate a step-down while keeping financial conditions from loosening. It seems to me that will be rub at the FOMC meeting on the 2nd.”
[Bad Call] “N/A”
[Interesting Call] “I have been astounded this year by the degree to which Powell has nearly every asset price on Earth in a complete headlock. When Treasury markets get a bit wobbly, he can flick a couple texts to the WSJ and calm them. The price of debt, the price of equities, the price of crypto, the price of real estate, the price of money and the price of most commodities go in the direction Jay wants them to, which he and the rest of the FOMC governors communicate with a few choice statements on the margin in public commentary.”
[TBD Call] “Whether you’re a JPEG owner or a Metaverse land titleholder or not, if you’re long crypto or you’re thinking about being long crypto, what is happening in the NFT space matters. If you’re long ETH, the state of the NFT sector REALLY matters to your investment. As does the state of DeFi. And the state of Metaverse/gaming. They’ve all gone pretty much one way, on account of It’s All One Trade. Which honestly makes the assessment of JPEGs primarily a macro one, hilariously.”
December 1, 2022
[Good Call] “I haven’t spoken a lot about my faith publicly, but I have spoken about it some. My faith is a big part of my life, and it has been for a long time. I believe in a God that loves me and has a plan for my life. I seek to live out God’s will in my life because I believe we as humans are purpose-built to yearn for that alignment. Ikigai the concept is sort of a back door, secular approach to a faith framework. I was cognizant of that when I named it Ikigai. My faith is a major driver of my actions, especially for something as important as what I spend the large majority of my waking time working on. In the first couple years of Ikigai, when we were very small and struggling to scale up, I would very regularly pray “God, if you don’t want me to do Ikigai, that’s fine. Pick me up off this path and put me on whatever path you want me to be on, and I’ll go do that. No problem.” And I prayed that for a long time and then we grew the business a lot and had some real success, and I felt like God wanted me where I was, doing what I was doing. I’ve been praying that same prayer a lot over the last few weeks, with a fervor but also a peace I’ve never previously experienced. “God if you don’t want me to do this anymore, that’s fine. I’ll go do whatever you want me to. Just show me the path and give me the strength to walk it.” And I’m not entirely sure how that’s going to shake out. I still need to pray more about it and meditate and read scripture and go to church. But I do strongly believe that good and evil are wrapped up in this technology. I do strongly believe this technology has the potential to make the world a better place, but it’s really just all potential at this point. If you look at the totality of the good that crypto has done and then back out all the bad it’s done, the net feels like it’s marginally positive. Whether or not crypto delivers on all of, some of, or none of its potential to make the world a better place will be entirely dependent on the individuals that are working towards those various outcomes. And that is truly a fight worth fighting. God willing, we will keep fighting it.”
[Bad Call] “I am profoundly disheartened by what I allowed to happen to my investors. It was a tremendously costly mistake, and it was entirely my fault and not anyone else’s. I lost my investors’ money after they put faith in me to manage risk and I am truly sorry for that. I have publicly endorsed FTX many times and I am truly sorry for that. I was wrong. My investors and people that listen to my opinion lost money because of my incorrect risk assessment and that weighs on me. If I keep doing this, I pledge to do better.”
[Interesting Call] “The good guys aren’t being loud enough. The space has not done enough to identify and expel bad actors. We’re letting way too many sociopaths get way too powerful and then we all pay the price. Ikigai is guilty of this. I am guilty of this. For years I’ve talked publicly about trying to do the right thing in crypto. Not supporting pump and dumps. Not playing the VC-retail exit liquidity game. Talking often about all the different types of risk present in these crazy markets. A bunch of other stuff trying to steer crypto in a positive direction. But I let a lot slide too. I often intentionally stayed away from acute, pointed accusations of specific people or projects. I took this approach for multiple reasons. I didn’t want to make enemies. I worried maybe I was incorrect in my assessment. I didn’t want to live my life as a paranoid curmudgeon. I thought my approach was sufficiently “doing my part” to help crypto move in the right direction towards maximizing the good it can do in the world. But I wasn’t doing enough. Most folks weren’t. We’ve been too tolerant. As an industry we have to realize that this ecosystem we care so deeply about is absolutely crawling with bad actors. We must accept this and act accordingly. Going forward the burden is on the individual or the organization to sufficiently defend their status as a good actor and not be labeled a scammer. Even then, you’ll have to expect good people to do scammy shit sometimes. If Ikigai continues on, we pledge to fight harder in this regard. It’s a fight worth fighting. We must hold ourselves to a higher standard. We must fight harder. Louder. More directly. More acutely. At this point it’s absolutely necessary.”
[TBD Call] “There’s at least the potential for the signal to noise ratio in crypto to increase in the near future. This speaks to the above point. The market we’ve been experiencing over the last several years has been, to some degree, fake. Maybe a little fake. Maybe massively, overwhelming fake. But in any case, the mechanisms by which the mirage was perpetuated have collapsed. Under/uncollateralized lending has been reduced to nearly nothing. Borrow/lending in its entirety is a tiny fraction of what it was a year ago. Massive frauds have been revealed and subsequently collapsed. What’s left at this point? It’s hard to know exactly, and there’s likely more shoes to drop. But it would make sense to me that this market would be easier to understand going forward. The quantitative data produced by the crypto ecosystem would be more logically explainable. If we can keep the “reckless lending, intertwined with fraud, used to heavily lever long to speculate on vaporware” at bay, the signal-to-noise ratio for crypto might remain higher for years to come.”
Closing Remarks
2022 is done and good riddance. The aftermath of the damage of 2022 is unfortunately with us as we enter 2023 and will likely be with us throughout this coming year. When things don’t go the way you want them to, you have two choices – stay the course or make changes. When something as significant as losing the large majority of your assets to the FTX bankruptcy occurs, like what happened with Ikigai, staying the course isn’t really an option. Change must be enacted. That’s true for the entire crypto market and that’s true for Ikigai.
Last month I laid out some of those market changes I think need to occur:
Crypto has a large attack vector from intelligent sociopaths.
You can forgive someone and still refuse to allow them to return to positions of power and influence.
Crypto has a large attack vector from the daisy chain of secondhand due diligence.
Trust in general within crypto needs rearchitecting. We have normalized an unacceptable level of opacity.
The good guys aren’t being loud enough.
We must more effectively ride the line between optimism and skepticism.
The insane influx of venture capital across all stages perpetuated an attitude of “growth at any cost”.
This is a sensitive topic, but we need to be careful about blindingly worshipping entrepreneurs with autism/mental illness.
With regards to the changes at Ikigai and my personal involvement with crypto. Everything is still up in the air at this point. It’s basically a series of decision trees. Do I stay in crypto? Yes or no. If yes, do I continue managing other people’s money? Yes or no. If yes, do I continue managing other people’s money standalone at Ikigai, or go join another organization? If I continue managing other people’s money, do I do that with the same approach to the market or change strategies? If I don’t manage other people’s money, what will I do? Can I create a research product of some sort? Would people pay $5/month for this newsletter on Substack? We have generated a ton of proprietary qualitative research internally at Ikigai. Could we sell that? We have generated a ton of proprietary quantitative research internally, which was the backbone of our systematic strategy. Could we sell that? I’ve had at least a few dozen people over the years tell me I should start a podcast. Should I do that?
All that and more is on the table right now. The path will become clearer in the coming months. I’m pretty sure God wants me to stay in crypto. Good and evil are so clearly wrapped up in all this. And I do still strongly believe in this technology’s potential to make the world a better place. That’s the “fight worth fighting” that I talk about so often here. I believe I have God-given gifts that I can contribute to this fight. I had been doing that already for years. But I wasn’t doing enough. I wasn’t fighting hard enough. Loud enough. I feel convicted that if I stay in crypto, I must fight harder to help deliver on this technology’s potential to make the world a better place. We all must. Too much damage has been done by bad actors. Bad actors are running the same playbook they’ve had for years and it’s STILL working. The FTX collapse wasn’t exactly the same as Mt Gox but it had many of the same factors and that was a DECADE ago. If we keep getting bit by snakes with the same scams we got bit by a DECADE ago, the good guys will lose this battle. Crypto will deliver on little or none of its potential to make the world a better place. What an absolute shame that would be.
“One kind word can warm three winter months.”
– Japanese Proverb
Travis Kling
Founder & Chief Investment Officer
Ikigai Asset Management
P.S.
Included below is an incomplete list of memorable tweets from the last month. Twitter is not investment advice and my views could easily be wrong. That being said, like it or not, Twitter matters for crypto. I have no interest in being a talking head for a living and babbling about on Twitter is a long way away from being a good steward of investor capital. However, this is a community with open-source software in its DNA, and participants want to crowd-source the truth. We believe we have built a team and a process that will produce these truths more quickly and more clearly than our competitors. We are shepherds of this technology. Answers to fundamental questions about this asset class are not currently clear, so having a public platform to share your views with the community is important. After all, you’re helping shape the future :)
1. Ikigai Asset Management is the trade name for a collection of advisory and consulting businesses operated by Travis Kling, Anthony Emtman, and their team.
The information contained or attached herein is not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, accounting, legal or tax advice or investment recommendations. This presentation may contain forward-looking statements that are within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s beliefs, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management. Although management believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that these expectations will prove to be correct. This email is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, product, service of Ikigai as well as any Ikigai fund, whether an existing or contemplated fund, for which an offer can be made only by such fund’s Confidential Private Placement Memorandum and in compliance with applicable law. Past performance is not indicative nor a guarantee of future returns. Please consult your own independent advisors. All information is intended only for the named recipient(s) above and is covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act 18 U.S.C. Section 2510-2521. This email is confidential and may contain information that is privileged or exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you have received this message in error please immediately notify the sender by return email and delete this email message from your computer. Copyright 2021 Ikigai Asset Management, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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