Unstable Stability, Portfolio Tweaks and a New Toy.
After last week’s bloodletting, it looks like the market has stabilised a little, albeit at a depressed level.
I mainly watch BNB because it’s the base of several of my DeFi investments, and it has bounced around the $300 mark for the last few days. Overall, the crypto market has lost a massive chunk of value, but if we insisted on stability, we’d be sticking to TradFi, wouldn’t we?
I’ve made two minor adjustments to my portfolio.
PinkApple is out - it’s only returning pennies a day and it won’t recover.
I’ve added COTPS; an intriguing arbitrage opportunity - more below.
And I’ve partly bought the DRIP dip.
If Gmail cuts off half this email, please just click on the title and view it on Substack - Thanks.
The Portfolio Update
My total value has gone down less than expected, partly because most of the pain happened last week and partly because Baked Cats has been printing nicely, so far (but see my thoughts below).
Performance notes*
My Diamond Team
I’m still loving MDT. It just keeps doing exactly what it’s supposed to do and slightly more. It gives me a consistent 1.71% every day and the TVL is still rising consistently. Yes, the price of BNB is holding me back from profit, but I’m confident that MDT will still be pumping when BNB recovers.
Titano
I almost decided to drop Titano, last week, but there was a brief rally in the price midweek. It has since dropped back and I’m still so far underwater there’s no point in selling, but I’ve decided to give it the benefit of the doubt, for now.
SAFUU
Similar story for SAFUU, though it has fared slightly better than Titano. I’ll let it run for the moment and hope for a recovery at some point.
Piston Token
There was gloating in the Piston camp, last week, when it continued to rise while everyone else was running for the hills. But that didn’t last long. The price is on a rapid downward slide now, as if it wanted to get down in the gutter with all the other altcoins. However, I am optimistic for two reasons
it’s backed by the same team as MDT.
TVL is 16m BUSD, which is a damn good stack for a DeFi contract.
Baked Beans
Ahh, Baked Beans! How I loved you.
I was greedily ripping the guts out of it, by claiming every day, but I’ve had a temporary change of heart. I noticed that the decline in the TVL had slowed a little, probably because everybody’s daily payout is less.
I can also see that the devs are still doing their best to keep the contract alive, so to assuage my lack of faith, I’ve decided to start compounding again and see if my returns start to recover.
Maybe Beans can be resurrected.
DRIP
My featured contract this week, so see below.
DRIP Garden
I was afraid that the relaunched Piggy Bank was going to steal attention from the Garden and it looks like that is coming true. There has been no improvement in it’s fortunes, but I’ve reverted to compounding every day, just in case.
COSMIK Finance
It’s still too early to pronounce a verdict on COSMIK. They couldn’t have launched at a more unfortunate time. The price has lost over 60% in the fortnight since launch, but given the climate, that’s only to be expected. What’s more disappointing is the daily yield at 0.7% is only a third of the promised 2.286%. Open verdict, for now, but must try harder.
Baked Cats
Not surprisingly, Cats has suffered a few hiccups this week with falling returns, and yesterday for the first time the TVL fell, although there was a small recovery today.
The devs tweaked the tokenomics this week and extended the bonus period to 20 re-bakes instead of 12 and upped the maximum bonus to 34%. My returns have been averaging 8% per day over the last week, which is not to be sniffed at, but of course, isn’t in line with the promised 15%. I’ve also withdrawn once, but there’s a long way to go before ROI, if I ever get there. I still admire their ballsiness, though
COTPS - Auto-Arbitrage
I’m quietly excited about this, my first foray into arbitrage. Much too early to offer an opinion, so I’ll update you next week.
(* please note, some of the above are referral links, but you don’t have to use them.)
Featured Contract - DRIP
Yes, I know DRIP has been articled to death all over the web, and I’ve been responsible for some of that myself. It’s almost part of the DeFi furniture by now, but that’s no reason to ignore it.
Yesterday was historic for me, as it was the first time, since I invested, back in October ‘21 that the price fell below the $16.50 I bought in at. Far from feeling disheartened, I took advantage and added an extra 20 DRIP to my pot.
Last month, DRIP also passed another milestone, by celebrating it’s first birthday. Surviving for twelve months is rare achievement in DeFi, so DRIP deserves kudos for that, but right now, not everything is rosy.
A Long and Rocky Road
I was lucky enough to join just before a long and satisfying price rise that peaked at nearly $200 in February. Since then, we’ve seen an equally long and disappointing decline.
Many factors have contributed to that slide; general market downtrend, a slowdown in investor recruitment and a rash of competing protocols, offering higher returns.
But a big distractor was the DRIP team’s push to create a supporting network of pools and staking protocols under the banner of the Manor Farm and later the Animal Farm.
Every stage of that diversification was dogged by delays, confusion and false starts. The most devastating was the bot raid on the Piggy Bank launch in early March. Great expectations turned to angry accusations, and after a few days of hesitation and finger pointing, Forex Shark, the DRIP Daddy Dev paused, not only Piggy Bank, but also the entire Animal farm infrastructure.
What started as a short pause turned into an agonising nine week wait during which all our funds were unreachable. Three botched relaunches lead to further delays, and it was only last week that the Piggy Bank and Pig Pen were finally reinstated.
The fallout was that many investors lost faith in DRIP and the more fearful tried to claw back their bags and the price continued to fall.
So How Is the Patient Now, Doctor?
There’s no doubt that damage has been done. Forex and the team are unarguably good at the tech stuff, but rubbish at managing a disgruntled user base or communicating clearly. Any investment’s prospects are as much based on investor sentiment as they are on the underlying worth of the project and, right now, morale is low.
However, DRIP is still a behemoth in DeFi terms. There are over 110,000 players in the game and the contract is worth $769m, so it’s not about to disappear overnight.
Now that Animal Farm has wheezed back into life, we anticipate several new partnerships with major names in the DeFi firmament, which will hopefully bring new utility to the table and new money into the game.
Over the next few weeks, I expect to see the DRIP sluices creaking open again and a return of positivity to the community, despite the gloom elsewhere in crypto land.
Through all the upheaval, DRIP has never stopped rewarding us with our regular 1% per day. So, for me, it’s carry on compounding, till the price swings up again.
If you happen to be one of the three people left on planet DeFi, who hasn’t bought into DRIP yet, I’d be delighted to be your guide. Here’s my referral link. At today’s price, it’s a steal.
My DeFi Rules
Only invest ‘don’t-care-dollars’.
DYOR, ask around, check Telegram and Discord, read the WP.
Don’t invest at launch, wait till the dust settles, unless you’re a bot.
Avoid falling TVLs and be wary of falling prices.
Get to ROI as soon as possible, enjoy the profits thereafter.
Slowly invest more in the winners, cash out what you can from the losers.
Have fun.
Next Week
That’s it for this week. Next time I’ll dig deep into my new enthusiasm, COTPS. I’m fleeing the UK tomorrow, for the heat of Houston, TX on a family visit, but the laptop is going too, so look out for Dispatch No 4.
Please let me know what you think of DeFiance. Drop me a comment and tell me if it’s useful or if there’s anything else you’d like to see.
Till then - thanks for reading.
Dispatch No 3 - May 17 2022
DRIP to my lou my darling.....I am afraid DRIP done dropped! However I will say this out of the many Defi failures over last 6 months [many like everyone of them] I think DRIP has one of the best chances of coming back. I am not sure buying more now is a good move, but if it does come back and you bought at $15-16 bucks you could end up with alpha profit, if....big If.....but hey so far all Defi's been a gamble basically...even my baby Strongblock is coughing up a hairball right now. Real question is....when Fed raises rates a full point at next meeting how does Bitcoin react!....we going to $18,000 or below? Major resistance line 200 day moving....good thing Biden says inflation is barely above 3% thank God ! or gas would be $5 a gallon right now....but in Biden we trust or in whoever the hell is running the tell-a-prompter:)