Greetings from Texas
I’m in the USA this week, on a family visit. But DeFi never sleeps, so the DeFiance newsletter comes to you from the thriving city of Houston TX, where men are men and the women are armed.
The big news is that the DeFiance portfolio took a hit this week. My latest foray into arbitrage ended in tears when COTPS ran away with my money and several millions more from other people. Full details below.
Apart from that it’s been a week of slight recovery after the crypto crash, but no breakthroughs and no new investments.
If Gmail cuts off half this email, please just click on the title and view it on Substack - Thanks.
Portfolio Update
Performance notes*
My Diamond Team
For the first time since I invested, the TVL stopped rising and took a temporary downturn, over the weekend. But within a day it had recovered and is back on it’s upward trend. Also, BNB has bottomed out and is recovering slowly, so every day MDT looks stronger and it is still the brightest jewel in the box.
Titano and SAFUU
Both of these continue to bump along the bottom, like a pair of dead water-skiers. Their token prices are deeply depressed, but the one thing that gives me hope is that the TVLs are bouncing up and down, rather than continuosly falling. Neither investment is worth selling, so I’m holding for now.
Piston Token
I still like MDT’s little brother, but the price has now dropped down to what it was at launch and the funds on deposit are gradually reducing. Piston needs some good news and fresh investors if it’s going to recover.
Baked Beans
Feeling guilty, last week, I rekindled my faith in the Big Orange and started re-baking again to see if the daily percentage would come back up, from the paltry 0.72% I was getting. So, I compunded for seven days straight and yes, the return did improve. But not by much. This morning I took out $61 which is roughly 1.76%.
More importantly, the TVL is still falling, so unless the Master Bakers can attract some new recruits, it’ll be, “Bye, bye beans.”
DRIP Faucet
Not much to say about the Big Daddy of DeFi. DRIP pumps on, but since there are no new anniuncements from the team, the price is still languishing in the mid-teens.
DRIP Garden
I am now convinced that the Garden has no chance of recovering. All eyes are on the Piggy Bank now and the money too. I will be claiming every other day from now on.
COSMIK Finance
I can’t figure COSMIK out. Both the price and the contract have flatlined for the last two weeks and as you can see, the charts are almost identical. It’s either the calm before the fall or the slumber before the big awakening. No comprendo!
Baked Cats
Another conundrum. On the face of it, Cats is doing OK. New money is still arriving, old money is still compounding and seemingly sticking to the 6/1 mantra. But the daily returns are up and down like a fly in an elevator, ranging from 3.5% to 8.1% in the space of two days. I’m still hopeful of making ROI, but it will take me another four weeks at this rate.
Failed Investments
You’ll notice that I added a new row in the portfolio table. These are the investments I’ve written off, either because they are no longer producing returns, like PinkApple, or they’ve rugged, like COTPS. The figure in the ‘Profits Taken’ column is net of any cash I managed to take out, before they died.
I Got Scammed!
This week, I planned to feature my new, favourite money-maker, COTPS Auto-Arbitrage. But the relationship ended badly.
They say you’re not a true DeFi investor until you’ve been rugged, scammed, hacked, exploited or otherwise financially abused. Well, now DeFiance has been right royally scammed.
I was excited by COTPS because it was, or claimed to be, a whole different approach to making DeFi profits. Instead of the usual ponzi-nomics of the miners, COTPS promised to take advantage of small price differences between the buy and sell prices of multiple crypto currencies. Trading hundreds of times a day it would add up lots of tiny profits into a healthy daily return. Best of all, my profits wouldn’t be beholden to the plummeting price of some made-up token - COTPS could make money whether the weather was bullish or bearish.
To be honest, I should have known something was up when the SMS verification for withdrawals stopped working. Not that I was trying to withdraw, but I was tracking the Telegram chatter and alarm bells were ringing.
Despite that, once I’d set up the automation script, according to the COTPS website, my stash was rising at the healthy rate of 4.5% per day.
At first, the verification text codes were just ariving too late to beat the timeout. Then they stopped arriving altogether.
COTPS posted various misleading messages saying normal service would be resumed soon, a new provider was being appointed etc. But, finally, two days ago, the site disappeared and word in the groups was that several hundred million had been spirited out of one of the dev wallets.
I only lost $370, but I hear that others said goodbye to several thousand, and in some cases considerably more.
If any of you jumped into COTPS on my referral link, then I apologise for leading you down a dead-end. I hope you didn’t lose any more than you could afford.
But I will shed no tears over my loss. My funds came from my DRIP Garden profits, not my bank account. And also, I have to be honest, I quite enjoyed the ride. It’s all part of the fun of DeFi investing.
Like a day at the track, you win some you lose some. The trick is being up on the day and, so far, the DeFiance portfolio remains solidly in the black.
So, I say bring on the next crazy opportunity - I’m ready.
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 week I’ll be focusing on the Piggy Bank, part of the DRIP Network. |Recently relaunched after a long pause, the Piggy Bank is bigger and better than ever.
Till then, thanks for reading.
How did you calculate your baked beans portfolio value? Since Beans has no set price, is this just an estimate based on initial investment and subsequent daily return %age? (not including your referral bonuses)