Voting With Your Money

Somehow, money is part of the few things we can control or rather the deployment of money is left to the sole discretion of its earner.

I think this inherent autonomy in how we spend, save, or invest can speak volumes when observed objectively.

An expendable item such as money could also reveal a person's true priorities and unspoken beliefs when it's viewed as a series of "conscious" decisions to cast votes in the economy of values.

Don't listen to what financial gurus say, just watch what they do with their money, and you'll learn more about their actual conviction and underlying philosophy than any public statement could ever convey.

The only issue I see with this type of learning is that almost everything is understood in hindsight, when the doing has already been done.

You'll probably not be a skilled poker player if you're trying to learn poker by only seeing the cards after the hand is played.

On crypto, I've started this routine of tracking smart money wallets for two primary reasons.

The first one is gaining more on-chain understanding with regards to movement of funds, entry and exit prices, and the difference or multiples gained from a trade/investment.

Let's just say I'm trying to become more realistic with actual market dynamics and the often-unspoken realities of high-stakes trading/investing.

Stripping away much of the hype and focusing on practical tangible results will serve anyone that's serious about understanding these markets.

The second reason is kind of tied to the first one, which is recognizing patterns, as in behavioral patterns and market psychology that aren't immediately obvious from surface-level analysis.

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Mirrors Of Reality

I feel that this new deep dive has also peeled back layers of idealized notions about how financial markets really operate, such as emerging ones like crypto.

From my experience so far, the data itself is skewed.

Success rate is a flimsy metric and changes dramatically based on the chosen timeframe.

A single massive gain can mask dozens of smaller losses and a streak of wins could collapse like a house of cards in one ill-timed move.

Volatility is the great equalizer here, and nothing is ever guaranteed or predictable in the long term.

I've also had this impression that transparency of the blockchain doesn't inherently guarantee purity of intent despite the tech itself being revolutionary.

A good portion of whales are just insiders who operate with privileged information, front-running retail investors through leveraging connections that the average participant simply doesn't have.

When you're just playing a different game with a different rulebook, you're not necessarily a brilliant analysts that you've made people imagine you to be.

For me, this was a necessary reality check and will probably not look the same way I used to look at these high-profile traders/investors and their supposed expertise.

Maybe this is what the real world looks like too, albeit in a more opaque way.

The 'smart money' in traditional markets operates with similar layers of access and influence, just with more sophisticated obfuscation.

Open Jungle

The digital transparency of blockchains simply pulls back the curtain on practices that have always existed in the shadows of finance.

This in itself is also a sobering realization that even in a supposedly decentralized and open system, the fundamental dynamics of power, information asymmetry, and human incentive remain deeply entrenched.

The main difference here is that crypto's transparency makes the inequality visible. TradFi keeps the same power dynamics hidden behind institutional walls and regulatory complexity.

Wall gardens vs an open jungle. Both unequal, one invisible and the other visible. If you had to choose one, which would it be?

Definitely an open jungle for me, any day of the week. Because transparency transforms victims into students of the open system.


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