Taran
@Taran_ss
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Founder @stix_co (crypto OTC and secondaries) | ex @camblockchains, physics @Cambridge_Uni | Not Financial Advice |π₯ππ
STIX
Joined February 2018
If you're going to launch a token for your protocol, treat token and liquidity management as a priority. Most of your user base is there for the token, which is not necessarily a liability. Tokens are the best incentive alignment tools, after all. You can't just focus on the.
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Recent OTC prices (in FDV):.Pre-launch:.$EIGEN @eigenlayer 6B (blocked) .$BLAST @Blast_L2 2.5B.@gensynai 1B (blocked).$ZRO @LayerZero_Labs 3B.@babylon_chain 500M (blocked AFAIK).$IO @ionet 1B (blocked).$BERA @berachain 2B (blocked).$SCR @Scroll_ZKP 1.7B.$ZKS @zksync 3B (blocked).
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Virtuals otc round was brilliantly organised tbh. Everyone all tweeted at the same time. Price rallied. Vesting is super short. It may run short term (next 4 ish weeks) but the unlocks might be too large for the liquidity to handle. NFA. Much to learn from the kol managers.
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CT is all but a kernel of Satoshi's vision. Think bigger. Stop trading and believe in something.
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Layerzero team spent weeks trying to anti sybil the $ZRO airdrop, zeroing allocation for millions of potential sybil wallets. They delayed their token launch by over 3 years, and STILL dumped 30+% in the first 48h after the airdrop.
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I have bought millions in memecoins OTC from sellers, including $GOAT, over the last few months. Lots of people think memecoins are a zero-sum game. Individual coins surely are but the industry as a whole will continue growing. Trustlessly selling memecoins OTC is a niche.
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Intersubjective truth: $EIGEN would be trading at 25-30B if it launched earlier this year without the locked token drama. There was OTC volume at 5-6.5B as recently as in July. Float much lower than it seems. Pumpability is high.
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Nothing is more humbling for an arrogant crypto founder than an obviously botched token launch/performance.
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Eigenlayer could've been a 50+B protocol. Some of the fumbles were doing a locked token, trying to time the market, unwarranted "team selling" of tokens and now even the twitter is hacked.
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Hot take: most people working at <insert dead chain> foundation is just a salarybro and focused at extracting as much in bonus as possible from the treasury.
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Founders adding the 1y cliff so they could cash out otc/liquid while investors still locked up, unable to sell otc. Same founders then moving onto building their next protocol. Lmao you gotta love crypto.
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CT is the best marketing platform in crypto. My god, the amount of new people now reaching out wanting to buy/sell OTC is insane.
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Not many people realise this but FTX liq was prob an offramping event for crypto - most of the people who bought the claims are traditional bankruptcy investors, like credit funds or individuals. Most of the money will leave crypto and never return.
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The last few cycles have had one or multiple winning L1 trades - $LUNA (lol) and $SOL last cycle. It's probably Hyperliquid $HYPE this cycle tbh.
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There's only a handful of major token launches left for this cycle: berachain, scroll, Linea, eigenlayer, monad, fuel, movement, eclipse, polymarket.
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Crypto VC fund investing 5 to 10m into a company where the founders pay themselves 2m a year and make no revenue. Who's building this? Ah yes, it's been built already.
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WLD traded mid 8 figs at 10B to 30B early this year. I know all the buyers. One of the largest asian funds got in at 3B. Few other asian funds at 5B. Team blocked all sellers from selling whilst they sold non stop from treasury at 10B.
@Taran_ss @Arthur_0x @EtherFi do you even have any demand for dog shit like IO or WLD at 80% off? The vesting schedules are so predatory its hard to extract any value at all.
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It is normalised in this industry for founders to change terms of vesting of investment for investors in their early rounds YEARS after the investment was made. This is, for lack of a better word, a rug and people should speak out about it. A recent L2 launch did this.
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$AVAIL raised $75M - most recent investors invested at 800M FDV in Feb/March. Currently trading at $0.16 or 1.6B FDV. Investors are on a 2x locked up with a 1y cliff and 2y linear vest. Not too shabby given it is only on Bybit out of the major exchanges atm. Liquid is still king.
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No, it's @HyperliquidX.
Every cycle a new CEX has risen to enter the top tier, and this cycle, that exchange appears to be @Backpack.
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ATTENTION > TIME > MONEY. Those with money realise time is true value. Those with time and money both realise capturing attention (so people spend time and money) is where value truly lies. Memecoins are just a representation of a hyperfinancialised attention economy.
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$TIA is now at the lowest price it's been since 2 weeks after launch. Unlocks are yet to come in October.
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Founders thinking they're gonna time the market with their token launch are wrong. The best time so far was Q4 2023.
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In crypto, secondaries (OTC sales) may be blocked by protocol teams/foundations for a variety of valid or invalid reasons:.
Recent OTC prices (in FDV):.Pre-launch:.$EIGEN @eigenlayer 6B (blocked) .$BLAST @Blast_L2 2.5B.@gensynai 1B (blocked).$ZRO @LayerZero_Labs 3B.@babylon_chain 500M (blocked AFAIK).$IO @ionet 1B (blocked).$BERA @berachain 2B (blocked).$SCR @Scroll_ZKP 1.7B.$ZKS @zksync 3B (blocked).
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We receive 10M+ in locked TIA demand every week. Sellers are very few, and most buyers are looking to buy to hedge their positions almost immediately. It's a market-neutral strategy to return 25-100% by October.
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to make you feel better going into the new year, my fumble on $AI16Z exceeds $50M today. gm and HNY
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Exploring the TON ecosystem heavily atm. @wontondotfun is the Pump equivalent on TON. TLDR, @RuskiTon is prob my largest bet within TON atm (Nothing is financial advice in this thread).Here are my observations:.
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More than happy to host an X spaces to discuss secondaries, treasury sales, otc trades etc. Who should I invite?.
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A lot of value in otc deals rn. Lots of distressed sellers. This is Nov 2022 for venture rn, Q3 will be a good time to bid distressed assets if you're in cash. Study $TIA. Most alts are down 70+% and sellers are wanting 70+% discount from current prices. Great time to bid.
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Justin Drake is doing a pretty big talk at Devcon at this very moment and the ETH Foundation is dumping eth. How lovely. Almost like a kol shills a coin whilst the dev sells.
The Ethereum Foundation sold 100 $ETH for 334,315.7 $DAI again ~25 minutes ago. This is the first $ETH sale since @Ethereum Foundation released its 2024 report on Nov 8, showing asset reserves at $970.2M as of Oct 31, with $788.7M in crypto (99.45% in $ETH). The Ethereum
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@Arthur_0x I think 80+% is the actual discount rate. Sellers ask 50 to 60% but deals get done closer to 80% off. We just did @etherfi which is less than a 2y lock at 70% off.
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My dad was proud of me, he was very happy and fulfilled during his final years. I love you, Dad. Rest in peace. ΰ¨ΰ¨²ΰ© ΰ¨ΰ¨΅ΰ¨Ήΰ¨Ώ ਨਾਨΰ¨ΰ¨Ύ ਸਦ੠ΰ¨ΰ¨ ΰ© ΰ¨ΰ¨Ύΰ¨Ήΰ¨Ώ
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This is, hands down, the best thread I've read on Twitter this year.
22 ideas from 2022. The top 1% of ideas I encountered:.
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Sorry but Singapore is just one racist experience after another. It's a beautiful city but generally, terribly racist towards Indian/brown people. Walked into the @Swatch store at MBS to buy quite a few moon swatches but the 2 employees there started shouting at me. Never been.
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narrative shifting + relentless acceleration + e/acc pilled + technological supercyle (real) + based AGI + cosmic conquest + bootstrapping network states + abundant atomic economies + memetic leverage + tokenize everything + please god donβt let me miss the rocket ship.
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If you're in crypto, pivot to living in the UAE from wherever you are. Bullish UAE.
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Ah yes it's fair for an exchange to list a cabal 20m shitter on their spot exchange, with a 10% supply donation as listing fee but not a clear market winner at 1B with better distribution and mindshare.
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I want to ensure I get VCs/traders/founders, not just VCs. If any founders would like to come forth and address why they've blocked secondary trades, I would welcome them. cc'ing some here: @Starknet (@EliBenSasson, @jdiegooliva), @zksync (@gluk64 @Be1garat), @worldcoin (@sama,.
More than happy to host an X spaces to discuss secondaries, treasury sales, otc trades etc. Who should I invite?.
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$STRK is at $4B FDV, down over 80% from their previous round FDV of $22B. What's interesting is that it's now below what its OTC fair value was pre tge ($4.5B). Transfers were blocked so potential buyers are thankful they didn't participate in the otc transaction last year.
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A quick fix to the high FDV token issue is for startups to access venture loan finance rather than raise VC. They can choose to raise cash via loans and grants (maybe form the L1 treasury), and can launch low + run 100x. There's no pressure to launch high + make returns for VCs.
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Exchanges quoting 8 figures for spot listings for memes rn. Even clear market winners, which started as community led coins, think it isn't worth it rn as they hold limited supply in the treasury. Exchanges should just charge extra trading fees to extract the same value out of.
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The amount of people who have made millions (8+ fig) off of crypto and haven't ever used a hot wallet or swapped on a dex is staggering. Employees/investors of L1/L2s with 10-11 figure launch FDVs cash out many millions and haven't ever played with crypto or held any tokens. .
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e/acc isn't just a cult. it's a 100+ trillion dollar movement. humanity will accelerate. it'll conquer the whole fckin universe. it'll unlock energy generation and capture mechanisms previously unknown. long live humanity. accelerate forward.
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i miss 2020 so much. as a builder, 2020 felt like the west wild. you could deploy a protocol, slap on a token for liquidity mining, and have it trade on a DEX immediately. today, we've lost that element of fuck-around-find-it. launching is such a huge hurdle now. in addition
i miss 2020 so much. as a builder, 2020 felt like the west wild. you could deploy a protocol, slap on a token for liquidity mining, and have it trade on a DEX immediately. today, we've lost that element of fuck-around-find-it. launching is such a huge hurdle now. in addition.
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Went to a VC fund with a bid of 10M+ usd of locked $TIA in Q1 at $8.50, they laughed at us. Now I see them investing in seed rounds at 9 fig FDVs. LPs, don't give money to just anybody. Make sure they have your best interest at heart.
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A lot of L2s will start leaving eth in 2025. Obvious reason is the extra pumpability as an L1 and not really the product, which is valid too.
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OTC at <1.2B, with no sizeable bids. Make of that what you will.
New Pre-Launch Listing: $TKO @taikoxyz . Ahead of the highly-anticipated Taiko token launch, you can trade $TKO on Aevo today. The token has 1 billion max supply, so $7 implies a fully diluted valuation of $7 billion. Trade $TKO here:
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On top of this, sellers who rejected selling at 3B when we approached them with large bids are now contacting us wanting to offload. OTC value is probably sub 1.5B now - no one wants to be locked up for 3y. .
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Recently, we've had quite a few portcos struggle with CEX listings - cost and queue times. These were all in the sub 500M fdv range and often had smaller budgets for listings. They could've simply launched their token onchain, managed liquidity better, and would be FAR better off.
If you're going to launch a token for your protocol, treat token and liquidity management as a priority. Most of your user base is there for the token, which is not necessarily a liability. Tokens are the best incentive alignment tools, after all. You can't just focus on the.
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All of a sudden, the TL is shorting $SOL and bridging to base. hmmmmmmmmmmm.
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OTC discounts to spot prices REDUCE in a bear market, not vice versa. We're doing more otc volume now than we were in q1/q2. Smart buyers buy when markets are down. Simple tbh.
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$ALEO's real max supply is 2.6B. Token is (barely) trading at $5.55. Implies an FDV of $14.4B and a current float of ~3.5%. Barely any trading volume + no Binance + low liq perps. First round was in 2020 and they've raised ~$300M. Everyone's an OTC seller at these prices.
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What happens to @polymarket volumes and usage post-elections? What's the team doing to continue their growth after their biggest catalyst will diminish?.
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I heard sovereigns are building $MOVE strategic reserves. May become a threat to the US Dollar itself. Gmove.
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Fun fact: I've only ever on ramped once. It was approx 1000 USD in 2019. Have only been off ramping since.
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Solana is for wealth creation and Ethereum is for wealth preservation.
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Reached out to someone for a quote for a locked token. They say they're keen to sell. 12mo linear vest. They quote us 2x current spot price. WEE CEEs.
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Few know this. The buyers actually bought at ~10B, and they have LPs :).
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We're going so so much higher lads. E/acc is our future.
JUST IN: Elon Musk joined President-elect Donald Trump's call with Ukrainian President Zelensky to discuss ending the war with Russia.
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The @zksync lazily blocked all OTC transactions and secondaries for investors and team to control natural price discovery. $ZK currently has max value of $4B FDV in the OTC markets, and I don't see OTC value rising post TGE. Early investors unlock 25% during month 12 post tge.
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I request each and everyone of you to spend more time with your parents. It's one of the most important things in life. All else is fluff.
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only one way forward. accelerate.
Rage against the dying of the light of consciousness. Go forth and accelerate.
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Accelerate.
Overheard in Silicon Valley: "My biggest lesson from the last year is just, itβs all going to happen. All my childhood dreams of space colonies and brain interfaces and AI and robots. Everything is justβ¦ going to happen.".
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The @stix_co App (is heating up! OTC markets are going parabolic with the recent ETF News. Some of our recent transactions in January include @berachain, @MantaNetwork, @zksync, @Scroll_ZKP, @LayerZero_Labs, @Picasso_Network amongst others!.
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New VC funds plagiarising STIX charts and data without citations in their fund decks (literal copy paste), and trying to raise LP capital off the back of it. Bullish STIX!.
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It's simple really: most VCs don't have their current LPs best interests at heart. They just want high brand investments to impress new LPs for future funds. That game is over though: LPs now wanna see DPI before reallocating.
Infra founders are still raising at over 1B val pre prod is a major red flag . The latest infra hot coin Avail was not listed on either Binance nor OKX, now daily real volume sub 5m . CB 2024 Q1 retail volume is only 1/3 of 2021 Q1, it wonβt take anyone more than 10 mins to.
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There's a clear interest split in the web3 secondary markets between the asset classes: tokens and equities. The highest "quality" (the only metric in crypto as there's no revenues) token projects are settling at least at-par but mostly at premium valuations. These sales are.
Blame the crypto winter: Web3 startup valuations on secondary markets are tanking as much as nearly 50%, data shows
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