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road to (hopefully) $30m | month 3 recap

the goal, for anyone new: documenting $5m to $30m in spot crypto, every position shown, the losses too. sold solana near the top last cycle and retired off it. doing this one in public.

running tally: $5m start in march, $5.9m end of april, $10.4m end of may. june closes around $8m. first down month.

read the $8m number with this in mind. about $1m of that is fresh capital i moved from stocks into crypto this month. a deposit, not a gain. back it out and the real move is roughly $10.4m down to $7m. that's the month.

monthly grade: F

the first two months of this cycle felt amazing. june i was wile e. coyote, running off the edge, legs still going.

here's what happened, and i didn't play it well.

zcash had an exploit scare early in the month. a live bug in the orchard pool, sitting there about four years. whether it was ever used can't be known until everyone migrates to the new ironwood pool next month. so far it looks clean, coins leaving the pool aren't flooding exchanges. but it's an overhang until ironwood and there's a chance another shoe drops. tho i'm not expecting one.

at the peak i was up around $3m on zec. it had already pulled back from there. i was on vacation, didn't see the exploit live, and when i saw it i sold everything. on a coin whose whole pitch is sound private money, supply integrity is the thesis. i'd rather lock the gain than wake up to a zero. banked a gain north of $1m. that part i don't regret.

here's the part i got wrong. after that sell the disciplined move was to sit on my hands. i already had lots of chart concerns. bitcoin was weak, the zec exploit was unresolved. instead i bought the whole zec position back near 450. i was deep in profit on the exploit sell and on hyperliquid too, so i was playing from a position of strength, and i went looking for offense. basically i was too eager, and the mistake was buying back when i should have been doing nothing.

then price bled. i actually could have scratched out near breakeven more than once and i didn't take it. i kept waiting for bitcoin to bounce off 60 and drag zcash back up.

i was protecting my scoreboard. i had a million dollar win in hand and i did not want to hand it back and go red. so i held, waiting for a bounce, and it bled more.

anyways, i pulled the rest of the plug and cut most of the rest of zcash and near, average around 390 on a 450 entry. ugly fills. i left about $500k of zec and near on the table on purpose, which is a small piece in case we somehow manage to go up.

i sold there on purpose. knowing i might be selling a local bottom. bitcoin could bounce in july and zcash could see 450 or 500 again and i'll have sold the low.

i made the call anyway, because i don't think this bear is over, and i think bitcoin and the alts see lower before the year is out. i don't know the month. but i'm confident enough in the direction to raise the cash and wait. for better or worse, putting my money where my mouth is.

net on the whole zcash round trip i'm still green, call it +$150k to +$200k realized. but a million dollar win turned into a couple hundred k, and i'm the one who did it. all good though, this is part of the cost of doing business.

the only real consolation is the loss wipes out most of my short term gains for the year, so a chunk of tax i'd have owed is gone. not a strategy. just the one upside of being wrong.

so where the port stands. hype untouched, the position i don't think about, down a touch, near its highs, nothing to fud. a small zec and near stub left for optionality. the rest is cash, more cash than i've held since march.

so here's where my head goes from here.

i got away from the thing (i think) i'm actually good at. i made my money buying spot and sitting on it, and that only works for me personally when the entry is one i believe in. zcash in june wasn't that. it was a price that had already bounced a lot and bought on a fear of missing the rest of a move. i talked myself into it.

so i'm going back to basics. mostly cash, and the job now is to find entries i'd hold for a long time without flinching. the catch is i've put a clock on myself. i want to be allocated for this cycle and the prices i want might not show up. so it's a balance, wait for the entry, but don't wait forever. that's the whole game from here. find the spots, and if they don't come, deal with it when it's closer.

just resetting to how i should have been playing the whole time.

portfolio below. around $8m, down on the month, about $1m of it freshly deposited.

still aimed at $30m. the plan didn't change because the month went red. the way i execute clearly needs work. i'll get better.

month three done. onwards brothers.