☕ Launching Alts Cafe (back on Substack)
☕ Launching Alts Cafe (back on Substack)
Patey's 2022 plans for alternative income and investing: crypto, NFTs, content sites, domains, poker, trading, DeFi. Come join the Discord!
Hey, I’m back on Substack (having built and sold the investing.substack.com publication to Travis back in 2020) and it feels good.
So Alts Cafe you say?
I’ve been investing in alternative assets such as content sites, newsletters and crypto since 2016.
I also wrote a book back in the day called Coffee Shop Entrepreneurs about my journey to becoming location independent (pre-covid!) so it all fits well.
Here’s a recap and a roundup of what I’ll be doing in 2022.
Alt Investing
#crypto
During the insane 2017 alt season, I did pretty well buying, holding and then selling a basket of 50 altcoins a few days before the top (luck + gut). However, the subsequent bear market of 2018-2019 where almost everything died, turned me into a Bitcoin maxi.
As such when I bought back into BTC close to the bottom at around $4K (I could have bought at $3K but the ‘hyperwave’ narrative stated it was going to drop to $1K) I only bought BTC and completely dismissed Ethereum which I could have picked up for under $100.
That cost me a lot of money (ETH has > 50x in this cycle).
Fast forward to the middle of 2021 and Patey has now become an ETH maxi. I’m heavy into DAO tokens (all on the Ethereum chain), have a paid subscription to the Bankless Substack and am deep into NFTs.
I’ve done pretty well this year on the Ethereum chain, but being a maxi cost me 10x to 100x what I could have made if I’d been buying up the alternative layer 1s such as AVAX, SOL and TERRA.
Crypto is still dominated by Bitcoin which has 4 year halving cycles. Typically we reach the top of a bull market 12-18 months after the halving. Bitcoin had its first halving in Nov 2012 and topped in Dec 2013; it’s second in July 2016 which topped in Dec 17, and its third in May 2020.
As such, we may already be at the end of this current bull run and could be 2-3 years away from another alt season (unless it’s now a ‘super-cycle’ yo).
Regardless, I’m going to try to make sure that I get in early on the next successful layer 1s and layer2s and will share what I’m up to in this newsletter (I want one of those 100x returns.)
I’ll look to understand and play the metagame as Cobie puts it and ride the narratives as Taiki frames it.
#NFTs
One game I feel like I’ve been playing pretty well is NFTs, finding collections where the price is cheap relative to the narrative that’s building that can pump it.
I bought a mutant ape for 4.2ETH a couple of months ago as agreed with and promoted the Mutant Cartel narrative that they were undervalued vs the OG apes. I took an offer for 8.4ETH this month (when the floor was around 7ETH) and have put some profit back into the Lazy Lions (which is my current PFP on Twitter).
My thinking is that the Lions were the first project I bought, as you see them all over Twitter and they are cute (rather than gross as with a lot of mutants). As such, I think this will hold true when Coinbase launches its NFT platform (supposedly this month) and opens the floodgates with its millions of users.
The Lions are currently at just 1ETH (crazy how $4K becomes ‘just’ but this is internet money remember) which is a great price tag for a beginner, vs mutant apes which now start at 11ETH.
I missed out on some upside with the mutants (that’s fine) but ETH has dropped since so the USD value is closer. I wrote for the investing.io newsletter earlier this month on how I’ve rewired my brain back to valuing NFTs in USD.
I think Lazy Lions will 3-5x over the next month due to Coinbase NFT. I can’t see mutants having another double in that timeframe. I will be looking to buy back into MAYC after a severe correction, however.
#domains
I’m not a great domainer - I’ve only ever sold one at retail on Squadhelp and one at wholesale on DNWE - but recently got back into it in a small way.
Someone reached out to tell me I’d forgotten to renew ngut.com and they wanted to buy it (told you I’m not great). It had been removed from my Godaddy account as had 15 or so bids at auction but I just managed to get it back with 2 days to spare.
4 letter .com domains are apparently valuable but I’ve not had an offer above $300 to date. I even did some outreach on Twitter to people who have Number Go Up Technology in their profile, to no avail.
#contentsites
I’ll be getting back into the content site game in 2022 after over a year of not touching WordPress. I’ll be picking up another aged SEO domain from Odys and getting AI powered info content from Justin McGill’s Content At Scale.
The new sites I’ll build going forward will be information-based and monetized with ads, rather than affiliate, and I will be doing very little link building.
I’ll be looking to flip sites as soon as possible on Flippa or Empire Flippers, whilst multiples stay crazy high before the macro picture and interest rate hikes potentially hit them next year.
#newsletters
At some point, I’ll start selling ad spots in this newsletter. When I get to 10K (active) subs I can assume 2% will click on a sponsored ad (if done well) for 200 clicks. I can charge $3 per click for $600 a send. That will be $2,500/m.
I won’t be offering paid content behind a paywall again, but will likely launch a new podcast that would bring in sponsorship revenue.
Alt Income
#poker
I watched a lot of poker during this pandemic (Ginge Poker on Youtube helped me the most) but only played like 5,000 hands this year (which may sound like a lot but that’s one big session for a professional player). In 2022 I’m going to play a decent amount and record my win rate, along with some videos.
My goal is to achieve a 5bb/100 win rate at 200NL ($200 buy-ins) over 50K hands. Then move up to 500NL and try to maintain a 3bb/100 win rate which, when playing 3 tables at once, is about $35 per hour. I could probably make more money on Fiverr but at least in the UK it’s tax-free, and I’ll begin taking shots in much bigger games as well as playing live $5K and $10K tournaments.
But I’ll be starting back at 50NL with a $2K bankroll and it will likely take me 3-6 months to be properly bankrolled for 200NL. I’ll be taking aggressive shots, but I won’t be risking any more than 5% of my bankroll on a single table.
#trading
I’ve just set up an account on FTX and also given myself a $2K bankroll. I’m going to be mainly trading the cloud and momentum. Likewise, I won’t risk losing more than 5% of the portfolio on any one trade. I’ve never done this seriously before so let’s see what happens!
#defi
I’m very new to this so if you are too we’ll be learning together. I’ve only done OHM and Olympus DAO forks up to now, but am currently looking at all kinds of stuff like Defi Kingdoms on the Harmony chain.
Call To Action
That’s it from me.
I’m planning to continue releasing newsletters on Wednesdays.
Until the next one, come join the Discord and follow me on Twitter.
Cheers!
Richard