I've Become a DeFi Degenerate
It has happened, I've become a DeFi Degenerate. It wasn't planned or done on purpose, it just kind of happened. I didn't even make it to the six-month mark in crypto before the degen apparently hidden deep in me took over. So what is a DeFi Degenerate?
DeFi =Decentralized finance (DeFi) is an emerging financial technology based on secure distributed ledgers similar to those used by cryptocurrencies (Investopedia)
Degenerate = A. having declined or become less specialized (as in nature, character, structure, or function) from an ancestral or former state. B: having sunk to a condition below that which is normal to a type. (Merriam-Webster)
In DeFi, "degen" is a name given to that group of people who are known for taking part in crytpo "pump and dump" schemes. It started innocently enough, taking on a little more risk. Those higher rewards are tempting after all and as they say, "no risk, no reward." However, over time I've sunk to a low place I never envisioned myself to go in crypto and you know what - I LOVE IT.
Now to be clear, I basically consider everything I have in crypto at this point to be "risk capital" and am prepared to lose it all. Going in with this mentality, you can see how the degen path might present itself. Funny thing is, I'm not a huge risk taker by nature. I've invested in stocks, primarily index funds, for years. I've never deviated from my original strategy formed in the last century and have never even sold any holdings building up enough of a portfolio base to retire early. Many of my friends have taken a much riskier approach to investing, buying and selling, over time my strategy has beaten them all - by a fairly significant margin in just about every case. You would think I would simply take what I have learned and profited from and apply that once again. But now I'm into crypto, which almost none of them have moved into yet interestingly enough, I've become an investing version much worse than any of them when it comes to risk taking.
My friends are gamblers, not only with their investments but in sports as well. I'm always hearing about their big wins, but the truth is they lose more than they win - I just don't hear those stories very often. I've never gambled, well unless you consider putting a few bucks down on one of those Super Bowl square games at work. It is just not in my nature. Las Vegas - no thank you. My parents owned a condo in that shady town for years and my brother once lived there - I couldn't stand it and rarely visited. Everything just felt, well dirty...
Yet in crypto, I feel like I've taken up residence in Las Vegas to run a casino myself. Now I am rolling in the dirt!
The high I get doesn't come from hitting a 21 on blackjack or nailing a red 12 on the roulette wheel. No roll of the dice gets my juices flowing. My team didn't cover the spread in the big game giving me a hefty payout either. No, the high comes from yields and other returns. It is addictive and their is always a bigger yield or return to chase. I'm starting to finally understand the game my friends have been playing all these years.
I'll start to cover some of the projects I've started getting involved with in my next article - stay tuned and try not to laugh. Please keep in mind that many folks go to Vegas and see the gambling simply as entertainment which is similar to how I see these projects. I'm not going in big on any of them, at least not yet. I'll try to keep it that way, I promise.
But back to the beginning, it all started with innocent investments in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) at the start the year. It felt, honestly, like investing in tech stocks - no big deal. But you can't really earn interest or dividends on your Apple stock, yet you could with crypto and therein lies the difference. Soon the chase was on to find higher yields for simply placing my coins in various platforms. Gains would not only come from potential price gains, which have been hard to come by in 2022, but more importantly from every increasing numbers of coins and tokens. My blood pumps faster and faster with each higher yield...
Next up came yield farming. This felt like real crypto investing to me, much more than simply holding coins. There is obviously more risk, including impermanent loss, which made everything seem more critical in terms of decision making and strategies. Suddenly I was knee deep into spreadsheets, figuring out when to harvest my gains at the most optimal times. The more brain power that was required, the more I got into it. Articles, podcasts, videos all feed my frontal lobes on a continual basis as I absorbed as much about the crypto space as possible. This level of involvement can't be that healthy. Can it?
When it comes to the degen part - I blame social media. Reddit, Discord, Telegram and the like inundate the senses with all sorts of crazy ideas. The problem is, the more you hear about these projects the more normal and acceptable they appear to become. The familiarity breeds content and comfort until one day you just say "F IT" and throw a little money at one of these riskier plays. Dopamine begins to rush through the body, what a rush! Suddenly those spreadsheets show you doubling your money in days, not months or years. I'm almost convinced I can time these platforms well despite no practice with timing at all with my stock investments over all these years.
Who am I kidding? Let's be honest here, I'm going to get REKT! It is inevitable, yet...
There is a small part of me, that little voice in the back of my head, that keeps seeing that crypto reward known as a Lambo. It is like a little devil figure hanging out over my left shoulder whispering, "its OK, you got this." I'm going to strike it rich in crypto and in no time at all. I am a crypto millionaire in the making, no doubt. Being a DeFi Degenerate is the quickest way to get there after all and I don't have the patience to wait. Now, who is with me?
