Best Moments at Crypto Rand's

Author

Crypto Rand
December 23, 2022

Best Moments at Crypto Rand's

What a year!

We were trying to make a list of all the important events crypto sailed through during this year, but the list started looking like a disaster Wikipedia page.

Instead, we decided to pick the moments that have been important to us, at Crypto Rand's, and to our community members.

Here is what was important to us, our personal favourites:

Top trades

Trades you see once in a lifetime

Over the year 2022 I have shared +50 actionable setups in the group with entry, stop loss and take profit levels, and additionally, a good amount of other trade ideas and setups.

Agroman's calls, in Statistics

Looking in retrospect and taking into consideration those +50 “official” trades, here are the overall stats that summarises this year so far:

  • Direction: 23 Long vs 28 Short setups.

  • Performance: 26 Wins, 15 Loses, 6 Even, 4 Ongoing (55.32% Winrate & 1.73 W:L ratio

  • ROI: 19.39% Average Win and -3.29% Average Loss

  • Extremes: 98.87% max Win vs -8.24& max Loss

  • Streaks: 7 Win streak vs 2 Loss streak

Best Agro Setups and trade 2022

One of my most traded coins, $APE has been very present in my watchlist and my channel, sharing 6 trades on it over the year and having one still ongoing at the time of writing this review. But so far the official trade that gave the best results has been the monkey coin, here it is

The 2022 banger!

We have been commenting about the “official” setups, shared in my channel, but in other of the sections where I share trade ideas, I managed to recommend shorting $LUNA when it lost the support right before the collapse (it wasn’t even a thing at the time of entering). Then I kept the trade open until it hit the ground in the collapse. It's my highest PNL screenshot of all time 32,521.63% at x20 lev. (looking to debunk it in 2023!)

By far the best managed trade of the year side by side with the $APE long shared above, let your winners run!. Have a look at this three screenshots:

NFTs left and right.

Feels like a long time ago since NFTs were printing easy money but we had some good wins within the group at the start of the year.

Look Labs Mint - Caught this one early with many members in the group who managed to get OG status earning a free NFT which pumped to 7 ETH! A free $20K for many. The normal asset prices also did around 5-6x as well so great return on investment with this one.

Citadel Mint - Another project we were disgracefully early on from around 100 community members. Free mint worth around 0.5 ETH per owned citadel as well as many token/nft airdrops since. Still holding this one… amazing team and hopeful for the next NFT bull cycle.

Airdrops - One of the easiest risk-free wins from this year was token airdrops. Requires a bit of time, effort and patience but pays incredibly well if in on the right projects. Two decent wins this year as well as several others due to come in 2023 for members who followed the tutorials. $6500 realised profit in 2022 airdrops

Optimism - Was speaking about the airdrop potential on this one since January! This was around $5000 worth of airdrop for using the protocol just 4 times. Some people earned upwards of $40k+ on this one airdrop alone.

Aptos - Insanely easy $1500+ for the Aptos airdrop and one we spoke about. All you had to do was mint an NFT on testnet which took around 5 minutes and another free 150 APT tokens worth $1500 at the time of airdrop.

More Calls, from Bleeding Hedge.

2022 was undoubtedly a tough year for me as a trader/analyst. Having gone through much of my learning journey through a major stock market bull run, much of my trading strategy was long side breakout trades and this strategy suffered a great deal in 2022.

So it's been a steep learning curve this year and a lot of valuable lessons learnt. When I look back on the year there are a couple of standouts ‘’key learns’’ I’ll be carrying into 2023 and I thought it would be valuable to share them with you here and provide some examples.

  1. Less is sometimes more - In the early part of 2022, I certainly overtraded in what was a tough environment. Particularly for a breakout trader. I also made some really nice killer calls in the early part of 2022 that I’ll share with you now. If I just stuck to the trades and didn’t over analyse the market 2022 would have shaped up very very differently.

  2. Adapt your strategy to fit the market trend - More recently I’ve converted more to level trading, only really concentrating on taking positions at liquidation levels and level reclaims. This is a much better strategy for this type of predatory market where we see prices often taken to places to entice breakout traders into the wrong side of the trade.

So I think 3 trade recommendations stand out for me in 2022… The first one is actually December 2021 - Cheating I know but I still wanted to share it as it set anyone up better to weather the storm in 2022 AND it's also a valuable lesson from the above:

60% SELL of ALL spot holdings at BTC 57k… And this was the DAY before the market declined nearly 30% - A great lesson because if I just left it there and didn’t overtrade/analyse the market from this point I’d have my Lambo here and a shit load of cash to accumulate more BTC at these prices… Killer but there we go.

I outlined reasons to short alts and reduce bags in JANUARY - particularly in gaming/projects that have high vesting schedules

With that we did short SOL, ALICE and GALA really nicely

These were really nice shorts but taking it back to the key lessons - I analysed the entire alt market and knew many of these were going to 0… Should have just stuck to the script, not over analysed and walked away once I knew the position was in a good place.

Top Contributing Members

A Top 5 with real troll pieces in it

DiscoInferno

  • Eloquence maximalist, deep thinker, music passionate and NFT degenerate. Is the personal therapist of @confessions. He adds lots of exciting perspectives into any conversation, is always willing to help, is blockchain passionate and builder of his own NFT project

LeanSixSigma

  • ETH hater, TA lover, race biker and a true bear. His favourite colour is grey and everything has to go to zero. Provide a lot of quality takes in most areas of financial markets, very proactive, always helping and adding lots of value.

PiXel

  • Top chart designer, cameraman, military enthusiast and beer lover. Takes sick pics of his food making your plates look poor. Actively discussion of setups and potential investments. He is the secret coder behind the Crypto Rand Group exclusive indicators.

Ellionacci

  • Former lunatic, quality trader, great analyst, degen scalper and TA winner. DC lover, Batman is his idol! Made a tribe of his own with 6 children (so far!) Willing to share his knowledge, ready to get into a good debate and learn in the process.

Smedroc

  • Meme troller by profession but working hard to get his dream job at Mcdonald's as a burger flipper. Maker of great memes and gifs at lightspeed. Is a constant humour torrent in the group, careful what you write, his emojis are always ready!

The biggest Crypto Events From 2022

Rock and Rolling from Start to Finish

Terra

Luna and TerraUSD (UST) were both native tokens of the Terra network, a blockchain-based project developed by South Korea’s Terra Labs and its founder Do Kwon. The main mission of Terra was to create algorithmic, uncollateralized stablecoins, a holy grail of crypto, that would remain beyond the reach of regulators thanks to its decentralised nature.

In May 2022 the collapse of the algorithmic stablecoin Terra (UST) losing its peg to the USD dollar after an attack had major impacts on the cryptocurrency industry, causing a 59% drop in DeFi's total value locked, from $205 billion on May 5 to $85 billion at the end of August 2022. The Luna Foundation Guard's reserves decreased by 97.65% trying to defend the UST peg and the LUNA tokens price dropped around 99.98% directly from ATH.

The list of people and protocols affected by the crash is endless, but three notable fallouts stand out: Celsius Network, Three Arrows Capital and Voyager Digital. Each of these organisations has filed for some form of bankruptcy or insolvency in the wake of the Terra crash, with each having a unique ripple effect throughout the markets.

Do Kwon, the founder and former CEO of Terraform Labs, faces allegations and arrest warrants in South Korea and is still on the loose. The collapse also had implications for the transparency and openness of the DeFi industry. Lawmakers and regulators are eyeing a way to regulate the stablecoin market and the DeFi market as a consequence of the collapse.

Three Arrows Capital

Three Arrows Capital (3AC) was one of the most prominent crypto hedge funds in the entire space for the last few years. At the peak, 3AC managed approximately $18 Billion in crypto assets before ultimately collapsing completely in the summer of 2022. The cause was predominantly down to highly leveraged speculative positions across many assets with even more counterparties. The collapse of LUNA/UST was the trigger, as 3AC held a highly leveraged $580 Million position in the asset which crashed to less than $1000 in a matter of days. Such huge losses, a down-trending market and way too much leverage led to 3AC being unable to meet its margin calls as a liquidation cascade caused 3AC to blow up and file for bankruptcy in early July 2022.

The biggest impact was arguably the ensuing contagion with many counterparties deeply exposed to 3AC which was felt in the wider crypto markets. A few of the largest affected included:

  • BlockFi: suffered huge losses after liquidating 3AC

  • Voyager: lent $650 million to 3AC

  • Genesis: lent $2.36 billion to 3AC

  • Blockchain.com: lent 3AC $270 million; laid off 25% of staff

FTX collapse

Hands down the wildest thing that happened in 2022 and it might be the wildest thing EVER in crypto. I think back to the Mt Gox collapse and that was horrific. A huge amount of BTC supply was hacked from a single exchange. It was like binance being drained today but a little worse.

But still, even that doesn’t compare.

SBF lied to the world to cover losses and strengthen his position as the dominant exchange but that all unravelled in a single tweet from CZ about liquidating the FTT position. As soon as this happened bank fun ensued, Caroline attempted to have her SBF moment tweeting she would buy all the FTT at 22$. Nice try… This ultimately failed and FTT went into freefall

Everything unwound from there. EVERYTHING.

We then had CZ say he would possibly buy FTX but after taking a look at the finances he said ‘’no way’’ the 10+bn hole was too big to fill and the organisation was a total operational mess.

Fast forward to today we have the ex-lawyer that handled the Enron collapse now as the FTX CEO… SBF is currently on a plane to the US in handcuffs and Caroline turned into a snitch so she doesn’t spend her entire life in jail.

One silver lining – The Netflix series will be insane.

Crypto Rand's Discord Moments

Some of the most memorable moments this year have been around competitions, ran for the community

NFT COMPETITION

Not quite what you may have imagined. The competition was designed to award the most degenerate NFT holders and artists in the community. The goal was to mint the ugliest, funniest, most ridiculous NFT that you could think of or that was in your collection…there were some hilarious entries. Everything from -99% pictures of pixelated animals to homemade paint-created pieces of ‘art’ - unfortunately the server channel collapsed so most of the entries were lost. HOWEVER, we did manage to recover the winners for you! Originally it was a blank square where you can draw whatever you like, this was the result…. a Crypto Rand portrait with golden teeth! For your info the other winner is holding a... double Cockring (!), he is still looking for buyers!! I’m sure you want one of those in your life! https://solscan.io/token/AKjTCJzcrEwVCyYKKtU9qYACmuV6sQcjZZ5jFrhGXpg8

RATE MY PLATE

This one was a BleedingHedge’s idea, check the concept of the competition in the capture.Funny thing is that he got rinsed when he came to show off his barbecue shrimps, an NFT project idea almost came out of that!

TIMMY SPACES

Early into the 2022 bear market we had a really awesome space’s session with long-standing member - Timmy. We talked about his insane early Luna play, self-development, how to weather the bear market as well as mindset and health. The video is available via this link - https://youtu.be/P0u-KKM0lgU

A valuable session and real solidarity during the hard times. It was nice to see and one of our favourite moments in 2022.

The Tools We Use

Project & Blockchain Analysis Tools

Excellent tool used to evaluate the fundamentals of crypto projects with up-to-date on-chain data. Metrics include TVL, project revenue, treasuries, active users, active developers and more. Useful for fundamental analysis of core blockchains and projects within the ecosystem.

The free version is more than sufficient in my opinion. Best used to check the numerical data of a project used alongside your qualitative research (team, whitepaper, product-market fit etc). You can run comparisons between competing blockchains and dapps in several categories but generally, I use it more for deep diving into projects in which I am interested before taking a position.

Analytics platform used to interpret on-chain data in the form of personalised dashboards created by users. Choose categories like NFTs, Projects, and DEX and get a personalised dashboard with all of the relevant information

Website which aggregates all the relevant defi metrics for all of the key blockchains and dapps. Alongside the usual metrics such as TVL, Volume, and Fees - you can also now see project raises, airdrop opportunities, trending contracts etc. Very useful.

Alpha Tool

This has been a year focused on TA, trading, mindset and execution. I have tried countless strategies, tools, indicators and whatnot over the past 12 months. There is one tool that is outstanding among all the many others:

EMA Trend cloud

It has helped me not only in execution but also to keep my emotions at bay while trading. This indicator has been incredibly useful to do chart scans very fast and select interesting pairs by just looking at the position of the price relative to the EMA trend cloud and its shape/inclination.

It’s not super precise and requires experience, but in my opinion, just those two lines, its crosses and the positioning above, below or crossing price gives a very clear bias to start working with, so you know beforehand if you want to look for shorts or longs.

Its length (my preference 13-25/32) is short enough to have it react fast, so can be used live despite being an indicator that is considered “lagging”.

A trading strategy could be built just with it (see image), as it can provide entry and exit signals, and acts as support or resistance. In combination with other moving averages could be a complete system on its own, like the “FMAG” (fill the moving average gaps) that you might have seen me use quite often during the 2022 year.

This is not my invention, but I think this tool is a very valuable one that can complete your skill set in many different ways as it is very versatile. Give it a try!

Deep Analysis Tools (Stocks, On-Chain, Options)

SpotGamma

BY FAR THE BEST tool I use daily. Spot Gamma specialises in options activity – as well as providing a load of useful tools to scan options activity in specific equities they provide me with daily updates on key levels from an options perspective.

I use these levels daily and it’s a HUGE part of my analysis. In illiquid markets like we’re in at the moment options activity becomes more pronounced and market influencing. Can’t recommend this more – It’s a STEEP learning curve but quite honestly I’d consider paying $500 a month for it. It's that valuable.

Crypto Quant

I use Quant for a load of things but mostly I use it to track inflows and outflows for BTC. It’s all live data so I can see if someone deposits a large amount of BTC on exchange OR withdraws. I also use it to track the same for ETH and stablecoins. A useful tool to check the heartbeat of the crypto market on chain in real-time. I also have it linked to Telegram for real-time alerts.

Finviz.com

This is a stock market screening tool I use. With finviz, you can search sectors, insider buying, and what P/E ratio a company might have. I find this a useful tool if I spot a possible rotation into certain sectors – Take metals for example… I can just use the screening tool to give me ALL the metals and mining companies in the US. From there I can filter even further to find more specific stocks.

Finviz – Stock Heatmap

This just gives you a nice clear visual of what stocks/sectors are getting a bid or selling off. Helps understand where the market positioning money. It's live so you can check it throughout the entire day.

The People We Like To Follow

Because power is knowledge, we get our info from the best sources

In the crypto space if there is a number one platform to get information that has to be Twitter. Crypto Twitter commonly referred to as “CT” is a constant feed of valuable information mixed with a shitload of misleading and inaccurate posting.

At first glance that could seem like an issue but as long as you follow the right sources, you should be able to get a constant stream of quality info, news and data.

These are our recommendations based on the 2022 content shared in their profiles sorted by categories:

DATA & STATS

  • @nansen_ai

  • @UnlocksCalendar

  • @LunarCrush

  • @_TokenHunter

  • @glassnode

  • @RealCryptoGraph

  • @DuneAnalytics

NEWS & ALPHA

  • @PC_PR1NCIPAL

  • @hyuktrades

  • @Tree_of_Alpha

  • @HsakaTrades

MACRO & SENTIMENT

  • @zerohedge

  • @DiMartinoBooth

  • @MacroAlf

  • @biancoresearch

TRADING & TA

  • @Trader_XO

  • @Tradermayne

  • @Ninjascalp

  • @ColdBloodShill

  • @trader1sz

  • @GCRClassic

MINDSET & RESOURCES

  • @Trader_Dante

  • @CryptoCred

  • @thedefiedge

  • @EmperorBTC

  • @I_Am_The_ICT

  • @Tim_4444

The Crypto Narratives around 2022

Ethereum Layer 2s

2021-2022 saw some of the highest Ethereum gas fees ever, with transactions regularly costing $15-$100 due to immense demand on the network. This accelerated the need for scaling solutions, given the fact we were still years away from Ethereum ‘sharding’ to scale the network intrinsically. With zero-knowledge & optimistic rollups - the technology birthed some excellent L2 ecosystems with billions in value locked. The narrative centres around Ethereum still being the most prized and secure smart contract platform (even with alt L1 competition), so such L2 solutions could still inherit the Ethereum ecosystem's security and decentralisation but allow for a better user experience with 10x cheaper transaction fees. Currently, with over $4.26 Billion in TVL, this is one area of crypto which has seen strong development and adoption in incredibly challenging conditions. The two dominant protocols currently are Arbitrum and Optimism with 80% of the market share but many more are due to launch in the next year.

2023 - We likely see L2s continue to grow into 2023 as the core utility of cheaper Ethereum gas fees will remain for the foreseeable future. Also with lots of active development, we could see much more growth. L2 projects to watch out for in 2023 are Optimism, Arbitrum, StarkWare, and zkSync.

DEXs

Decentralised Exchanges and products have had a strong year for several reasons. Improved user experience and wider external drivers have been a catalyst for the strong DEX narrative in 2022. We saw many CEXs such as Coinbase greatly increase KYC requirements and many exchanges/countries banning the use of crypto leverage have driven many people to decentralised alternatives. Additionally, confidence in centralised actors in crypto has been destroyed this year, with numerous custodial platforms falling and huge losses as a result for many crypto users. Voyager, BlockFi, Genesis and most recently FTX are all examples of where CEX have failed completely - a stark reminder that self-custody is the only truly safe haven for crypto ownership. 2022 saw the rise of decentralised protocols like GMX which now generates the 3rd most protocol fees only behind Ethereum and Uniswap.

2023 - These external factors have driven users towards DEXs and will likely remain and continue into 2023. With more regulatory pressure, less confidence in CEX and better improvements in the DeFi user experience this is one narrative that should continue to develop.

NFTs

NFTs had an incredible 2021 and carried this into around May 2022. We saw the rise of PFP projects in 2021, followed by gaming NFTs, fine art collections and many projects cementing themselves as ‘blue chip’ products. 2022 saw NFTs reach other blockchains outside of Ethereum such as Solana with a lot of success. We have also seen traditional companies such as Nike, Reddit, Instagram, Twitter, Starbucks & many other household brands embrace the NFT technology within their businesses. GameFi and NFTs in games in general still remain as one of the clearest vertical integrations for crypto and I expect this to make improvements and a return in the future

2023 - It is almost certain we will see a resurgence of NFTs in the future, whether this happens in 2023 will depend on industry development and likely the severity of the wider macroeconomic outlook. Keep an eye out for innovative use cases, projects, ideas and returning volumes before we see another NFT bull run.

What's next in 2023?

Macro This year / 2023

Macro has certainly been the key theme in 2022 and I expect many of us have had a painful learning curve trying to navigate the unknown. Quite honestly if I look back at my mindset in late 2021 it's almost laughable how little I knew and I suspect it’s the same for many… If they’re even still around.

And what a year it was. We had:

  • War

  • COVID lockdowns / COVID reopening

  • Inflation

  • Tightening from central banks

  • Financial war with commodities and financial markets

Other than outlining that the tightening of financial conditions has driven us here I don’t want to dwell on 2022 from a macro perspective. We all know what happened, we all felt it and we’ve all had our fair share of FOMC meetings. So it's all about 2023 and what we can expect to see.

2023 Macro Expectations

When I really think hard about it and try and drown out all the noise I think the makeup of 2023 from a macro perspective comes down to two scenarios… Recession or Stagflation.

Scenario 1 (Recession):

  • Jobs down

  • Housing down

  • Inflation down

Scenario 2 (Stagflation):

  • Jobs down

  • Housing down

  • Inflation Up

I think there’s a solid chance we flutter between the two throughout the majority of 2023 and this is mainly driven by the inflationary factors that are outside of the feds' hands. Things like energy costs and food costs are two areas the fed can’t control and we have possible tailwinds that could cause these areas to go up… and down in 2023. Think war, China and a global supply chain.

Outside of this, I think housing collapses further, and Jobless claims will start to accelerate but I don’t think that’s a secret.

The final consideration is one we need to take seriously and that’s what happens if the Fed moves here and things start to break – A real possibility. Where this breakage comes from I don’t know but likely credit-related, corporate or governmental something just doesn’t feel right.

All things considered, I have to assume deep recession or stagflation deep into 2023.

Thank you very much for tagging along during 2022. We hope to see you again next year! If you want to know more about us: