The issue that I wrestle with is whether truly decentralised financial and social dApps can exist at scale (i.e., with hundreds of millions of users) given the above issues. I don’t have the answer to that question, but by the time this issue matters to the market, I hope to have used the institutional investors as exit liquidity so that I may fully bask in the light of the one true Lord Satoshi.

I most likely overestimated how quickly the reduction in supply would translate into higher ETH fiat prices. Versus Bitcoin, I am confident that ETH will continue to outperform. The cleaner trade would have been to buy options on the ETH/BTC cross. But I already had that position in the physical, and I like trading, so I went for it. Oh well…

The number one goal of any organism in any milieu is survival, and money managers are no exception. In their working lives, fiduciaries want to survive the year to receive their next bonus. That means they will buy crypto only when it’s safe to do so. Safety is found when the price has already risen multiple times off of the bottom. When the market turns lower and they lose their investors’ money, at least they can defensibly say they bought when everyone else was buying.

From a USD liquidity perspective, the remainder of the year features a Fed committed to reducing the size of its balance sheet, and the US Treasury issuing lots of debt to fund the government. Both of those actions remove liquidity from the system. That should cause the impulse to fall and take Bitcoin down to test its June lows of $17,500.

If the Fed and Treasury continue with their USD liquidity reduction plans, I have little confidence in ETH’s ability to get to Five Ducking Digits by year end. And much to the chagrin of my portfolio, I believe my Dec options will expire worthless.