Portal is the only custodyless interoperability protocol for Bitcoin and just released its token called $PTB. Check it out today!
GM friends. Hereâs what Iâll cover today:
đ3 crypto red flags to avoid
đ Crypto chart of the week
đď¸ The latest DeFi news
đ3 crypto red flags to avoid
A few weeks ago, I talked about what Iâm looking for in crypto projects.
But I realized that I never wrote an issue about what red flags should convince you not to invest in a certain coin.
Many of the protocols that failed over the past years presented the same red flags. So in this issue, I wanted to cover a few of the main red flags from my watchlist.
Letâs dive inđ
1. The project is constantly attacking its competitors
Those of you whoâve already been in crypto for a few years probably remember the famous tweet posted by Do Kwon (Terra Luna creator) in 2022.
âBy my hand $DAI will die."
The irony is that Terra Lunaâs UST stablecoin collapsed just a few weeks after, while DAI stablecoin still exists to this day.
Now, obviously, the UST downfall wasnât caused by the fact that Do Kwon was a cocky cult leader. But before UST collapsed, a lot of people pointed out that the UST economic model wasnât sustainable.
Yet his arrogance and overconfidence made him ignore these concerns without addressing them, and ultimately led to UST losing its peg in one of the worst crypto collapses ever.
Whatâs the takeaway? Invest in projects that have humble teams who donât pretend to know everything and are willing to listen to the community feedback.
Ethereum, AAVE, Hyperliquid, Pendle, Uniswap, and almost all the leading projects in this space have humble leaders who Iâve rarely seen attacking others.
2. The team is flexing its wealth on social media
If the founder of the project you invested in spends one week in Dubai, the next week gambling in Monaco, and the week after vacationing in France, then my friend, Iâve got some bad news for you about where your moneyâs going.
The reason why many highly successful protocols from 2021 are no longer relevant today is that their teams lost the hunger to work hard once they became successful.
Thatâs why Iâm generally trying to buy only the tokens of the projects that have a team that seems very hungry and motivated to build something great.
How do you notice that? Typically, Iâm looking for these things:
The founder or the team members of the project are highly active on social media and show a lot of excitement about where the project is headed
You never see posts or photos on social media where the projectâs team is promoting a lavish lifestyle
The team is always shipping fast and sticking to its promises
If the project youâre bullish on is doing the opposite of that, then you might want to reconsider your investment choices.
3. The social media posts of the project are filled with buzzwords
Did you ever read a long article about a protocol and feel like you didnât understand anything at the end? It happened to me several times.
And not because I didnât understand the meaning of certain words, but because the goal of the article was to amaze the public and convince them to buy a certain token by using fancy words, not to actually provide some useful information.
My advice is to stay away from projects that say nothing in a lot of words.
If the vision of a project isnât clear and it takes you more than 5-10 minutes to understand what a certain protocol is actually doing, chances are you wonât miss out on any gains by no longer paying attention to it.
The most successful products are usually built by teams that can explain what theyâre building in just a few simple terms.
To conclude, whatâs certain is that you need a good bullshit detector to make it.
Iâd even go as far as to say that over 95% of the projects that are launching nowadays are made with the sole goal to extract as much money as possible.
Does this mean that you can no longer make money in crypto?
Absolutely not. But you have to be careful with what tokens you choose to buy.
Together with Portal
Portal to Bitcoinâs $PTB is finally here
Portal to Bitcoin, the first custodyless interoperability protocol for native Bitcoin, just released its utility token dubbed $PTB.
Historically, bridges have been very vulnerable to hacks.
Through Portalâs innovative Bitscaler technology, Bitcoin can scale horizontally and vertically with zero protocol changes in a trust-minimized way.
Hereâs why you should pay attention to Portal:
Swap securely â Portal will enable swapping native Bitcoin, ETH, SOL, and other assets via atomic swaps. No bridges. No wrapping.
$92M in funding - The protocol has a massive war chest of capital that is being used to bring every significant global financial market onto Bitcoin
Built for builders â With tools like the Swap SDK, developers can integrate Portalâs cross-chain functionality directly into their apps
At the center of Portal to Bitcoin sits $PTB.
The token is available for trading on Binance, Kraken, Bitget, MEXC, and several other top exchanges.
100% of Portalâs swap fees will be used to buy $PTB from the open market and burn it. On top of that, PTB will be used to pay gas fees on the Portal Notary Chain.
In this way, the token directly benefits from the protocolâs success.
Check out Portal to Bitcoin today!
Crypto chart of the week
Lighter, a new perpetual DEX, is now processing more than half of Hyperliquidâs trading volume
The main reasons why Lighter has gained so much traction are probably that it has zero trading fees and a points program that heavily rewards early adopters.
Crypto Memeđ
The latest developments in DeFi
Arbitrum introduced its DeFi Renaissance Incentive Program
Solanaâs proposal to implement an upgrade that will make it 80x faster passed
Chainlink partnered with the US Department of Commerce to bring government data on-chain
Ondo launched Ondo Global Markets, enabling its users to buy and sell over 100 tokenized U.S. stocks & ETFs
Resolv went live on Arbitrum and joined Arbitrumâs DeFi incentive program
Rabby integrated Hyperliquid perps into its wallet
Portal to Bitcoin released its PTB token and its airdrop claiming portal
Peapods Finance started PEAS token buybacks
Linea released its airdrop checker
Falcon Finance announced a Legendary Falcon Badge reward for KAITO stakers with 5000+ sKAITO
Wormhole has integrated Hyperliquidâs HyperEVM
Sonicâs S token circulating supply will increase by 14% for its US expansion push
Lombard launched LBTC, its yield-bearing BTC token, on Solana
Starknet started decentralizing its sequencer and became 7x faster
Turtle Club released the Liquidity Leaderboard with the goal of rewarding LPs
Curve Finance announced it will go live on Monad on day 1 of mainnet
Etherealize raised $40M to onboard institutions to Ethereum
Lido released Lido Earn - a set of blue-chip DeFi strategies for stETH
Avalanche is working with Toyota to build autonomous robotaxi infrastructure
Thatâs all for this week!
Until next time,
The DeFi Investor
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All are true and obvious red signs