Solana Weekly #45 - War, Taxes, and Parties

What’s up everybody! This is Thomas Bahamas and you are here for another episode of Solana Weekly. I’m here to uncover the alpha, break down what's going on, and try to figure out where Solana is taking us. We got wars, we got taxes, and we got Breakpoint coming up. To the market:Sol Price 22.19 - fairly flat, down about a dollar. Sol Eth - .014, still fairly flat. Lot of talk out there about eth not having the narrative these days. Sol BTC - fairly flat as well, but it looking bad. We got breakpoint coming up end of the month and I’m expecting a sol pump and some sick new announcements. War - expectation of coins going down and all risk assets are rocky. NFT's and niche alt coins aren't the safe haven needed, but are still doing pretty well. But this could be the inevitable push to get the fed to start printing and we see  the start of the great bull run of all assets before implosion, and it's a mess. Arthur Hayes on the Impact Theory podcast, insanely good breakdown of macro. Not into the impact theory, but when Arthur's talking, I'm listening. I heard some very similar ideas on Hidden Forces as well, and it goes into just how the bull run for crypto and most assets begins when the money printer gets turned back on. Information inflow management - I have to constantly check myself and realize who I’m taking info from. The whole NFA not financial advice thing is hilarious. Think about who you are listening to and who helps you think more clearly about markets. Don’t give your fav nft influencer credit for being a macro genius and a war expert, there are a lot of people who have dedicated their lives to that. I also think it would be hilarious to pick your brain and think about why you bought something and if it was an influencer that you wouldn’t take advice about anything on. Socialfi is stupid and it's a circle jerk for crypto people. Two main additions to sol with Friendzy.gg launching chat and hub3 launching. I think Friendzy has more potential for Solana because of the bonding curve not being as aggressive. On hub 3 the pricing increases significantly, like a friend tech. Solana people are cheap. Me included. Avax’s friend tech competitor stars arena was hacked twice in a day and drained for 3 mill. We get reminded of the douchey founder emin gun by him saying it’s not big. We should also remember he hired a law firm to sue Solana labs. Taxes: I did it, I paid Crypto Tax Made Easy to fix my taxes for the 2022 year. He brought 36k in gains down to 6k. I have the netrunner nft and used their platform but I didn’t like it. So I used the website crypto tax calculator and imported my wallets and exchange transactions. It was a mess with 12k transactions and they were all labeled wrong and it scared the f out of me. I knew it was wrong with giving me huge gains on stable coin swaps and no cost basis, but I also didn’t know how to fix it. The platforms aren’t there. It was like $600 to import all those transactions and two g’s for him to do all the work, but the peace of mind knowing that I don’t have a 36k tax liability hanging over me and the potential for the irs to come after are more than worth it. I love crypto and want to keep this as a positive impact on my life so I think it was necessary. I also f’d up and sold a bunch of eth and btc on Blockfi and there is no way that those transactions aren’t going to the irs. My new rule is to never do sales on exchanges. Exchanges are for stablecoins and on and off ramping only. It’s free to on-ramp, the execution and swap costs are better on chain anyways, and the reported gains aren’t accurate yet. So there is NO benefit for me. We need large audiences and bringing in new people. So far all it does is make a better circle jerk for us crypto peeps. This does nothing for our space but let us gamble more. Not improving anything.The whole purpose of using social media is to bring in outsiders to crypto. Think 2017 bull run and how insane twitter was. I even had people shilling lite coin on my Facebook feed. Pomp would get on the news and everyone would go crazy. The positive memes resignated and brought people and institutions in.We don’t have that anymore. Twitter is filled with crypto scam accounts that Normies hate, engagement and our feeds are trash, I have to go to private chats to see the quek tweets. None of these protocols are optimizing for the right thing which is getting outsiders in. No one is paying 5k just to hear market analysis from someone that larps as a car on Twitter, no one is bridging to Avax to buy your keys because none of that fixes a problem for Normies. We need to clean up the crypto scams collectively and get out of our own little bubbles. Find a way to build on x to make things better. Use the tools they provide like community notes and reporting accounts tagging people. Other fun stuff: breakpoint is coming! I got some Quek merch, it’s sick.MadLads coming with some sort of announcements. Huge update on backpack where you can easily lock your nft in your wallet. SMB gen 3 continues to go down. I am tax loss harvesting the ones I bought after mint and buying borderline grails for under 10 sol. Outlook isn’t great but I need more losses to offset gains and I don’t bet against the monkes. I think defi is continuing and not going anywhere. Had a dream that drift dropped a coin and became the biggest defi protocol ever. Honestly it could happen, it’s that good. Yes it’s got perps, but it’s got Lend, borrow, earn, swaps, and everythingIs so clean. I appreciate you all tuning in and would like you all to think twice before spreading any fud, fudding is easy, finding positivity and spreading it is hard. Hard but positive. This is a public episode. 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