Route 2 FI

Level 4 (1M–10M) really is the no-man's-land of wealth. For example, going from $100k to $300k can change your life. You can quit a job, move somewhere else, or take a chance on something of your own. Going from $5M to $5.2M? You're richer, but you don't notice the increase anymore in the same way. This is where the diminishing returns start to show. Back in 2021, when I went from $500k to $1m, I felt like on top of the world. It was a big change for me. A little backstory: in Feb 2021, I quit my 9-5 job with $500k NW, and it felt like a huge achievement. I knew it wasn’t enough to live off forever, but it was enough to dare to bet on myself. During the years after 21’ there have been periods where my NW has increased a lot, and periods where it went a bit down or barely went up at all. So I can very much relate to what Nick says: at some point, you could “work” twice as hard and barely notice the difference in your life. Your portfolio grows. But the extra money buys you less, while the time it costs you stays the same. This is where I think a lot of people in crypto get stuck. You know how to make money. But unless you increase the risk, your NW will only go up linearly. Because you might have to risk money you no longer want to lose. So you end up in the middle, the 7-figure hell (no man's land). Imagine spending another year glued to crypto to make an extra $200k on a $5M portfolio (4% increase). Don’t misunderstand me, that’s a lot of money, but many people don’t want to risk the big gains they’ve already earned, and since they don’t, their NW will barely move, and they’re forever trapped in the 7-fig hell.

$ETH with a new leg down rn.

Must be extremely hard to be young and trying to get out of the hamster wheel rn. Rent eats your salary. Buying a home is impossible because you aren't able to save up anything. Then the common advice is to go to university to learn a valuable skill and work your way up. Okay, but now you're also wondering if AI will take your job by the time you're good at it. I don't think AI takes every job. But imagine starting your career with that hanging over you. Makes it easier to understand why people end up gambling on crypto or taking massively stupid risks tbh. If the sensible route doesn't look like it'll get you there, ofc you're going to look for another one.

Crypto kind of ruins your patience for normal things. Because you've seen someone make more in a weekend than they earned in ten years of working, I think that's quite hard to unlearn, tbh.

Tried @miranetwork's Sterling today and it's actually really useful tbh. Everyone's building AI agents rn, but almost nobody checks if the model behind them is the one you're paying for. Even Anthropic is looking at this now. Nobody can really prove a provider is running the model it says it is. Their fix costs 70-95x more compute though. Sterling gives you public scores and only routes to providers that pass. Pay in USDC or $MIRA. Makes a lot of sense IMO.

The weirdest part of CT is how it recalibrates your brain. IRL things are fine. Then you scroll CT for 20 minutes and suddenly you feel behind because someone younger than you just posted a life-changing PnL. It's not even envy exactly. More like your internal scoreboard gets hijacked. You feel behind. Even though you’re doing well. The number that felt like freedom last year feels mid now, and you know it's stupid while it's happening.

I ruined my sleep in 2023/2024 by sleeping with heavy perp trades. Looking back, it was so unhealthy. And in the end, my spot positions even performed way better. Anyway, at the time I didn't see another option. I had to make it. Life feels so much better today, though, ngl.

$HYPE completely roundtripped the Druckenmiller tweet + Elon push from last week. Nasdaq is down 6% on the day, the AI trade might be over now that the Democrats are in control. The AI trade relies on expectations of relentless infrastructure spending and exponential compute demand; now this is being questioned, IMO. Could be a good entry here for $HYPE.

Is this the time you buy the f*cking dip? Asking for a friend.

A little update on the @phantom challenge: Decided to buy $HYPE and $SOXL a couple of days ago, and while I initially was up a lot, I've now round-tripped it all and back into negative. Feels wild to me that $HYPE already erased most of the gains since the Druckenmiller tweet, might also have something to do with it that Binance hasn't opened withdrawals, idk. Still holding, and my leverage is moderate. NFA & DYOR. Follow my profile on @phantom to see trades in real time, and sign up to get 10% off 3 months' trading fees with my code: phantom.com/r/route2fi1

Seeing lots of posts like this, but what’s really the big problem? Ofc, ideally Binance would open withdrawals for hyperliquid:native, but if you really want out asap, why can’t you just sell for stablecoins and withdraw $USDT?

There was all this drama about Kast rugging yesterday but it seems like $.08 per point after all? Let's actually napkin math the KPU thing.. Kast rumored to be raising at $1.2B+ after closing $80M at $600M valuation. I found out there are approximately 2.5M shares. That would give you almost $500/share or $60M in total rewards over 120k shares. $500/KPU is pretty damn good, no? It would mean $.08 per point, as was promised in the beginning. Kast really might pull this off after all the fud? kek

“Trading is the hardest way to make easy money.” A big part of the challenge is managing your emotions when money is on the line. You can understand the market and still undermine your own strategy. That’s why quant trading makes sense IMO. Set the rules, then automate the execution. AI helps process the information, and the system trades without getting emotional. Of course, automation still needs a sound strategy. Plenty of systems look great on historical data and struggle in live markets. The people behind the strategy and their risk management matter just as much as the technology. Thing is, you and I can’t easily access these quant trading strategies, primarily when it comes to TradFi. So big shoutout to the @Infinit_Labs team, who are bringing institutional-grade trading strategies on-chain. INFINIT provides the infrastructure for institutional-grade trading vaults, and they vet the managers who are qualified to deploy them. They also oversee every vault cycle to ensure that their rigorous standard is followed. I won’t go into too much detail in this post, but there’s a lot that goes into a trading vault, and this is very important. The first vault publicly available on INFINIT was APEX 1, which completed its cycle in profit, around 35% APR. Now APEX 2 went live, and I’m curious to see if the same team and approach will continue to be profitable, especially as market conditions change. Should they succeed, I think this can attract a lot of capital not only from quant trading investors, but also from retail for whom such strategies have been inaccessible. Deposits for APEX 2 end on November 11, and I’m also curious to see which other teams INFINIT decides to vet and bring on.

One thing I sometimes miss from my 9-5 job is having a clear finish line every day. You go to work, do your tasks, go home. Done. With investing/trading, making content, etc., there's no finish line. The market is open on Sunday at 2 am, and there's always a reason to check one more time. Lately I've been trying to set my own "office hours". But I guess it only works maybe 20% of the time lol. But it's better than before. Dopamine addicted and a fried brain due to spending too much time on CT fr fr.

People think doing crypto full-time is all freedom. Some days, yes. But when you get a really bad day in the markets, and you're sitting alone with a red screen and nobody to talk to about it, it kind of sucks. It really helps to vent on CT, though.

When I started in crypto, my goal was a number. If I hit X, I'm free. I hit that number a while ago. And nothing really changed in my head. I just picked a new number. Then another one. I think a lot of us on CT are like this. The market runs 24/7, so there's always someone doing better, always another trade, always a reason to keep going. I'm not complaining, I'm genuinely grateful. But lately I've been trying to enjoy the stuff outside the screen more. Seeing friends, being outside, not checking the price every hour. I really ruined my sleep schedule in 2023/2024 because I slept with heavy perp trades. Looking back this was so unhealthy, and my health felt like shit. At that time I didn’t see any other option though. I had to make it.