Knight of the Dip

It was May 23rd and I'd fallen asleep ignoring notifications chiming in from half a dozen phone apps until I couldn't ignore them anymore. My eyes were still adjusting to the phone's light when I began scrolling, and I assumed an executive order had just come down banning Bitcoin. The price action certainly reflected it. My portfolio had lost a staggering amount and my girlfriend was calling me:

"What's going on?" she frantically said, "It won't stop!"

I didn't say anything because I was busy looking for the catalyst. But all I found was China FUD certain I'd missed something.

"Hello!" she screamed.

"I'll call you back in five minutes." I needed to buy the dip.

"But—"

I hung up and stared into the wall. The radio silence of friends was telling. Clearly they were already ahead of me. I'd actually practiced and prepared for this very emergency. As an OG, I do keep funds on a CEX (CoinBase in this case) all in USDC stablecoins ready for marching orders as circumstances demand. I never use CoinBase by the way, except for idling these interest-earning stablecoin troops for deployment. The battle wouldn't last long though, and I was having trouble using my phone with such shaky hands. Already four different apps were notifying me that Bitcoin was bleeding at $30k and its bellwether brother Ether had been cut-down below $2k. A massacre of bloody red ink. This is where my combat training paid-off. The buy and liquidation list went as follows:

Buy:

• ZED.RUN Horses
• Polygon (MATIC)
• Uniswap
• Ether
• Maker

Liquidate:

• GOVI
• All small protective options positions

This was going to take time. Probably 45 minutes or so, ultimately costing $1k in gas fees. Didn't matter, the Chinese had reached our shores and were about to kick down my damn door. My girlfriend tried calling again so I blocked her, temporarily—there was no time to waste.

My laptop showed 80% when I tore it from its wall-charger and clicked the MetaMask icon while walking to the adjacent living room. The coffee table, littered with take-out boxes, served as my desk. My apartment is too small for a worthwhile desk, or one of those glass table's for two. I pushed everything to the ground to make way for Mac. And it's funny, because just then I heard commotion in the unit above me, and I couldn't help but wonder if my neighbors up there were looking through their blinds for the Chinese too. Anyway, crypto kept falling. A Twitter message popped up from a YouTube shill I follow that said:

Alt season is over.

For celebrity shitcoins I certainly hope so. I considered pausing everything just to unfollow him.

So I was able to liquidate GOVI. This was the most important thing. GOVI is the governance token for the CVI (crypto volatility index) by the way. And my god had it soared. Crypto volatility was at 175 (and would later peak at 190). For reference, 2018 and the March 2020 Covid dip peaked volatility around 170. It's no secret both times correlated with extraordinary buying opportunities. So it's easy to imagine how important a dip like this was to get. The GOVI I swapped for big swingin' dick Ether, and I wouldn't touch it. Then it was on to Sparrow and I closed the OTM covered calls which were now trading near intrinsic value. Crypto's crash was accelerating though, and I switched back to my phone. CoinBase took forever to load, and when it did, it might as well of returned a 404. Screwed. I couldn't buy anything. The desktop site was no help either. I couldn't even send the stablecoin troops to MetaMask. Back on the laptop, I connected to Opensea (an NFT marketplace) to check the prices of ZED.RUN horses. I found some from a great race class, my eyes locking on a teal colored one named Sudden Insight. This stallion was $5000 only 48 hours gone by, now $2200 based on my quick ETH calculation. But CoinBase was still down and there wasn't anything I could do but watch MATIC bottom at .76, UNI rebound off its 200 dma and MKR say enough is enough. Unbelievable. I called my friend Mike to commiserate, but his phone went to voicemail after two rings. A search of Twitter found everyone had the same CoinBase problem, with some OG having the definitive say:

This is why you don't keep money on centralized exchanges.

No shit you rich bastard—which I suppose made my transgression hell-worthy. Then came the pounding on my front door.

Kristin was standing on the other side with the attitude of an owner who's dog I'd just kicked.

"The fuck!"

She had no makeup on and just biked ten blocks. I didn't say anything and motioned her inside, hoping the exaggerated look of horror on my face was enough to appease her anger. I'm the one that got her in to this. She was content working a 9-5 marketing job that paid $20/hr before I expanded her mind with the promises of DeFi, NFT's, Web 3.0, and ERC20 hegemony. She invested all $10k of her savings (ETH, BTC, YFI, respectively) and since last August, all had been bliss. Now she was just above break-even. She couldn't buy the dip.

"I know, Kristen relax."

This was her first selloff. Must've been traumatic. I remember my first in 2018. It was the end of the world. Through all this one thing was certain: I'd never use a CEX ever again—save for conversion to fiat. I led her to the couch where she sat disoriented, and I explained in a white heat what was about to happen:

Volatility is too high, it won't stay here long, and all the 2x-10x leverage is being liquidated (I spun the computer around to show her some activity on DeFi), the futures premium is at a six month low and contracts about to be in backwardation. Options sellers and buyers will rebalance themselves to safe positions, and remember Kristen, all the weak hands will be shaken from the market, but greed won't be. Those who haven't sold through this, never will. The crypto fear index should register an all-time high and by next week you'll see a historic amount of fiat and stablecoins on exchanges (DEX and CEX) waiting for an excuse to bring a tidal wave of money back in. At worst we endure a crypto winter until July, accumulating in the process. Selling now and walking away would be the biggest mistake of your life. I'm here with you. God I felt like those cheap crypto cartoons on YouTube and hated myself, at least until CoinBase went live again and I stopped the Gettysburg Address to finally get to work.

Later that night she took me deep enough that her lips felt the sandpaper of my recent shave. And here we are.