Where has the time gone? My last update was about 7 months ago before the new year began. At the time I was still very much uncertain about what was happening in the markets and in my personal life. Since then crypto has only gotten more crazy with most altcoins crashing to record lows, long time holders becoming completely apathetic to the situation and new investors being scared away entirely. There is seemingly little to no reason to invest into crypto because of the unknown risks, scams, insider trading pump and dumps, token dilutions, unregulated and often illegal schemes, and so on. Many investors are simply moving to traditional finance markets as they offer a safer and more level playing field with additional guardrails.
The old wild west days of crypto have officially come to an end but there are still a few uncharted territories to be explored as they continue to develop. For example, Robinhood (the brokerage) recently launched their own "Robinhood Chain" which is essentially another Ethereum Layer 2, utilizing ETH as the native gas token. There has already been tons of speculation and memecoins being launched, as to be expected in a newly launched chain, but I suspect most of it is for marketing purposes to drive new user growth in a frenzied fashion.
Is DeFi dead? Absolutely not, but it is certainly in shambles compared to where it was before. Since my last update there was a massive hack on Aave, which is the world's largest collateralized lending platform in DeFi. This major hack shook the crypto world to its core. As the last remaining "safe" platform which housed over $45,000,000,000 USD at its peak in October 2025 and has now collapsed to $13,750,000,000, Aave was the top DeFi protocol for a very long time. That top spot has since been taken by Lido (ETH) which is a liquid staking protocol for Ethereum.
As a veteran crypto user and DeFi expert I would say that even I've lost faith in crypto overall as an industry. People finally saw it for what it was - one giant extraction scheme orchestrated by large whales, insiders and scammers to take money from the average (less intelligent) folks. I first found Bitcoin back in 2013 and quickly fell in love with the technology and potential. There were so many weird things happening all at the same time but mainly I learned to be skeptical of online dealings through my Bitcoin poker years. Eventually I moved into altcoin trading as a sort of desperate last vestige in crypto, feeling as if I had missed the boat on Bitcoin too many times to get back on at these prices. But alas, most altcoins have revealed themselves to be what they truly were all along. Hot air fueled by desperate retail demand, destroyed by insiders cashing out.
Recently it was disclosed that the sitting president of the US had made over a $1.2 Billion in the past year, mainly due to his crypto token launches. Retail yet again held the bag while insiders continued to enrich themselves all in the name of speculation. Only those who shorted it from the top made a fortune while the masses were led to slaughter over false hopes of quick crypto gains. This is not to mention his stock(s) that he is involved in, nor the merchandise sales and media lawsuit winnings. "Crime is now legal" was a meme on Twitter at one point but now it's becoming a daily occurrence in politics.
To distract from all of this we have manufactured wars in the middle east, south and central America, putting pressure on markets which are already somewhat fragile and setting up for a massive debt implosion. Rising oil costs only put more pressure on inflation, the Federal Reserve, and job markets. Higher fuel costs affect everyone that commutes to work but more importantly petroleum is used in just about every modern day application from fertilizers to household goods. The groceries in the store cost more because the diesel to get them there has gone up in price. All of this is perched on a delicate global economy that has run in sync peacefully for so many years we took it for granted. Now with reserve supplies being threatened we have growing uncertainty and choppy market conditions.
So let me get to the part about trading- the last year I've decided to re-enter the stock market with size. For the first 6 months of this year I saved up as much cash as I could and also took out a loan, and cash advance, to supplement my trading bankroll while market conditions are juicy. I was able to save up over $27,000 in cash, crypto and stocks from working alone before adding another $48,000 from debt. Currently I am holding:
-Crypto ($SUI, $S, $HIVE, $PLS, $ANON)
-Stocks (CHPY, Yieldmax Semiconductor Portfolio Option Income ETF)
-Cash ($2k-$3k for emergency and monthly bills only)
-Retirement accounts (401k and Roth IRA)
My original goal was to save up and invest at least $50,000 by the end of the year and I was well on my way to that goal at the half way point. Since I decided to add on more funds I thought why not also enable margin trading on my Robinhood account, to speed things up a little. Quickly was able to turn my $20K stock investment plus a $38K loan into $84k (net profit around $26k currently) within a month. The main thing is the semiconductor bubble is growing larger and is at risk of popping sooner or later. The smartest investors are fearful when others are greedy but there is always money to be made at the late stages of a bubble. In fact, that is when the most money is made or lost. This ETF I'm invested into right now pays a weekly dividend of around 0.8% and that is substantial, so I know that comes at the cost of capped upside. On the next major leg up I feel like I should get out while Im ahead and try to catch a major pullback bounce instead.
This week the dividend payment was $0.6274 per share which means I received $1,366.48 in dividends. Their ex-dividend date is Wednesday, dividends paid out Thursday after market close, then reinvested on Friday at market open. In the long run this ETF stock could drop 30% in a given year while still breaking even on the dividend payments since they are so high, but that is just in the worst case scenario if we see a broader chip market pullback.
I intend to flip this for a profit on the next major market rally and wait for another cool-off period because this market is already showing a lot of signs of frothiness. For starters we just had the largest IPO in history with SpaceX, followed by a US listing of the most valuable publicly traded Korean company SK Hynix, a memory chip maker. They say major IPOs are typically launched near the peak of market frenzy to capture as much value as they can from retail investors and hype. It seems to me that retail has gotten smarter as time and technology has advanced but there are still plenty of suckers to buy over-valued companies, myself included if I'm not careful.
Well I guess its time to wrap this up because its getting quite lengthy but until next time! Let's see if I get rich, or get rekt in the next blog :)