Danger

The market has been fantastic lately. YTD, the total crypto market cap is up almost 100% – from $765B to $1.4T. You have done well for yourself if you stuck around during the bear market. Retail is still not here en masse, meaning there is still the potential for significant capital inflows. We most likely have a BTC ETF coming, and we have just resolved some of the largest FUD in the market (Binance). All in all, it looks like we are poised for a legendary bull market to take off immediately and draw in sidelined capital as they FOMO back in. But when everything looks great, I get most worried.

Crypto markets have this annoying habit of pulling the rug out from under us when we are most confident. As such, one of my heuristics when looking at the market is how much bull posting I see on Twitter. Bull posting is fine when it comes with research and a solid thesis to underpin the position. But bull posting begins to concern me when I see large accounts make price predictions without any sort of thesis and underpinning research. To me, bull posting like the latter signals an exuberant market. An exuberant market that could get hammered as people add leverage to get more exposure. I still remember when large accounts called for $250K BTC when BTC was at $69K based on nothing other than belief, and then it all fell apart.

A few bull posts on the timeline are fine and often appreciated. But I get worried when my feeds get full of unbacked price predictions. Unfortunately, when I checked my feed this morning, I saw many exuberant bull posts. Of course, some random bull posts don’t drive price action, but when I see many accounts start to all tweet the same stuff, I usually find some short-term caution warranted. The market seems to enjoy humbling us before we move higher by moving in the direction of maximum pain, which seems like it could be to the downside.

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I have created for myself over time a very personalized model for studying twitter

Definitely filtering who to follow is the most important first step. If you lived through the whole of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, any influencers were challenged and forced to completely change mood / content provided / showed how commercial and not very "real" they were.. so here experience plays a lot in being able to distinguish "loudmouths" and "people who bring value." the biggest filter is to study who researches / builds / works in the industry more than influencers/shillers/traders

Fundamental is the development of customized lists by topic:

a main timeline of maximum 30/40 entities where by doing maximum 10/15 minutes of scrolling (including reading -- without opening articles) you get to see all the major market happenings of the day. wublock, tier10k, zoomer, treeofnews/alpha, bloomberg crypto, bloomberg etf guys(jseyff, eric), peckshield, theblockupdates, coindesk, cz, tether, ardoino, circle, justin sun etc . . major industry players basically... a few influencers like hsaka, pentosh1 and someone else who comes first on events/news (i don't go further because you have to be very jealous of your follows because if they become mainstream you lose the edge)

analysts: an analysts list becomes great for "deep dive" moments, be it analysts from delphi digital, other research firms, analysts from news outles, independent analysts, nansen, arkham, lookonchain, chainargos, galaxydigital, chainalysis etc etc (can reach even 80 90 100 follow). they help to discover new technologies, expand your eyes to other products / sectors you don't follow

authors: a list of authors from major news outlets is also essential... dlnews, theblock, coindesk, fortune, bloomberg, wsj, forbes etc. simply with them you get to scoops and more sooner because sometimes they care to post a preview of an article that is going online in those minutes but is not yet revealed by the bots that track the sites

shitposting: there are excellent shitposters who are the first in new technologies and allow you to spot the hottest trends at the moment that you otherwise wouldn't notice or would discover late; they are also some of the most honest and unabashed people, something very rare in this environment (if you go beyond 40 50 followers you don't get it because they spam since they live on twitter h24/7)

a more general timeline of accounts you trust (max 150/200/250 accounts) to follow hot commentary during major market events.. which is often a lot of fun. e.g. binance enforcement, bitcoin breaking yearly highs.. also always fun for a "check twitter sentiment

there's a huge amount of key opinion leaders of Asian origin who don't write in English that are totally ignored. this is something I'm slowly exploring but there are fantastic takes and threads that I don't reach the very large part of the western audience. one piece of advice is to open up more to this because there are tools, services or just sensational analysts that are completely unknown outside of e.g. china (a crypto community that is way stronger than it seems outside)

and a few others in experimentation. algorithmic timelines are suicidal because they spam you with unwanted content and I think you need to be 90% focused on your precise follows, and a 10% leave yourself open to new entries. every bearmarket sees someone who was in their prime in the previous cycle become obsolete (made a lot of $$$ basically) but also a lot of new accounts wanting to demonstrate who they are and that they have a lot to offer -- so there is a passing of the baton to new key opinion leaders

finally, the browser extensions that help you filter are crucial, critical, pivotal (using multiple terms trying to emphasize how important they are); I honestly don't know what the "new twitter" post elon acquisition is becoming because I filter out all the forced algorithmic content like "you might know this" "others you follow, follow this"... I follow A, B and C. why do you want to force me to see tweets from X, Y and Z who have no idea what they are thinking and risk altering my thinking I've built up about certain products/technologies/market?

the end result is that unfortunately I no longer access influencers/shillers/people who make impossible predictions because I am "too filtered." The end result then is that you keep very controlled timelines where if you know who you are reading, (having "lived" them over time), where you learn to value the words expressed and understand how and especially whether to react to the content you just read

ahahah I could write a delphi-style article (i.e. very long and detailed) about the disciplined use of crypto twitter

Lorenzo, what is your Twitter handle? Are any of your lists public? I’ve been playing around with my own curated lists, but I’ve also found some public ones where all the Curation is done, and the signal to noise ratio of specific chains or projects can be quite high, would love to take a look at your lists if possible.

In January I will try to develop something configured as "public," for now I have them all private, because I am very jealous of them haha. I will comment here with examples! Happy holidays!

Man, this is a hell of a curation guide! You could almost write an article on how to curate a good timeline for markets!

@anil Maybe Delphi analysts could curate a few Twitter, lists of good quality accounts that they follow, they could update them every so often to keep them relevant, and make them shareable to pay Delphi subscribers. Wasting time on Twitter trying to find the thought leaders and intelligent commentators takes so long and is so frustrating, that would for sure be a perk that I would want to pay for.

I will throw it at the team. Its a compelling thought

As a first step, I recommend following everyone at Delphi!

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Here is my long-winded copium:

Of course nobody knows and I also feel uneasy from prev cycle PTSD.

That being said, is our uneasiness built on a more logical thesis than the bullposters or are we just eyeballing some tweets and finding a rationalization to hedge a winning position?

I usually find it a positive sentiment signal when I am in profit on an active trade but I feel worried and uneasy to hold.

The opposite negative signal for me is when I am underwater in a position but stubbornly committed (Crypto Capo rn).

This is classic bull market crypto imo. The apes don’t hesitate to buy even when price is high and although it’s risky and seems dumb they make money.

The more analytical, thesis-minded investor types (the types like me that read Delphi) are uneasy buying at these prices and don’t want to get rekt by a crash. Unfortunately many analysts get sidelined with no dips and the “crash” will come but might be much later (e.g. $55k -> $42k)

Yeah, thats a totally fair point. Prior cycle PTSD is a huge factor!

hmmmm, whether there is logic behind my unease is a great question. I don't think so - this is just a hunch/feeling. Hence why I consider it only one data point to inform my outlook. Other than that, things look decent imo. Price is good, the market digested the Binance news well, we are potentially coming to the end of a rate cycle, things are looking up.

But conversely, there is still the GOX overhang, some FTX stuff to clear up, CB is still in court, DeFi under the microscope, L2 uncertainty etc. So maybe there is some negative catalysts in the future. I also sometimes worry when price moves quick as we get a huge OI increase and then a big washout - seen that happen a few times.

But great points all around - maybe its ape time?