been meaning to post this, but would like to discuss the solana:8RVBk8vxLiUHueLUW1f4izFVqN3nWippLhkohKg6EGkS trade VERY long post. if you're not interested in dissecting KNOTS or stonk eco, skip this. timeline of what happened, from my purview (this is annotated on a chart at bottom of post) 1) stonk started seeing big success, turbocharged by zcat hitting escape velocity of a proof of concept coin for yield pairs on solana 2) stonk started ripping and a few other "winning" pair coins started showing signs of life 3) KNOTS ended up surviving early/new pair supply dynamics and hit escape velocity 4) it was a pure play on stonk (which was on a rocket ship in early sept), and entered an "initial over-exuberance phase" where the tokenomics/meta is so new, nobody knows how to value it. coins here massively overshoot. KNOTS settled at 52m at the peak of this. 5) stonk had its first big pullback in mid-sept, bottoming on sept 16. KNOTS retraced all the way to 9m. 6) stonk went to put in its next leg higher, and KNOTS ripped back to 30m. volume on both its move to 52m and its recovery to 30m was huge, so the yield was insanely compelling too 7) BTC topped on sept 21, as did stonk, as did everything else onchain. we didn't know it then, but we were about to be in or a lot of pain onchain, no matter what chain/eco/launchpad your coin was on 8) stonk started a low-vol grinddown to hell 9) KNOTS is obviously beta on stonk, so it joined it in a low-vol grinddown to hell 10) as beta (it rewards stonk), KNOTS is only interesting if stonk is doing well. to make it even worse: its value prop aside from a very loose memetic correlation is kinda entirely derived from it offering yield. so now it's doubly bad - beta on its own does poorly when the alpha asset dumps, but the low-vol made the yield drop tremendously, crushing that narrative. 11) KNOTS went down disproportionately harder than stonk, retracing 52m down to 2.5m. at present day: KNOTS is now back up to 3.8, and looks like it's popped 50% off the bottom, alongside STONK potentially being bottomed too. i want to see 5.5m to see bullish market structure on this. so, i fully round tripped this coin. there's no arguing that fully round tripping this was just.. dogshit-bad trading on my part. i can't deny that. but that aside, here's why it wasn't really just a straightforward anonymous "trade": i schizo-bullposted this top to bottom on both fomo and twitter for several weeks. even if it costs me money, i can't in good conscience go that hard, and then suddenly dump it. you can be right or make money, and after that level of bullposting, i chose to 'be right'. (sidenote: anyone accusing me of having side wallets or some shadowy cabal can, respectfully, suck it from the back). i bullposted it that hard because (and i know this sounds CRAZY in this space), i actually believed the thesis it outlined publicly. i was caught off guard by how hard it dumped, but this tokenomic setup is an experiment in real time, and something i'm monitoring and learning from. my thesis for continuing to hold from here (through today) is this. some rhetorical questions for "is this coin and its narrative uniquely bad, or is it just broader conditions?": was it weak while onchain was broadly doing well? (no, onchain across the board got massacred, every single day, for weeks. each day somehow impossibly worse than the last) was it weak while stonk was in a sustained uptrend? (no, stonk was, like all of onchain, in a relentless grinddown to hell) was BTC, other majors, other chains doing well? (no, BTC did a pretty hard bart at 87k and has been in a low-vol grinddown to range lows, even to the point where a swing failure pattern was threatened, ie bullish market structure in general is invalidated for not just onchain, but all coins in crypto) was solana doing well? (no, solana locally topped and went sideways + down) so then, the story just becomes "KNOTS is levered beta to STONK doing well, and KNOTS is completely uninteresting if stonk isn't in a sustained and unambiguous uptrend toward new highs" with that in mind, i haven't sold a cent of KNOTS here at lows, and i'm going to suspend a conclusion pending stonk being in a new uptrend (other than the conclusion being: don't be squeamish to sell, you're going to get shit and accused of terrible things regardless). so the big path dependency here seems to be "does stonk go to new highs?" based on revenue and cultural dynamics, i think it does. its revenue is modestly down the past two weeks, but only an amount *commensurate* to onchain broadly. this is important. so invalidation is: 1) bull market is over or on pause (onchain dies) 2) revenue on stonk fun precipitously declines, while onchain volume broadly appreciates does KNOTS go to new highs above 52m? i actually think there's a chance here, but i don't know - we haven't seen stonk to new highs. my thesis is the yield flywheel drags it down to overshoot to the downside, and the yield flywheel will cause prices to rip to the upside. when KNOTS is as cheap as it is, disproportionate to stonk, you can get a lot of supply for cheap as stonk puts in a rounded bottom. then, you reap a disproportionate amount of free stonk on the way up another scenario for these coins is they just become a short-term "bond" for their underlying, and kinda ping back and forth between big range lows/highs. maybe KNOTS then goes back toward 30-50m, yields a ton of free stonk, and then dies back toward 0 on sustained downtrends, and acts as a yield-bearing oscillator across the cycle. continuing to observe. implications here for other stonk fun coins, though not apples:apples (more memetically rich coins can run higher based on the meme slapping, other factors, etc, and the right-side pair community/tent-size matters) doug funnie.