The investment journey of crypto-punks: differences in confidence and understanding in investment

Source: Daoshuo Blockchain

There is a passage in Duan Yongping's Q&A that deeply describes the difference in the degree of understanding of a project by investors:

The difference between only daring to invest 5% and daring to bet on one's entire fortune is 20 years.

This sentence is a bit exaggerated. I think it may be easier to understand if it is changed:

The difference between only daring to buy lightly and daring to buy heavily is huge. The latter can show an investor's true understanding and confidence in the project.

Of course, what is said here is by no means the kind of gambler who loses his eyes in the casino and hopes to win or lose in one hand and bet on one's entire fortune, but refers to the situation when rationally participating in a project under normal circumstances.

When I first saw this sentence, I thought of my experience in NFT. Two projects I have participated in formed such a sharp contrast: one is CryptoPunk and the other is Bored Ape.

I have written about this experience in previous articles.

When I first bought CryptoPunk, the entire NFT market had not yet risen generally, and I remember that Boring Ape had just been released. In that environment, the price of Punk was already 15 Ethereum.

This price does not seem expensive at all today, but it was not cheap at all at that time.

But in that situation, perhaps because of my usual interest in collecting, I subconsciously realized the value of Punk, so I bought it without hesitation.

After buying it, I also actively recommended it to my friends around me and suggested that they buy it as well.

That was one of the very few (if I remember correctly, it should be the only time) that I actively recommended to my friends around me to buy it. I have not even actively recommended Bitcoin and Ethereum to my friends. I only suggested them at what price to buy it when my very familiar friends asked me.

Therefore, my understanding and confidence in CryptoPunk at that time can be said to be even higher than Bitcoin and Ethereum to some extent.

On the contrary, Boring Ape.

When I bought it, it was about 1 Ethereum, which was much cheaper than the price of Boring Ape, but I didn't have the confidence to buy Boring Ape at all, and I didn't recommend it to any friends. I bought it with a half-believing and half-doubting mentality. Of course, it is impossible to buy it in a heavy position.

Perhaps this is the difference between buying lightly and buying heavily due to different understandings and confidence in the project.

Later, when the entire NFT ecosystem began to collapse, and Boring Ape's road to specializing in games was always blocked and no other development path was found, I planned to control the risk and only keep the mutant ape, and sell all the Boring Ape. At this time, what I immediately thought of was not to exchange Boring Ape for stablecoins, but to exchange all Boring Ape for Crypto Punks.

Looking back now, I subconsciously still had much more confidence in Punk than Boring Ape---even though the absolute price of Boring Ape was still much higher than Punk at that time (one Boring Ape could probably be exchanged for less than two Punks).

After that, I hardly paid attention to Punk, and rarely looked at its floor price, but I never worried that it would return to zero, let alone that it would not rise in the future.

I heard about Punk again because of the rise of the Bitcoin ecosystem. A bunch of new Bitcoin NFT projects came in with great momentum, and the price rose day by day, claiming to surpass Punk.

But now the price of Crypto Punk is 42 ETH (US$77,000).

And the prices of those emerging Bitcoin NFTs:

The first-ranked Taproot Wizards only has 0.15 BTC (US$17,000).

The once noisy Quantum Cat and Node Monkey are less than 0.05 BTC (US$4,000), and the price is not even a fraction of Punk.

Although Bored Ape still dominates the Ethereum NFT list, it only has 14 ETH (US$25,000). Once a Bored Ape surpassed Punk, but now it is only one-third of Punk.

Looking back on these, from the perspective of investment rather than playing around, there seem to be only three projects that I have invested heavily in and can ignore market fluctuations and hold on to with peace of mind, namely Bitcoin, Ethereum and CryptoPunk.