Inaugural Issue from Far Out the Left Curve

Welcome Anons!

We are glad to have you here, if you found this substack congratulations you’re already ahead of the curve. If you’re late to crypto or having trouble understanding the byzantine DeFi protocols, yield farms, & NFT ecosystems this substack will give you the tools to find the next big thing, enjoy the new economy, and make some money while doing so. Don’t be the old guy whose Zoomer nieces’ and nephews’ make more money in a month of farming and flipping NFT’s than you do in your wage slave job.

Primer: If you want to understand the opportunity that crypto, DeFi, & NFTs provide as well as learn about the team of Anons behind this publication – please START HERE.

Short Summary

The banking system is being replaced at a frighteningly fast rate (your buddy in wealth management at ClownMan Sachs is already toast unless he already has a big book of Boomer business) and NFT’s are going to swallow the art / music world. Few understand what’s going on right in front of them due to speed of innovation and coordinated attacks by Boomer media and the financial industry. What do we mean by this?

Bitcoin is the fastest to 1 Trillion Dollar asset in the history of finance and US citizens (and citizens around the globe) were unable to access it through their “trusted,” institutions until the 1000x opportunity had already passed them by. “Investor protections,” and “it’s going to zero,” were a great cover. Meanwhile, traditional finance (TradFi) and Silicon Valley types have been milking these markets for years with no oversight. Now that retail is here, they want to regulate it.

DeFi, Yield farms, and NFT’s provide equal access to those hungry and intelligent enough to dive in and seize the opportunity. Race, education, financial resources don’t determine your success or failure in crypto. You’re merely a string of cryptographic letters and numbers, ultimate anonymity. It’s up to you and you alone. We’re here to help give you the tools to make good decisions and avoid catastrophic ones.   

Decentralized Finance very simply is the automation of financial products, processes, and investment strategies that obliterate the need for the existence of Banks and the Clowns that run them. In DeFi I can self-custody my finances via a hardware wallet (without a checking account), leverage my assets based on pre-defined rules (without a loan officer), and access yield products (without a 2% “management fee”) far exceeding what the banking system can offer without accredited investor rules or any of the red tape. DeFi is permissionless infrastructure for you to manage your finances without the Nanny State interfering.

Yield Farming very simply is a sub-segment of DeFi that focuses on creating yield in exchange for users participation in a protocol or providing liquidity to an AMM (Automated Market Maker – more on this in future articles). It is the belief of the authors of this newsletter that yield farming is a superior way of participating in DeFi and if the farms are selected carefully, can offer higher upside than simply buying and holding coins. It can also offer downside protection (stable farming – more on this later) as well as put more “blue chip” assets like Ethereum to work for you 24/7.

Why do we think Yield farming is superior? Well, quite simply we’re not traders and 99% of the people who try to crypto trade will lose it all. Scan Reddit / Twitter for just a few minutes to see the absolute carnage of those liquidated on leverage buying into crap like Dogecoin or Shiba Inu.

Soros, Ichan, and the big boys have arrived to crypto – you have no shot unless you have a large bankroll, commit yourself 100% to trading crypto and even then you’ll still likely lose it all. Buying / holding BTC & ETH is a good strategy but not a life changing strategy unless you’re rich already or can throw 200k / year for the next five years at it. Yield farming (if done properly) can provide 50x – 100x returns with more predictable results than trading. The problem? The ecosystem is still regrettably full of scams and trash tokens promising unrealistic returns.

Half the battle is avoiding the scams and the Big mistake, we will focus on quality and deep research to help you in this matter.

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), are unique assets that can't be replaced with something else, and are verified and stored using blockchain technology. They can include everything from music to a website domain name, but the current craze is around digital artwork and profile pics. From digitally created assets on the blockchain, we will eventually tokenize physical assets (even real estate). Everything can and will become an NFT in the future.

With NFTs, we will see artists/musicians/content creators get paid in the form of royalties without middlemen like Gagosian, Spotify and Youtube taking a huge cut from the proceeds. Opensea (the largest NFT marketplace) currently commands a commission of 2.5%, which is much lower than Christie’s (high-end art marketplace) which charges a >12% commission. This will continue to change once we see more decentralized platforms like Shoyu (part of Sushiswap – more on this later) launching.

Did you know the most expensive painting in the world, Salvator Mundi, bought for $450 million by a Saudi Arabian Crown Prince could not be authenticated by the Louvre to be painted by Leonardo Da Vinci? NFTs solve that problem. Proof of ownership and authenticity can be easily obtained and immutable on the public blockchain.

Why the Name: Left Curve Capital?

Left Curve Capital is a reference to the “Midwit” meme…i.e. the phenomenon that simpletons with low IQ and geniuses with high IQ often arrive at similar conclusions, even though they arrived differently. Being a midwit is the worst fate of all, constantly missing the big picture (missing the forest for the trees) and consuming themselves with irrelevant details that don’t matter in the short or long run. This is usually the result of average intelligence, but over-education.

In crypto, thinking with the Left Curve and the Right Curve can yield extraordinary results. Take for example, those who were early to Bitcoin. On the right curve, there was Satoshi (Bitcoin’s anonymous founder) and some other giga-brain cryptographers who were early to its potential. They saw that the internet needed its own native currency before anyone else.

On the left curve, there are individuals who got into Bitcoin buying drugs on the Silk Road. They accumulated, not really understanding why the thing they were accumulating was growing in popularity, but “I’m going to keep mining because some really smart people are talking about this” ended up being a winning strategy. 

Different curves, same results.

At Left Curve Capital, we bring Right Curve analysis together with Left Curve thinking to create a crypto investing methodology.

How do we do this? By delving deep into protocols and weaponizing our collective autism trolling project Discord channels (where most dev teams interact) and social media to understand the “soft” investment theses that are just as important as Right Curve Analysis. There will be plenty of Right Curve from our founders backgrounds in Tech, Consulting, & Finance but we find the former in crypto to be just as important as the latter.

Take the following recent example and analysis from the Left Curve Capital Team:

$SPELL is the native governance token of Abracadabra.money, the issuer of the MIM (Magic Internet Money) stablecoin. We’ll do a deep dive on this protocol in subsequent issues, but essentially the core offering allows you to leverage your yield generating assets into MIM token which is pegged to the dollar. Very simply, borrowing dollars in exchange for yield.

Right Curve Analysis: 

• Cross-chain (ETH, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Arbitrum) implementations with aggressive expansion plans will result in the most capital efficient stablecoin

• Experienced team, led by Daniel Sesta who has a stellar track record in DeFi

• Uses Sushiswap’s Bentobox for deprecated lending markets, which prevents massive liquidations of one asset spilling over into other loan products – best in class tech

• Speed of shipping new product enhancements, 0xmerlin (Co-Founder, Lead Dev) literally codes up new features overnight

Left Curve Analysis

• Magic Internet Money (MIM) is hilarious (because crypto’s detractors have called it that) and extremely memeable coupled with the low unit price to attract normies (normies love unit bias, see Cardano)

• The Founder is extremely popular in the crypto community and is a phenomenal marketer, he can literally move the market with social media

• The multi-sig (akin to a Board of Directors – more on this later) has industry luminaries from Yearn, Convex, and other blue chip protocols. If they’re in, I’m in

• Andre Cronje (founder of Yearn - one of the OG DeFi protocols) has said he would release new projects when gas is low, so maybe 0xmerlin is Andre

• Using our proprietary library of whale wallets, we observed whales slowly building positions under the radar

Using both the Left & Right Curve modes of thinking, the Left Curve team made a decision that resulted in a 56x (and counting) for Hyena and a 17x for Scar at the time of this writing. The best part? We can farm this token and use ETH as a liquidity pair to generate more ETH & more SPELL!

Now let us examine the Mid-Curve / Midwit Analysis of SPELL:

• What if Gary Gensler and the SEC classify this as a security? (This is a risk for all crypto)

• Magic Internet Money can never be real money, Finance is solemn and serious! (The Federal Reserve is literally a Ponzi backed by guns)

• Lending markets already exist in crypto, this isn’t differentiated enough (Look Again)

• Maker is a blue chip stablecoin minter for majors and Unit Protocol is already doing it for altcoins

Quite Simply: Midwits = NGMI (Not Gonna Make It)

You might still be wondering, couldn’t you have made this call using Right Curve analysis?

Nope.

A similar protocol (Unit Protocol) actually has a very similar offering to SPELL. They use crypto altcoins to mint USDP (a dollar-pegged stablecoin), are deployed across multiple chains, and had first mover advantage prior to SPELL. Their tech works really well. The problem? Their dev team are autist developers but piss-poor marketers who are defensive about their tech. Attempts by the BowTied community to reach out were treated with vitriol and defensiveness.

Their idea of a marketing campaign? A Chess Tournament! We’re not kidding!

Unit protocol @unitprotocol

1/2 Dear Unit community! We are pleased to announce the winners of our first chess tournament! The winners are the participants who scored the highest number of points in the games. chess.com/tournament/344… - 1st place chess.com/tournament/344… - 2nd place

chess.comUnit Protocol Chess Contest - Player AndrewKh330

SPELL Market Cap: $1 BN (with a B)

DUCK Market Cap: $26 M

You be the judge.

Our Philosophy

We believe in crypto and the decentralized ideology behind it. We believe it’s going to change the world. But the cutthroat funds that currently manipulate this market don’t give a damn whether you lose it all. Staying loyal to an altcoin (non BTC/ETH) for honor, or because you have “diamond hands,” is infantile and psyops by crypto influencers who want to turn you into exit liquidity. You are being manipulated and you don’t even know it.

Some ground rules:

1. Don’t marry your bags, have a plan, take profits. That’s nice you got a 3x on some shitcoin. Take out your principal, put it into stables or ETH and let the rest run. 5x? Take out 50%. 10x? Take out another 50%. Yes you might lose some upside but let’s consider for a moment the position you’re currently in. You put $5,000 in a coin and it just 10xed to $50,000.

   Option A: Take out 80% (pocketing $40,000 free and clear), and you ride the remaining 10k investment to $56,000, now your $10,000 is worth $11,200. All the funds dump at once and you panic sell at a price of $28,000 because this is a perfectly natural thing to do and you’re not different (believe us, you’re not). That last $10,000 is now $5600 but in the aggregate you’ve taken home $45,600 from an initial investment of $5,000

   Option B: You ride the lighting because you are very different and very smart. You will time the top, you are not exit liquidity. You are a man! Go big or go home you tell yourself.

   Then it’s the top, you have $56,000 in unrealized gains from a $5,000 initial investment. You are a genius, it will probably 5x from here you tell yourself. You will be rich! Then it quickly drops to $48,000.

   You: “It’s ok, 14% drops happen all the time in crypto. I’m good.”

   That’s a factual statement, 14% drops do happen all the time. Maybe you’re right. Then it drops to $37,000 overnight. You’re getting nervous, but the fact you’re down $19,000 from the $56k peak gives you confidence it will bounce and come back.

   You: “This is a cup and handle! Pomp told me it’s going back up.” You get drunk at a wedding, everything will be fine. You wake up, panic sell at $28,000 because you are stupid.

Because you wanted to capture the last 20% of the bull market, you are now settling for a 5.6x vs the 9.1x you achieved by taking profits methodically. NGMI. The above scenario is actually an idealized version. The vast majority of people will hold to $5,000 and make nothing.

2. “Diamond Hands” and “HODL” are memes devised by influencers to make you exit liquidity for themselves. You’ll know the top is in when full-on mania hits, Dogecoin is pumping, and Pomp, Saylor, and the rest of the Twitterati are posting pictures of hands made of diamonds. Don’t be an idiot, these people are not your friends and want you to hold all the way down so they can exit the market at a good price.

   Note: This is not to be confused with conviction (you need conviction for your bags) but conviction only comes through deep research and confidence in your plan and your entry price. You will never have conviction by copy-trading someone else or the writers of this substack without doing your due diligence. We will give you the tools to develop your own conviction. Nothing more.

3. Stay away from DOGE / SHIBA / SAMOYED / INSERT STUPID MEME COIN. Unless you’re a very good trader (if you’re reading this substack, I can almost assure you that you are not), you will ride it up and ride it back down very quickly with nothing to show for it. Trust us, don’t argue.

4. We invest primarily in quality, but take Degen moonshots too. The difference between a Left Curve / Right Curve approach and the very dumb midwit approach to Degen farming is that we know we’re investing in dogshit and trying have fun while doing so. It’s exhilarating and fun to ape into a 50,000% APR shitcoin and play the casino but you have to acknowledge and be very clear-eyed about the fact you’re in a casino. We will primarily focus on quality, but will cover the occasional moonshot (in the Discord almost exclusively, these things happen in real-time) and how to play them (be early or don’t go in).

5. Do not use leverage unless you fully understand it. Going 100x long into a shitcoin is a one-way ticket to poverty. In subsequent issues we will discuss leverage and how to use it appropriately.  Our philosophy is conservative because 99% of the people reading this are not full-time traders and you don’t need to be a daredevil to make insane returns in crypto. Find quality, resist aping into dogshit, and let the market do its thing.

6. Fast and decisive decision-making is paramount. Once you have conviction (and only once you have conviction), APE IN HARD. Don’t hesitate, pussy-foot around, and let it keep going up. Entry prices make a huge difference. See below. We mentioned earlier than Hyena made a 56x and Scar has made a 17x as of this writing. We were both “early,” but his returns are far higher than mine by having just a slightly better entry.

Structure of this Substack (Paid Subscribers)

Twice-weekly articles: Usually split into one basic overview / conceptual topic, and one deep dive into a protocol that has caught our attention. We will review the protocol as a Left-Curver and a Right-Curver, and impart any lessons we’ve learned from past mistakes (there are many). Our primary concern is equipping you with the tools you need to succeed and make your own decisions, not make decisions on your behalf. Do your own research this is not financial advice.

Discord Group: Discord groups for money have a bad rep in crypto and deservedly so. They typically revolve around 1) pump and dump scam groups (illegal and usually ineffective), and 2) Crypto influencers / traders offering their “picks,” and “trades.” What the unsuspecting victims don’t know is that their “leader” has been paid by the protocols to promote (having entered early in a presale) and will shill the coin to the unsuspecting masses before dumping on their heads.

• The Left Curve Discord exists for two reasons:

  1. Ability to ask questions to speed up your development. We are not tech support, we will direct you to resources to do your own research. But, we believe having a Left Curve Community that supports each other and helps others along the journey is a critical value-add. The three authors were once DeFi virgins and if not for the kindness of others, we wouldn’t have gained the knowledge we had today in such a short amount of time

  2. NFT’s and Degen plays happen in real time, the substack isn’t a good medium for these. These are very dependent on whale watching and moving fast and decisively. Minutes can make the difference in a good mint and a bad mint.

That wraps our first issue, if you like it tell your friends!

Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by an anonymous cartoon villains for educational purposes.