Boomer State of Mind

“One of the biggest sources of alpha in crypto is feeling the swell of skepticism and boomer energy rising within and learning to lean through it to the other side… like breathing through the initial pain during a stretch… to consider a new possibility with a beginner’s mind.”

-Matt Huang

This old tweet by Matt has haunted me for years now. I think the main point is that alpha comes from what is new. That could be new trade ideas, funky possibilities for venture investments, collecting “weird” art or whatever else. It’s people spending time mining Bitcoin in 2010, folks participating in Ethereum’s crowd sale in 2014, and so on.

The reason the tweet haunts me so much is because I tend to ignore innovative and new things at first. There is a base impulse in me to skip, to pass by, to ignore. It applies to new coins and crypto projects as much as it does to visiting new restaurants or participating in new trendy things. I've still never been to an escape room for example.

For a crypto market participant this tendency is a BIG issue because betting on new things is how you make money. I’ve missed out on an objectively absurd amount of money over the years even though I’ve been present in the industry. Many crypto folks likely have similar stories.

I’m not sure about you, but here’s how it plays out in my world… I’ll be researching some new project or idea, get part way through the documentation or a Twitter thread about it, then be lazy and stop. I usually justify this by saying things like, “I know enough about this already,” or, “that’s not as important as this person claims it is.”

Then time goes by, and I watch devastated as the price of something I initially thought was cool pumps into Valhalla while I’m stuck watching from the sidelines… having (no) fun, staying poor. This year my big miss was seeing $UNIBOT when it launched and not buying any. I didn’t stop to think about how adding a token to a trading bot might turn into a new trend.

How are people supposed to contend with the kind of mental sluggishness I’m talking about here?

I think there are two parts to this.

The first has to do with how we process new information. Everyone takes in information, assigns value to it, then decides whether that information warrants taking action or not. For crypto people the problem is usually not information intake… we have lots of that. Instead, it’s being a “boomer” at the attribution stage i.e. not assigning enough value to the right things at the right times.

For example, I heard that Loot NFTs were being minted from their contract right when that started, but I didn’t bother taking action until after the collection was minted out. It didn’t register for me that this was worth paying attention to as much as it should have.

The second issue is “bag bias.” People buy tokens, and then they get so attached to them that when new trends arise they discount or even ignore the new in favor of the old. For example, there were a lot of NFTs I minted in 2021 that I held onto and didn’t sell until 2023 simply because I had an affinity for them. Happens to the best of us.

What has helped me wrestle most effectively with both of these issues - information processing and my own bag bias - is consistently writing things down in a journal. It gives me a point of reference outside my own brain to engage with and that is often enough to jumpstart some productive thinking & planning.

What did I hear that was new this week? What might happen to X or Y project? If I was starting a portfolio today would I buy the same tokens in the same proportions that I hold now, or has something changed?

Taking time to write down answers to these questions (and others) has helped me fight through my lethargic boomer state of mind and engage with the industry more objectively. I would highly recommend it.

Thanks to Lambo, Liam, and Emmy for feedback and review.