“Blockchain is so wide that you cannot know everything - you are just a few moments away from meeting a geek who knows so much more than you do.” - Olawele Daniel

Right now, is when we separate the people who will make money in the crypto market, from the people who won’t. It’s rough times out there for everyone. Those that are still up from buying before September are questioning themselves as to why they didn’t take profit in October, and those that bought after October are questioning why they even bought at all. New investors are watching the market and don’t realize that now’s the best time to enter so, they’ll continue sitting on the sidelines until everything starts moving up. Therein lies the problem. Last year saw the biggest influx of investors into the crypto market, of all time. Crypto has never been so accessible to everyone and SHIB is the token people continue to talk about the most. So, what gives?

I’ll be honest with you. In my opinion, we’re late to the party. Crypto may be in its infancy for the general public but, it’s been around long enough that people with way more money than any of us have already taken control of it. That’s why you hear the meta-cliche “everything follows Bitcoin,” all the time. It’s because it’s true. The whales buy and sell, and the market moves at their behest. There’s no way around it. So, what can the average retail investor do in the face of that gigantic disadvantage?

The most basic and simple answer is a word I’m sure most of us are tired of hearing. HODL. Hold on for dear life. Unless you have time to watch the second-to-second charts, or time to set up automated bots to do rapid trading, all you can do is hold on and ride the waves these whales create. The reason HODL works is because it’s dependent on the majority of average retail holders creating a solid floor of support that can’t be pushed down. These whales depend on retail to get scared and sell, just as much as they depend on people to FOMO back in on the uptrend. They sell large amounts, which causes an initial drop, and people get scared and sell, dropping the price even more. After that the traders swoop in and start day trading the peaks and valleys as much as they can. Then, after some consolidation, the whales buy back in at the bottom with a large amount, pushing the price up quickly, and people see a new “bull run” coming and start FOMOing back in. Then the cycle happens again. Each time a certain percentage of people buys in and learn quickly that they should hold onto their assets until they’re in profit. These investors are what create support at each level.

There’s something else we can do to ensure our investments flourish, as well. I keep talking about it in most of these forwards because I feel like it’s the single best thing any new crypto investor can do. That thing is to educate yourself. Not just about simple market trends and RSI and bull flag pennants and nine inch nail downward spirals, or any of the other multitudes of market indicators but, about the intricacies of the technology crypto entails. Those concepts I just mentioned are important, yes, but they’re mostly used by day traders. Not long-term investors. What I mean when by “the intricacies of the technology crypto entails” is things like blockchains, layer 2 solutions, automated market makers, proof of stake, smart contract coding, merkle trees, multisig wallets, etc. You don’t have to know how to do any of these things but, trying to at least understand the concepts behind them is important. I think this because I believe it’s the most efficient way to make wise investments regardless of what deep wallets are doing to the market. Wouldn’t it be better to go into Shibarium and ShibaSwap 2.0 with some knowledge about how these systems work? In that way, wouldn’t you be able to look into any of the other projects that will be launched on Shibarium and be able to, potentially, “get in early”?

I know learning about these things is daunting for the majority of people, myself included. Trust me, though. The more you look into them, the easier they are to understand. I didn’t comprehend any of these systems and networks at the beginning of 2021. There’s still a ton I don’t know (hence the quote at the top) but, every time I learn something new, the next thing I learn becomes that much easier to understand. That’s one of the reasons for this newsletter. I hadn’t planned it this way but, this has become a tool for myself to better understand these things. I don’t write any of this off the top of my head. I sit and research, write a bit, research more, go back and change something I had slightly wrong, and then research some more. It’s an ongoing process of acquiring more and more info, in small bite size pieces at a time. I can honestly say I have big plans for Shibarium and mean it because of that. There’s a ton of opportunities out there in the crypto space. You just have to learn enough to make the most of them and, above all, be patient.

So, with all of that in mind, this week we’re going to try to understand Ethereum Layer 2 solutions. I won’t lie, I had to read most of the sources I included multiple times before I even started trying to explain them. I could do a single L2 an issue and have enough content to last 6 months. That’s how incredibly intricate they are. We also take a look at a ShibaSwap Woof Pool token that’s creating its own “Dark Metaverse”. They recently increased the number of rewards received for providing liquidity with it on ShibaSwap. Because of this, it’s ranked number 2 for average ROI. In the Shiba Showcase we’ll gaze at the magnificent digital meme art of a Twitter user who’s quickly making a name for themselves. Lastly, I’ve changed the location and format for Shiba In-News Updates. They will now be found at the bottom of the front page for each issue. Instead of having a separate page link, which previously had the main points of an article and the link to that article, all links are now on this page as well. This way we eliminate the need to go back and forth to the front page for each article. Lastly, until we receive an official statement as to whether xSHIB holders will continue to receive Ryoshi’s Vision as rewards, I will exclude them from the weekly pricing analytics updates.

I also want to say thank you to all the people that support me in writing this newsletter. Shoutout out to pcsillypj, AndreasGER, DaReapa, weed4future, broskie94, ShibaPolls, Prof_Void, and r_agv. Your kind words and want to share it with others is what keeps me wanting to continue publishing it.

-u/siflbabyshifero

*I want to address the proposed crypto ban in Russia with regards to my statements above. While world news like this is definitely used as the “catalyst” for market trends, it’s not the actual root cause. There are many factors that cause market movements to begin but, the root cause is massive amounts of money moving in and out at once.

ShibaSwap guide and previous issues:

SHIB Ecosystem Weekly Update: Shiba In-dex

Weekly Analytics 01/23/2022