Once upon a time, man was emotional—irrational even. Subject to the whims of the market, the currents of culture, the traps of psychology, and the blind spots of bias. Prey to illusions of grandeur, choices often guided more by impulse than insight. Then, the age of rationalism. Computers, AI, and technical analysis designed to spot patterns invisible to the human eye, predict market movements, to automate processes with structural precision. And yet whilst the tools change, the human at the center of it all—thinking, planning, investing—has not.

writing as compass, papa

The Gap Between Tools & Temperament

The ancients scribbled notes in the margins of books or carved plans into parchment, grasping for clarity in the chaos. Now the promise of the data deluge imbibed by algorithms, spreadsheets, and machine learning: precision. Yet that's only half the battle. Arthur Schopenhauer once said “Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see,” to which i'll combine an addendum quote by Caterina Fake "so often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard."

So if irrationality persists, the tools we create are only as good as the thinking that guides them. Amid the data and the models, we risk forgetting what the ancients knew: clarity emerges not from complexity, but from simplicity. Perhaps progress is not in the tools, but in how we use them. Writing is not just a record of thought—it is a process of discovery. A compass in the cosmos, pointing us toward the targets worth pursuing.

First Cycle: Lessons in Ignorance & Impulse

I owned a little BTC in 2017, thanks to friends experimenting with the onion router (TOR). It wasn’t much, but enough to grab my attention as it went from worthless to something—$1,000 per BTC in November 2016 to $8,000 a year later, and then $20,000 by the end of 2017. Meteoric.

I wouldn’t classify this as my first true cycle—I didn’t know about the previous bear market, hadn’t read the white paper, and knew almost nothing about Satoshi Nakamoto. BTC was simply a tool, not an investment. At the time, the narrative revolved around its potential as a currency alternative, so we tried using it that way.

Then came the crash. By 2018, BTC had dropped 84% from its highs, continuing to fall until the COVID pandemic in 2020, when it bottomed out near $4,000. Any plans I’d considered to allocate more capital to the sector evaporated. It was a brutal lesson in volatility.

crash, red candles - papa

But as many have said, bear markets are for building. The speculative frenzy dies down, leaving space for ideas to mature. Ethereum had risen to prominence as a programmable smart contract alternative to BTC’s “store of value” use case. BTC, meanwhile, was slowly gaining institutional support, while Ethereum unleashed a wave of development talent into the decentralized ecosystem. This era saw the emergence of a plethora of applications, protocols, and infrastructure. Exchanges like Coinbase made accessing these assets easier, while on-chain wallets and self-custody tools improved user experience.

Though I didn’t invest further during this time, I didn’t sell either. Instead, I began experimenting.

DeFi, NFTs, & the Price of Disconnection

Uniswap, Arbitrum, ENS, and Optimism. There wasn’t much of a plan, just a scattergun approach: open a wallet, try a protocol, move on. The communities were buzzing, gathering on Reddit, Twitter, and Discord, yet I remained on the edges. I wasn’t immersed, I was disconnected. Resistant to alien new forms of communication (an instagram and facebook zealot), I wasn’t immersed, didn’t listen to the conversations, didn’t connect the dots.

Still, I was early. That counts for something—or so I told myself. Airdrops rolled in, and for a while, it felt like success. But being early isn’t the same as being prepared. The gains that came were quickly traded away, and the opportunities—the real ones—slipped through my fingers. I didn’t participate in governance on Optimism or dive into the mechanics of liquidity provision on Uniswap. I never explored what could be built atop the ENS stack.

Looking back, I realize the problem was that I hadn’t asked the hard questions: Why am I doing this? What am I trying to learn? What do I believe about this space, and how will I know if I’m wrong? Without those anchors, every decision was reactive, every move unmoored from the last.

The boom times rolled on with NFTs. Man, did I collect NFTs. Pretty sure I own thousands. They were the new, new thing. All the gains from one field rolled into another, deeper down the rabbit hole, a further layer of abstraction away from the real world.

Except this time, I did participate. As a musician and artist, it felt natural—even inevitable—to create collections, share art, and engage in a way I hadn’t before. It was thrilling, watching the space explode with activity. Alongside what felt like millions of others, I dove in headfirst. It was epic.

Until it wasn’t.

redder rabbit hole candles, papa

The cascade of outrageous offers (so frequent that I had to hide them in my email promotions folder) stopped as abruptly as they began. The floor fell out from under the market. Prices evaporated, enthusiasm dissipated, and the frenzy turned into silence. Anything liquid was converted back into fiat in a rush to salvage value. Anything illiquid became a ghost, haunting my on-chain wallet—a permanent reminder of exuberance unchecked, of lessons still unlearned.

Charting a Course: The Discipline of Writing

This time, I couldn’t even pretend I didn’t see it coming. I’d read about bubbles. I’d seen them in markets before. But it’s one thing to understand them intellectually and quite another to feel their gravity firsthand, to ride the euphoria and then the crash. What had started as excitement became a sobering reflection of just how little I had changed. I hadn’t built a thesis, hadn’t tempered my enthusiasm with perspective, hadn’t written down the lessons as I went.

Instead, I’d chased the highs and ignored the questions—the same questions I’d failed to ask during the DeFi frenzy: Why am I doing this? What am I trying to achieve? What are the risks, and how will I navigate them?

The answers, of course, were there all along. But finding them requires the discipline I hadn’t yet cultivated: to step back, reflect, and document.

This time, though, the crash left an impression. I couldn’t keep stumbling blindly from one trend to the next, thinking that sheer participation was enough. I needed a system, a way to interrogate my decisions and my biases, to anchor myself in an industry that thrives on the unmoored. The exuberance of this cycle had taught me one thing for sure: writing it all down wasn’t just a way to avoid mistakes—it was a way to finally start learning from them.

direction, papa

Writing might save me from my own impulses. By capturing my thoughts, I could spot the patterns: the same mistakes, repeated in different forms. By documenting my reasoning, I could see the gaps—recognize when I am speculating instead of thinking critically. A journal doesn't guarantee success, but offers perspective, a pause before the next scattergun move.

Instead, I drifted. The tools were new, the ideas fascinating, but my engagement was shallow. I didn’t take the time to interrogate what I was doing or what the ecosystems were building toward. Writing would have forced me to slow down, to wrestle with the complexities instead of skimming the surface.

That’s the thing about writing: it isn’t just a way to record what you think—it’s a way to figure out how you think. Without it, I was chasing momentum. With it, maybe I could have started building something better—a thesis, a sense of direction.

And so, my journey with onchain platforms like Mirror, Paragraph, T2world, Farcaster, and Lens began—never claiming surety of success but as a commitment to learning. These outlets are more than just repositories for thoughts; they are tools to crystallise lessons, expose biases, and build conviction.

This time, the cycle feels different (lol)—not because the volatility has lessened, but because I’ve equipped myself with better tools: a written record, a clearer thesis, and a determination to participate with purpose. Warren Buffett’s wisdom about concentration versus diversification resonates now more than ever. It’s not enough to be early; it’s about being prepared, focused, and ready to act decisively.

As the next chapter unfolds—driven by AI, DePin, and stablecoin adoption—I hope to leverage my networks and deep immersion not only to seize opportunities but to contribute to an onchain future that as innovative as it is grounded.

papa

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Papa

I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice - anything just to get a paper bag. And I'd write the words on the paper bag and stuff these ideas in my pocket until I got back. Then I would transfer them into the notebook.
Jay-Z