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73K BTC and 4K ETH
The current cycle is shaping up to be a fascinating one. We witnessed BTC dipping below $20K during the winter, a support level that has historically held strong in previous cycles. In 2020, it took BTC 16 days to break its all-time highs after touching them. This time around, it achieved this in less than a week and, for the first time ever, before the halving event. It’s also the first cycle in which we're seeing real, tangible institutional flows, thanks to Bitcoin ETFs.
While many attempt to rationalize the market's behavior with logical guesswork, I believe a better approach is to cut out the noise and focus on actual onchain activities. It doesn’t matter why prices have front-run the halving or why prices are fluctuating; what's crucial is our ability to ride the waves, identify narratives early, and capitalize on this cycle.
In this week’s issue, I’ll be covering what Smart Money is doing and sharing 3 interesting wallets to keep an eye on, highlighting their strategies and holdings.
What is Smart Money Buying?
Smart Money stablecoin holdings as a percentage of their portfolio currently sits at 5%, a level we haven’t seen since 11 February 2021. The lower the percentage of stables in their portfolio, the more bullish Smart Money is.
Looking beyond ETH/BTC/Stablecoins and their derivatives in Smart Money’s top holdings, a few key themes emerge.
- DeFi (UNI, MKR, 1INCH, AAVE, RBN, COMP, dYdX, PENDLE)
- Gaming (BEAM, PRIME, YGG, GF, MAVIA, GALA)
- RWA (ONDO)
- AI (WLD, ALI, RNDR)
- Memes (PEPE, SHIB, TRUMP)
The largest balance changes show a similar trend with tokens like PEPE, YFI, AGIX, AIOZ, stTAO, ENQAI, FET and FTM being some of the largest additions to Smart Money holdings.
Three Smart Money Wallets to Monitor
Diving into Smart Money won’t be complete without highlighting a couple of wallets that have piqued my interest over the past two weeks. They’ve successfully navigated narratives, made intriguing rotations, and placed significant conviction bets on specific tokens/sectors.
ThetaTfuel: The AI to FTM Rotatoooor
ThetaTfuel began accumulating AI tokens in November 2023, initially investing in FET at $0.38 and AGIX at $0.24. The address has since fully exited both positions after experiencing a 3-5x price increase, yielding a total profit of $2.5 million. Their initial investment in FTM at $0.31 has now appreciated by 2.5x. Along the way, they've transitioned their AI investments into FTM, primarily accumulating FTM at prices ranging from $0.48 to $0.69.
With Fantom’s Sonic mainnet launch, the potential return of Andre Cronje, an ecosystem-wide airdrop, and a canonical stablecoin all on the horizon, there seem to be enough positive catalysts for ThetaTfuel to make a significant bet on FTM.
Big Brain Holdings: METIS and AI
Big Brain Holdings is indeed a big brain holder, currently sitting on a 9x on METIS and an 8x on ENQAI . They acquired METIS for $12 on August 23, 2023, and accumulated the bulk of their ENQAI holdings at prices ranging from $0.0108 to $0.0184 between January 26, 2024, and February 3, 2024.
The fund also holds numerous other AI, gaming, RWA, and L2 tokens such as GFI, PRIME, AIOZ, and BOBA. While their onchain holdings amount to almost $80 million, $56 million is in USDC. Considering their allocation towards key narratives, unrealized returns on certain investments thus far, and the amount of dry powder they have left to deploy, this fund is definitely one to watch
Tip: Hit CMD + K in Nansen, type in Big Brain Holdings, to see their entire portfolio.
Mechanism Capital’s Degen Bets
With over $2.4M in Trump and ZYN, this Mechanism Capital wallet is one for cultural meme enthusiasts. They first acquired 399K TRUMP for $202K on 19 Janurary, with two smaller transactions the next day. Their thesis is simple, the best performing memes will be the ones with the most attention, and few do it better than Donald Trump. Will TRUMP rival DOGE and SHIB in the coming months? Mechanism Capital believes it might.
Bonus wallet: Mechanism Capital has another wallet with almost $1M in TRUMP, check it out here.
Track Smart Money, Become Smart Money
In a bull market, dips often present opportunities to invest in tokens you might have previously missed. Subscribers should closely monitor Smart Money activity to observe how they're allocating during these dips. If you're currently holding or interested in initiating positions in any of the tokens associated with the wallets mentioned above, watch their activity on Nansen and set Smart Alerts for the relevant addresses.
That’s all for this week – as always, feel free to reach out with comments or questions at martin.lee@nansen.ai.