CryptoCharming 🐟

road to (hopefully) $30m | month 2 recap the goal, for anyone new: started with $5m cash in march, $5.9m end of april, $10.4m end of may. crypto as an asset class barely moved. "round 2" is me documenting going from $5m to $30m in spot crypto with proof of every position. fortunately sold solana near the top last cycle. doing this one in public. a good month doesn't mean i'm right. just means i'm up *right now*. things can get ugly very quickly. section 1: what changed ZEC roughly doubled, then gave a chunk back. HYPE gained ~80% and held most of it. BTC sideways the whole month. the portfolio went over $10m mid month, pulled back to the mid-8s on a hard ZEC dip, then recovered into the close. closing the month at $10.4m (up $4.5m from april). i'd be lying if i said i was unfazed by the round-trip to the mid-8s. that pullback was the first time round 2 felt real, not theoretical. the rotation thesis i've been writing about since march is what drove the run. crypto's overall pie isn't growing. BTC is flat since i bought in late march while AI stocks, prediction markets, sports betting, and quantum stocks all soak up speculative capital that used to flow into crypto. that's the structural backdrop. the only way an alt rips in that environment is intra crypto rotation. and the math here is the part most people are missing. HYPE and ZEC combined are ~$25b of circulating market cap. ETH alone is ~$250b, 10x the size of both of my bags put together. if even a small fraction of ETH holders look at a five year flat price chart and ask "why am i still here" and rotate, the math doesn't have to work hard. ETH drops 10%, that's $25b looking for a home, and if even half of it lands in HYPE and ZEC, those coins fly on their own. stablecoin holders are the other half of the story. a lot of people sat in stables waiting for an october 2026 bottom that may or may not arrive. the stablecoin share of total crypto market cap has been declining for two months as that money chases winners. ZEC and HYPE were the winners. some of that stable money found its way in. no new capital required. just rotation, from ETH into the narrative leaders, from stables into the price leaders. that's what drove the run. the late month chop gave some of it back and then took it back again. which brings me to what i actually did about all of it. section 2: what i did nothing. doing nothing through a runup is harder than doing nothing through a flat month. and doing nothing through the pullback that followed is a different kind of hard. when things are flat the inaction defends itself. when things rip, reverse, and recover in the same week, every day you don't act is a day you're choosing a path. there are two playbooks available for spot plays this cycle. worth naming them both. playbook 1: hold towards the cycle top. buy in the bear, ride the drawdowns, sell when the framework says sell. this is what i did with solana last cycle. it requires stomaching real drawdowns. i sat through significant pullbacks on sol after it had already 10x'd. one decision at the start, one decision at the end, a lot of nothing in between. playbook 2: swing and rebuy. trim into strength, buy back on weakness, repeat. on paper this is more profitable if you get it right. in practice you have to be right about three things instead of one: when to sell, when to buy back, what to buy back into. miss any one and you're worse off than just holding. plus short-term cap gains, a ~20% drag on every round-trip. plus you have to find a better asset than what you already own, and i don't. if i did i'd be holding it instead of HYPE and ZEC. i'm picking playbook 1. and this month was the first real test of that. ZEC ran to ~$675, came all the way back to $500, then bounced to $570 into the close. still meaningfully off the high. the playbook 2 move was to have trimmed in the 600s and plan to rebuy lower. the playbook 1 move was to do nothing. the real reason i didn't trim isn't discipline, it's opportunity cost. i want to be in ZEC. if my thesis is right, the pullback might not be deep enough or long enough for a clean rebuy, and i'd end up sidelined in a position i was already correctly in. trimming to chase a better entry when you already have a good one is playing it too cute. so i didn't. obvious caveat: it's easy to talk about playbook 1 when the screenshot i just posted is green. the real test isn't the run up, it's the first 40% drawdown. i sat through one on sol last cycle. i'll find out if that experience transfers when it happens. this week was a small preview, not the real exam. here's the thing about playbook 1 that nobody talks about: it's not easy because it's lazy. it's hard. the entire crypto information environment is built to pull you off it. every week, something else is running. every day, someone on CT is telling you to rotate. when ZEC pulled back this week, my replies filled up with "is it time to rotate to [other coin]?" because the other coin had started moving and ZEC had paused. that's the trap. attention follows momentum, momentum follows attention, and the loop runs on you mistaking short term price action for an actual thesis change. what i keep telling myself: my thesis hasn't broken. HYPE and ZEC were the call when i bought them and the case for both got more confirmed this month, not less. a coin running for a week elsewhere, or my own bag giving back 20% off a high, is noise unless something has actually changed in the coins. nothing has. at my core i'm lazy, and the lazy move and the right move are the same here. it is to do nothing. section 3: what would change my mind a few things, none of them tight rules. if ZEC or HYPE make a meaningful move up over the next month or two, i'd consider trimming some. "meaningful" is intentionally vague. i don't know what the number is until i see it. probably small if i do it. what i'm explicitly not going to react to: ETH or SOL outperforming HYPE and ZEC for a month or two. that's going to happen. these things ebb and flow inside a cycle. ZEC consolidating after a double, or HYPE giving back 20-30% while another major runs, is normal. doesn't break the thesis. doesn't move me. the coin specific thesis break would be one of my bags doing something actually wrong. HYPE's revenue dropping, ZEC failing to capture the privacy narrative when conditions are obviously favorable, a regulatory action targeting either of them directly. and if either ever round trips back to my cost basis, that's when i find out how strong the conviction really is. i don't think it happens, but i'd rather say that now than figure it out in the moment. what won't change my mind: a 20-30% drawdown without a thesis problem. one bad week. one scary headline that doesn't touch the actual reasons i own these. a note before next month at some point i'll publish my full sell framework, the actual conditions that would move me from holding to selling. but that's bull-market content, and right now the more honest question is whether i'd hold these through a real drawdown. so i'll write whichever one the market makes real. probably get to both before this is over. everything in this recap is a snapshot, not a vow. i'm picking playbook 1 today, end of may 2026, with the information i have. if conditions change i'll change with them. and you'll see me say so. flexibility is the point. things are going very well *so far*, but things can change very fast in crypto.