Ethereum whale Tetranode on “how to become a whale”
What is a Tetranode?
Quake game reference
Played Starcraft a lot growing up
Calls himself a “retired software engineer” but still works 100 hours/week
It’s a compulsion, doesn’t feel like work
First 4 years of crypto he just hodled – built discipline
Initially crypto community on reddit, moved to Twitter
Eventually bought a house with crypto gains but still drives a Toyota
Several levels of wealth
1. When poor, just want more money
2. Make millions – self-retirement, freedom
3. Then you wanna make others rich
Early investor in FunFair but held through crash, learned the importance of execution
For investments, he wants to know he can be the biggest customer – so he can help / influence
Measures his wealth in ETH
“hardest money on Earth”
Why bullish ETH in early days?
Angry that bitcoin didn’t scale (during block wars)
Started buying ETH at Kraken listing in 2015
Why not alt L1s?
None of them really solve the scalability trilemma – just make different tradeoffs
At his scale, security issues become greater
Experimented with Fantom and BSC – but bridge UX wasn’t good, and bridges are dangerous for larger transfer sizes
Why does decentralization matter?
The consequences are fat-tailed – eg, censorship resistance
Centralization adds risk – eg, Binance regulatory risk, and CZ keyman risk
Don’t do buybacks – causes a project’s treasury to bleed and doesn’t help project in long-run
What he values: Large addressable market; How the product helps his own needs
Farmers he respects
-@Pleyuh
-@DegenSpartan
How does Tetranode move markets?
Either through online influence or direct market actions
He’s not a true market maker like 3AC
Info asymmetry exists even in Ethereum – its value should surpass Bitcoin based on activity and fees alone
Better to make own judgments early than wait to be validated later (when your alpha is gone)
Trust your tuition to make the call
How are whale games played?
With smaller investments he can control the market and will do things like liquidating short sellers
In a few whale rooms where they can collab to make those decisions
Nowadays he makes money by #1 Farming and #2 Being advisor for new projects
How he helps: Tokenomics advice; Market making; Marketing
His favorite projects (Infinity Gauntlet)
-Dopex (highest conviction) – his most used L2 app
-Redacted + Olympus (partners)
-Fei + Rari
-Rocket Pool (only decentralized staking pool)
-Curve (tokenomics is among best)
Governance doesn’t really work in 2022 – voting isn’t binding, controlled by a few large hodlers – it’s more “decentralization theater”
Profit sharing is more effective (eg, Curve)
1/3 of his portfolio is on L2
Lending market is a weakness currently, need more uptime assurances
Ideal L2 has fast withdrawal time
ZKSync is holy grail but no generalized EVM compatibility yet
In long run, ZKP is end game (because open source)