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I'm back
Hey guys, its been a while. I got caught up in some personal stuff and haven't been able to update the last month. I'll be honest, doing weekly updates is a bit exhausting, and I can't promise I'll release an update every week. It's especially tough when I haven't been following the games or even crypto that much recently.Things have calmed down in crypto land, and the expression "crypto takes the elevator down and the stairs up" seems to be holding true. Over the last month ETH has climbed around 60% (~1,050 to 1,660). Bitcoin didn't perform as well, only gaining back 15%.
These numbers make it look like crypto is doing a lot better than it actually is. It's important to note that if you got down 50% and back up 50%, you're still down 25% from where you started (e.g. 100 -> 50 -> 75), so you should really look at logs. And lets be honest, crypto is still hurting.
But it's not just about the price, but the enthusiasm. Even the haters have backed off because its boring. I guess that's a good thing. I've always said I wish the hype would die down a little and let good applications be built. I am a bit surprised at Bitcoin's under-performance compared to ETH and BNB, at least in the rebound.
I saw FTX introduced stock trading.
Right now on FTX you can:
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) July 30, 2022
a) invest in stocks
b) invest in crypto
c) make credit card deposits
d) get an FTX card, spend directly from FTX
e) make direct deposits
f) make peer to peer payments
what else do people want?
They're still one of the most interesting companies to follow in the space. I have mixed feelings about the CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, and I still haven't used their product, but it looks like he's delivering.
I just started listening to Lex Fridman podcast featuring the Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, so I'm sure I'll have comments on that in the next week or so.
Action
Volumes kind of fell off last few weeks but prices are up which is good. We haven't touched 30 BNB average 24-hour trailing round size in a while.
Winners and Losers
Note that these are winners and losers from the last 3 weeks.
| Place | account | games played | won | won USD | Winnings Even Money | Average bet size |
| 1 | 0x7774e54add14fcc807d1ecc86e4c346eb9133bb0 | 2,393 | 58.35 | 12,137.0 | 71.69 | 0.3 |
| 2 | 0x06c8828fc57af6647edb6b15da73a75f5397786e | 2,198 | 45.15 | 9,391.0 | 115.52 | 0.32 |
| 3 | 0xbe00210b167c25558b032aa88f78c06454ea1cba | 2,453 | 43.85 | 9,120.0 | 112.42 | 0.33 |
| 4 | 0x61580a281cf0f6eb03dcc93cd1271d361026806e | 210 | 43.37 | 9,022.0 | 39.79 | 1.02 |
| 5 | 0x7bd3541c73c45bae3427020b76342270f26fbd7e | 140 | 36.8 | 7,655.0 | 1.39 | 5.63 |
| 6 | 0x6bf09f8c8bd17d5f5428ada05057f9aabe69b64e | 94 | 35.95 | 7,478.0 | 14.77 | 0.85 |
| 7 | 0xbfa3608981e8dc53ef037237859593d17f5a42a4 | 370 | 33.28 | 6,922.0 | 31.91 | 1.23 |
| 8 | 0xdb06da5990dcc8295c389d24f4cb9e249116b068 | 399 | 31.67 | 6,587.0 | 22.69 | 1.08 |
| 9 | 0x97e0b1948b3b2d6f2a1c287a72ac5dd0a0dee5b9 | 420 | 30.54 | 6,352.0 | 3.67 | 0.52 |
| 10 | 0xa4e6e1d5b0d2fdbf6baf18c2adb5e37df972a654 | 1,022 | 28.61 | 5,950.0 | 11.95 | 0.13 |
I thought top winners would be bigger considering that I combined three weeks of action, but they're not! I think that's because today's winners will be tomorrow's losers and thing kind of even out. Someone could have a really hot week, then people catch on, start shadowing his trades, moving the odds, or his luck just ends which results in losses the following week.
We also have relatively low volume, and honestly it'll likely get lower because no one is consistently winning. The top guys seem pretty disciplined though. A lot of games and a reasonable bet size. The top dog has a lot of experience. He's played over 21k games! And he's won 75 BNB in his life, meaning he averaged 0.003 BNB net winnings per game. That's a lot of work and a lot of ups and downs. 77% of his profit came from the last 3 weeks, which means he either "figured it out", or he'll just revert back to the mean and give most of it back over the next few months.
Let's look at the losers
| Place | from | games played | won | won USD | Winnings Even Money | Average bet size |
| 1 | 0xc1f265e222c5a4b6c8c536f9cc138c648518b6ac | 953 | -229.77 | -47,793.0 | -26.27 | 3.63 |
| 2 | 0x6020a29fc5ba916b22568817eceaefd940b4f0d7 | 732 | -201.18 | -41,845.0 | -32.94 | 3.08 |
| 3 | 0xd820b68e7c4e822692a805567f4b57e832730533 | 1330 | -152.97 | -31,817.0 | -19.51 | 2.1 |
| 4 | 0xad483dc8c4482eafdbebbc98ea66a89e461cfbd9 | 2546 | -136.57 | -28,407.0 | -111.95 | 1.3 |
| 5 | 0x69e5d58023e5e36604c9407593198cb9229e6cf9 | 138 | -119.88 | -24,935.0 | -19.01 | 6.25 |
| 6 | 0x53a50c476ef3c84132a9803e1ee167659715d838 | 905 | -119.69 | -24,896.0 | -77.47 | 1.05 |
| 7 | 0xe9f971a510747118eaffb1bf78411eace3102a31 | 571 | -103.45 | -21,518.0 | -48.44 | 2.51 |
| 8 | 0xfaded83f9cab5f8975ca34395c01c3e455ffdb93 | 1792 | -80.42 | -16,728.0 | -63.05 | 0.91 |
| 9 | 0xf6152ae9e8d5003cc29856b1ffeb2166317fa30e | 40 | -74.3 | -15,454.0 | -7.33 | 5.23 |
| 10 | 0xab4dc696d2bf74446ba6ceb414cd3741a95035ae | 954 | -70.3 | -14,622.0 | -49.42 | 1.1 |
Some things never change. Big losers tend to be more consistent at losing. But note that just because they're losers doesn't mean their strategy is bad! Finding a "bad" strategy is good, because you could just reverse the signal and you're in the money! But sadly, that doesn't work, because bet size moves the odds and fees take a hit. So the worst strategy is a random strategy. That'll guarantee you lose money consistently. My hunch is that these players are just betting more or less randomly (trading on noise, no signal), which makes their strategy the worst of all.
Anyway, as you know, we love our losers. That's it for this week. Hopefully I'll be able to update more regularly but weekly is going to be tough.
As always, feel free to reach out with questions or comments or want my to highlight anything different on my weekly market recaps. If you like what you read and want to subscribe to receive an email when a new post is published, click here.
Good luck and bet responsibly!