The investment journey of cryptopunks: differences in confidence and understanding in investment

Source: Dao Talks Blockchain

In Duan Yongping's Q&A, there is a profound statement that describes the difference in understanding a project among investors:

The difference in skill between only daring to invest 5% and being bold enough to bet one's entire fortune is 20 years.

This sentence is a bit exaggerated; I think it might be easier to understand if it is revised.

There is a huge difference in the understanding of a project between those who only dare to buy in small amounts and those who are willing to invest heavily; the latter truly reflects an investor's understanding and confidence in the project.

Of course, what is mentioned here does not refer to those gamblers who, having lost everything at the casino, are betting their lives on a single gamble, but rather to the situation of rationally participating in a project under normal circumstances.

The first time I saw this sentence, it reminded me of my experience participating in NFTs. The two projects I was involved in formed a stark contrast: one is CryptoPunks, and the other is Bored Ape.

I have written about this experience in previous articles.

When I bought CryptoPunks for the first time, the entire NFT market had not yet experienced a bull run, and I remember that Bored Apes had just been released. In that environment, the price of the Punks was already 15 Ethereum.

This price doesn't look expensive at all today, but at that time it was not cheap at all.

But in that case, it might be that my usual interest in collecting made me subconsciously aware of the value of punk, so I bought in without hesitation.

After buying, I actively recommended it to my friends around me and suggested that they buy it too.

That is one of the very few projects (if I remember correctly, it should be the only one) that I have actively recommended to my friends to buy. I have never actively recommended Bitcoin or Ethereum to my friends; I only suggest to them at what price they can buy when they ask me actively.

Therefore, my understanding and confidence in CryptoPunks at that time could be said to be, to some extent, even higher than that of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The opposite is the Bored Ape.

At that time, I bought in at around 1 Ethereum, which was much cheaper than the Bored Ape, but I had no confidence when buying the Bored Ape, nor did I actively recommend it to any friends. I bought it purely with a half-hearted, just trying it out mentality. Of course, it was impossible to go heavy on it.

Perhaps this is the difference between being cautious in making small investments and being confident in making large investments, which is caused by different levels of understanding and trust in the project.

Later, when the entire NFT ecosystem began to collapse, and the path of the Bored Ape focusing on games was always unfeasible without finding other development paths, I decided to control the risk by only keeping the Mutant Apes and selling off all the Bored Apes. At that moment, what I immediately thought of was not to exchange the Bored Apes for stablecoins, but to exchange all the Bored Apes for CryptoPunks.

Looking back now, I subconsciously still had much more confidence in Punk than in Bored Ape---even though at that time the absolute price of Bored Ape was still much higher than that of Punk (one Bored Ape could hardly be traded for two Punks).

After that, I hardly paid any attention to Punk and rarely checked its floor price, but I never worried about it going to zero, nor did I worry about it not rising in the future.

Hearing again the widespread discussions about punks after the rise of the Bitcoin ecosystem, a bunch of new Bitcoin NFT projects are emerging fiercely, with prices rising daily, claiming to surpass punks.

But now the price of CryptoPunks is 42 ETH (77,000 USD).

And the prices of those emerging Bitcoin NFTs:

The top-ranked Taproot Wizards only have 0.15 BTC ($17,000).

Once the noisy Quantum Cat and Node Monkey were worth less than 0.05 BTC (4000 USD), and their price couldn't even match the tip of Punk.

Although Bored Apes still dominate the Ethereum NFT rankings, they are now only valued at 14 ETH (25,000 USD). Once, a Bored Ape surpassed a Punk, but now it is only worth a third of a Punk.

Looking back on this, from the perspective of investing rather than just playing around, it seems that there are only three projects where I truly invested heavily and could ignore market fluctuations with peace of mind, which are Bitcoin, Ethereum, and CryptoPunks.