Start Panicking If You Own These Cryptos

I went to the doctor recently and learned that I’m pre-diabetic. It sucks. No more candy, soda, fast food, chips, cake, Frappucinos, popcorn, donuts, or any other guilty dietary habits I carried over from the lockdown.

It sucks to hear, but I’d rather make changes now before I become fully diabetic. Sometimes, a brutal dose of truth is necessary, even if it forces you to make uncomfortable changes.

Looking over my portfolio and the crypto market recently, I realized many coins should be trimmed from portfolios. I hold a decent-sized lot of one of them. I bit the bullet and booked the loss.

Booking losses are painful. Booking losses in a bull market is excruciating. It feels like being the neighbor of the guy throwing a massive party, and you didn’t get an invitation.

Then, when you turn on a YouTube influencer or a Twitter shill, you get reminded of how much money is being made and how perfect their calls are, but you feel like a bagholder.

However, like my doctor’s recent update on my health, it’s not too late to trim the fat from a portfolio and make up the losses elsewhere. So, I will share a handful of coins that I’d cut and move into other better-performing crypto assets.

The Criteria to Make the Shit List

It’s not easy to make my shit list. Many coins don’t qualify, but let me explain how I chose which cryptos don’t belong in a balanced crypto portfolio.

My first shit list rule is only to include coins that have existed before 2023. New coins can do crazy things in a bull market, and I can’t fault someone for wanting to take a risk on a new coin that has yet to prove itself.

In the past year, the entire crypto space has increased in value by approximately 120%. Bitcoin is up 147%, ETH is up 68%, SOL is up 603%, and BNB is up 183%.

So, rule #2 is that if the crypto price has not increased by at least 31% over the past year, it doesn’t belong in a portfolio. If a token isn’t doing 25% of what the entire crypto asset class has done over the past year in the bull market, what makes you think it will suddenly outperform?

I chose to look one year back because the crypto market accelerated dramatically in October 2023.

The Shit List

As I reviewed the top 100 cryptos by market cap, here are my results and their respective 1-year returns.

XRP-11.5%
DOT-14.2%
LTC-9.8%
XMR-3.5%
ETC-27.2%
XLM-(10.9%)
POL (Used to be MATIC)-(30.2%)
OKB-(6%)
FIL-16.2%
HBAR-14%
ATOM-(33%)
MKR-(8.9%)
ALGO-30%
BSV-28.2%
LDO-(30.5%)
QNT-(24.5%)
FLOW-23.7%

Surprises, After Creating the Shit List

I’m a bit surprised that 17 cryptos made it to this list. I was especially concerned that 7 of the Top 100 were negative in the past year.

My biggest surprise and disappointment was that I still held one of the negative tokens in my portfolio- LDO. My shit list was right…I was down massively in Lido.

So, I took my medicine and booked the loss- over 50% :(

Where I Went Instead

After dumping my LDO tokens, I moved those funds into APT. I like SUI more than APT, but I own a lot of SUI already and think that APT may get some sympathy increases and help it catch up to SUI’s market cap.

Some other ideas are the categories that influencers are prepping to shill—memes, AI, and gaming. I’d much rather own a blue-chip crypto in a shilled category than a rusty pail of trash that I was wrong about.

I’m becoming more convinced that crypto is simply an attention game and that fundamentals are overshadowed by hype. Suppose LDO, a profitable DeFi project with the highest DeFi project measured by TVL, has returned negative 30% over the last year. In that case, few people pay attention to or care about profitability.

Even worse, MKR (now SKY) has the highest revenue per user, but it has experienced an 8.9% negative return in the past year.

Key Takeaways

The good news is that the major altcoin bull run most likely hasn’t occurred yet, just like I haven’t been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Just like my dietary changes, there’s still time to make adjustments if you hold a token on the shit list.

If you hold these and want a better choice without doing research, splitting the money into thirds into BTC, ETH, and SOL or BNB may be wiser.

Or, if you like and believe in these shit-list projects, perhaps they can buck their trend. As stated, LDO and MKR are fundamentally very successful. You could also argue about holding XRP, FIL, or POL. However, the other names will most likely be used by leverage traders or will slip out of the top 100.

Clap if you agree that owning these projects doesn’t make sense. If you are a contrarian, I’d like to hear why in the comments. If you have any projects on your shit list, share them in the responses with your reasoning.

Thank you for reading, clapping, and subscribing.

I own SUI, APT, BTC, SOL, and BNB.

This information should not be taken as investment advice. I am no more qualified to give financial advice than to translate ancient Sumerian texts into modern-day fables. Digital assets like crypto and NFTs involve risk, so you should always perform due diligence before investing.

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