On Narratives: (Long)
Narrative trading became the best way to trade in 2021, specifically after the May 60k-30k dump. All liquidity started to get concentrated in 1 main runner alongside a multitude of beta coins, mostly started by $AXS and then further perpetuated by $SOL $LUNA $AVAX (alt L1s).
This overall shift basically was the end of the widespread altseasons that we grew to enjoy and love in the earlier years, where any altcoin would go up 30% each day and it didn't matter what you chose.
Narratives continued to play out. Gaming, Alt layer 1s, ZK coins, NFTs, Launchpads, big lindy memes. Those were some of the older ones we saw in 2021.
Along the years, we also added: RWA, Modular, BTC ecosystem coins, Stable coins, AI, perp dex coins, privacy, different launchpads, and many more.
Notes on trading narratives:
-The main leader is almost always the one you should concentrate/focus on, they are going to outperform the beta
-The market leader sets the narrative and the beta will follow accordingly.
-The narrative lasts as long as the market environment and as long as the leader lasts. The leader can keep going extremely strong and put in 20% candles each day for weeks on end OR it can just simply be a 1 week move. It's very dependent on how strong the coin is + BTC.
-NEW narratives are always stronger than the old ones. The old ones will continue to get rehashed in some ways, ie. there will be some random leader like $ASTER moving and then other perp dex beta like dydx and drift will move. But the newest metas will have fresh participants with the strongest pumps (relatively).
-More on the above- it's why stale narratives like gaming probably don't have huge resurgences relative to the 2021 AXS run. There needs to be a strong leader/demand for that sector and it's quite old.
-Narratives will get rehashed but with newer coins. 2023/2024 AI coins like NIL, GRASS, TAO may have more recent mindshare than older ones such as AKT, RENDER, FET. They all fall under the 'AI' bucket but it's important to discern the two groups.
-Another example of the above may be DeFi 1.0 (AAVE CRV SNX YFI) vs. later groups of DeFi (ENA PENDLE SYRUP AERO).
-There can be subgroups in each narrative. Filecoin might fall a bit under the AI bucket (and traded like so in 2024) but might have an entire new category altogether with storage (and also FIL can be a leader with STORJ as beta). There's some nuance to it.
-Narratives can be sparked for anything. Again, it's mostly the leader that is going to dictate the narrative and if a coin is just obscenely strong (aka ZEC right now), privacy will be in. But maybe all it takes is a big amount of hype with Robotics and then you ape SAPIEN. Or it could be ASTER and then perp dexes come back. It just depends.
Narratives are still highly important in crypto and it's also necessary for you to understand some of the different groupings when trading. I used to have my trading view setup where I had every single coin in a basket of like 7 different categories for each narrative. These days, there are too many to count and also the market is too dispersed for this.
I think that the market will continue to find concentrated liquidity/volume in just a few coins and that the old days of 'altseason' are mostly over for a while. Altcoin trade selection has never been more important and you must continue to be extremely diligent when finding your coins/trades. Good luck.
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