Author: TechFlow
"It's just that when you stood at the crossroads and saw the wind and clouds, the day you made your decision was quite dull and ordinary in your diary. At that time, you thought it was just an ordinary day in your life."
--- (The Girl Killing Quail)
14 days ago, one of our ordinary editors, while surfing the Internet daily to find writing materials, accidentally discovered the nonsense of Terminal of Truth and saw its token $GOAT.
At that time, the editor invested 1 SOL, and until today, Binance announced the launch of the GOAT contract. This initial 1 SOL, if calculated based on the price at the time of publication, has a return rate of 250 times.
And the goat had just come out that day, so almost no one was explaining the whole story.
After a brief understanding, the editorial department thought that AI Bot issuing memes was an interesting narrative angle, so they wrote an article (Will this year's AI issue meme coins? A quick look at a16z co-investment, the meme coin issued by the bot itself is GOAT).
If you carefully compare the release time, you will find that this is one of the earliest articles in the Chinese media introducing GOAT; and precisely because it was seen early, the final benefits were far greater than imagined.
Compared with professional dog-beating bloggers, on-chain scientists and industry leaders, this profit may not be considered a big deal in terms of multiples and total amount, and may just be a drop in the bucket;
But we think that this matter may be more valuable for ordinary readers:
How can a relatively ordinary person who is not a full-time trader rely on interpreting public information, using free tools, maintaining a good attitude, and reaping unexpected benefits?
The following is his true story, shared with everyone.
Laughing before the rise, predicting after the rise
This business has always been a ruthless one where the winner takes all and people are conquered by rising prices.
GOAT has come this far today. Looking back, everyone may think that you are a prophet who successfully caught the hottest coin; but if you look back 14 days ago, I think I am just one of the many leeks in PVP.
In addition to my daily busy media editing work, I also often lose money in the Solana on-chain dog arena.
However, because of my main job, I have to come across new hot topics and narrative angles every day, and then write articles about the parts I find interesting. This is driven by work, not active speculation.
Writing interesting and informative content is the main job.
So when I first saw GOAT, I was laughing. It was less about serious investment decisions and more about finding the subject matter interesting.
Of course, the final result was good and I got an unexpected surprise.
If we look back, on the afternoon of October 11, I wrote an article about a16z investing money in the Truth Terminal Bot, and the Bot issuing its own coins. Almost at the beginning of writing this article, I bought 1 SOL like a lottery ticket. The price of GOAT at that time was 0.0019.
Figure: This was taken on October 11 when the Goat was first released. The green point B in the figure is the entry price.
Today, the price of GOAT is around 0.75. Compared with the initial entry price, the total assets have theoretically increased 370 times.
However, I had sold my principal long ago. Later, when someone FUDed the truth terminal and misspelled the English word, suspecting that it was operated by humans and the price plummeted, I added 1 SOL.
If we only calculate the initial 1 SOL after doubling the investment, the profit is almost 250 times.
Figure: Screenshot taken before publication on October 25. Due to the buying and selling activities in the middle, the profit calculation is different from the main text
Clearly, from a profit maximization perspective, I did at least two things wrong:
You should not invest only 1 SOL, the initial capital is too small;
Don’t chase 1 SOL when you shouldn’t be FUD, and only get small gains when there is a big opportunity to pull back;
However, I am neither a professional trader nor a researcher, nor am I a big V who always wins the battle. Nor do I try to join various so-called Alpha groups.
For an ordinary crypto practitioner who has no extra energy, bargaining power, or information gap, I can accept these operational imperfections.
Precisely because my total cost at the beginning was only 1 SOL, I could hold on to it with a smile on my face. Even when I was busy with work, I didn’t feel too upset because it was only 1 SOL after all.
You have to know that of the 2.5 million tokens launched by Pump.fun, less than five currently have a market cap of more than $100 million.
Therefore, if you place a big bet or chase a big bet, you are likely to lose money.
Plus, I tend to be conservative by nature, so if I'm not sure but think it's somewhat interesting, I might as well implement the 1 SOL tactic.
So there is no such thing as a prophet of stories about getting rich quickly, we can only laugh at the ups and downs of the market.
If someone had dared to throw out 1,000 US dollars when GOAT first came out and kept it until now without any composure, I think there would be no need for him to keep working and writing stories about it now. Such a ruthless person must have hidden his merits and fame.
It is difficult to replicate sudden wealth, but I think there is one thing that can be shared and used as a reference, which is how I discovered the goat and the terminal of truth earlier.
"Getting up early" is the comprehensive use of information and tools
If you participate intensively in the dog-beating PVP on Solana, you will probably feel that all the dog-beating is actually a game of attention.
To put it bluntly, a coin is issued intentionally or unintentionally because of something that (seems) worthy of attention.
This thing can be about celebrities, culture, emoticons, quarrels, memes or anything you can't imagine.
So in essence, you are actually watching a foreign version of "Weibo" (X), you need to have a gossipy heart and bet on the gossip (Pump.fun).
So the question is, with so much gossip out there, how can we discover the gossip worth reading earlier?
Social media can be dramatic, but the flow of money cannot deceive people.
Take my discovery of GOAT, for example:
First of all, in my daily work, I have intentionally or unintentionally collected a lot of addresses of so-called "smart money" from various data bloggers, researchers and social media recommendations, and added some so-called "smart money" alarm bots.
My expectations are not that they are smart and honest enough, but that I find hot spots for my daily editing work.
But there is one thing I am roughly sure of --- if multiple addresses and bots you monitor are saying that XX bought XX coin, then it has the potential to become a writing topic, at least in the (ultra) short term.
In other words, whether it is a deliberate conspiracy or a keen sense of smell, these people may have already selected the subject matter for you, so there are at least some points that can be brought up to attract everyone's attention.
So following this logic, I found that a large number of addresses were buying GOAT on the 11th, and the frequency and amount were very large.
Based on my intuition as an editor, I thought there might be a hot topic here, so I searched for the contract address of GOAT on X.
The search results are filled with a lot of shouting information, but there are also treasures.
At that time, there was almost no introduction to GOAT and the Truth Terminal. The only valuable search result related to the token contract address was this:
Up to now, this article link has only been read by more than 5,000 people, which is not a small number of people, but the title almost hit my intuition at first glance:
Marc Anderson gave an AI Bot $50,000 in Bitcoin.
Even if you don’t trade in cryptocurrencies, if you are a practitioner in the crypto industry, you will find this news interesting. The strong motivation to learn about this matter became my initial introduction to GOAT.
So, the initial logic for discovering GOAT is:
Abnormal fund flow --- Social media search --- Find valuable information --- Satisfy curiosity --- Interpret information.
With my mediocre English and the help of GPT, I quickly finished reading the report and found the AI Bot account "Truth Terminal" behind GOAT; and in the remaining time, I quickly read every post posted by Truth Terminal in order from new to old.
At this time, I didn’t have enough evidence and knowledge to confirm that it was an AI bot and not a person in disguise, but its nonsense made me think it might be hype:
Neurotic, half intelligent, half philosophical, saying he wants to issue a coin...
This is the first time that a (self-proclaimed) AI Bot has issued a Meme coin on its own.
Then I watched the conversation between him and Marc, who indeed sent Bitcoin to Bot. With the "soft endorsement" of the founder of a16z, I vaguely felt that this thing would be popular.
So I thought this would be a good topic, and quickly wrote the initial article introducing GOAT.
((Will all AIs issue Meme coins this year? A quick look at a16z joint venture investment, and the Meme coin GOAT issued by Bot itself))
According to feedback from colleagues, some Alpha groups also forwarded this article afterwards, providing them with information sources for discovering Alpha; but my original intention was not to speculate, but to quickly discover hot spots and write articles.
This may also be a bonus for working in the crypto industry, but the prerequisite is that you have a gossipy heart and a routine work mode.
What happened next was a matter of course. I paid a small price for the recognition and invested 1 SOL, but I didn’t expect GOAT to become so popular that it would rush into the top 100 crypto market capitalization.
So looking back, “getting there early” may not be entirely accidental, but rather the result of comprehensive use of information and tools.
And if you're always eating second-hand information, then obviously the fun and the odds are reduced.
Different practitioners in the industry have different ways of using and obtaining information; as editors, our way of obtaining information may be the most suitable for ordinary people - the tools are public, the search is public, and the monitoring is free, and you can get all of these in your own way.
Besides, I still need to spend time to write things down. An ordinary player can just rush in without writing anything under the same information density.
Of course, it is also possible to lose everything, so I have always emphasized that when any meme has not come out, you should "spend more time expressing and less cost betting." This is determined by the nature and rhythm of my work.
You need to have a kind of old-fashioned sensitivity
You may ask, I don’t have such luck, I didn’t find the goat at the beginning, and what should I do if it’s too high when I want to get on the car.
In fact, it has been about 15 days since GOAT issued the coin, and there is a considerable window period in half a month. You don’t have to bet everything on GOAT; there are many other opportunities to explore during the window period.
But the prerequisite is that you have to have a kind of old-fashioned sensitivity.
What is a glutton? Let’s take pump.fun as an example.
For example, Coinbase CEO Brian posted a post about his wedding and released a photo of the two of them together; Pump.fun responded to the post in a greasy but precise way:
"Congratulations, nice dog in the photo, what's its name? (for research purposes)"
Apparently pump.fun keenly sensed that issuing a coin with this dog might be a good choice.
This is the kind of sensitivity that comes from being a veteran in the circle for a long time. It is very frivolous but to the point. Everything is an opportunity for asset speculation.
Back to the GOAT tag, as an editor, I personally believe that there are at least three sensitive opportunities as the event life cycle evolves:
When the coin is first launched, identify whether the narrative and subject matter are worth investing in, and write an article introducing the GOAT;
The coin is rising. Identify whether there are Dragon II and imitations that appear with similar concepts but more unique narratives, and write an inventory introducing the imitations;
The coin is going up, identify whether smart money and big funds are continuing to flow out, observe what other things the successful people have bought, and write data analysis;
So GOAT is a clear line, and the hidden lines in it can be explored, and many Beta opportunities can be found when the wind is still there.
And because the entire crypto industry is a "venture capital circle" with extremely compressed time and space, you will not be given many time windows, but there may be dense opportunities at the same time. This requires you to constantly enhance your sensitivity and increase your information density to maximize your benefits when the wind is favorable.
Finally, we hope that GOAT’s unexpected surprise is a good start and can help everyone understand the latest changes and cutting-edge trends in the industry and identify and discover more opportunities.
This is not only a duty, but also a kind of cleanliness that strives to "do no evil" in this industry.
*Risk warning: MEME has no actual value support and is greatly affected by market sentiment. Most (over 99%) MEME are PVP and will eventually return to zero. This article is only shared as personal experience and does not constitute any investment advice.
