Original text compiled and translated by: TechFlow
Host: The Defiant
Guest: Zion Thomas aka Ansem, amateur boxer and Crypto Twitter personality
Podcast source: The Defiant - DeFi, Web3 NFT Insights
Chatting with Ansem, AKA The Solana Guy
Air Date: May 28, 2024
Summary of key points
Zion Thomas, aka Ansem, is an amateur boxer and a well-known figure on Crypto Twitter (CT), known for his insightful crypto market analysis. He is also building a project called Bullpen.
In this conversation, Ansem shares his journey into the crypto world, discusses his experience as a CT influencer, and the challenges Solana faces. He reviews the ups and downs of Solana and what makes Solana unique. Ansem also reveals his favorite ecosystems and applications, offers advice, and briefly introduces his project Bullpen. Finally, he shares his future plans and some valuable Alpha for us.
Entering the Crypto World
Prior to entering the crypto market, Ansem was a software engineer and a full-stack developer at Capital One. In 2016, Ansem learned about the importance of Bitcoin but did not buy it immediately.
In 2017, after graduating from Georgia Institute of Technology and becoming a software engineer, Ansem was influenced by his work mentor and began trading cryptocurrencies in his spare time.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the market changed dramatically, Ansem continued to trade and did well. In 2021, he decided to pursue cryptocurrencies full-time and has been focusing on it essentially ever since.
As Ansem became more active in the cryptocurrency field, he found that he liked trading more and more. Ansem said that trading gave him immediate returns, whether it was profit or loss, and this instant feedback fascinated him. This was completely different from the sense of accomplishment after fixed working hours and project completion. The immediacy and continuity of trading was more in line with his interests.
Ansem previously worked as Head of Research at TCG Crypto and now works primarily on his own.
Crypto KOL
Ansem mentioned that his favorite moments are when he sees people get excited and make money from following his trades. He mentioned that some people would tell him that they made a lot of money because of his advice and even became millionaires. They are very grateful and say that he changed their lives. Especially those fans who have been following him for many years, they have witnessed Ansem's progress from posting trading ideas with only a few likes in 2017 and 2018 to posting all trading logs and analysis weekly in 2020 on a private page with only 100 people. These people see Ansem's hard work and persistence, which makes him very proud and satisfied.
Ansem also shared his dislikes. He mentioned that now that he has nearly 400,000 followers, it is inevitable that he will encounter some people who are dissatisfied with him. Some people are dissatisfied because they lost money on a certain trade, over-invested, or misunderstood what he said, or simply have a problem with him because he is a big account. Dealing with these negative emotions and private messages is his least favorite part. However, Ansem believes that overall, the positive aspects far outweigh the negative aspects.
Solana’s Development History, Challenges, and Opportunities
Ansem first explained why he came to Istanbul. He said he came to Istanbul to attend the Slide Across Roads conference organized by Step Finance. This conference brings together developers, traders, community members and people interested in cryptocurrency.
Ansem stressed the importance of in-person events, especially in a heavily online community, which help build closer connections.
He also mentioned that his face-to-face interactions with founders and traders in the Solana ecosystem at the Breakpoint conference in Lisbon last year strengthened his confidence in Solana.
Ansem believes that the users of the future will still be humans, not AI agents. He acknowledges that AI will be integrated into every aspect of our future, but he believes that humans will still be active on the blockchain.
The ups and downs of Solana
Ansem pointed out that Solana’s development speed and innovation capabilities make it stand out among many L1s. He believes that Solana’s community building and fast development pace are its biggest advantages.
He also mentioned that Solana and Ethereum differ in their goals, with Solana focusing on becoming an integrated L1 while Ethereum relies more on L2 solutions.
Ansem also reviewed the huge impact that the FTX crash had on Solana. While the crash caused Solana’s price to drop sharply, he pointed out that it did not shake the confidence of developers and the community within the Solana ecosystem. Although outside perceptions were affected, those who truly believed in Solana still believed in its long-term potential.
What makes Solana unique
Ansem believes that Solana's rapid development and strong community support are key factors in its success. He mentioned that Solana's community building in 2021 is one of its biggest milestones. Solana has successfully attracted developers through communities, NFTs and other means, and has established a strong online and offline community. When market conditions are not good, it is the long-term beliefs of these community members that support Solana.
Another important milestone is the speed of development for Solana. Although the Solana network was almost unusable for a period of time in 2022, the team fixed a large number of issues within a few months. This rapid development and repair capabilities have allowed Solana to regain people's attention in 2023.
Ansem believes that Solana’s uniqueness in the development community lies in its top-down development model. The development team led by Anatoly has adopted a "move fast, fix fast" strategy, and this forward-looking thinking has enabled Solana to maximize the use of both hardware and software. He emphasized that Solana’s goal is to become an integrated L1 blockchain, with execution, consensus, and settlement all performed at the L1 layer, while Ethereum relies more on L2 solutions.
Ansem pointed out that Solana's early adopters were mostly traders and developers who were active after the DeFi Summer. In 2021, the rise of NFT attracted a large number of retail investors to trade on Solana, which also laid the foundation for Solana's success.
Ansem explained the reason for the increase in Solana trading volume. He believes that although Solana's price fluctuated between $15 and $30 for most of 2023, it attracted a lot of attention and trading volume after the price broke through $30 as demand exceeded supply. Airdrops from projects such as Bonk and Jupiter also contributed to the increase in trading activity.
ULCERS
Ansem explained that “OPOS” stands for “Only Possible on Solana.” It’s a slogan that the Solana marketing team came up with in 2023 to emphasize Solana’s advantages over other blockchains, such as Ethereum, in handling high-throughput applications.
Ansem noted that some applications can only run on Solana because they require a large transaction throughput. For example, Ethereum can only process about 15 transactions per second, while Solana is capable of handling much higher volumes. Therefore, any application that needs to process a large number of transactions can only be implemented on Solana. In addition, users on Solana can perform frequent small transactions at a very low cost, which is not feasible on Ethereum during peak trading activity because Ethereum's on-chain transaction fees will increase significantly.
Ansem emphasized that Solana is also superior to other blockchains in terms of user experience. Its low-cost, high-speed transaction processing capabilities allow users to more conveniently perform various operations, such as investing small amounts of money in meme coins. These all reflect the concept of "OPUS", which can only be achieved on Solana.
Future market trends
Ansem pointed out that Meme is currently very popular and has become an effective tool to attract retail investors in this cycle, similar to NFT in the previous cycle. Meme is easy to understand and takes advantage of the long-standing Meme culture on the Internet, allowing novice investors to join the community by holding Meme and further explore other applications of cryptocurrency.
Ansem believes that AI will become very interesting in this cycle. With the launch of ChatGPT, many AI-related cryptocurrencies have risen rapidly. He mentioned that decentralized computing applications and AI agents are two areas of particular concern. AI agents can perform automatic transactions on the blockchain, find the best returns, etc., greatly simplifying the user's operations.
After the release of ChatGPT, a lot of capital has flowed into the AI field, but it is not clear where the greatest potential lies at the intersection of AI and blockchain. He believes that although there is no clear 100-fold growth opportunity yet, there will definitely be some AI and cryptocurrency projects that will reach the tens of billions level in the future. He mentioned some unreleased AI projects such as Ritual and Gensyn, believing that these projects may be very promising in the future.
About L2
ETH L2
Ansem noted that EVM L2 is overhyped. He explained that if execution is pushed off the Ethereum main chain to these rollups, the goal is to improve performance and speed, but if the EVM is still used, it does not actually solve the core problem. He is more optimistic about rollups that explore alternative virtual machine structures, such as Arbitrum's Stylus and Movement's Move VM.
In response to another founder’s criticism of L2, Ansem said he would not call them “garbage” but did think L2 projects received too much funding. He explained that this is because many people think that Ethereum is the only L1, so they invest in L2 projects related to it.
Ansem believes that we will see fewer L2s in the future. Although there are a lot of L2s currently, only a few will become long-term winners in the end. He mentioned that similar to the emergence of a large number of L1s after the success of Solana, L2 will also go through a similar process. In the future, application-specific rollups may use some shared SDKs (software development kits).
He specifically mentioned Sovereign Labs because they provide an SDK that makes it easy to build high-performance rollups, and once this approach becomes popular, L2 innovation will decrease and developers will use existing SDKs.
BTC L2
Ansem also believes that Bitcoin ordinals have great potential in the NFT field because they are recorded directly in the Bitcoin block and have strong traceability.
He has reservations about the prospects of Bitcoin L2 in DeFi and other applications, believing that these L2s need to significantly improve the user experience before they can really work. If it is just another EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) L2, it may not attract much interest, because they need to show obvious advantages in actual use to improve the user experience.
Favorite ecosystem and apps
Ansem made it clear that Solana is his favorite ecosystem.
Among them, his most frequently used application is Jupiter, which is an aggregation platform for transactions. He also specifically mentioned Drip, which is an NFT platform where digital artists can publish their works and users can subscribe and obtain NFTs of their favorite artists. Drip performs well in user retention and does not require users to speculate, so users will frequently use the application.
He also mentioned that Coinbase’s L2 solution Base is his second favorite ecosystem. The reason is Coinbase’s extensive influence in the US market and its huge user base (about 80 million users). Ansem believes that if Base can attract 10% of Coinbase users, a large number of users will start using on-chain applications. However, as an EVM rollup, Base cannot compete with Solana in terms of throughput and fees, and still needs to be improved in terms of technology.
Ansem believes that there will be many L1 and L2 failures in the future, and only a few will become winners. He mentioned that although the technology may be similar, once an ecosystem successfully attracts enough developers and community members, it will be difficult for other ecosystems to compete with it. The blockchain industry is still in its early stages, so it is difficult to determine the winners in the next 20 years.
Crypto Investment Advice
Ansem suggested diversifying capital into several major ecosystems. He personally invested mainly in Solana and Base. He also mentioned some interesting applications on Base, such as Friend Tech and Farcaster, and believed that SocialFi has long-term development potential. He pointed out that influencers and content creators in Web2 have proven their influence, and in the crypto field, due to the different way of capital allocation, the income of top creators may be higher than that in Web2.
Ansem also offered the following advice to those looking to follow in his footsteps in the cryptocurrency industry:
No qualifications or background required: Ansem emphasized that in the cryptocurrency field, you don’t need any specific qualifications or background, as long as you can prove your ability in the public domain and let people see your efforts, you can succeed.
Keep an open mind: He pointed out that in the cryptocurrency industry, anything is possible. No matter what your background is, as long as you have the right mindset and keep working hard, you can achieve your goals.
Tips for becoming a good trader: Ansem suggests that people who want to become good traders need to actively study past market cycles, learn charts, communicate with experienced traders, and understand the early stages of development in other industries. He emphasizes that practice is the key to becoming a good trader, you need a lot of practice, and you may lose money in the beginning.
Content creation and influence: Regarding content creation and influence, Ansem said he has no special advice, because his success happened more naturally. His experience shows that in the cryptocurrency industry, by showing your passion and hard work, you can naturally attract attention and gain influence.
Bullpen
Ansem is the co-founder of Bullpen, a social trading platform that aims to provide a place for cryptocurrency novices and experts to discover, learn, and trade. Users can access market trends, trader discussions, and the latest news on the platform, while also being able to trade a wide range of cryptocurrencies with one click.
Bullpen uses a cryptocurrency-specific LLM (Large Scale Language Model) to analyze information in various Telegram groups, extract the most relevant content and market trends, and push this information to users. Users can trade directly on the platform while obtaining information.
A key goal of Bullpen is to grow its user base. The more users there are, the more information the platform can collect and analyze, providing higher quality market insights and trading opportunities.
Ansem shared the motivation for creating Bullpen, which stems from his years of experience in the cryptocurrency field and his experience of helping friends get started. He found that novices need a centralized platform to obtain information and conduct transactions, rather than switching between multiple platforms. Therefore, he hopes to provide users with a "one-stop" cryptocurrency trading and learning platform through Bullpen, so that they can easily understand and participate in cryptocurrency transactions, avoiding the cumbersome learning process and multi-platform operations.
Ansem believes that more projects like Bullpen will emerge in the future to simplify the trading and use of cryptocurrencies. He mentioned that some current Telegram trading robots have demonstrated this demand, and these tools may attract millions of users in the next few years.
What’s next for Ansem?
When asked if he considers himself "successful," Ansem said he considers himself successful because he is doing what he loves and no longer worries about the ups and downs of the market. Regardless of how the market moves, he feels he is in a good position to pursue a variety of interests, including trading, angel investing, and starting companies. He emphasized that success for him means being able to freely choose and pursue different career paths in industries he loves.
Ansem plans to continue boxing and possibly racing. He hopes to achieve more in these areas.
Ansem will be more active in angel investing, supporting founders who he believes are building great applications in the crypto space. Communicating with founders and helping them grow is one of his current priorities.
Bullpen remains one of his main projects. This social trading platform aims to simplify cryptocurrency trading and provide a centralized learning and trading platform for newcomers.
Ansem also plans to expand his media presence, especially by creating video content on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. He hopes to educate people through videos and help them get into the world of cryptocurrency. He plans to create short educational videos covering everything from setting up a wallet to market dynamics to help those who can’t follow cryptocurrency 24/7 to stay up to date.
Ansem’s Strategy
Ansem recommends allocating 70% of the portfolio to relatively safe assets such as Solana, Coinbase shares, Bitcoin and Prime. He said that these assets will perform well in the long run, and he enters these markets at the right time through regular investments.
The remaining 30% is used for riskier investments such as leveraged trading (perps), on-chain trading, small-cap coins and memes. He recommends that after making profits from these high-risk investments, the funds should be reinvested into safer investment portfolios to ensure long-term stable growth.
Ansem emphasizes the use of high time frame technical indicators to determine when to enter or exit the market. He recommends using moving averages and other high-level signals to identify market tops and bottoms.
He recommended the book "Technical Analysis of Financial Markets" (author: John Murphy), which provides the basics of technical analysis and helps to understand market trends.
Final Words
Ansem encourages everyone who is interested to enter the field of cryptocurrency. Whether you are a developer, business developer, marketer or trader, there are opportunities suitable for you. Communicate more with people to understand your position and learning direction in this field.
He believes that now is the best time to pay attention to and invest in cryptocurrencies. The market is recovering from the impact of events such as FTX and SBF, and people's attention and confidence in cryptocurrencies are recovering. The passage of Bitcoin spot ETFs and the entry of funds from traditional financial institutions also indicate the stability and growth potential of the cryptocurrency market.
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