GCR is an anonymous trader who became popular in the 2021 bull market because he seemed to know the trading trends very well. As a well-known short-selling master with huge trading scale, his trading cases are impressive. For example, he publicly shorted the top of DOGE in May 2021, publicly shorted SHIB and Metaverse Token in November 2021 (at the peak of the bull market), and publicly shorted LUNA before the LUNA crash in 2022 (he made a $10 million bet with Do Kwon). Although he is now much less vocal on social media than in the last bull market, we can still read his past tweets, which are sorted out in this article. There are many points worth collecting and reading repeatedly.
Before reading GCR’s tweets, I first summarized and extracted some of the points worth learning from GCR’s views:
- Round numbers are Schelling points, which are either potential support or resistance points, especially when there is no valuation justification.
- Low unit deviations can attract retail investors: why would you buy less than a tenth of a Bitcorne when you have millions of dogcoins (… worth 10,000x the value of $1)?
- Don’t short low market cap projects: If GCR follows this rule, you should too.
- The strong will always be strong, and vice versa. Reducing the number of winners and increasing the number of losers is a bad strategy, you are better off doing the opposite.
- Judging from the SNL show with Musk, shorting every DOGE pump is one of the most successful trades you can take.
- GCR's advantage has nothing to do with candlestick analysis or any complex strategy, he relies solely on intuition.
- Compared with old tokens, new tokens have one advantage: full of hope and lack of holders.
- The way the market reacts to news provides a lot of information about the bias (bullish or bearish) and sentiment of market participants, which is more important than the truth of the news.
- Don't think about anything else except making money.
- In the copycat cycle, you should maximize risk at the beginning and slowly reduce risk over time, but most people do the opposite.
- Asia/China will drive the next bull run.
- BTC and ETH are both at bottom. GCR turns bullish after FTX crash.
- Most people with long-term conviction are better off holding BTC and ETH rather than trading.
- ETH will reach $10,000.
Note: GCR originally tweeted from the @GiganticRebirth account, now uses @GCRClassic, and there are several tweets from the GCR temporary account "MingXMecca".
For a long time, every DeFi vulnerability has caused a panic sell-off because the market never actually cares about more than a few hours.
The way the market reacts to news is very informative:
When news affects prices, market participants often struggle with whether it is true or false. More often than not, the actual truth of the headline is unimportant. How the market reacts to the news, and in what time frame, is more meaningful.
「Reverse selling of news」:
When 95% of traders expect to “sell the news”, I almost always buy, as I used to say “inverse sell the news”. Many people who were forced out of the market due to fear of an event are forced back in. “Selling the news” happens in unexpected circumstances.
Don’t short low market cap projects:
That's why we never, ever, short low-cap projects. It's one of the hard and fast rules I teach everyone, especially when sellers are exhausted and supply is at a standstill after four years.
Intuition is the biggest advantage:
The best traders will always prioritize intuition over apophenia. You don't like this answer? Intuition isn't enough to satisfy your curiosity? This is the truth, and there is no other truth. I can't teach it to you, but you can find an edge.
Low unit bias effect can attract retail investors:
No matter how many times they see it, people still underestimate the appeal of the low unit bias effect to retail investors. It is the most powerful magnet in crypto. Why would anyone in their right mind buy 100 CONEs when retail investors would own 1 million? It is the cheapest coin on Coinbase.
Don't think about anything else except making money.
DOGE is the easiest coin to trade by downplaying catalyst-driven rallies:
Completely out of this short, you will find DOGE to be the easiest coin to trade. April 20 DOGE day, Musk on the comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL), TSLA accepting DOGE payment, I shorted all the tops, the enthusiasm of the rise will never meet expectations (a meme token should not strive for fundamentals), and there will most likely be no cycle lows.
Why take profits on a short position?
The third most common question I receive is: Why take profits on shorts if you still think they will go lower in the long term? If you are taking 70-90% downside on an altcoin short and are still holding the extra 10%, re-evaluate your heuristics. This is what will happen to you if you are still copying my shorts months afterward.
Short selling can be a trade or a contrarian investment:
There are two ways to be short: trading and contrarian investing. If the confidence interval of the 1-year price is > 95% (there is a 95% chance that the price will be lower than the current price in one year), "invest" and don't pay attention to short-term fluctuations. I chose to "invest" in PEOPLE with 0.09 USDT; squeezing to ATH is possible, but my investment is in a great company.
The Future of NFTs:
Compare the market cap of NFT projects to some famous meme tokens: SHIBA reached a market cap of 60 billion at its peak; no NFT has a $1 billion cap (except BAYC). Altcoin 2.0 seems overvalued relative to the growth of NFTs; I predict that the tokenization of NFTs will cannibalize the trading volume of Altcoin 2.0.
The hard integer threshold is the Schelling point:
Bounced off 10 meme support as expected, but not entirely meme-y; hard integers are clear convergence points for reflective assets with fuzzy valuations; respects Schelling points.
Sector rotation and imitation:
I have been telling you for weeks that the biggest threat to any successful project is its own success. Success breeds imitation, and this is a mercenary industry that will ruthlessly move to primitive derivatives in pursuit of higher yields (from VCs to traders to eventually retail investors).
DeFi Summer, Food Farms, Original seigniorage [ESD, DSD], OHM (Olympus DAO), and countless other crazes have taken turns.
Shorting Elon Musk drives DOGE higher:
Was there an easier, higher-probability (>100%?), less complicated trade over the past year than shorting Elon Musk to fuel DOGE gains? A trade that requires less edge, better foresight, less talent, but always works? SNL, Dog Day, TSLA payouts, Super Bowl ads, space missions, etc.
Don’t try to buy the bottom:
If I have helped you in the past, please take my advice: Don’t try to buy at the bottom. You may lose a lot of money thinking you can buy at a low price and recover some of your losses. This is almost impossible, and you are likely to panic sell at a loss or the price of the coin will go to zero.
Mastering the Airdrop Chart Pattern:
Capturing high volatility (on both ends) is where you can get the best returns, but the market has gradually become more efficient at pricing these events. However, airdrops still often follow predictable chart patterns that the market has yet to fully grasp; study every single one of them for 18 years.
Timing the "bottom" of an airdrop is actually a very critical art form to learn in this space; something I really started to study after UNI. Sometimes on-chain indicators help, but this is on exchanges; sellers usually "run out of steam" once prices flatten out and start to consolidate.
Go all out in networking:
If you’re not good at trading, try going all out on networking. Every meeting, be there. Every party, show up. Humans are more approachable in a bear market. You wouldn’t believe how many people I know became successful by knowing the right people.
The famous "decentralized casino" paper:
Just as “digital gold” became the winner narrative and use case for Bitcoin in the last cycle, the “decentralized casino” thesis is becoming a consensus across the crypto industry (filling the gap left by “Web3”).
It’s too expensive for the average person to fly to Macau or Las Vegas. Decentralized casinos and/or decentralized Ponzi schemes always run the fastest when we have windfalls and macro risks. I’ve always believed that humans are desperate, greedy, depraved, lonely, and trapped in the metaverse.
News Trading:
If you find yourself marginalized, I would recommend trading the news instead of getting your information from someone else. News trading is becoming increasingly competitive, so you have to build infrastructure to react quickly and watch for items that have been delayed for months.
It is imperative that if you are trading meme coins, you quickly cut your losers when the market shows you that they don’t care about the meme “news.” It is obvious to any trader with an intuitive feel for the market to feel this catalyst and should take partial profits at the first impulse.
The relative strength of a stock is often a lagging effect:
Traders often contact me asking why cryptocurrencies are showing relative strength or weakness to stocks. I usually tell them to wait before jumping to conclusions; oftentimes, we are just witnessing a lag effect.
GCR shorted some coins:
Publicly short SHIB, DOGE, GAL, SAND, MANA, original Luna, LUNC, and more broadly, the entire 2020-2021 crypto bubble, the 10-year macro asset bubble in Q4 2021, etc.
To be honest, tokens that retail investors hold heavily are often hyped for months due to some "future catalyst", leading to an explosive buying frenzy as the event horizon approaches. Just as retail investors imagine that the meme will make them millionaires, market makers use the chain reaction of final liquidity to allocate.
Betting Unit Bias:
What pushed XRP to $3? Most importantly, low unit bias. Bitcoin is already $10k, ETH $1000. Retail investors feel they are too late, but 10 cents XRP can go to $1? $10? What about $100? Lots of speculation that Coinbase is about to go public (incorrectly), betting on unit bias in the next cycle.
What really drove retail at the start of the altcoin cycle? (1) I was too late to the “legitimate asset class” (BTC/ETH); (2) other coins also seemed institutional (XRP will be used by banks, Garling seems to be certified, ADA was created by ETH “co-founders”, Musk endorsed DOGE).
In the middle and late stages of the cycle, they start chasing more degenerate plays that don’t require as much social proof (because the retail pool has opened up). These cycles only start after the major assets have risen a lot, leading to (1) a wealth effect and (2) people feeling like they missed out and chasing altcoins.
For most people, it’s too early to think about the next “institutional” coin. Doing research in a bear market will give you an edge, but the time to really invest is after a major market surge. Sentiment will also shift from crypto being a scam to “I need to buy the next ETH, ETH is too high.”
Advantages of the new currency:
Full of hope; lack of coin holders; the team is not very rich and has no motivation to hype.
China and Asia will drive the next bull market:
I believe China (and Asia in general) will power the next bull run, it will take quite some time to digest the western cynicism towards this space, but the east is rising and eager to show itself. You should go on WeChat, many of the future high growth will be in tokens unknown to your circle.
The strong always stay strong (MingXMecca):
In the narrative cycle, we have a cognitive bias to buy tokens that have not yet grown; but more often than not, the strong will always be strong, and the weak will often continue to lag. Until the dance ends; then the power created collapses rapidly.
"Low Floating Theory" (MingXMecca):
Thinking about incentives, some projects have huge outstanding float / in the future, can be hedged. Let market makers deliberately pump up, let traders think they should join this "narrative" - allocation; instead of selling at 0 price later in deep bear. They have been waiting for the echo of GCR.
Reverse Super Cycle (MingXMecca):
Nothing really changes in Web3, people talk their own narratives at the top and bottom. I keep telling people that the narrative of all tokens going to zero is just a reverse supercycle, “this time it’s different”. It’s always the same game, and people love tokens.
The best performing tokens have the worst token economics:
Some of the best performing tokens have the worst token economics and are from the most predatory teams. Many of the teams that launched at the peak of the bear market have been desperately waiting for more favorable conditions so that they can deploy tricks and manipulate the market.
The winner is the king, the loser is the enemy:
Try to think of your Ponzi scheme as a prizefighter rather than a token; the winner goes to the winner and the loser goes to the loser. People will literally cut their winning portfolio and increase their losing portfolio rather than go to therapy.
Increase risk at the beginning of an altcoin cycle:
General trading principles as we watch meme coins pull higher: During an altcoin cycle, you should increase risk at the first trend reversal and begin to gradually protect capital over time. People lose money because they do the exact opposite; slow early and get greedier over time.
I continue to hold a large position in spot BTC and ETH because I believe we bottomed in November and remain optimistic about the future; eyeing $10k ETH by 2030. 90% of holders will be better off. This advice is only for Degen traders playing shitcoins.
The best indicators to know how much juice is left in a cottage season:
Having been trading alt seasons for years, one of the best indicators of how much juice is left is: how do altcoins react to news, announcements, listings, scams? When alt season is about to rugby, traders are still long on the news but sell immediately.
Long-term holding of spot:
I bought around 16k-18k tokens in 2022, not much interested in trading. I plan to dump them to institutional/TradFi funds late in the next cycle. I have scaled up some contrarian investments, choosing some select shitcoins where the narrative/rotation has run dry.
Research 2019 and 2020:
Don’t expect too much, the entire banking system isn’t going to collapse overnight, leading to hyperbitcoinization and driving BTC to $1M overnight. Don’t expect too little either; when we get a correction, it’s not a scam by CZ to exit liquidity, it’s back to 0. Keep your balance. Study 2019 vs 2020.
ETH will hit $10k someday:
This may be my last tweet about crypto. As I always say, if you have long-term conviction in BTC and ETH, you will do well just by holding and not trading. They just keep printing more money; you are unlikely to time every local move. ETH will hit $10k someday.
