Let me start out by saying that I've never actually employed this strategy, but I've been thinking about it for a couple weeks and I think it's going to turn out really well for me.
The reason I've never engaged in this so-called mystery activity is due to the fact that I didn't really understand how Uniswap worked, nor did I care to. Before the last couple of months, I had only used Uniswap for its main purpose: to swap one coin for another. I had no idea how the yield-farming aspect of it operated. Now that I have a better understanding of the platform, I realize I can take a lot of the guesswork out of my trading game and play this market like a boss.
Let's get to it.
So let's say we're in the throngs of December and the market is going crazy like it often does in quarter four. Bitcoin does the 'impossible' and goes x3 from where it is today, trading well above all time highs. Ethereum goes even more bonkers with an x5 to $2000. What do you do?
Now, it's very easily to speculate today on what you should do in that situation, but when we're in the shit and the actual reality of it hits us like a ton of bricks, we have a way of letting our emotions get the best of us, leading to potentially totally bonehead plays.
But what if it keeps mooning and I miss the next pump?
FOMO
As we've seen from times past, no matter how stupidly high crypto spikes we all ask ourselves this question no matter how improbable the outcome may seem. A RATIONAL person would take at least 5%-25% gains with the intention to buy the dip later. Even if we do make that play, when do we decide that the bottom of the dip has arrived and we need to pump that money back into the market? There are so many chances to make mistakes here, and no matter what we do, there will always have been a smarter play in retrospect that we'll often beat ourselves up about.
In months past, my "obvious" solution was to simply cost-average buy and sell during the retail money-flow swings. February and September are often the best months to buy, while summer and Christmas time are often the best moments to take some gains and stabilize our positions.
Say we want to enter or exit 30%. Instead of picking one moment in time and FOMOing/FUDing in/out of the market, we could instead buy/sell 1% every day for 30 days during the given time frame. This is an excellent way of lowering day to day volatility and capitalizing on those bi-yearly swing trades.
What if there was a better way?
Their certainly may be! With Uniswap, we can buy-the-F-ing-dip with an algorithm rather than by hand. We can make our decision and not even have to look at what the market is doing. What's done is done.
How?
If you've ever played Craps you know there are a lot of bets to be made. Don't ask me why, because I don't have an answer, but for some reason I know a lot about Craps for someone who's never played it before.
The most common bet is the "pass" bet. If the person rolling the dice wins, anyone who put a bet on "pass" also wins. However, there is also a "Don't pass" bet that can be made where you bet AGAINST everyone else. Most people don't do this because craps is a social game, and if you win while everyone else is losing they have a way of taking offense. Still, the bet is there and can be played.
Providing liquidity to a Uniswap pool is essentially betting against the market. You become that the "don't pass" guy. You become the house, and as we all know, the house always wins (on average over a long enough time frame).
If the market wants to buy, you're selling, and if the market wants to sell, you're buying. In the event of an Ethereum dip, the market is selling Ethereum, and providing liquidity in this event is the literal definition of buying the dip. Except with Uniswap, you don't even have to think about it, it just happens automatically without all that pesky FUD/FOMO nonsense clouding our judgements. When the ratio of ETH goes up in the pool because people are dumping it, more ETH will appear in your Uniswap Liquidity Pool.
Sidestepping the fear
Therefore, this Christmas I will employ said strategy. I actually already sort of wrote about this in my post providing-uniswap-liquidity-as-a-hedge-against-volatility. The DAI/ETH pool is the perfect tool for lowering volatility, because half of your stake as a liquidity provider is a stable coin.
Conclusion
Come Christmas I won't be worried about what the market is doing. I'll be making the smart play. I'll be lowering my volatility rather than try to guess where the market is going.
Not only can we use the DAI/ETH Uniswap pool to buy the dip if we are quite certain the market is about to crash, but also, if we mess up the timing a little bit and ETH spikes up higher, we aren't going to miss out on all those gains like we would have if we exited the market completely. This makes the whole trading scenario much more psychologically viable and less stressful, to know that no matter what the market does we are hedged in both directions. Best case scenario the price bounces up and down furiously with massive volume and we just sit back and collect the exchange fees.
If crypto has taught us one thing, it should be that Min/Max all-in strategy is not a very smart thing to do when dealing with such volatile markets. We should be looking to lower volatility instead and make safe plays to retain our sanity and not go on emotional trading tilt.
Another interesting thing about this strategy are the Uniswap yield-farming fees that get collected. During these large pump/dump cycles is exactly when volume goes through the roof and lots of money is trading hands. It will be very interesting to see how good the yield farming payouts are during Christmas volume compared to the other slower months. It's possible that those fees provide us with the ultimate hedge against losses during said dip.
For example, say I pump $2000 into the Uniswap pool but ETH crashes 75%. Sure, my pool is now only worth $1000, but I also control a lot more ETH than I did before (double) and perhaps I even farmed $250 in the months during the crash due to massive volume. This would make the loss much more easy to stomach.
Again, I haven't actually tested out any of this trading theory, so I'll circle back in February and let you all know how it goes. Until then, trade responsibly.
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Hey I've been buying this dip since 2017. When does it go back up?
If you're talking about Bitcoin then Dec 2018 :D
haha... funny indeed. Next year I'd say.
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Bitcoin? It already bottomed out almost two years ago.
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I was actually answering: When does it go back up?
You're right though.
Ah yes, you meant higher than $20k? I agree with your assessment.
No, because you lose money if the price never comes back. Eth will probably go up. However, you could apply your strategy to the BTC/ETH pair. This is a pair that could keep a steady ratio over long period of times.
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The point of this strategy is to lower volatility not min/max profits. If you provide liquidity to the BTC/ETH pair it doesn't matter if the ratio stays even because we're all measuring value and unit-of-account in terms of USD.
Just be careful with impermanent loss
I must not be understanding impermanent loss correctly.
Haven't I already described it correctly in the original post?
If ETH goes up you only make half the gains.
What's weird is how no one seems to mention Impermanent GAINS.
Where you lose less money when ETH drops. Very odd.
Actually you understand it perfectly. I am the one who didn't understand your strategy. Impermanent gains is a cool concept, hadn't thought of it like that.
I think most people are used to think in terms of portfolios, with percentage allocations to each coin.
I would tend to think: "I decided to hold 10 ETH, so if I provide liquidity with my 10 ETH, I would lose ETH on the way up".
After reading your original post, I admit the ETH/DAI strategy is great. But it is also capital intensive. If you want to make a $5,000 bet on ETH, you must have $10,000 in DAI and $10,000 in ETH, then provide liquidity with it.
So you don't only make half the gains on your ETH, you also make no gains on your DAI, so you actually make 25% on the way up (and 75% less loss on the way down). It is a very conservative strategy.
I personally prefer to fully invest that $20,000, as the rewards are potentially so much higher.
You could argue that you're not willing to invest fully in ETH. You only want to invest $10,000 not $20,000.
But then I would argue that holding the other $10,000 in DAI is also risky. First, because of smart contract risk as an LP, and second because of the DAI peg.
Personally, when my money enters crypto, I consider it invested (even DAI). I can't stomach holding real savings in DAI or USDC. So using your strategy will just remove too much gain potential. But I see where it comes from.
In essence, your strategy is the opposite of leverage/margin trading. With margin trading one increases risk and reward and pays fees. With your strategy one decreases risk and reward and earns fees.
I also noticed something else. If ETH goes up 4X you double your money. So in that case it is half the gains. However, consider the case where ETH goes 4X again, after having already done a 4X.
This now means ETH is up 16X, but you will only make a 4X on your money. So you don't make half the gains in that case, you make 25% of the gains.
In fact, you will always make the square root of the real gains. If Eth goes up 10X you will make approximately 3.16 times your money.
3.16^2 = 10.
When you add this to the fact you need to hold in DAI the USD amount of your ETH. The loss on an ETH 10X is HUGE. So my other comment is wrong, I was assuming you would make half the gains with your ETH.
This also means that for gains less than 4X, you make more than half the money. For example, for a 3X in ETH, you would make 1.73 times your money because 1.73^2 = 3.
Making half the gains would mean 1.5 times your money, but you make more in that case.
So, in short, the bigger the difference in price, the larger the rate of loss becomes for the same change in percentage gains.
Nice strategy, but it doesn't work. Just look at what happened with wleo, or Koin. Think about your past predictions and trades. We're amateurs. Big way.
Just accumulate and hold.
This IS a financial advice!
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It is simultaneously very easy and also very difficult to argue against this logic. The way DAI, wLEO, and Koin are minted are all completely different in every way. There's also a small risk incurred by using Uniswap smart contracts via LP tokens. In theory, it does work. In practice...
The problem is that when the big opportunities to capitalize occurs the fees are astronomical and exchanges are clogged and closed. Every single time. We always lose, exchanges and big guys win.
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I buy Bitcoin every day I started with buying when I felt it was “cheap” then I bought everytime I had extra cash then I bought every month then I bought every week
Now I’m done to buying every day lol! The addiction becomes real, when you see the way the local fiat currency the South African Rand is dying right before your eyes you sort of have no choice
And yet, I got the feeling nothing beats trading :)
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As far as gambling is concerned... that's pretty accurate.
Or as I say at the end of every post: Best of probabilities to you
;)
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The contrarian game, right?
Your plan sounds legit, and although I haven't yet tried uniswap I am tempted to play this game. What holds me back though is commencing the selling game too soon. What if the real bull run begins in mid 2021 and I'm already almost entirely on fiat? That wouldn't be nice.
If BTC's gonna peak by the end of 2020 then everything you wrote makes sense and you've found yourself a way to score some good gains. I am inclined to say that BTC will peak in about a year from now.
Interesting strategy though with this liquidity providing tool and if you're not risking a large percentage of your portfolio, it's worth the shot.
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I'm also targeting a peak for Q4 2021, but there will be a ton of 30%-40% dips along the way. I expect we'll get one of those dips in Feb so I want to capitalize on that.
That's exactly why the DAI/ETH pair is interesting because half of your stake is automatically not a stable coin. If ETH goes up you'll still make gains.
For many investors, buying the dips morphs into trying to catch a falling knife.
I’m going to be boring and just stack Satoshis whenever I can.
Which is exactly why providing liquidity to Uniswap is not that.
It buys for you based on the algorithm.
The more it dips, the more you buy, little by little.
Yeah, that's my plan too to stack sats whenever I can - @chekohler is also in on this strat to stack sats every Sat in our "Strat-stack-sat" initiative lol
Can't wait to see how this turns out. I remember "buying the dip".. STEEM was $1
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Unfortunately "buying the dip" works much better with Bitcoin because it is so much less volatile than everything else.
Oh... now you tell me 🤣😂
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