Phew... it has been a busy week or two with preparing with all the IEOs that seemed to batch themselves together! It has been a fun time preparing them all, making sure that everything was set and ready to go... assets placed and ready to just commit and everything! So, now it is time to look back on the various sales and try and learn what I could have done better... however, that said, I've had not complaints at all. Investment recouped, profits taken and moonbags held as well... so, all in all, all the objectives that I had in mind for all of the sales were achieved.

... but there is always room for tweaking of techniques and skills, and most importantly improvement!

So, I'm going to take apart the MXC Genopets (GENE) sale that concluded just a couple of days ago. It was a nice restful day at home... so, I had the ability to just set the alarms and focus when I needed to. Like many of these things, it is better to do it when you have clear time and brain space to just get yourself prepared for that 15 minutes of frenzy when the market opens!

 

 

Well... to start off with, nothing can happen without winning the lottery draw for participation. So, I was pretty happy to receive this notification in the morning!

MXC had been operating the Launchpads on a strict lottery system... which is great if you win it, and not so much fun if you don't. However, for the next Launchpad (24th Nov... mark the date!), the format seems to be shifting to a subscription model. Which is also fine, especially if you hold large amounts of the MXC exchange token (MX). This is one of the exchange tokens that I have been slowly building up for quite some time now... so, I'm no whale, but it is decent enough.

So, each winning ticket allocation was 250 GENE tokens at the price of 200 USDT (0.8 USDT per GENE).... and every account could win multiple allocations if they had multiple tickets depending on their MX holding tier.

 

 

In contrast to the Binance Launchpads, in the hour or two between distribution and market opening you can already post orders to the MXC order book. Actually, this is both a blessing and curse... when you are hammering the market sell button to just take whatever price is going, you don't feel like you have had much input into the actual price that is settled at. However, if you are setting up an order spread beforehand, you feel like you are DIRECTLY responsible for the missed profits or the missed fills. On the other hand, you can just set them up and then forget about it until you check in later! Which is really quite relaxing... instead of allocating that 15 minute window to the adrenaline of the opening spike.

When I started allocating my spread of limit orders, the order book looked like this. Hmmmm... remember that the sale price was 0.8 USDT. This seems a touch too low... I hope it doesn't bomb! However, you can always bank on FOMO and bots to smash the price around a lot in the opening minutes and seconds. I started my spread at around 2.5 USDT/GENE and moved up from there... which is a conservative 3x on opening. I was a little bit spooked by the low starting order book.

 

 

Of course, like any spread... you start a bit tightly packed, and then move them much further out. I even had some completely unrealistic moonshot asks like those above... in fact, even out to 25000 USDT per GENE. Of course, I would not expect the initial spike to be more than 50 USDT/GENE, but there is no harm in placing stupidly high expectation asks to see if the initial volatility spike manages to overwhelm the actual market liquidity! If any of these triggered I would be a very very very happy camper!

So, the ask spread set whilst holding out a moonbag, I went to have lunch instead of waiting in front of the computer for the market opening. Actually, I really like this.. much less stressful and it means that I can just walk away and forget about it until I'm ready!

 

 

So... here is the opening spike! Poop... I really should have been much more greedy with the lowest of my spread. Anywhere from 7.5-12.5 USDT/GENE would have been a much better place to start the spread. That said, I have no complaints... I didn't lose out, and it is just the tempting thought of being more greedy! The opposite could have also happened, in that the spike would have been much smaller and a higher starting spread would have gone mostly unfilled. Hindsight wisdom...

However, given that this was a Solana based blockchain game... there was a bit more going for it than a regular old Launch. So, something to keep in mind... start the spread a little bit higher... at least 5x or maybe at 10x. The Binance ones do at least that in the opening spike... probably something that I should have carried over.

 

 

Now... this is where it starts to get a bit unusual... most IEOs plummet after the initial spike... and then have a long steady decline afterwards. However, Genopets looks like it is holding up well enough! Lucky I held a moonbag (plus those untriggered long shot asks...).

 

 

... even hours afterwards, the trajectory was definitely not the same as most IEOs. Steady climb... no long decline. Wow, there must be very little dumping... Thankfully, I also didn't do a complete dump either! I had a better feeling about this than the fan tokens that have been recently been releasing on Binance.

At this point, I took the opportunity to remove some of my highly unrealistic asks, and just do a few market sells to pick up a bit more profit from the asks that were never going to trigger. This market price was a lower than the my highest triggered ask, but I figured that there was no harm in just taking a little bit more...

 

 

LOL... even this morning... the price just keeps climbing! Haha... one more market sell... and I'm just going to sit on the rest!

So, with the profit taking... Paid off the initial 200 USDT (denominated in MX) investment for participation... I bolstered quite a few riskier tokens on MXC, in addition to adding more MX exchange tokens in preparation for the subscription Launchpad. Also, bolstering the other exchange tokens of Huobi (HT) and Gate.io (GT) to better position myself for their IEOs. Siphoned off some to redirect into superannuation... and kept the rest to act as liquidity for the next round of crowdsales.

So, the lesson here was to be a little bit more ambitious about the limit ask spread.. I should have trusted my instincts about the start point, but I got spooked by the existing order book when I arrived to place my limit orders. Next time, I should just go with my gut.... or at least a more formal mathematical approach!

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Handy Crypto Tools

Ledger Nano S/X: Keep your crypto safe and offline with the leading hardware wallet provider. Not your keys, not your crypto!
Binance: My first choice of centralised exchange, featuring a wide variety of crypto and savings products.
Kucoin: My second choice in exchanges, many tokens listed here that you can't get on Binance!
FTX: Regulated US-based exchange with some pretty interesting and useful discounts on trading and withdrawal fees for FTT holders. Decent fiat on-ramp as well!
MXC: Listings of lots of interesting tokens that are usually only available on DEXs. Avoid high gas prices!
Huobi: One of the largest exchanges in the world, some very interesting listings and early access sales through Primelist.
Gate.io: If you are after some of the weirdest and strangest tokens, this is one of the easiest off-chain places to get them!
Coinbase: If you need a regulated and safe environment to trade, this is the first exchange for most newcomers!
Crypto.com: Mixed feelings, but they have the BEST looking VISA debit card in existence! Seriously, it is beautiful!
CoinList: Access to early investor and crowdsale of vetted and reserached projects.
Cointracking: Automated or manual tracking of crypto for accounting and taxation reports.
Stoic: A USD maximisation bot trading on Binance using long-term long strategies, powered by the AI/human system of Cindicator.
StakeDAO: Decentralised pooled staking of PoS assets.
Poloniex: One of the older regulated exchanges that has come into new ownership. I used to use it quite a lot, but have since stopped.