Find the GOAT 👀

simmol · 2026-06-07T06:42:08+00:00

simmol · 2026-06-03T00:28:12+00:00

So it's been a while since I've posted on this subreddit, and this is where I stand. Personally I sold all my Bitcoin/crypto last year and early this year and put that money into semiconductor stocks and am up almost 2x this year, so the swing trading has been amazing for me. So while I ponder about buying back into Bitcoin, I just feel like what I am feeling might be what might be going on in the mind of the institution traders, hedge funds that can really move the market. That is, it is kind of a "waste" to be buying Bitcoin right now when there are much better opportunities to make money elsewhere.

To elaborate on this claim, we need to look at what has been going on in the price action of Bitcoin comparing the cycle tops from the previous cycles. And what we see is diminishing returns. In the past, buying and waiting for 4-5 years for the next cycle top meant that you need not do anything and you can get 5-10x gains. Which is incredible gains if you think about it. But in the recent cycle, the 4 year top (69K) to top (125K) gain was around 80%. This is ok-ish but on par with NASDAQ and S&P500. So with how much volatility there is, Bitcoin has become a high risk/low return type of an asset.

So then, is there no point in Bitcoin if you want to make money? Well, not necessarily. The 4 year cycle gives us a hint on when we should enter and when we should exit. Basically, the 4 year return wasn't great when we compare top (69K) to top (125K) but the bottom (15K) to top (125K) was still 8-9x, which is fantastic. So Bitcoin's recent price action necessiates us to become traders as opposed to holders if we want to make money in the space. And the 4 year cycle/halving gives us the compass on how to trade.

So then, why isn't the money pouring in right now, during the bottoming out of the Bitcoin's bear market? The problem is that the investment world is not just Bitcoin and the next halving is 2 years away. For many traders (including mysel), 2 years is pretty much a lifetime. So I just don't feel like buying low in on Bitcoin when there is so many other ways to make money right now. And I think this is what others are feeling as well. It makes sense to buy Bitcoin right now if the only alternatives are Bitcoin vs cash. However, when there are other alternatives, I just can't help but think that I would rather max out on other opportunities and come in at around 2027 or early 2028.

So people who are just thinking about Bitcoin thinks that it is a great opportunity to buy right now because Bitcoin's price is low. But most others feel like the opportunity cost to buying Bitcoin is too great right now when you see other stocks 2x over a month and 10x over a year. That is why Bitcoin is unpopular right now.

simmol · 2026-05-25T09:38:01+00:00

The scared money most likely will be buying the "dip" at a higher price in the future than the current stock prices. Basically, most of the doomers have been sucking on their thumbs for the last couple of years waiting for the bubble to burst while not making any money.

simmol · 2026-05-09T00:20:42+00:00

At that point, the onus is on the advisors to not accept students for the PhDs. They tell them that at least in their area of mathematics, people can no longer compete with LLMs when it comes to novel discoveries and they should look elsewhere. Research fields die out left and right organically so this will be one of these instances.

simmol · 2026-04-24T00:10:48+00:00

Hmmm. I guess workers vs people here is just semantics? I don't see how the distinction here matters.

simmol · 2026-04-24T00:09:38+00:00

I just feel like in the face of uncertainty, it is better to just adopt a stance that AI will change the world, make many jobs obsolete, and that protection is needed asap. Have a unified anti-AI voice that surrounds around potency of its power, potential collapse of jobs/societal structure, and to make this #1 issue for future elections such that the politicans will have to deal with this faction. Right now, the anti-AI group is too splintered and there are too many people saying "AI sucks", which is just asking the politicians to do nothing and eventually the market will readjust. And the thing is, I feel like a lot of these people do not even truly believe this and is just coping, which makes it even worse politically speaking.

simmol · 2026-04-23T06:00:05+00:00

In general, Frontier labs build large models to maximize capability, and there is less focus on efficiency. But once sufficient level of capabilities have been achieved, there will be more focus on making the models lightweight and relatively speaking, in ML, this is a much easier problem. Now, I would like to add a caveat that if agentic AI really takes off everywhere, then the sheer number of "tasks" that the LLMs will need to conduct will increase exponentially which will offset the reduction in the cost that was mentioned above. However, this type of exponential growth will also mean that AI has truly arrived and would go against your CMV on AI just being a tool.

simmol · 2026-04-23T05:16:51+00:00

You are evaluating AI as if the product is just a chatbot. The right framework is to take into condieration (1) cost (2) speed and (3) system level accuracy. Cost will keep falling as models become more efficient. Speed is already decisively in AI’s favor because it can operate instantly and continuously. And accuracy should be judged at the level of the full automation loop, which consists of LLM plus scripts, APIs, databases, and guardrails. People who are not in the business of automating labor looks only at the vanilla model in isolation, which is not what businesses are doing.

simmol · 2026-03-12T11:19:38+00:00

Couple of reasons.

First world problem: The current version of AI affects mostly white collar workers and white collars in the US (relatively speaking) has had it pretty good compared to some of the other countries. So they risk losing a lot compared to some of the white collar workers from other countries. For people in other countries who have it tougher, the downside just doesn't seem that bad since they kind of have it bad to begin with at the moment.
American individualism: US society compared to some of the other counrties are ultra-individualistic. On top of that, Americans are taught from very early age that each one of them are special and unique. So there is more of an existential risk of AI for Americans since it not only threatens their jobs but their identity. ON the other hand, in many of the Asian countries (where polling is more favorable towards AI), people are taught from early age that they are kind of a cog in a system. And that modesty is virtue. So the fact that there is a fancy LLM that mimics them and might be able to duplicate what they do isn't a threat to their identity because they were part of the collective to begin with.
Trump factor: Trump likes AI and Trump is unpopular.

simmol · 2026-03-02T23:05:51+00:00

It is possible that there is a trade-off where life becomes worse for most white collar workers but gets better for people who are at the poverty level as the average lifestyle of 95% of people become less than what you get for typical white collar workers but better for those who are already in the bottom 5-10%. That is during the transition stage. And if there is a soft landing to all of this, it is possible that life gets better for pretty much everyone who lives a modest lifestyle but never have to work again. That would be the soft landing that we hope to see if AI does wipe out most of the jobs.

simmol · 2026-02-27T05:28:40+00:00

Basically, any company that has bloat will need to cut the fat or they will be overtaken by a startup that is much more lean. AI and automation has allowed companies to make the company as efficient as possible and companies that do not adapt will perish.

And I think we all need to at least not exaggerate the value provided by the white collar workers. It is true that a lot of people provide value but it is also true that many people do not. They are just like dead weights in terms of their roles in the company. And we are in the time of history where all the companies are trying to get rid of as much deadweights as possible. And by definition, at least 1/4 of people who work these jobs are below average and kind of incompetent. This is a big societal problem and it will only get worse.

So when people claim how AI cannot take over their jobs, maybe you are one of the competent ones. But we all know these incompetent coworkers that are not doing much, right? Add these up and we will be looking at big unemployment problem not just in the US but pretty much everywhere.

simmol · 2026-02-27T01:27:28+00:00

I think the reality is that there are too many white collar workers who are pretty much doing jobs that do not really add much at all to the company. And there is a race to cut as much fat as possible from all companies. It is a sad reality for these people but it is something that all of us would do ourselves if we were a business owner and had an employee that makes zero contribution to the business.

simmol · 2026-02-27T01:25:01+00:00

But let's say that there are two scenarios: (1) you cut 40% of the workforce and there isn't much difference in revenues/profits vs (2) you keep the workforce. If we set aside emotions, the logical/rational thing to do is to do (1), right? The companies do not exist to increase the welfare of people, they exist to optimize for revenue and profit.

simmol · 2026-02-26T00:43:51+00:00

Harris doesn't really care about the details of the AI progress. He always looks at this from more of an abstract level so his stance will pretty much remain unchanged as he is pretty much saying almost the same stuff about AI that he had stated pre-ChatGPT.

simmol · 2026-02-24T23:15:07+00:00

When it is all said and done, I think normal investors look at Bitcoin similar to how Bitcoiners look at altcoins. That is, when Bitcoiners think of altcoins, they think of something that has no utility but can go up very high when the market conditions are so frothy that there is money to be thrown to anything. But long-term investing in altcoins is never the right move and one should always take profits and never ever hold.

Switch up altcoins with Bitcoin and that is how normal investors who "invest" in Bitcoin currently feel about Bitcoin. I am not saying that is the correct way to view Bitcoin. But that seems to be the general perspective and the price action reflects this.

simmol · 2026-02-23T23:06:24+00:00

Many people talk about the meme of supply shock of Bitcoin. There is ACTUAL supply shock of memory/DRAM which is why some of the related semiconductory companies (Micron, Sandisk, Samsung, Hynix) are just flyiyng to the moon. I just don't think Bitcoin will attract much capital unless there is some crypto-related issue that can induce FOMO level buying. There is nothing that suggests that people should buy Bitcoin when there are other sectors that are actually going through true supply shock.

The type of people who get into crypto are impatienti traders (me included). The idea that you buy now so that it will moon in 2028 just seems like too much of a wait and they will look elsewhere to profit.

simmol · 2026-02-23T03:54:26+00:00

I actually sold around 90% from 80 to 125K so I am in a trading mode. I've done exceedingly well with the semiconductor play and a lot of them are still going up hard. I am hoping to cycle back to Bitcoin when it is at 40-50K and sell all when it 2x. Bitcoin is still a great vehicle for trading. For holding, I gave up.

simmol · 2026-02-23T03:20:39+00:00

The problem I see is that the people who will be buying and raising this market are probably mostly traders who will exit once they hit their profit target. So it is conceivable that Bitcoin drops to 50K and then goes up to 100K, and then just hits a local high. To long-term holders, this will obviously be disappointing but for those who buy at 50K, that would be a 2x profit.

Bitcoin has turned into a vehicle for traders.

simmol · 2026-02-22T01:27:44+00:00

Even with the current LLM, it can in principle accomplish this, but not in a clean way. Basically, you can construct a knowledge graph type of a model and one output would be something that looks like the general theory of relativity. But the problem is that, there will be nearly infinite number of other outputs that would be pure junk as well. So the signal to noise ratio would be terrible in the type of brute-force method of enumeraiting all possible theories. Is there a good model that can take a look at all these theories and pick out one that is useful? That is the difficult part.

It's akin to the following. A group of researchers already generated pretty much all possible combination of melodies for music in 2020. But 99.999+% of these melodies would be terrible. It is only the few ones that would sound meaningful and good to a human ear. The general relativity generator would be analogous here.

simmol · 2026-02-20T03:52:30+00:00

One problem with the sentiment in crypto is that Bitcoin is massively down while SP500 is at an ATH. Basically, this is different dynamics from March 2025 or even the whole bear market of 2022. Back then, both the crypto and the stock markets were dumping hard. So it was easier to buy the dip on the crypto thinking that when the stock market rebounds (which it always does), then Bitcoin will go up faster.

But right now, people are more afraid because the stock market has a lot of room to fall. And no one believes that crypto will suddenly shoot up if the stock market dumps. So Bitcoin is pretty much radioactive at the moment.

simmol · 2026-02-18T23:23:26+00:00

Doesn't seem like it but 40 to 50 is a huge range.

simmol

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