🐂 Bull run’s back, baby

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Happy Friday!

We have yet another M&A announcement this morning: dYdX acquired Pocket Protector, a social trading app. 

I’m not sure I’ve seen too many of these types of acquisitions, so it stood out to me. However, they declined to give financial details about the deal…a trend I have started to see pick up around crypto (please guys, let us be nosy and see what the terms are). 

Anyway, Pocket Protector was created by two alums from Meta and Amazon, and they created a Telegram trading bot. Additionally, Pocket Protector notched $1 billion in annualized trading volume. 

In a statement, dYdX’s Antonio Juliano teased that the acquisition allows the firm to “execute rapidly on an ambitious roadmap to reinvent decentralized trading,” which gives you a bit of an idea about their future plans. 

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In a bull market, it’s not all about where you put your money; it’s also about where you put your time. 

In this week’s Round Up, co-hosts Jason Yanowitz and Santiago Santos hit on this topic, because the bull market is really underway. 

Santos warned listeners that “overtrading is a thing.”

 ”Just assume that you're not gonna time the top and work backwards from there and have parameters in place to protect principal, cash out, and optimize for mental clarity to play this game forever,” he continued. 

There’s a time limit in his eyes, too. Santos told Yanowitz that he doesn’t think this cycle goes on for more than a year. 

“ This is just markets doing their thing. If we continue on this pace, where everything just starts ripping 50% month over month. Gravity, at some point, takes its toll; all flows dry up, and the market corrects,” Santos noted. 

The big question also becomes: Are you gonna outperform bitcoin? 

“Because I can tell you — I've looked and invested in most or a lot of crypto funds. You know how many outperform bitcoin?”

“Like 10%,” Yanowitz noted. 

Going back to yesterday’s Empire, we noted that only three tokens had outperformed bitcoin by June 30 of this year. Now, mind you, that’s clearly before the most recent price increase above $120,000, but it gives you an idea of how high that bar is at this point. 

So the advice from Santos is simple: Stay in your lane, pick a few things to focus on, take it from there, and stay disciplined. 

“ I would just be wary of trying to catch trades, spreading yourself too thin using leverage,” he added. 

There you have it: some Friday bull market advice from Yanowitz and Santos.

And now you know.

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📅 October 13-15 | London

Last week, I asked: Are we in M&A szn?

You lot — and by that I mean the majority of voters — had quite a timely response. 

“Who cares about M&A szn? I’m still waiting for alt szn,” was the most popular response. And, look, I get it. We’re all still waiting for it. 

This week, I’m wondering: