👀 If we were to hold just 3 coins...

GM everyone. This is 2036, the crypto newsletter that pays you.

Here’s what we’re serving up today 🍲: every crypto investor should hold bitcoin and Ether. But if you were allowed to add just one more coin - what would it be? We have our answer…

Let’s dig in.

🥔 Today’s meat and potatoes

Get smarter on crypto in 2 minutes

Exactly one month ago, we wrote that at $15, Solana could be an obvious buying opportunity.

One month later, it’s up +45% and trading at $22, at a time when:

• bitcoin is up +18%

• Ethereum is up +9%

… talk about outperformance.

Solana is a blockchain known primarily for two things: high speed and low costs.

Look at this comparison between Ethereum and Solana:

Ethereum is bigger, has more liquidity and more developers. But Solana is cheap and ultra-fast.

That’s why Solana is third behind Ethereum and Bitcoin for NFT transactions and is one of the most popular choices for crypto games - like this one:

Solana is also getting a new validator client called Firedancer that could eventually allow it to process even more transactions (1 million per second) and make it more reliable.

Good stuff.

But not all is good and easy in Solana-world. Here are just some of the risks involved with holding the coin:

a/ Solana’s reputation and future are uncertain.

Solana was originally dubbed an “Ethereum-killer”. In hindsight, it looks like it mostly killed itself. After the collapse of FTX, it crashed -77% in a day.

That’s because it was simultaneously:

• the darling coin of now-disgraced conman SBF

• a blockchain that crashed a lot

On top of that, a whopping 8.2% of all SOL tokens are locked by Alameda, SBF’s-now-bankrupt hedge fund.

They’ll unlock around mid-2025, which could put some pressure on the price at that time.

The community is talking about forking the chain, but for now the idea isn’t gaining enough traction to be taken seriously.

b/ Most coins don’t reach their previous All-Time Highs 🏅

I always bring up EOS, the Ethereum killer that raised $4 billion in 2018 and went absolutely nowhere.

Solana could also die a slow death by a thousand cuts.

c/ Crypto is driven by new narratives.

$AVAX, $LUNA and $SOL were the fastest horses of the last bull market.

But the next bull market will have new category winners. Maybe Optimism & Arbitrum (more on this soon). Maybe something completely different.

On the other hand, Solana could become the phoenix that crashed and burned and rose from the ashes.

Who knows. But you’ve been warned.

With that said, Solana could also massively outperform in the coming bull market. In the last week, the market has been mostly flat, but $SOL is up +15%.

That’s why if we had to pick just one coin to add to the eth/btc mix, it would probably be Solana.

The Solana ecosystem is vibrant. Here are a couple of things you can do on Solana today:

1/ Stake Solana (like you stake ETH) for ∼6.5% APR on Marinade Finance or Lido 🏦

2/ Trade Solana tokens on decentralized exchanges like Raydium 💱

3/ Buy NFTs on Magic Eden 🖼️ (show me yours by replying to this email, and I’ll show you mine..!)

4/ Play a game on Solana like Aurory or SynergyLand 🎮

All of that starts with having a Solana wallet. And that’s what we’ll pay you to get today.

🍨 Dessert

Stories to read if you have FOMO

1/ Brazil’s new digital currency can control, move, freeze and burn user’s funds without their approval.

2/ Bank of America has been charging illegal fees and opening credit card accounts without customers’ consent

3/ Vanguard now owns $560 Million of bitcoin mining stocks

📝 Task

Earn BTC for a simple crypto task

Phantom is the de facto Solana wallet. It will allow you to hold SOL, buy NFTs, play games, etc.

So our task today is a classic Wallet Wednesday with a spin… in the Solana ecosystem.

We’ll tally all the participants in a Google sheet and mathematically choose a winner at random who’ll receive $15 in SOL.

So stay tuned 👀 We’ll announce the winner of today’s task in Friday’s email.

🖼️ Crypto meme of the day

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