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Admitting Mistake in Underestimating NFTs! Alameda CEO Reflects: Don't Reject New Things, NFTs Are Like January's Dogecoin

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Admitting Mistake in Underestimating NFTs! Alameda CEO Reflects: Don

When NFTs started to gain popularity, I scoffed at them, wondering why I should care about things that are like digital photos. But now, they have turned into a huge opportunity.

The CEO and quantitative researcher of Alameda Research, Sam Trabucco, shared his views on the rise of NFTs on Twitter. He admitted that he underestimated them at first and missed out on a lot of early gains, describing the NFT space as "January's Dogecoin" and suggesting that this wave is far from over.

Alameda's Mission: Making Money

This is actually Alameda's sole goal. The reason for choosing crypto, according to Sam Trabucco, is that Alameda can maximize its resources and advantages in this field. However, if there were a gold rush in sports betting or any other field, they might also allocate one-third of their time to focus elsewhere. He said:

We have the infrastructure to execute short-term arbitrage, price differences, good intuition on market structure, and betting on the right projects is one of the main sources of income.

But at certain times, certain opportunities are more profitable than Alameda's daily business, such as:

  • 2020 U.S. Presidential Election
  • The Rise of DeFi

Resistance to New Things

Trabucco pointed out that these new things represent opportunities, perhaps to make a big profit through Alameda's technology and resources, but it requires a different approach and time, unable to focus on the original business.

It is easy for people to reject and look down on this: "Shouldn't we focus on what we are good at? We won't have an advantage." Trabucco believes:

Usually, this logic is correct. The cost of starting from scratch to specialize in a certain area may be too high, or it may really not be suitable for oneself. At this time, identifying investments is crucial, for example, the presidential election contract can be converted into something similar to our daily business in just a few days; DeFi requires a lot of work, but the opportunities are huge and the returns are continuous.

He used himself as an example:

When NFTs started to gain popularity, I scoffed at it. Why should I care about things like photos? I knew there was money to be made, but what advantage did I have to profit from it? And now, these have turned into a huge opportunity.

The Lesson of NFTs

Trabucco pointed out that the fact has proven that NFTs have once again become the Dogecoin of January this year, where every NFT project could skyrocket. Although he believes that liquidity mining will ultimately be hotter than NFTs, he has learned not to overly trust his intuition:

For us, especially for me, don't trust your intuition too much when it comes to new things. I have a bias that I was born with, ignoring many signs that NFTs would become popular and missing out on a lot of early gains. Simply betting on new trends may be more correct than any decision I make, after all, this is also the reason why I entered the crypto field.