My Two Favorite Crypto Investments Right Now

Despite China’s latest crackdown on cryptocurrencies, investments in cryptocurrencies continue to be profitable and show every indication of continuing to be so for the indefinite future. While “traditional” crypto investing (if there is such a thing) involves finding good coins/tokens and HODLing them, the emerging world of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has opened up some massive new opportunities for profits. When investors are able to get constant compounding yields in staking and yield farming, the reliance on price appreciation as the sole mechanism for profits goes away. As an investor, it sure is nice when the price of an asset can remain pretty much the same and compounding yields still explode the value of your investment.

New DeFi investors quickly become aware of sites like Pancakeswap, Uniswap, Sushiswap, Apeswap and their numerous forks that are rebranded versions of the same UI and same set of contracts. And yes, you can find some great liquidity pools (e.g. the CAKE autostaking pool on Pancakeswap) and yield farms on these sites. When you can stake a blue chip crypto like BNB against a stablecoin like BUSD and get 32% APR, or even two stablecoins (BUSD and USDC) against each other to get almost 8% APR, you realize that traditional bank CD’s that pay sub-1% APR are a complete waste of time and money.

But amazingly enough, for aggressive investors, these yields are a small fraction of what can be achieved through my two favorite DeFi projects right now (September 29, 2021). These are: OlympusDAO and Wonderland. Both of these projects are outstanding long term projects with excellent developer communities, great tokenomics and plenty of funding for continued growth.

It is really only necessary to explain OlympusDAO, since Wonderland is basically a fork of OlympusDAO on the Avalanche chain. So let’s start with OlympusDAO.

The idea behind OlympusDAO is this: the purpose is to create a free-floating world reserve currency that is independent of the US dollar. As we all know, cryptocurrency prices can fluctuate wildly over time, make them unreliable to use as regular currency rather than as an investment. To address this issue, stablecoins pegged to the US dollar came into being and now represent a significant fraction of cryptocurrency transactions worldwide. The problem with stablecoins is that the US dollar is controlled by the US government and Federal Reserve, so depreciation of the US dollar (i.e., a reduction in spending power for purchasing goods) will also result in depreciation of the value of stablecoins. Furthermore, the US government has signaled its intentions to more vigorously regulate stablecoins, so their future is somewhat murky.

OlympusDAO, on the other hand, uses a token called OHM which is backed by a basket of assets. OlympusDAO focuses on compounding supply growth rather than price appreciation to provide value appreciation to OHM investors. The primary mechanism used to do this is staking: investors will stake their OHM in the OlympusDAO app, where there OHM gets replaced by staked OHM (sOHM), which is redeemable at any time 1:1 for regular OHM. Because OHM is a fairly new project, the current APY for staking is a rather enormous 7246% (APR of 432%). Like all such projects, the APY will continue to drop as the project matures, but the fact that it can offer such a high rate of return even with a Total Value Locked (TVL) of $1.3 Billion (yes, Billion) is quite impressive.

An investor has two ways to earn from OMH: staking and bonding. Currently staking is the preferred approach because it is almost completely passive and earns a higher yield than bonding, which requires a more active approach. In staking, a user starts with ETH in their Metamask wallet, and connects to Uniswap or Sushiswap to swap ETH for OHM (leaving some ETH for gas fees). With OHM in their wallet, the investor now goes to olympusdao.finance, connects their wallet, and stakes their OHM. That’s pretty much it. Three times per day, rewards in staked OHM are added to the user’s total. The user can unstake their OHM, withdraw, and convert back to ETH at any time. Otherwise, the investment just continues to grow, as long as the price of OHM remains stable. In fact, the price of OHM can actually go down by quite a bit before the investor loses money. And the price of OHM in recent months has held up quite well, as you can see here: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/olympus/

OlympusDAO has a very strong and active community behind it, with plenty of good documentation. Check out the OlympusDAO documentation site for lots of great information on how it all works.

Now that you have a basic understanding of OlympusDAO, you can easily understand Wonderland, since it is basically an Avalanche network clone of OlympusDAO. The Avalanche network offers faster transaction times and much lower gas fees than the Ethereum network, and the AVAX token price has exploded in recent months to reflect this. Wonderland is a newer project with somewhat lower, but still substantial TVL of $137 million. But because it is a newer project, the APY for this is a whopping 39792%! This results in a compounded return of 8.5% every 5 days. Wonderland uses a token called TIME, which can be purchased on traderjoexyz.com. The price of TIME has fluctuated quite a bit more than the price of OHM, growing from $615 to $7300 and now back down to about $2800, as you can see here: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/wonderland/

Since the APY on Wonderland is so large, a relatively small investment can pack a really big punch after a year of compounding!

How To Participate in OlympusDAO

• Make sure your Metamask ETH wallet is set up with some ETH in it.
• Go to the uniswap app. Swap ETH for OHM, leaving some amount of ETH for gas fees.
• You may need to add OHM as a token to your wallet if you don’t see it there in Assets. To do this, scroll to the bottom of the Assets tab in your Metamask wallet, click Add Token, go to the Custom Token tab and add the OHM contract address, which is: 0x383518188c0c6d7730d91b2c03a03c837814a899
• Once you have OHM in your wallet, go to olympusdao.finance, click Enter App at top right. This takes you to the Dashboard page. Click the Stake menu item on the left to see the Stake page.
• Enter the number of OHM you wish to stake (or click Max), and then click Stake OHM.
• Done!

How To Participate in Wonderland

• Make sure your Metamask AVAX wallet is set up with some AVAX in it. If you have not yet set up the Avalanche Network on Metamask, you can learn how to do it here: https://support.avax.network/en/articles/4626956-how-do-i-set-up-metamask-on-avalanche
• Go to the Trader Joe swap. Swap AVAX for TIME, leaving some amount of AVAX for gas fees.
• You may need to add TIME as a token to your wallet if you don’t see it there in Assets. To do this, scroll to the bottom of the Assets tab in your Metamask wallet, click Add Token, go to the Custom Token tab and add the TIME contract address, which is: 0xb54f16fb19478766a268f172c9480f8da1a7c9c3
• Once you have TIME in your wallet, go to wonderland.money, click Enter App in the middle of the page. This takes you directly to the staking page.
• Enter the number of TIME you wish to stake (or click Max), and then click Stake TIME.
• Done!

Final Note

Please note that I receive NO compensation whatsoever for presenting these investments. There is no referral system for these — I just like them as a medium to long term investment and I want them to succeed.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional financial advisor, attorney or accountant, nor am I holding myself out to be. While I make every attempt to provide correct and factual information, it is always possible that my analysis and opinions turn out to be wrong. All information, analysis and opinions in my articles are distributed for general informational and educational purposes only and are not intended to constitute legal, tax, accounting or investment advice. Any reference to an investment’s past or potential performance is not, and should not be construed as a recommendation or as a guarantee of any specific outcome or profit in the future. I expressly disclaim any liability or loss incurred by any person who acts on the information, ideas or strategies discussed in my articles.