We will look back at markets in 2017 and go WTF.

I have begun to end all my trading/investing/market conversations this year with #onlyin2017 and #dayenu

While I have many of my own investing and trading #onlyin2017 #dayenu stories…this is my favorite…

I was on one of my long walks home to Grammercy tonight and I was on the phone with my partner Gary who was selling some Ripple (not the booze) for us that would convert into Bitcoin. We traded into some Ripple back in the early fall as we diversified out of Civic (please don’t ask) #onlyin2017 #dayenu.

Way back in May of this year after Bitcoin had rallied to $1900 I decided to sell all my Bitcoins. At the same time though, one of our portfolio companies Civic decided to do an ICO. Our fund Social Leverage is an investor in Civic (cap table, not ledger), but because this is 2017 and our high priced fund lawyers that drew up our fund docs back in 2015 had not included the ability to buy tokens/participate in ICO’s, our fund could not participate. I imagine if our lawyers had presented us with this idea in 2015, we would have said, quit making shit up to charge us…get the docs done!

I decided to take a personal ‘flier’ on the tokens and support the offering and Civic (the price would be 10 cents). In order to do so I would have to convert Etherum or Bitcoin into the tokens at the closing date. So I had to hold onto a bunch of Bitcoin. When the conversion finally took place in June 2017, Bitcoin had further rallied to $2,800 #onlyin2017 #dayenu.

I figured I would hold the tokens for five years and Civic would work towards building a big company and maybe the tokens would appreciate along with the equity value.

But, it’s 2017 and by August the Civic tokens were trading above 60 cents.

I always take partial profits when the gods look down on me with 600 percent gains that I never expected to earn (especially in just a few months).

Of course, selling my tokens only meant getting back Bitcoins which by this time were at $3,700. Basically I had given up on 80 percent Bitcoin gains over this time period for 600 percent Civic gains…#onlyin2017 #dayenu.

Tonight I sold some of those Bitcoins for $6,800.

I went from selling Bitcoins at $1,900 to owning more of them at $6,800 with a 600 percent gainer in tokens in between.

In other words, I’ve made so many mistakes in 2017 but most have just resulted in bigger gains…#onlyin2017 #dayenu

I doubt my 2018 investment stories will have similar hashtags!