Greetings friends!
This is the next installment in our series of weekly (written) interviews with various on-chain gigabrains…
It is with resident defi Chad @Dynamo_Patrick!
Interview
Q. Greetings ser… so the bits about your background you have shared on Twitter are really interesting… could you tell us more about it, and your ‘origin story’, as it were? And how you got into crypto?
A. I first bought crypto back in 2017. I didn’t learn how to invest properly and ended up losing almost my entire savings on coins that went down 99% in 2018. Fortunately, at 23 I didn’t have much to lose to begin with.
When I finally re-entered crypto in 2020, it was both for personal and idealistic reasons.
A bit of context: After college, I worked in corporate finance at a packaged food company’s Bentonville, Arkansas office. The corporate world was soul-crushing and I had been accepted to Harvard Business School, so I left to work at a childhood cancer nonprofit before starting the MBA. Late 2019, before starting the MBA, I decided business school wasn’t for me either.
I was bored and had no plan for what I was going to do in life. Had I been born 150 years ago, I would have gone to the American West. Today, aside from Antarctica (which I hope to explore someday), the current frontier is digital. Enter crypto.
A lot of people complain about the volatility and risk of crypto, but that’s half the appeal for me. If it ever becomes sanitized and safe, I’ll likely move on. Being in crypto has turned up my risk tolerance and turned down my BS tolerance. At this point, I can’t go back to a normal job.
The idealistic implications of decentralization attracted me to crypto as well. Whether you call this current epoch the Fourth Turning, the Kali Yuga, or the dawn of the Age of Aquarius, we’re entering a time of great upheaval. Trustless, decentralized systems will be crucial to rebuilding the world for the better.
Q. What makes you most excited about crypto/defi?
A. I’m most excited about applications that allow people to take back control of their financial futures. As useful as on-chain options and increasingly complex yield farming strategies are, they just don’t provoke an emotional reaction. Allowing people to secure their finances from predatory banks or set up uncensorable streams of passive income? Now that excites me.
Q. What do you think will be the next big crypto or defi ‘narratives’?
A. My contrarian prediction is that alternative Proof of Work smart contract chains will benefit from the Ethereum merge. My thesis is basically that (1) some subset of investors prefers Proof of Work, and (2) mining crypto is a multi-billion dollar industry and so miners will fund incentives for alternative PoW chains to keep their businesses alive. Whether they support a fork of Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Kadena, or something else is to-be-determined.
Another narrative that I see gaining steam is fan tokens. This is one of the few real-world uses of crypto that’s ready for primetime. Trading fan tokens has the potential to bring in an entirely new type of investor. You’ve seen how tribal crypto investors get over their favorite tokens—what do you think happens when that token is associated with their favorite sports team? Multiple times in the past month I’ve considered dropping everything to go all in on starting an exchange for fan tokens.
Q. What advice would you give to someone newly interested in defi who really wants to build an understanding of it and achieve success within it?
A. Focus, focus, focus.
First, that means focus on 1 topic. You need to specialize to find an edge. Once you’re an expert on one thing (like Arbitrum DeFi or stablecoins for example), you can branch out. If you try to be an expert on everything at once, you’ll never catch up to people that have years of experience on you.
Second, that means focusing your portfolio with concentrated bets. The reason I was able to go full time in crypto is because I made a few concentrated bets in 2021 that paid off big. If you spread your portfolio across 20 positions, you won’t be able to keep track of them all and, even if you do have a big win, it won’t meaningfully change your portfolio.
Q. Could you tell us more about your YouTube channel? And any services/etc you are currently offering/other stuff like that?
A. My Youtube channel is called Dynamo DeFi. I post videos about how to earn passive income through DeFi and crypto—I try to bring objective analysis to a space that is full of hype and have never done a paid video. As far as services, I offer copywriting to crypto projects and 1-on-1 crypto coaching to individuals.
Q. What does @Dynamo_Patrick do for fun when he’s not focused on defi?
A. Crypto is one of the things I consider to be most fun. Most mornings I get up at 4:30am to work on crypto content and research for a few hours before the day starts. And I genuinely enjoy it.
Outside of that, I like to stay active. I used to lift weights, but after gyms shut down during covid, I got into a calisthenics routine—mostly pullups, dips, handstand pushups, and hill sprints. I also practice mixed martial arts. Lately I’ve been cycling about 80 miles per week too; my fiancée is training for a half-ironman, and I started cycling so that she would have someone to do long rides with.
My dad has a farm, so I often go there on the weekend to help out. Nothing clears the mind like driving a tractor.
Q. Any final thoughts you want to share? Or other things you want to mention?
A. Money is important, especially when you don’t have much of it. But it isn’t the most important thing. The Bible says, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” Honor and a good conscience are worth their weight in gold.
I’m in crypto for the money as much as anyone. But without the greater purpose of decentralization and otherwise doing good in the world, I never would have been able to stay in through the downturns.
-End-
Conclusion
Huge thanks to @Dynamo_Patrick for sharing all of the above thoughts/wisdom/alpha!
Make sure to follow him at the below Twitter account:
And subscribe to his YouTube channel Dynamo Defi.
And if you enjoyed this interview we’d be honored if you’d share/RT/follow/etc!