I drained my 401K to reinvest in crypto.

The market is quiet. That's exactly when you want to be buying.

I had no need to leave the money in my IRA, and the crypto market is currently low. Time to make moves. Risky, but I'm confident it pays off.

It started with getting hired as a contractor at Coinbase. During downtime, I hopped onto TradingView and looked around. Most of my previous holdings are down. No one's talking about crypto right now — perfect.

Previous cycle vs. next cycle

Last bull run, my big three were DeFi, DAOs, and NFTs. Only DeFi survived. For the next cycle: DeFi, Tokenization, and Smart Contract Platforms.

DeFi has matured from its degenerate days. Blind investing, exploits stealing funds, 1000% daily Ponzi returns — the space learned hard lessons. DeFi is here to stay, just more sober.

Tokenization is the process of creating digital representations of physical assets on the blockchain. Fractionalized real estate, tokenized fine art — this is how TradFi institutions eventually adopt blockchains. Still early.

Smart Contract Platforms — Ethereum, Optimism, Base, Stacks, Tezos, Algorand. As DeFi and NFTs exploded, Layer-2 solutions raced to provide cheaper transactions. Alternative chains launched competing ecosystems. Legacy blockchains are adapting too: Stellar building Soroban, Stacks bringing smart contracts to Bitcoin.

The play

Considering all of this (and an Instagram poll), I sold the 401K, paid the taxes, and started dollar-cost averaging into these themes. Not a strategy to maximize gains — it's thematic investing based on what people will actually use. We'll see where things stand post BTC-Halving.

You only live once. – Drake