1) Bulls, Bears, and morality

2) NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. NOT MORAL ADVICE.

3) The crypto community is, of course, dominated by crypto bulls.

That's sort of what it means to be in the community.

So, yeah, more people are long than short.

4) And actually of _course_ there's more long than short; we actually know _exactly_ now much more.

There are about 18.5m tokens more longs than shorts in BTC, and eventually there will be 21m.

5) In addition, there's some sense than one is "better" than the other.

Sometimes "better" means "will make money", "is smart", or "I enjoy". But it also means "morally better".

There's a fairly strong sense in the crypto community that it's morally better to be a bull.

6) You can see this in a lot of places, but really you should have always expected it, I guess.

When it comes to "generally bullish about BTC, and ETH, and idk new things if they're good", it's mostly uncontroversial.

That's sort of what it means to be in crypto.

7) But recently there's been some tension in the community.

Is it good or bad to be bullish about yield farming?

The divide isn't about making money, it's about being right.

8) First off -- I think it's a complicated topic and there are good arguments either way.

9) Pro: yield farming is:

a) a way for the community to have a stake in the ecosystem
b) economically reasonable: billions of $ worth of coins dropped
c) igniting excitement in DeFi
d) fair

10) Con: yield farming is:

a) unfair to builders and too generous to whales
b) economically crazy, APY shouldn't get above 30% or so
c) terrible PR, like the ICO boom
d) distracting from real value creation

11) There have always been rumblings of worry about yield farming, which makes sense.

So the rest of this post isn't about yield farming.

It's about everything else in crypto.

12) The weird thing, I think was that at peak yield, even as people started to worry about it--

--everyone was still bullish on everything but yield farming.

Bullish on BTC, and ETH, and DeFi, and crypto.

Not just long term--also short term.

13) No one was posting that they were short anything large in crypto.

And more, there was strong virtue signalling that it was *good* to be bullish DeFi and *bad* to be bearish.

14) Sure, some were bearish on $PICKLE.

But very few thought the same of DeFi.

Which is weird: because the rest of DeFi was up, too, a lot.

And it was up _because_ of yield farming.

15) $ETH was up a lot because yield farming: you had to buy ETH, and stake it, to farm.

So were $CRV, $LINK, $COMP, $BAL, $LEND, $YFI, $UNI ...

Everything, really, at least everything in DeFi.

Oh, and $BTC, too, from wBTC.

16) So if yield farming drove ETH up 30%--

--and yield farming was a bubble--

--then ETH is rich too, right?

No one seemed to say that, though.

17) There was this weird agreement:

that vaporware doubled DeFi.

And that the vaporware was going to crash, and that maybe it was *morally bad*.

But that the sector's gains from it were real and permanent and *morally good* and a sign of the strength of the community.

18) "Smart money" was decrying the yield farming bubble and running from it.

The same people were going head over heels into the blue-chip rally it had created.

There were no bears until things crashed.

19) It was reminiscent of...

...well, everyone knows where this sentence is going.

I remember a high school classmate's post on Facebook: "sure bitconnect might be a scam, but c'mon, look at that graph. I'm up 5000%; you missed it."

20) And smart money was like "lol have fun when the scam crashes, we're going to go buy BTC and ETH and EOS and XRP and NEO and FIL".

Which, then, also crashed.

21) Do you wanna be right or do you wanna make money?

22) So, ok, back to DeFi.

Did the blue-chips "deserve" their gains? Were their losses "unfair"?

What's their future?

23) I don't know, that's for the world to decide, not me.

But I guess what I'd ask is:

In a post-hype world (are we there yet?), how are the products?

24) When they're forced to stand on their own, with no bubble lifting them up:

will they float?

Some will, probably. Some won't.

That is the way.

25) And it's sad, and unfortunate, that not everything's great. Sometimes things are underrated, sometimes they're overhyped.

But it is what it is, and I don't think it's morally bad to say so, or morally good to pretend otherwise.