Chief Story Officer -- Arthur Hayes

Narratives all the way down

Arthur Hayes lays out the case for story-telling and the importance of narratives when it comes to king-making his investments

The importance of story-telling

• Narratives are 99% of what matters when it comes to investing in crypto

• Being able to craft a narrative that can be digested by everyone is a recipe for virality and in fact, Arthur thinks the tech doesn’t matter much. Why?

• The price for a given project correlates with 1) the amibtious-ness and the relative comp (e.g. are you trying to overtake the next ethereum?) and 2) the likelihood of success

• “If the probability of success rises from 0.01% to just 1% because the story quickly infects the minds of many, I 100x my money. But the only way to 100x my money with a token that has a perceived probability of success at 50% is that the actual results”

Macro vs. Micro

• Arthur categorizes narratives into “macro story” vs “micro story”

  • The macro story speaks to a larger trend, the goal is to tie the project into this trend (e.g. “Retail derivatives trading volume is shifting from CEXs to DEXs.” )

  • The micro story ties in why a particular project is best fit to capitalize on the macro. (e.g “BitPerp is advised by Arthur Hayes, who helped invent the perpetual swap and will dominate DEX market share”)

The “Tech”

• Do metrics matter (e.g. TVL, trading volumes) when it comes to numba go up?

• They matter depending on the stage a particular company or protocol is in

• As Hayes mentioned, if we go from “impossible” to “maybe” the re-pricing can be larger from “maybe” to ‘highly likely”

  • It goes back to market expectations and sentiment

  • “If probability of success rises from 0.01% to just 1%…”

Successful Narratives

• The goal is to be viral, to spread the story. Any attention is positive

  

• “I’m trying to spread the story wide and far. I do not care if you buy or sell any tokens spoken about. I care that I present such a provocative story and supporting arguments that you discuss it in a positive or negative manner with others.”

Conviction on BTC

• Bitcoin is in the hot seat, especially with trad-fi accumulating the spot ETF

• Combine this with an inevitable global fiat debasement and it’s pretty much guaranteed we will be breaking previous ATHs

• Arthur has his BTC / ETH bags packed and will be focused on slinging shit coins

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