Waiting | DeFi Journey #38

Week 38 felt heavier than usual. No surprises, no new positions, no crypto market rebounds, no shift in market structure, just more pain across the board. And that sums up where we are: two month period of a liquidity-starved market, with sentiment still stuck in the basement and market makers under serious stress.

Week 38 Portfolio TLDR

• Weekly fees: $26.59 (all from ASTER)
• Positions closed: 0
• New positions: 0

The yield this week came from exactly one place: ASTER. Everything else generated $0. DeFi activity outside ASTER dried up further. All my positions except for ASTER were out of range and as a result, the entire DeFi journey is overshadowed by the portfolio declines. Tom Lee from Fundstrat explained something that makes the last six weeks make more sense. The October 10 crash did more damage than most people realized. $20B of liquidations nuked leveraged longs and it blew holes in multiple market makers' balance sheets. And when a market maker has a hole in their sheet, they do not wait it out. They derisk by cutting capital, reduce trading, and withdraw liquidity. And every price drop forces them to sell more. Crypto market makers are the central banks of the crypto markets. When they get crippled, the entire market suffers. This kind of unwinding usually takes months. Bitcoin went from $121k to mid $80Ks. This is one possible explanation that explains the slow bleed across all the DeFi positions.

Week 38 holdings

My portfolio continues to struggle, but this is exactly the kind of period where people question whether DeFi is worth the it? Nonetheless, I continue my stance from the past two weeks, where I continue to sit still and do nothing. No rebalancing and no opening of new positions. Will there be some light if Tom Lee's theory proves correct and the market makers finish doing their restructuring?

• CL100-WETH/USDC (Base). Generated $0.00 this week and I am down 35.60% with $76.40 in total fees at a 19.93% yearly APR. ETH tried to climb back toward the $2.8K--$2.9K zone. If reclaimed, that opens a path to $3.3K--$3.4K, but the timing is terrible. This keeps the WETH/USDC pool in a holding pattern: good long-term asset, but weak short-term price structure.
• CL200-AVNT/USDC (Base). Generated $0.00 this week and I am down 54.13% with $369.87 in total fees at a 103.71% yearly APR. AVNT lost attention after the market capitulated, but the fundamentals did not disappear. Robinhood listing puts it in front of casual buyers. Backed by Peter Thiel and Coinbase. The problem is not the project. The problem is the market environment. Once market makers stabilize, this is the type of token that could reprice quickly.
• CL200-USDT/STBL (BSC). Generated $0.00 this week and I am down 56.90% with $653.48 in total fees at a 177.69% yearly APR. This is the portfolio's heaviest drawdown. STBL team made a move this week that signals long-term thinking: vesting continues normally, but no tokens will enter circulation until Q1 2026. Aimed at reducing sell pressure. The reaction was mixed, and the price did not move much due to wider market weakness.
• CL50-ASTER/USDT (BSC). Yielded $26.59 this week and I am down 34.59% with $139.17 in total fees at a 40.73% yearly APR. Despite the market's weakness, ASTER remains the only token in range, which has provided a small bright spot in a terrible week.
• CL200-4/USDT (BSC). Generated $0.00 this week and I am down 62.04% with $33.46 in total fees at a 105.80% yearly APR. BSC memecoins continues its drop across the board and 4 followed the same pattern: market cap down to $39.4M, price down 6.1% in 24 hours.

The bottom line

Week 38 was another difficult week, but structurally, market makers unbundling (according to Tom Lee) should end within the next month. ASTER remains the only LP pool in range and generating yield. Otherwise, there is not much else to report, and my overall stance has not changed; sit still and do nothing is the best I can do now.

Thank you for reading, and hope you have a good rest of the day!

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