despite short-term sentiment, crypto's future is extremely bright
brighter than it has ever been
there are a lot of mistakes that have been made and there will be many more of them — that is perfectly natural for an industry that's barely a decade old
in fact, it is great — it means there's a ton of activity and interest
from there, progress happens via error-correction and creativity
for reference, AI, robotics, VR/AR et al have been "around" in some form for over 30-50 years each
there is an insane amount of progress that remains in crypto
first, "crypto" is too broad of a term and masks too much underlying information and information is the fundamental input of decision
so break them up in some way
this is roughly how I do it: - apps - chains - protocols - memes
now, there's another distinction to be made
namely: infrastructure vs. platform
basically, infrastructure is fungible but a platform is not
a platform has stickiness due to some sort of network effect (either via liquidity, state, developers, socials, mimetics, or whatever)
on average, infrastructure is a riskier investment because it exerts no control, it can be switched out — but, infrastructure sometimes can become a platform and this would be an asymmetric outcome
(Solana started out as infrastructure and then became a platform for example — almost all new L1s and new L2s are infrastructure at first, not platforms)
each of the above categories can either be infrastructure or platform; you would assess this on your own
for example: coin/btc/eth/sol are platforms — they have something non-forkable in terms of either tech, liquidity, distribution, social cohesion; basically *state*
but shitcoin5670 is "infrastructure" in the sense that it can be swapped out for shitcoin5671 on average — same with *any new chain* or *any new protocol*
infrastructure is only useful to the extent that it can result in un-forkable state and become a platform
the only exception is if the market is so large that being infrastructure is still highly profitable (e.g., a bank stock in tradfi)
from there, you decide how much to allocate to platforms vs. infrastructure and in which categories depending on your risk profile