GCR: The reverse trading master in the Crypto world and his legendary journey

Original author: Arkham Research Team

Original translation: Frank Fu, Investment Manager of IOSG Ventures

TL;DR

· Just yesterday, the famous "Big Short" GCR in the cryptocurrency circle tweeted after a year, encouraging everyone not to "give up" in the recent market crash. The tweet has received more than 50,000 likes. I believe many people are curious about the deeds of this legendary trader in the cryptocurrency field.

· This article takes this opportunity to introduce in detail GCR's background, trading philosophy, and the content of market analysis and predictions he shared in his past tweets. GCR is famous for his outstanding performance on the FTX exchange and accurate predictions of market trends. GCR's preference for shorting, his investment in meme coins and NFTs, and his bets on the 2024 US presidential election are all reflected in the article.

· Although GCR reduced his social media activities in early 2023, his market insights and trading strategies still attracted attention from the cryptocurrency community. GCR's last public speech emphasized his positive views on the future of cryptocurrencies, especially his long-term optimism about the price of Ethereum. I believe that this article will restore everyone's confidence in the future development of the cryptocurrency market in the digital age and provide valuable experience and inspiration to the public.

Introduction

· GCR is one of the most famous traders in the Crypto field. He was known as "Gigantic-Cassocked-Rebirth" on the defunct FTX exchange and is well known on Twitter for his frequent and proven investment tips related to Crypto, multiple successful predictions, and smart writing.

· From 2021 to 2022, he frequently appeared on FTX’s top trader rankings and beat many other market participants to become one of the top overall profit and loss figures on the exchange. Although his identity remains a mystery, he claims to have started from almost nothing and amassed his wealth simply through trading.

GCR Arkham User Profile

One of GCR’s first posts after debuting on the FTX leaderboard - posted using the handle @GiganticRebirth

1. GCR’s Background and History

GCR has never publicly spoken in depth about his background, but occasionally mentions snippets of his life before he came to the world of Crypto. On X, he mentioned that he started with a portfolio of only $1,000, saying that this was his “only chance” and that he gradually increased his assets through trading. He first demonstrated his predictive abilities through political influence analysis, a practice he often mentioned on X. He has also dabbled in sports betting and claims to have “probably spent a thousand hours” researching how to extend his lifespan.

GCR’s tweets about his early history

He describes himself as a hard worker. On good days, he has encouraged fellow traders on Twitter to put in more than 120 hours a week to perfect their craft. While he encouraged his audience to take a break at the end of 2022, he personally says he hasn’t taken a day off in nearly 3 and a half years.

GCR’s advice to traders

GCR is essentially a contrarian – his tweets in 2021 frequently reference a “tree of life” as the key to exploiting the market. After much speculation about the secrets of GCR by many different traders, he eventually suggested that this "Tree of Life" was actually just a willingness to bet against the consensus view. He is a big fan of George Soros and often brings up Soros' talking points, discussing reflexivity and the idea of reverse thinking

GCR's reverse thinking strategy reflects his deep understanding of market behavior and accurate grasp of group psychology. He realized that in the market, most people's views are often wrong, and real opportunities are often hidden in the opposite direction of consensus. This way of thinking enables him to find profit space in market fluctuations and achieve success through distinctive trading decisions.

George Soros's reflexivity theory believes that the biases of market participants will affect market prices, and these price changes will in turn affect the expectations and behaviors of participants, forming an interactive cycle. GCR is obviously deeply influenced by this theory and applies it to his trading strategy, looking for imbalances and opportunities in the market through reverse thinking.

Some Contrarian Predictions for GCR

He is best known for publicly and successfully trading Crypto in the markets of 2021 and 2022, amassing a large and loyal following spread across his multiple alternate accounts. However, in early 2023, he went silent, leaving the X platform after posting "This may be my last tweet about Crypto." Since then, his social accounts have become silent.

2. Crypto Bull Market - Early 2021

In early 2021, GCR was not well-known and had only a small number of followers on Twitter, where he would post details of his recent market sentiment and trading activities. From the beginning, he favored a contrarian view, with one of his earliest posts detailing his short bet against the retail-driven rally in GME in January 2021. “I’ve always found Reddit culture offensive, and I side with the oligarchs and the rich,” he wrote.

GCR Talk Meme Stock Trading

His 2021 posts largely consisted of trading principles that have since been widely circulated on Crypto Twitter, with him repeatedly emphasizing the importance of patience and finding areas where he can exert a unique advantage.

GCR’s Advice on News Trading

Interestingly, he also published one of his previous predictions, which was that “if you put 20 ETH into SHIB and waited 5 months for the full bull run to top out, it could be worth 40 million.” By May 2021, it turned out that in fact traders only needed to invest 2 ETH in Shiba Inu Coin (SHIB) to make a profit of $40 million. This was GCR’s first post, highlighting his love for meme coins (an asset class that was particularly skeptical among traditional traders in early 2021).

GCR’s Trading Discussion on SHIB Coin

During April and May, he issued many bearish warnings, strongly opposing popular bullish narratives such as the “super cycle” promoted by other popular 2021 traders like 3AC’s Su Zhu. His reasons for supporting his positions were sometimes very simple, just contrary to the “mainstream market view” in the 2021 mass retail trader-driven boom.

GCR’s Tweets Warning of Market Pullback

During the Crypto craze in early 2021, the popular meme coin Dogecoin (DOGE) began to surge in price. By its peak in May 2021, DOGE’s price had risen 69,136%, significantly higher than its 2020 lows. Dogecoin is a “meme coin,” a coin with no utility or fundamentals to back it. It unexpectedly reached a market cap of $98 billion after tech mogul Elon Musk took an interest in it and began tweeting about it. Much of its rally was driven by the liquidation of short positions held by traders who didn’t believe a joke coin could have such a significant market cap.

One of GCR’s most notable trades in early 2021 was a public short on the top of DOGE on May 9, 2021 — the day Elon Musk appeared on Saturday Night Live (SNL). More than a year later, he explained: “Coins heavily invested by retailers often get hyped for months due to some ‘future catalyst’… Just as mass retail traders imagine that the meme catalyst will make them millionaires, market makers use the last waterfall of liquidity to distribute (chips)

GCR shorted Dogecoin at the top

3. Swimming against the tide - second half of 2021

In the second half of 2021, GCR turned bearish, publicly issuing advice to remind traders to heed his previous warnings to reduce trading in unfavorable conditions and not to have any illusions that "altcoins can survive independently and swim in the goblin town of BTC."

On July 15, GCR published his infamous 2022 bear market prediction in a private Telegram chat, predicting a long and deep bear market with little respite for even the strongest projects.

“Local bottom will be around $20k…Macro/equity top in 2022,…most altcoins will be down 95% or 99%”.

GCR’s Bearish Prediction

GCR’s bearish attitude does not mean he will leave the Crypto market - quite the opposite. While optimistic about the remaining opportunities in the market in 2021, his strategy in the second half of 2021 shifted to short positions to take advantage of market liquidity outflows. Since then, he has been heavily shorting altcoins that are either weak or strong relative to BTC.

GCR Discusses Altcoin Markets on Twitter

He has also applied his predictive skills to different assets and sectors. The first was a return to political predictions, with a successful bet on the rise of dark horse Valérie Pécresse during the 2022 French presidential election.

Pécresse ultimately did not win — but GCR later said his goal was to capitalize on the upside of a fringe candidate becoming accepted by the mainstream — as he explained, the difference between 5% and 50% is a 10x return, while a bet on the winner in a to-die race would only yield a 2x return.

GCR’s Political Predictions

In August, GCR began speculating on NFTs (non-fungible tokens), preferring their lower market cap to meme coins, which he called “Altcoin 2.0.” In addition to attempting to buy hundreds of “Pudgy Penguins” NFTs, his address also won a “Sad Doge” NFT at an auction, which he sold a month later for $2 million in USDC (US dollar stablecoin). However, he commented that NFTs are an asset class that is very difficult to gain exposure to, saying: “My NFT investment is seven figures, but it only accounts for less than 1% of my net worth and is part of my broader barbell investment strategy.”

GCR NFT Purchase

By October 2021, he was betting on Trump to win the 2024 election. The trade was so large that getting enough liquidity on exchanges was nearly impossible, and he eventually had to resort to direct over-the-counter (OTC) transactions with Alameda Research. Just over a year later, Alameda Research's balance sheet was leaked, showing that they still held $7.3 million worth of unhedged TRUMPLOSE tokens - likely a remnant of the GCR trade.

GCR's prediction for Trump's re-election in 2024

In October, GCR released his advice to young traders to take their time to find all possible advantages in the market. "Even if you live another 80 years, you will never have such easy access to generational wealth." This state of extreme prosperity lasted for about two months - until the end of November 2021, when the Crypto market reached an all-time high.

GCR’s Advice for Young Traders

Soon after, he began recruiting members for a new team — dubbed RebirthDAO. Its stated goal was to form a “decentralized hedge fund” by combining the forces of many extremely successful traders in the Crypto markets. The team’s first trade was an ETF news trade in October 2021: designed to identify and capitalize on the approval of the Proshares BTC futures ETF. According to GCR, the trade was a huge success — RebirthDAO was one of the first public traders to receive a news alert that pushed the BTC price from $57.1K to $59K, giving them a precious few seconds advantage over other news traders.

GCR discusses RebirthDAO on Twitter

4. "Big Short" - GCR in 2022

GCR discusses shorting the market in November 2021

After a busy October 2021, GCR slowed down in November - because the altcoin market reached a state of extreme excitement, he chose to take a vacation. On November 22, he posted online that he was "back and started shorting." Two days later, he clearly declared that the market was close to the high of the cycle: "I am very confident that we are at the end of the cycle and the cycle is still there... If you have made money, now make sure your profits are safe." About two weeks ago, on November 10, the price of BTC had reached its highest point in the cycle at $69,000. For traders heading into 2022, he gave a piece of advice:

GCR's Advice to Traders

Through RebirthDAO, GCR began looking for ways to profit from what he considered an overheated altcoin market. With the total value of the entire Crypto market at over $3 trillion at the time, GCR looked for coins that would have a large number of new coins issued in 2023 and had his DAO team collect as much information as possible about the unlocking of token issuance. Instead of choosing to short BTC or Ethereum, which had the largest market capitalization, RebirthDAO planned to short the weakest batch of altcoins in the market. GCR said he was most interested in the coins that had the largest issuance in the first half of 2022.

The research team used a variety of means to collect this information, not only reviewing documents, but also analyzing on-chain wallets and even directly contacting project team members to understand the scale of their token issuance in 2022.

GCR later mentioned that many of the coins that the DAO considered particularly suitable for shorting were either projects in the Solana ecosystem, which were financially supported by FTX and had a large number of tokens locked up to investors, or coins related to the metaverse, which were over-hyped by the market in late 2021.

However, GCR's most famous operation was a public bet with LUNA founder Do Kwon. On March 14, 2022, GCR proposed a $10 million bet to Do that the price of Terra Luna would be lower a year later than it was then. GCR successfully persuaded Do Kwon to bet $10 million with his own Crypto, and a well-known account called @cobie managed the custody of the bet.

GCR bets on a fall in LUNA price

While GCR managed to convince Do to bet $10 million against him directly, he wanted the bet to be bigger, so he used derivatives on FTX to cover his balance and short $10 million worth of LUNA perpetual futures. Just two months later, on May 7, GCR revealed that the position had made a profit of $2.3 million.

GCR discusses his thoughts on LUNA

LUNA is highly susceptible to selling pressure due to its unique nature - it is used as an asset to back UST, an "algorithmic stablecoin", and the value of UST is determined by the price people in the market are willing to pay for LUNA. During most of the bull market, buyers willing to buy LUNA were able to absorb all the funds that flowed out of the UST system - it even survived a "decoupling" event during the crypto market crash in May 2021. But by May 2022, there were more than $10 billion of UST in the LUNA system, compared to only $1 billion in 2021.

When UST was sold off in large quantities on the market, people holding UST rushed to exchange it for LUNA, and then sold it for real US dollars. The long queue of people waiting to redeem UST, claim and sell LUNA discouraged other traders from buying LUNA on the market - causing the price of LUNA to begin to fall sharply.

Finally, the price of LUNA fell to almost zero. It only cost GCR $0.72 to completely offset his risk on LUNA, effectively hedging his $20 million short position in LUNA for less than a dollar.

GCR Closes Short LUNA Position

As the bear market continues in 2022, GCR foresees more and more cyberattacks, scams and frauds, both from bad actors and from some project teams. As more and more decentralized finance (DeFi) projects are damaged by code flaws, exploits, and reentrancy attacks, GCR warns traders to pay special attention to incentive mechanisms in a bear market and use them as an important basis for investment decisions.

GCR's Comments on Scams and Fraud in Bear Market

By the end of 2022, GCR had shorted the remaining gains of Dogecoin (DOGE) several times and advised his followers to take a break and vacation when the market situation was not optimistic. With the global price bottom of BTC coming at the end of the year, GCR reminded traders that "macroeconomics will never give you an edge; it is never possible to... stick to what you know."

On November 8, 2022, the FTX exchange collapsed due to a massive loss of customer deposits. After discovering that its sister company Alameda Research had been using user funds from the exchange, the massive outflow of funds quickly led to the bankruptcy of the exchange.

GCR has repeatedly reminded traders to pay attention to the security of fund custody-during the bull market, a large number of hacks, scams, and wallet fund losses have led him to call on more traders to choose top exchanges for fund custody. Unfortunately, he did not foresee the collapse of the second largest exchange in the Crypto field.

When FTX stopped withdrawals, GCR wrote: "I hope that for the sake of the entire industry, the last part of my prophecy will not come true." But unfortunately, in the next 3 months, it was discovered that FTX itself had about $9 billion in debt and had allowed Alameda to use customer funds to bear losses for many years. What is an item on their balance sheet? It is $7.3 million worth of "TRUMPLOSE" tokens. “I always thought they were hedging on Betfair,” GCR posted online.

5. 2023 and Beyond: GCR’s Predictions for the Future

Following the FTX debacle, GCR permanently stopped tweeting on the @GiganticRebirth account. His alternate account, @GCRClassic, provides fewer individual trade updates and gives more general predictions for the future.

GCR's Advice to Crypto Participants

During the 2022 crypto market trough, GCR's most important advice may be a reminder about the value of time: "No matter how much money you have left now, the depth and breadth of market understanding are invaluable." Even though he lost a lot of money on FTX, GCR remains optimistic about the prospects of Crypto. He said: "In an increasingly digital world, digital assets are indispensable." This tweet was posted on November 23, just two days after the BTC price fell to approximately $15,476.

As the market becomes uncertain about the prospects of Crypto and some startups begin to shift their attention away from the industry, GCR puts forward the view that an "echo bubble" may appear in 2023, which will appear after the last optimists in the market are completely eliminated. Interestingly, the full recovery of the market in January 2023 actually laid the foundation for the cyclical bottom of BTC.

GCR’s “Echo Bubble” Theory

In early 2023, as markets gradually recovered, GCR took the opportunity to discuss some of his long-term beliefs and predictions for the future of Crypto. In one of his earliest tweets in 2023, he noted that the next rally would be led by China: “Many future rallies will be in coins that no one in your circle knows about.” Within a few months, the first BRC20 coin, ORDI, had been deployed on the BTC network. By November, ORDI would reach a market cap of $1 billion - largely due to its popularity among Asian exchanges and speculators.

GCR’s Belief in an Asian-Driven Bull Cycle

Still optimistic about the future of Crypto, albeit with a dose of pessimism and skepticism. In a May 2022 tweet, he predicted that humanity would become more “desperate, greedy, depraved, lonely, and trapped in the metaverse.” He has continued to hold onto this view throughout 2023, as the Crypto market slowly went through various phases, including casino coins, meme coins, and even bizarre projects involving hamster racing. In 2023, RLB, the token of Crypto’s top online casino, soared to a peak valuation of $777 million, but has since fallen by more than half.

GCR's Casino Theory

GCR predicts that the efficiency of the Crypto market will increase significantly starting from the end of 2021. He believes that there are many reasons for this increase, such as graduates from top universities joining the field, more mature regulatory structures, and strict control of privacy protection protocols and private Crypto. Although it is generally believed in the Crypto field that transactions can remain anonymous to a certain extent, GCR reminds everyone not to mistakenly believe that any action on the blockchain is private.

GCR's Views on the Future Talent Development of Crypto

He has shown a keen interest in the 2024 US presidential election - starting in late 2021, he placed a heavy bet on Donald Trump, believing that he would be the ultimate winner. He said: "The dumbest and the smartest people know that Trump will win easily." The former US president has continued to be in the spotlight throughout 2023 with a series of eye-catching feats, including turning himself in to Fulton County Jail in Georgia on August 23.

GCR's Views on Trump's 2024 Campaign

In the first three months of 2023, GCR invested in more than 300 tokens of the NFT project "Milady", even though some Crypto insiders thought the project was a bit weird. About three months later, when Elon Musk posted a meme about the NFT project on Twitter, GCR sold about half of the tokens on hand. Even so, he still holds more than $890,000 worth of Milady tokens in his public wallet address ezekielx.eth.

GCR buys Milady on BLUR

A month before GCR left Twitter, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. This caused USDC, one of the largest stablecoins in Crypto, to temporarily decouple, and its value fell to $0.88 at one point. This incident did not affect GCR - he exchanged a total of $4 million in USDT for USDC on the chain.

GCR's stablecoin transactions

On Twitter, GCR expressed his view that Crypto is bound to be widely adopted in the digital age. He said: "People will seek another option, a new way."

GCR's comments on the future of finance

His last tweet on the GCRClassic account was positive. He said: "They will continue to print more money." He also said: "The price of Ethereum will rise to $10,000 one day."

GCR's last tweet and his prediction for the price of Ethereum

A week later, he liked a tweet from someone else that said "See you when ETH reaches $10,000." After that, he never appeared again.

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