"This looks interesting," I thought, as I minted Lepidoptera #14 by MJ Lindow on fxhash on November 26th for 5 tezos. I looked at it a few times and I just didn't vibe with the art that was generated. It was my first piece of generative art, and I didn’t have the personal perspective or community to educate me differently.
I sold it for 13 tezos, a ~50% gross margin after royalties and transaction fees. Sounds good, right? 💰
To my amusement and dismay, the floor price continued to rise.📈 This, folks, is what we call “paperhands.”
💡 Paper hands refers to a person who sells an asset too early, and therefore, represents an asset of incredible potential that is sold on for a quick gain
Each time I checked the value increasing, I felt a sick feeling in my gut. Watching the gains you could have realized is not a good feeling for us human beings. As of this writing, the floor price is 600tez and may continue to rise.
💡 The "floor" price is the lowest price of any NFT in a certain category
For my mental health, I had to step back and use mindfulness to re-frame my perspective. There are many things to be grateful for, despite paperhanding a valuable piece of art:
- Being early in the web3 space
- Learning about technologies like NFTs, the blockchain, and creative coding methods
- Being surrounded by beautiful creative energy
- Building community
- Feeling the pain and learning this lesson early
- Having the means to be active in the Web3 space. If you're reading this, you are probably have alot to be grateful for
- Being surrounded by opportunities with non-linear outcomes. In fact, I found one in the Lepideptora example! Others will come.
💡 Nonlinearity is a term used in statistics to describe a situation where there is not a straight-line or direct relationship between variables
Speaking of non-linear outcomes:
This resonated after my Lepidoptera experience. In fact, Naval tweeted it the day after this happened. Was he tweeting directly to me?! 😆 Holding would have been the right call in this case. However, Naval gives valid reasons to sell an investment, which make sense to me:
When we start "Paperhands Anonymous," let's look at the positives. What did we redeploy our capital into? Were those investments fruitful?
I urge you to be gentle with yourself, take a step back, and learn from our experiences. Let's support each other on the way.
🙏🏼