The little degen that could

I’ve been thinking a lot about self-directed IRAs and solo 401Ks today, trying to scheme some way for me to take advantage of these instruments to preserve some of my crypto gains. I wrote a bit about IRAs yesterday, but the solo 401K seems like it might be a better option. Basically the advantage is that the solo 401K has a higher annual contribution limit, somewhere northward of $50 thou compared to $6500 for an IRA. Also, it seems that you can take out a loan against it, which you can’t do with an IRA. The interest, which has to be the prime rate plus one percent, gets paid to yourself, which isn’t really a downside to me.

So basically I could take crypto that I already have and deposit it into either of these account and consider it a deduction on my taxable income, then take a loan against that deposit, stake it in BlockFi or elsewhere and earn a higher interest rate than I’m paying on the loan. This strategy would net about four thousand dollars.

It’s not great, and assumes that BlockFi doesn’t go under, but coverage on the deposits could be purchased for about 2.5% of the capital amount. Not great from a risk/reward standpoint, that’s for sure.

Speaking of RR, I’ve already pulled the remainder of my wBTC holdings out of the Yearn vault in anticipation of putting it into the BadgerDAO LP pools, at 400%. It’s going to be a short-term play, very high risk, but 400% APY can’t be ignored. I’m spending a good deal of time in the Discord and looking over the docs to figure out exactly what’s going on. They’re aiming to be nothing less than the one-stop shop for everything related to Bitcoin on Ethereum, and what I’ve seen so far has been very promising. And it seems like the closest thing to going back in time to get involved with Yearn or Sushiswap in the first few weeks. The interest rate is already dropping, and there’s a threat that the token price might collapse when the airdrop for the DIGG product happens, so I’m keeping a close eye on it and will be prepared to exit early if need be. Right now I’m just waiting on gas to drop so I can enter into the pool.

I’ve also become aware of a token called ibETH, or interest bearing Ethereum, from a project called AlphaFinance. I’m not sure how it works yet, but there’s a large amount held by a DeFi whale, and it’s yielding 20% returns. That’s better than what I was getting in my Yearn bUSD vault, which I already exchanged for ETH, so it seems like it might be a good place to park it. As usual, I’ll probably buy some first then figure out how the hell it works after. Alpha has a mind-numbing 43 liquidity pools which seem to range between 40-150% interest.

So I’m going to wait for gas to drop, then stake an insane amount of capital into Badger and pray that I can make it through the next month without a contract failure or rug-pull, and then I have two calls scheduled with people from the IRA and 401K firms. If all goes well, I may have discovered a line of business to be explored by the newly formed Skunkwerks project that is forming. We may have a possible niche, helping people open these accounts so they can take care of these DeFi opportunities. As more people come onboard with Bitcoin — like my neighbor — we’ll stay on the bleeding edge of yield and help guide people through varying levels of risk and leverage in the space.

It might just be the perfect opportunity, if I can earn enough income for my wife to provide a steady income for myself, I may be able to help others along as well. Not that I’ll need it for myself, of course, but because I want to bring as many people along with me as possible.