StayKing Results of April 2023


In April this year we decided to spring into trading a little bit. We opened more positions and the share of cryptocurrencies versus stablecoins within our portfolio increased.

However, we haven't closed any of these positions yet and for the first time since the launch of StayKing, participants will not receive a monthly reward. 

What was the market situation and how exactly did we approach trading?

Market situation in April 2023

The beginning of April was marked by anticipation of the arrival of the Shapella (Shanghai + Capella) upgrade of Ethereum. This was the biggest event on the Ethereum blockchain since the legendary "The Merge" , when Ethereum switched from a proof-of-work mechanism to a proof-of-stake mechanism.

The Merge allowed ETH holders to use staking to participate in a proof-of-stake consensus and secure the network. However, it did not allow them to withdraw their ETH. And it was the ability to withdraw ETH that the Shanghai upgrade (in conjunction with the Capella upgrade) was finally supposed to bring. 

This upgrade occurred on Wednesday, April 12. Despite some expectations that more ETH would be released to the market, causing a massive drop in price, the opposite was true. The successful implementation was rather encouraging in the end, and an increase in the price of this cryptocurrency followed.

In April, Elon Musk also re-emerged and showed that he can continue to sway the market. This time, he briefly changed the logo of the Twitter social network to that of the cryptocurrency DOGE. In response, the price of this "cheerful" cryptocurrency briefly rose. 

US inflation data released showed that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) came in at 5% year-on-year in March, lower than the 5.2% expected and also the lowest value since May 2021. A brief rally across the market followed, but it was short-lived. Mainly due to the FED's statement, who still remain cautious.

In the U.S., the debate on the regulation of stablecoins opened up again at the congress level. For example, stablecoin issuers would have to hold enough funds in reserves to cover their stablecoins one-to-one.

This discussion comes at a time when several protocols such as CURVE and AAVE are preparing to release their own decentralized stablecoins. 

Towards the end of the month, it became clear that the problems of US banks continue. This time it is the First Republic Bank that is in trouble, which experienced a huge drop in its shares and we now know that this bank is going out of business and will be taken over by JPMorgan.

Probinex Portfolio Management in April 2023

The month of April was much more active on our part compared to March. While in March we held a large portion of our portfolio in stablecoins and fiat, April was marked by entering positions.

We temporarily changed our strategy to a combination of intraday trading and swing trading. Intraday trading means that trades are opened and closed within a single day, while swing trading tries to make the most out of price movements and trends over the course of days up to weeks.

In April, our automated algorithmic strategies that trade on futures were deployed on parts of the Probinex portfolio, but these did not perform well and generated a loss.

We did not even trade futures within the semi-automatic strategies and instead some of this capital was used for accumulation within spot positions.

Simply put, we entered the market and accumulated cryptocurrencies. But we did not close out any of these positions. These cryptocurrencies have not yet been sold, so it is too early to draw any conclusions. But of course our goal is not to close positions at a loss.

As you can guess, the distribution of the portfolio has undergone major changes. Currently we have 38.81% in stablecoins and the rest is in the market (especially in spot positions). 

However, for safety reasons, we only hold a small portion of our capital on the exchanges, just 11.35%. The rest of the funds are held in hardware wallets.