In crypto, the line between genius and recklessness is drawn by one thing: whether you kept the money. Wood, known online as notanicecat69, is one of the rare traders who crossed that line, lost everything, and then came back to do it again, this time with the discipline to hold onto his gains. In this candid AMA on Episode 17 of the "In the Trenches" podcast, Wood breaks down his entire crypto trading strategy, from memecoin selection to position sizing, profit-taking, and why doing nothing might be the most asymmetric trade in 2026.
His story is not a highlight reel. It is a full accounting of blown portfolios, revenge trades, painful round trips, and the hard-won habits that turned him from a DeFi degen into a trader capable of turning a few thousand dollars into life-changing money on Solana meme coins.
Wood's crypto journey started in September 2021, right around the time DeFi summer was in full swing. He was an ETH DeFi guy and did well early, but then he made the mistake so many traders make: he became a believer.
He rotated aggressively into Avalanche when Trader Joe and Time were launching, caught strong early moves, and watched his portfolio climb into the low seven figures. But he never sold. He round-tripped his Time bag, his Joe bag, his AVAX bag, and then spiraled into revenge trading.
"I ran up a very small portfolio to like low seven figures in my first cycle and I ended the cycle with like 30 or 40 grand or something. Literally gave back every single dollar."
That brutal experience became the foundation for everything that followed. When Wood re-entered crypto, he carried with him a single guiding principle: never do that again.
After taking a six-month break, Wood stayed connected to the markets on his personal account, following along quietly without a public Twitter presence. What pulled him back in was Ansem's bullish thesis on Solana when it was trading around $25. Wood listened to Ansem on the Up Only podcast multiple times and decided the conviction was credible enough to act on.
He had almost nothing left: one ETH and one Compai Panda, worth about $4,000 total. He swapped into the Solana ecosystem, paid for Bird Eye Premium, and started scanning every new pair.
"There was no liquidity on chain at this time. There was like no memes, there was no pump fund, there was no anything and I just started like buying anything that had any semblance of like a use case basically."
His first big win was a token called GoFX, which he bought at an $800K market cap and rode to a 20x. That pushed his portfolio from $4,000 into the low six figures. Then he found WIF.
Wood bought WIF around a $1.5 million market cap, accumulating several million tokens. He became a WIF maxi, and created the notanicecat69 Twitter account for a single purpose: to bull post for his bag.
"My Photoshop skills are terrible. I'm like a 37-year-old like dad. Like I don't know how to do anything like technology related. And so I took a picture of my dog and I photoshopped a green hat onto him."
That crude image became his first PFP. He started raiding, bull posting, and building what would become one of the original CT raiding crews, alongside traders like Tosh and Tiggo.
When WIF crashed back near his entry after running to $10-15 million, the community kept posting. "Our bags looked bleak and we needed them to go up and that was it."
WIF went on to reach a $5 billion market cap, but the path there included four separate drawdowns of 70% or more. Holding through that kind of volatility with life-changing money on the line required a specific mental framework.
Wood credits a Blockraise post that he encountered when he was considering selling around $30-40 million market cap. The post said something to the effect of: every cycle, people turn a couple thousand dollars into millions, and yeah, it probably will not be you, but why not you?
"For whatever reason I bought into like the belief that like this was an opportunity for me."
His WIF position eventually reached seven figures. In February 2025, while in Miami, he looked at his portfolio and realized he might not need to work anymore. He sold enough to cover several years of living expenses and committed to trading full time.
Wood's profit-taking approach on WIF evolved as the position grew. Early on, the clips were small. But once WIF broke $2 billion in March, he started taking "material, life-changing amounts of money off the table."
His core philosophy on profit-taking:
He uses the example of his Useless token trade to illustrate. He sold his entire position between $25 million and $40 million market cap. It later went to $400 million. But after he sold at $25-30 million, it first dropped to $6 million. The sell was objectively the right decision at the time.
"Little did I know that the Bonk guys were going to do what they did."
One of Wood's firmest trading rules: once you are out of a token, do not re-enter.
"Tell me a time you've made money double dipping. I always lose money when I double dip. Every single time."
He breaks down the psychology behind it. When you re-enter a trade you already exited, you tend to oversize because you are anchored to your previous gains. He experienced this firsthand with Penguin. He caught it early around $15 million, rode it to the highs, and sold on the way down around $100 million. Then, at $80 million, he re-entered with a larger position than he had ever held.
"Bad trade. That second trade is always the one that you break all the rules on."
When asked what he still struggles with most, Wood's answer was immediate: oversizing. He calls it the "Achilles heel" of virtually every trader, regardless of portfolio size.
His framework for how to size crypto positions:
For his own portfolio, he keeps roughly 2.5% of his total net worth in his active memecoin trading wallet. Everything else sits in majors or cash.
For a trader starting with $5,000, Wood recommends putting $4,000 into Solana or Bitcoin and trading with only $1,000. His reasoning:
"If you're any good at this, you can take that $1,000 and turn that into a large amount of money. Like every trader here, like most crypto accounts you see that have done well, almost all of them started with an amount of money you would be shocked to learn."
Wood's single most important piece of advice for new traders: do not buy new pairs, and do not gamble on micro caps.
His process is to wait at least two days after a token launches before considering an entry. If the coin is still alive, still showing strength, and has a visible community after 48 hours, only then does he evaluate it.
"Don't buy new pairs because new pairs are a game that's rigged against you."
The logic: on fresh launches, bundlers and snipers dominate the early price action. Someone likely owns 20% of supply and will dump on retail buyers. By waiting, you allow those predatory actors to exit. And the strongest tokens, the ones that actually have staying power, will still present good entries days later.
He points to Penguin and Moltbook as examples: both sat around for several days before running. There was time to find them and enter at reasonable levels without gambling on a brand-new pair.
Wood attributes most of his success to one skill: understanding how narrative works in crypto.
"We're trading narrative and we're not trading fundamentals or whatever. We're trading stories and we're trading simplicity."
His framework for evaluating memecoin narrative:
He uses the example of Fog, which he bought below $15 million. The tagline "is just a fog" immediately resonated, the art was compelling, and anyone looking at it would understand it instantly.
The market has shifted dramatically. In 2024, a handful of meme coins competed for attention. Now, CoinGecko stats show roughly 12 million failed tokens launched in 2025, compared to 3 million the year before.
"Nothing is PvE anymore," Wood says. Liquidity is spread so thin that everything has become PvP, with tokens cannibalizing each other's market cap on an hourly basis.
He compares the current memecoin market to poker. "People are looking at niche tokens that they think are funny. And you see people all day shilling memes like I think this has legs to go to two million... It's gambling now."
One of Wood's most valuable frameworks is recognizing when the environment has shifted from "easy mode" to a market where he cannot win.
The key signal: liquidity vamping. When one token's rise causes every other token to dump, it means the same finite pool of money is sloshing between assets. There is not enough new liquidity entering to support multiple runners simultaneously.
"When I just see things being easily vamped and easily seeing liquidity being sucked, I just am like this isn't a game I'm good at and know how to play and I step back."
His response when he catches himself overtrading:
"I find that when I find myself buying too many tickers, I trade poorly. And I think focusing on less than three tokens at a time is when I'm most successful."
Wood built his entire network from scratch with no prior following, no Telegram access, and no connections. His formula:
The reason diversity matters: echo chambers kill traders. Wood saw this play out when the initial wave of memecoins died in summer and fall of 2025. Traders who only talked to other memecoin traders could not see that the trend was shifting to AI tokens.
"Building a network with people with different points of view that can challenge you is super important here."
Wood is emphatic about one point: borrowed conviction does not work.
"I've tried borrowing conviction countless times... it never works. At least for me, it doesn't work. I need to fully believe in whatever the thing is. I need to come to that belief on my own for my own reasons."
This applies to every trade. If you are entering a position because someone on crypto Twitter is shilling it, you will not have the stomach to hold through a 40% drawdown, and you will not know when to exit. Your own research process, however basic, creates the mental framework required to manage a position through volatility.
Wood has been openly bearish for roughly a year. His concern centers on the divergence between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq (QQQ). The two assets tracked each other closely for an extended period, then Bitcoin sold off while the QQQ continued higher. The gap between them has widened significantly.
"Why am I buying Bitcoin if equities are all-time highs and they're looking tired?"
He projects a 10-20% pullback in equities over the next six to twelve months. If that materializes, he does not see a scenario where Bitcoin holds its current levels.
"Bitcoin hasn't shown strength with the cues being strong. Why would it show strength with it being weak?"
While on-chain activity has been robust, Wood cautions against reading too much into it. The nine-figure runners in the trenches happened at the expense of hundreds of other tokens. It is the same pool of money rotating, not new liquidity entering.
Wood's answer was blunt:
"I think it's no trade, man."
He moved most of his portfolio to cash between February and March of 2025. His recommendation for most traders: sit in cash, wait for a meaningful bottom, but keep a small amount deployed so you stay engaged with the market and do not lose touch.
"If you've got life-changing money, change your life."
This article is based on Episode 17 of the "In the Trenches" podcast, featuring an AMA with notanicecat69 (Wood), crypto trader and RiskOnPod co-host.
