OVERVIEW

Crypto In May: Cryptotwits Pawn & Loan Intake Report 🧾

Today’s newsletter is a special look at how crypto has historically performed in the month of May - but from the perspective of a pawn shop owner. ♟️

A pawn shop runs on three things: the item, the reason, and the price. The item is what's on the counter. The reason is why they walked in today. The price is what the counter knows it's worth based on every other time something just like it came through.

Most months, customers walk in with their assets and a reason that justifies why now is the time to part with them. The reason is almost always wrong. The counter has sixteen years of data.

These are the five customers who walked in for the May intake. 👇️ 

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
Customer #1 - BTC 🧾

Item presented: One Bitcoin, vintage 2009, original holders mostly long gone.

Reason for visit: "Want to be out before May tanks me. Heard the saying. Figured I should listen to it."

What the counter sees: Sixteen Mays in the books. Ten green, six red. 62.5% of the time this asset walks out worth more than it walked in. Median May: +10.30%. The customer is acting on a saying he picked up somewhere, not the data on his own merchandise. May ranks sixth out of twelve months on his calendar. Middle of the pack. Boring. Reliable.

April to May correlation of 0.795. Highest of any item appraised today. Whatever April did, May does about 80% of the time. April closed +11.86%. Green Aprils have produced green Mays seven out of ten times historically, average +29%.

Best comp: May 2017 closed +69.03%. May 2011 closed +149.74%. Worst was 2021 at -35.44% the day Elon tweeted himself onto the front page.

Counter's offer: Above ticket. Customer's leaving money on the table by listening to a slogan he heard one day (sell in May and stay away).

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
Customer #2 - ETH 🧾

Item presented: One $ETH ( ▲ 1.88% ) , slightly scuffed from the smart contract era.

Reason for visit: "Getting ahead of the summer pullback everyone's calling for."

What the counter sees: Customer is reacting to a forecast that contradicts his own ten-year resume. May is this asset's single best month of the year. Number one. Out of twelve months, May has produced the highest average return on this item for as long as I've tracked it. 70% win rate. +35% average. Median +18.55%.

He's beaten his cousin BTC nine out of ten times in May. Nine. Out of ten. Ten years of head-to-head appraisals and he's lost exactly once.

The catch is the condition during the month. Average drawdown of -42.97% from peak to trough means he's gonna come back in two weeks looking beat up. The ticket on May 2017 was +191% but at one point during that month he was down 89% from his high.

Best comp: May 2017 +191.58%. May 2019 +66.05%. May 2025 was +40.95%, his fourth straight green May.

Counter's offer: Top of book. The reason he gave is the opposite of what his ledger supports. April closed +7.28%, doesn't matter much - this customer wins May regardless.

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
Customer #3 - XRP 🧾

Item presented: One XRP, unclear ‘original’, paperwork from an old lawsuit still attached to the back.

Reason for visit: "Asset's been hot. Cashing out while the average is still big."

What the counter sees: This is the most deceptive customer I’ve dealt with. The "hot average" he's quoting is +25.40%, technically true and completely misleading. One month - May 2017 - closed +378.72%. That single month is propping up his entire average. Strip 2017 out and his career May average is negative 6.72%.

Median May return of -2.52%. Win rate of 41.7%. $XRP ( ▲ 0.9% ) loses May more often than he wins it. Out of the five characters in the store today, this is the only customer I dealt with whose win rate is below 50% in this month. Five of his last eight Mays closed red. Last year was -0.76%. Nothing.

Best comp: Outside 2017's outlier, his best May was 2019 at +43.18%. His median outcome is a small loss.

Counter's offer: Below ticket. The reason doesn't match the merchandise. Until he prints another outlier - and he might, his tail is fat - the realistic intake is cautious.

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
Customer #4 - ADA 🧾

Item presented: One ADA, mint condition, only eight Mays of provenance documentation.

Reason for visit: "Need the cash. Don't really care about timing."

What the counter sees: Quiet customer with a sneaky resume and the most honest reason of the day. Career May average of +7.22% looks pedestrian. Median +1.00% looks like nothing. May ranks seventh of twelve on his calendar.

This is the only customer in my book who outperformed BTC during BTC's worst Mays. When BTC closed -35.44% in May 2021, this guy closed +28.37%. When BTC managed +9.52% in May 2020, this guy closed +55.44% - his career best. His correlation to BTC in May is just 0.365 - the lowest out of everyone who’s come in today.

The catch: outside those two breakout Mays, $ADA ( ▲ 3.96% ) ’s been quiet. The last four Mays averaged -5.15%.

Best comp: May 2020 +55.44%. May 2019 +28.69%. Last two years he's been in for less than +2% both times.

Counter's offer: Fair to ticket. The customer doesn't have a forecast - just a need. April closed at just +1.89%, smallest green of the five people in the store. The April to May correlation for this asset is essentially zero (-0.091), so April tells you nothing. Coin flip merchandise.

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
Customer #5 - TRX 🧾

Item presented: One $TRX ( ▲ 0.22% ) , questionable quality, could be a counterfeit, paperwork in a different language than everyone else's.

Reason for visit: "April paid me well. Figured May would be the same. Locking in the run."

What the counter sees: Customer is using a strategy that works for everyone else and statistically doesn't work for him. For every other item I appraise, a green April leans toward a green May. For this customer, a green April is a bearish signal. April to May correlation: -0.686. Negative. Inverse.

After green Aprils, historically, this customer's May has averaged -2.86%. After red Aprils, his May has averaged +13.55%. His best Mays come when everyone else is panicking..

April just closed +4.27%. Green. Under his own contrarian pattern, that's the wrong color to be cashing out on.

The other tell: when this customer loses, he loses bad. Average red May is -27.77%, deepest in the cast. May 2018 was -34.95%. May 2021 was -42.08%.

Best comp: May 2019 +37.26%. May 2022 +33.38%. May 2021 -42.08% - the day his paperwork came in stained.

Counter's offer: Below ticket. The reason he gave is statistically the wrong reason for this specific item. Discount applied for inverse seasonality.

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OLD NEWS
Crypto Stuff That Happened Today, But A Long Time Ago 📜

Here’s what was happening in the newsletter a year ago today:

• This was another data-dive issue - more scoreboard than story.

• The week was basically mixed and sleepy - Top 25 was down 0.4%, so not exactly a parade.

• The better pockets were AI, Web3, Privacy, and Proof-of-Work - AI +5.2%, Web3 +5.1%, Privacy +4.1%, PoW +3.9%.

• The laggards were DEX and Lending - DEX -0.9%, Lending -0.7%, while NFTs were flat at 0.0%.

• The whole piece was about tracking rotation - market cap, RRG, heatmaps, social volume, active addresses, and BTC/ETH ETF holdings.

Here’s what was happening in the newsletter two years ago today:

• This was also a data-dive issue - same spreadsheet, different weekend.

• Crypto was still well below the highs - total market cap was down 22.07% from the all-time close, though still up 35.70% YTD and 128.32% YoY.

• Altcoins still looked worse than the broad market - altcoin market cap was down 37.14% from its all-time close, and altcoins ex-ETH were down 38.54%.

• Most sectors had a rough week - AI got smoked the worst at -12.8%, while DeFi -10.4% and NFTs -8.0% weren’t exactly thriving either.

• The only green spot was Privacy - up 1.0%, which is a very funny little winner in a sea of red.

Here’s what was happening in the newsletter two years ago today:

• PEPE was blowing up Ethereum fees - memecoin mania shoved ETH transaction costs into the $14-$16 range and burned nearly 10,000 ETH in about 36 hours.

• Cathie Wood kept buying Coinbase - because apparently SEC drama just looked like a coupon to her.

• The technical focus was on ADA, XLM, LINK, and SOL - one of those chart-heavy days where the market needed explaining.

• The educational bit was “what is a blockchain” - a full Crypto 101 explainer for the civilians.

• Other notable bits - CertiK froze $160K tied to the Merlin rug, Israel seized Binance-linked accounts, El Salvador cut tech and crypto taxes, and DeSantis vowed to ban CBDCs in Florida.

OLD NEWS
Other Stuff That Happened Today, But A Long Ass Time Ago ⌛️

Month, Day (example: May, 3rd)

• 1471 - War of Roses, Battle of Tewkesbury, Edward IV defeats the Lancastrian Army, kills Edward Prince of Wales.

• 1626 - Peter Minuit, a Dutch explorer, finds New Netherland, known today as Manhattan Island.

• 1776 - Rhode Island is the first colony to renounce King George III.

• 1814 - Napoleon begins his exile on Elba.

• 1869 - A four day naval battle at Hakodate begins. The Imperial Japanese Navy defeats the last of the Tokugawa Shogunate’s navy in the Sea of Japan.

• 1904 - Construction of the Panama Canal begins.

• 1942 - World War II: the Battle of the Coral Sea starts.

• 1959 - The Grammy Awards.

• 1979 - Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister.

• 1994 - A member of the UK Parliament makes the pun, ‘May the Fourth be with you’. Members were not impressed.

• 2002 - Barry Bonds hits his 400th home run.

• 2024 - Madonna ends here Celebration world tour with a free concert at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. It becomes her largest concert ever with 1.6 million people in attendance.

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Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in AVAX, ADA, PUDGY, WLD, NEAR, INJ, LTC, LINK, ZEC, XLM, and FET. 📋