Are you experiencing your first crypto downtrend? Feeling stupid? Sweating bullets?
What made you buy in? If it was for the profits only, then you should be excited. When everyone is rushing to sell, you should be there to buy. Biggest profits are made when you don't follow the herd but rather when you know the herd is wrong and have the courage to act upon that instinct. Don't get me wrong, it's always a risk. What if you're wrong and everyone else is right? Then you have to research. Yes, I know. The boring stuff. But if you do your research, you can lead rather than follow.
Is this the time to panic sell everything? If you let your emotions affect your investments, you'll be buying in again when the herd is back trying to get rich again, at what price will bitcoin be then? 35k? Probably even more.
Am I telling you to start buying everything you can right now? No, I'm telling you to do your research if you're feeling bad about buying and holding onto your crypto. Look into the past, see the trajectory of the technology, not the price itself. Is it getting better, is it getting adopted? If the trend continues, what would the price look then? In 2 years? 5?
Don't let your emotions control you. See the data, process it, make a plan and stick with it. Don't risk more than you can lose. That's like asking emotions to take control over you. But now might just be the time to start buying when everyone else is selling.
The image I shared above was from a twitter post from Brian Amstrong. The founder of Coinbase.
Here is his message in full which he shared with his own team:
Hey team, many of you are new, so I wanted to share a bit about the price of crypto.
The crypto industry is like no other I've seen - lots of up and down cycles (reaching a new plateau each time). There have been 3 or 4 of these now. It can be scary the first time you see it, but to us who have been in the industry for many years, it feels like old news.
When there is hype, people are irrationally exuberant. When there is despair, people are irrationally pessimistic. Neither is true. Reality is always somewhere in the middle, more correlated with real usage (transactions per day) than the price.
After many years of this, I've come to enjoy the down cycles in crypto prices more. It gets rid of the people who are in it for the wrong reasons, and it gives us an opportunity to keep making progress while everyone else gets distracted.
We use the down cycles to build a strong foundation so we can thrive in the next growth cycle.
I want to encourage you all to ignore the price of crypto and the headlines which will inevitably start to come up. Our job is to rise above that, finding our own intrinsic source of motivation, to come in and do our best work, regardless of what other people think.
We'll win in the long term by listening to our customers, and building what they want, just like any great company.
You'll hear me continue repeating this message periodically. I want to teach the org how to think about it, and have you share the these same ideas with candidates who are thinking about joining.
Together we can stay focused on the long term, and shift the world toward an open financial system.
This is an example of individual who actually believes in the technology. These people are building the future as we speak. What will the total market cap of crypto be once the shift to an open financial system happens in a big way?
That's a question we all can ask ourselves. Still panicking about the current price?
I know I'm not. But I also realize that some of the newcomers are doing so as we speak. Hopefully you find a bit of peace for yourself in this post.