I've lost more than I could ever imagine losing, but you'll never learn how to get up if you don't get knocked down. Even if we go into a multi-year bear market, there will always be opportunities for those who are focused and remain on the scene. Builders will build and holders will hold but what about those who only know how to make money in a bull market? These people, including me and probably some of you, will learn a lot in the coming months/years.
You either give up or learn and come back stronger
No matter how long it will take, eventually, we'll be back in a bull mode. Then you will have another shot to either make your life easier or make the same mistakes and get stuck in a vicious loop. As we all know, the best way to learn from mistakes is by making mistakes. If you got this far, you have probably made some mistakes as well. I'm also pretty sure that you want to come back stronger and improve yourself while the market is taking a breather.
Make a list of lessons you've learned, here are some of mine:
- Always take profits on the way up
No matter how promising your coin is, parabolic rise always ends with a correction. Have a strategy of selling and set levels where you will take profits. Stick to it and you will outperform most of the market participants.
- Try to recognize top signals
There was a time when Elon Musk was on SNL talking about Dogecoin, yeah, it was a top signal. There were also days when I looked at CoinGecko and couldn't find any unpumped coin. I still didn't sell but searched for what else to buy. In retrospect, it was stupid.
- Correlation with the stock market and DXY
Don't underestimate crypto's correlation with the global markets, it's real and it can go both ways. When stocks are flying and the dollar index is falling, Bitcoin and crypto usually go up. When stocks fall, Bitcoin falls and the dollar usually flies higher. It's important to keep track of global events and try to understand how they impact crypto.
- Look at the tokenomics of a project before aping in with your life savings
When a new project with a token comes out, don't ape in without checking out the tokenomics. Starting from total supply and market cap to token unlocks for early investors and whether the token is inflationary. I remember aping into SLP without checking out that it's a super inflationary reward token of Axie Infinity game. That's how I forced myself to learn why I'm losing my money. Definitely worth it.
- FDV - Fully Diluted Value
Fully diluted value is not a meme. It's calculated by multiplying the price of your token with the total supply of tokens. If it's much higher than the market cap, it means that there are a lot of tokens locked that will be unlocked at some point in time. Some projects have only 5% to 10% of the total supply released meaning that the rest of the tokens will get dumped on the market in one way or another.
- Legit projects vs Copy cats
There is always one project that takes off because it's something new under the sun but as it happens, dozens of copycats are created with the same idea just different pictures. Most of the time, the first one is legit but others are only cash grabs and scams.
- Recognize your own greediness
I have a friend who's deeply into crypto and whenever he starts looking for a flat or a house to buy with his crypto gains, a correction comes in just a few days. That's a great top signal that would have worked for him a couple of times already.
- Don't marry your bags because most coins will die and go down 99%
Yes, you can gain a lot more if you buy the right altcoins but you also gotta know when to leave the ship and secure the gains. If you hold for too long, you can get decimated because you can never be sure if your chosen project will get back the traction after the hype goes down and/or the team stops working on updates.
- Bitcoin season vs Altseason
There are many indicators that help us recognize whether it's Bitcoin season or altcoin season, one of them is the Bitcoin dominance indicator. Here's a great Twitter thread about it.
- Recognize trends early
Layer-1, Layer-2 DeFi, Play to Earn, Walk to Earn, etc. These trends come in waves that you will start to recognize after spending enough time in the cryptospace. Once you understand how it works, you can get into projects that will be trending before they are actually trending.
Got a skill you want to learn? Now is the time to do it!
When most people leave the scene, only the dedicated ones stay to 'craft their art' to perfection. Whether it's writing, coding, mining, social networking, or anything else, now is the right time to master it and become one of the greats! Maybe there's a skill or two that you always wanted to learn but never had the time because of all the bull market things. Now you have it!
Websites such as Coursera, Udemy, Skillshare, and many others offer courses and tutorials in almost all areas of life. If that's not for you, you can always go onto Youtube and learn anything from scratch. Just think of a topic or software that you want to learn, type it down, and search for beginner tutorials, and off you go. That's how you start!
one must never stop learning
Find a place/community to hang out
If you're a Discord user, come and check out LeoFinance and Hive servers to meet other content creators and developers. Maybe you'll meet new friends there. Thousands of groups out there are welcoming new users, go out, explore and find a place of your liking.
Is that you?
If you're not a huge fan of socializing on the internet, don't spend your time doing it but focus on your own development. Keep doing what you do, get better at it and the universe will reward you for your efforts. As you get better at stuff, more opportunities arise at your feet and it happens naturally. It has been proven time and time again by many people around the world.
Create a project from scratch
This one is probably the most difficult but also the most rewarding of things that you can do with your free time. I know you've had many ideas in your head that you could have realized but there is always something in the way. Well, why not start now? The best projects are built while others are too scared to even be in this market. Slowly but surely is the key here.
I can't tell you what exactly to do or make but I can tell you one thing for sure: '' a little progress every single day is all it really takes to improve your life''.
But don't create another walk-to-earn, please? Simpsons-to-earn would be much more fun!
