Crypto winter is rough. Here are five essential survival tips

It’s been a brutal year for crypto investors. After a protracted market rally took the global cryptocurrency market cap to $3 trillion by the end of 2021, Bitcoin and other digital assets have been battered by macroeconomic turmoil, sending many of last year’s new crypto adopters racing for the exit. Today, the space is worth just under $1 trillion, with Bitcoin and Ethereum both trading more than 70% lower than their all-time highs.

But while this year has tested even the most ardent crypto followers, early adopters have become accustomed to extreme volatility in both directions. Crypto has historically boomed about every four years as new entrants discovered the technology and hype builds, but it has always suffered serious crashes after market euphoria peaked. These downturns have come to be known as “crypto winter” phases, which are characterized by significant drops in market activity and interest, project attrition, and extreme sell-offs. While few crypto fans welcome bear markets, they can provide an excellent opportunity to recover and take stock for the next market cycle. In this section, we share our top five tips to survive the ongoing crypto winter. Those who follow them should be well positioned to thrive once crypto finds momentum.

Stay close to Crypto Winter

While crypto winter can be challenging, it’s important to remember that bear markets are actually where many people build real wealth. This is especially true in crypto for two reasons.

First, projects that lack fundamentals, don’t fit the product market, or are outright scams get wiped out during bear markets. At the same time, the space shifts focus from price action, marketing, and hype to product and business development. Some of today’s leading crypto projects, such as Solana, Cosmos, and Uniswap, were built and launched during bear markets. Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, was launched in the middle of the Bitcoin bear market in 2015 and traded below $10 until the 2017 bull cycle. Ethereum peaked at $1,430 at the end of that cycle in January 2018 , which provided staggering returns for early investors.

This leads to the second reason why sticking around is key to surviving the crypto winter and thriving through the next cycle. Many legit cryptocurrencies are falsely labeled as Ponzi schemes when they are “bigger fools” assets. In finance, the bigger fool theory suggests that investors can sometimes make money from “overvalued” assets by selling them to someone (the “crazy”) for a higher price later. Exacerbated by the herd mentality, this psychological phenomenon leads to economic bubbles, followed by massive corrections. And while all markets are subject to this, crypto-assets are particularly sensitive, further underscoring the importance of being early .

And getting into crypto early means staying involved, learning and analyzing the market when the industry is in a bear cycle. Some of the most successful investors in the 2017 bull run were those who weathered the 2014 through 2016 bear market. Similarly, many of those who committed a homicide in 2021 have weathered the debilitating downturn from 2018 through 2019. Above all, sticking around is the most decisive factor for success when the market turns.

Rethink your thesis

Losing money is never fun, but it can be a great teacher. Crypto winter is an excellent opportunity for investors to reevaluate their investment thesis, reflect on any mistakes they made over the past cycle, and prepare for the next leg.

An asset or an entire asset class falling 70% from its all-time high could mean several things. For example, a significant downturn in an investor’s portfolio may mean that the market has invalidated his investment thesis, meaning he needs to rethink his approach and reconstruct his portfolio to better reflect the new reality. If this is the case, sales at a loss and other investments may be warranted.

However, a significant drawdown does not necessarily mean that an investor’s investment thesis is invalid. Instead, it could be an excellent opportunity to double down. For example, if a token’s fundamentals improve, investors who liked it at $1,000 should like it even more at $200. A drop in an asset’s price doesn’t necessarily mean it’s become a weaker investment. There are plenty of reasons why an asset may fall temporarily despite strengthening fundamentals, many of which are exogenous or unrelated. An investor’s job is to identify exactly these market inefficiencies, buy temporarily undervalued assets, and then sell them at a higher price when the markets have caught up.

Apply second-order thinking

Each crypto bull cycle is triggered by multiple catalysts and surrounded by different stories. The 2017 bull run was marked by Initial Coin Offerings on Ethereum and the “blockchain, not Bitcoin” story, where startups made millions selling mostly useless tokens on empty promises of tokenizing and decentralizing anything. The latest bull run began with Bitcoin’s 2020 halving, coinciding with the unprecedented post-pandemic money printing that shone the spotlight on its value proposition as an apex inflation hedge asset. The cycle continued with the rise of food-themed decentralized applications on Ethereum during a period that came to be known as “DeFi Summer,” before a mainstream boom in NFTs led to “NFT Summer” a year later. The 2021 cycle ended with the rapid rise and fall of alternative Layer 1 networks Terra, Solana and Avalanche.

Those who successfully predicted the dominant stories made a kill, while latecomers who couldn’t see where the puck went were less fortunate. Predicting the next cycle’s dominant stories is required thinking second order or deep reflection that takes into account the long-term consequences of many relevant causally linked events. In this respect, the game of investing is identical to Keynes’ infamous beauty pageantwhere investors have to guess what other investors will think instead of what they themselves think.

Since cryptocurrencies are subject to the phenomenon of the bigger fools, successful investing is not necessarily about looking for projects or assets that outperform the market, but rather anticipating the expectations of others. While first-order thinkers are currently trying to figure out whether the upcoming Layer 1 network Aptos will outperform Solana, second-order thinkers are trying to figure out which blockchain is the best according to the most inexperienced investors when the next cycle begins.

Think in terms of expected value

Another helpful mental model to use when surviving bear markets and crypto investing is to practice making only positive expected value investments. In this context, the expected value (EV) is the sum of all possible values ​​for a random variable, each value multiplied by its probability of occurrence.

Let’s assume an investor is considering buying token X worth $1,000. The token in question is a highly volatile small-cap cryptocurrency with a 95% chance of going to zero and a 5% chance of rising to $25,000. The formula to calculate the expected value of this investment would be:

EV = (-$1,000 x 0.95) + ($25,000 x 0.05) = $300

This means that the expected value of the bet is positive and that if the investor continued to invest $1,000 indefinitely in investments with the same odds, they would earn an average of $300 per investment. In simpler terms, if they made 100 investments ($100,000), lost all money in 95 of them (-$95,000), but made 2,400% profit on five of them (5 x $25,000 = $125,000), they would end up with a $30,000 profit ($125,000 – $95,000).

While considering expected value makes it easier to judge whether a specific investment is worth it, just a small change in the assumed variables can often turn a positive EV trade into a negative one. This means that properly assessing the probability of certain events occurring is essential for investment success. Aside from that, given that there are thousands of cryptocurrencies in the market and investors have a finite amount of money, it is also imperative to compare the expected values ​​of different investment opportunities and invest only in a diversified set of those with the highest expected returns. value.

Suppose an investor is considering investing $1,000 in Bitcoin or Ethereum at current market prices and believes they have the same 50% chance of going to zero or reaching their previous all-time highs. In that case, they can calculate the expected value for both investments to see which one is the most solid. In this case, Ethereum has a slightly higher expected value because it would need to appreciate more than Bitcoin to reach its previous all-time high.

Be patient

Patience is essential during the crypto winter. The winter period can last longer than expected, which can be mentally challenging even for the most steadfast of believers. The current bear market comes during the worst macroeconomic conditions since the Great Financial Crisis. It is perfectly possible for cryptocurrencies to continue falling or trading sideways for two to three years. For sidelined investors, exercising patience can be relatively easy, but for those with a significant portion of their net worth in crypto, it can be a major challenge.

In addition, bear markets are much less forgiving than bull markets, which means that sometimes the best move is not to make any investments. This is especially true as most of the cryptocurrencies on the market are more than 99% below their all-time highs. In bear markets, many investors build life-changing portfolios, but it takes patience, research, and foresight to make the right moves and choose the cryptocurrencies that will outperform the market in the next leg.

Final thoughts

As this year proves, the crypto market is not for the faint of heart. While upside volatility can help cryptocurrencies rise to dizzying highs during bull runs, they can fall just as sharply during protracted recessions. But those who adopt a long-term mindset and learn to embrace recessions have historically been some of the biggest winners in the space to date. Assuming crypto doesn’t die, following the tips in this feature should help investors prepare for the next rally. We are stuck in the crypto winter, but the fundamentals have not changed. Anyone who thinks about the big picture will have a much easier time surviving the crypto winter.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this post owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.