I Like The Bear
I like the bear crypto more than the bull.
I am more excited about the prospects during a bear. I have less anxiety, less fear. I am more calm and steady about my involvement. The bull crypto is intense. There is constant hype, constant fanfare. Bull crypto is a casino, with the pokie machines and the tables, the lights and sounds, and everywhere around me there is someone winning, someone doing better, someone is onto a jackpot.
I do stupid things in bull crypto. I ape into a coin I know nothing about. I fall for an NFT scam in the hope, the belief, that I somehow got in early, that I know something almost no one else knows about. With bull crypto I think I can beat the system, I think I am doing something special, that others haven't figured out yet. When I am with bull crypto I think I am smart.
I am not smart. I am like most other people in this game. I have almost no edge, no special insight. My game is simple. If I want to win then I do the simple, boring, wise plays. I dollar cost average. I research and invest in fundamentals. I plan to take profits and I take profits. I stay away from hype. I hold and play the long game. During bear crypto I am better able to do this. I am in a quiet room with a couple of sensible people. I listen to advice. I might even give some advice. There are no noises, no bright flashing lights. My senses are calm. I am calm. I win slowly, so slow I can hardly even see it.
And I am back here again. It's been a while. The bull run was a bit of a shit show. I learned a lot. I expect to see the bull crypto again in about a year. I look forward to it, and hopefully I do things a bit better this time. Until then I play the quiet, long game with the bear.
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Turns out the turn from bull to bear is a complete shit show though. It seems that many of the things built during the bull run cannot survive the bear, or even the turn to bear. Weaknesses are being revealed, and only those projects that built on solid foundations will survive.
UST was an experiment that saw massive gains, massive hype, fame for it's founder, and a lot of hope and excitement for a stable coin outside the impending KYC iron curtain. Experiments are great and I would not fault the effort. What made the experiment such a disaster was it's rise, it's success - during the bull. The climate gave the project the kind of leverage, the kind of collateral that most projects of it's kind should not be given. Risk during the past year did not feel like risk. Very little felt like risk. And UST was built on the back of a wave of greed and hype that had never seen the margin calls of a major downturn.
Is the lesson here - Do not plant in the Spring?
No doubt there are some very specific lessons to be learned from UST and it fall, and hopefully these lessons are applied to new projects that attempt to build algorithmic stablecoins in a climate that is suspicious, even downright hostile to them. I think it is an important asset class to have, potentially something akin to true digital cash. But not any time soon.
For any old or new experiment, the true test will be seeing out this bear, surviving the winter, ready to reap rewards in the spring.