In January 2018, a friend of mine introduced cryptocurrencies to me. I have quickly been interested to know more about this new technology and could see the potential. I quickly started buying in a few projects while learning more about the blockchain and Bitcoin in particular.

If you have been in crypto long enough, you should know that after the peak in December 2017, Bitcoin and altcoins started to gradually decrease in price. This was the beginning of a long bear market that lasted roughly 3 years.

As a newbie at the time, the sellouts and dumps teaming with bad media coverages crushed me emotionally. I then lost interest in cryptocurrencies and stopped my losses by selling the few assets I had.

That was the biggest mistake I ever made in my crypto investment journey.

If I could go back in the past from today, here are things I would have told my past self.

• Use the bear market as an opportunity to educate yourself

During the bear market, positive sentiments about cryptocurrencies cool down. Most people lose interest in them and waste no time talking bad about them. Those acting in this manner are likely to know less about the technology, and also about the market cycle in general.

A bear market is a financial market characterized by a prolonged period of declining prices, investor pessimism, and a generally negative economic outlook. In a bear market, asset prices, such as stocks, bonds, cryptocurrencies, or commodities, may fall by 20% or more from their recent highs, and investors tend to sell their investments in anticipation of further declines. In the case of cryptocurrencies, that fall may go by 70% or more from their recent highs.

Knowledge is power

A successful is one that really knows what is doing. You should always be knowledgeable about what you invest in. Cryptocurrencies are more than meme coins, hype, volatility, huge returns, huge losses, rug pull, ...etc.
Cryptocurrencies are assets that use blockchain technology. As with any other technology, cryptocurrencies are trying to solve something. Something good that humanity as a whole will benefit from.

When Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, he did so because he saw corruption, instability, and inequality in the current monetary system. Vitalik on the other side saw the potential of blockchain and cryptocurrencies by creating a virtual machine. He created Ethereum, a smart contract-based blockchain to facilitate exchanges between two parties without the need for unnecessary third parties. Today, almost all cryptocurrencies created fall under either currency-based or smart contract-based like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are great inventions, but they still have some issues in their technology to overcome. As a result, the emergence of competitors like Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Fantom, Solana, Arbitrum, and many more continue to flood the market.

The market can be an opportunity to learn more about what is going on in the space. If you saw interesting projects during the bull market, keep learning more about them during the bear market. It's a good sign when a project keeps working on its roadmap during harsh times.

A lot of good projects emerged during the 2018-2020 bear market. Seeing their all-time high (ATH) during 2020-2021, no need to say that was a missed opportunity if you hadn't known and bought them during the bear market.

• Dollar Cost Average (DCA) should be your best friend during the bear market

Dollar-cost averaging (DCA) is an investment strategy that involves investing a fixed amount of money into a particular asset or security at regular intervals, regardless of the price. The goal of this strategy is to reduce the impact of volatility on the overall purchase price of the investment.

For example, let's say you want to invest $1,000 in a particular cryptocurrency. Instead of investing the entire amount at once, you could invest $100 each month for ten months. This would allow you to buy shares of the cryptocurrency at different prices, which could potentially lower the average cost per share over time.

When DCA on a project during the bear market, you may be buying at a discount price that could maximize your profits when the market turns bullish again.

Don't forget to keep up with the project update on their roadmap. You don't want to DCA on a dead project😏. Usually, projects that keep on working on their roadmap even during the bad times, will do better during the bull market.