The next bull run could come in 2 months or 2 years. All signs point to 2022 being quite choppy, with some opportunities for upside if you time your entries, but I really don't like to play the market that way. My ace in the hole isn't having a crystal ball. It's having information and a plan that fits my lifestyle.

Information

We have more information than we've ever had on markets. The trick is to find people you trust. The even better trick is to find people who trade well in the current environment. For instance: The guy I follow for yield farming alpha, Taiki Maeda, I don't want his advice from March 2020 to March 2021 in a raging bull market. Why? He'll probably underperform, because you shouldn't be farming at that point. You should be doing the Alex Becker, diving into garbage that influencers push.

By the same token, it's time to turn off all the faggy moonbois like Elliotrades, Carl, That Martini Guy, and even calmer moonbois like JRNY and Datadash. Right now is time to play defensive, and none of those guys know how to do that. Now would be a time to pay close attention to Taiki and Drake on Digital if you plan on staying in the crypto market to wait out this bear. If you're a market-hopper, honestly, now is your time to exit. Come back (or not) when we go full bull again.

You need a healthy macro perspective as well. Understanding that crypto is STILL just an ant pissing in the ocean is important. All the people who now control crypto do so with a minuscule portion of their capital. Those coins you think are so important they are treating like the riskiest of risk-on assets. 

My favorite macro person is Lyn Alden. She's popular for a reason. Her latest example of expertise actually made me laugh out loud when it came true. Someone asked her about Ray Dalio's talking point of "cash is trash." Alden said that Dalio's had this talking point before, and he did it just when the dollar started to gain strength. Well goshdarned if that isn't what happened this time! LOL. Anyone listening to Dalio and going in because "cash is trash" just got royally fuckt in the crypto market's Friday crash, and why? Because according to Alden, Dalio has a history of giving marginally sound advice at the exact wrong time. XD Alden's gold, man.

Once you've matched your advisors to the times, you'll be ready to create a plan that fits your lifestyle.

Lifestyle

I'm 100% crypto. That's stupid when everybody knows we're going into a risk-off, Fed-induced liquidity tightening. Why do I still do it? Because I'm going deep into the weeds in crypto. I'm attending conferences and soon to start businesses in the space. I'm getting early alpha that 99% of traders don't get, so I get into things early. I also watch everything like a hawk. I find a lot of opportunities by pure accident just because of my time on crypto Twitter, so while most people are making a loss, I'm finding some weird way to make shit work.

But. I have ongoing costs that need to be paid. So my style has to be based around yield farming rather than trading on TA or betting big on individual projects. I have to learn ecosystems rather than projects, so I'm not only reading whitepapers, but checking how protocols will interact with each other. That gives me an edge in the market that no one, not even the most educated macro guy, would be able to see unless (s)he zoomed in.

Once these decisions are made, your investing life becomes much easier because you can filter out the noise. Because I know I'm staying in crypto and that strategy is going to be based around ecosystems and farming, I don't give a shit about the latest greatest bullshit on the outside of what I'm doing. Saves me from 95% of scams and 99% of bullshit projects with shit teams. I also get more from my advisors because I'm able to tailor their advice to my lifestyle specifically.

Be Prepared to Fail

I thought I had my plan for the bear market worked out. I would use the huge yields on certain projects to make delta neutral bets that would just pay me the yield and I'd be ok. I was going to use Mirror Protocol for this, and also do some delta neutral trades on Pancakeswap (find the token on Pancakeswap, stake it for yield, then short it on Binance somehow). Long story short, neither of these strategies is really viable for me for a number of reasons.

So my plan failed now that the bear showed itself. I had to figure out something else. That something else is creating pools for high volatility tokens. This was something I picked up while trying to work my delta neutral strategies. Pooling correctly actually makes the arb bots work for you and takes advantage of the higher spreads that come with liquidity crunches. It's a new strategy, and I'm prepared for it to fail as well. But if it does, I'll learn even more about crypto than I know now, which will make me that much smarter when I meet with people in the real world to start companies.

Blue Chips/Picks and Shovels

Chamath Palpitations (WTF with his real name) gave his predictions about 2022 and risk on stuff. He said that crypto projects that get it right will shine through even in the bear market. The shit will get found out quick, but the projects that have a disruptive use case will bring profits. I took this as saying the blue chips & picks and shovels will make it.

Now that everything's down, now is not the time to go investing in some goofy startup NFT game that just came out yesterday. You've got known value sitting there at 40% down from where it was yesterday. I'm going to get THAT first. As well, there's no reason to put your money on individual games instead of on protocols that ALL these games, succeed or fail, will need to use. So the underlying blockchain projects that showed strength like Gala, Phantasma, Xaya — that's what I pick up now. If you want to dig in the dumpster in the gaming space, something like BlockchainSpace, which makes tools for gaming guilds, I think is better than investing in any individual game. Also the guilds themselves. YGG, PathDAO, Merit Circle — all the groups with cash to burn. Let THEM invest in the games for you, because they have better alpha. Of course, this picks and shovels advice can be used on any part of the crypto industry. I'm just stating games because I know that part best.

That's my investing plan for the bear. BUIDL in general.

I'd love to hear any bear strategies you guys have. Working together helps to hold up the market and gives us all a springboard for the next bull run.