How I learned to love the bear
This is my second bear market. I got into crypto near the tail end of 2017 thought I had missed the chance to ever buy cheap coins and then watched the market tank in 2018. It was nerve-wracking and made me think about quitting crypto altogether. But I didn't and I am glad I stuck it out. I shall also stick out this bear market as well. Once this crypto winter is over spring will be waiting!
There are many benefits to bear markets and this is actually a great time for crypto newbies to learn, grow their bags, and get involved in new projects. Most of all the worst projects and scams start to die out and the good projects get left. Here are ten pieces of advice for those new to crypto.
1. Learn. Now is the time to learn everything about Bitcoin, Ether, NFTs, DAOs, Web3, and all the other crazy buzzwords that you don't understand. The FOMO is gone now you can just focus on what the technology actually does. There are many great sources out there. Check out my Podcast at Buzzsprout, and Spotify.
2. Buy cheap Bitcoin. Quality coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum are much cheaper. Were you going to buy them in the last bull run? Why not get them at discount? This is the time to dollar cost average.
3. Earn crypto. There are many ways to earn crypto like bounty hunting, mining, day trading, blogging, and various other services. This is a great time to earn crypto because everything is at a discount. If you earned $100 worth of Bitcoin at the top of the market you would receive 0.0014 $BTC. Now you will get 0.0045 $BTC for the same work. Those Satoshis are going to add up!
4. Stake. This is not the time to sell (unless you are a great day trader) but is a great time to accumulate. One way to accumulate is to buy proof of stake coins and let them grow. Just set them down and forget about them. Depending on the project, you will see your coins grow before the next bull run. For instance, if you bought $Divi your holding would grow 17% each year. Let that run for two years and you shall see how compounding can grow your wealth.
5. Speculate on Altcoins. Remember how Bitcoin is cheap? So are Altcoins? Remember that crazy coin you wanted to buy but couldn't afford? Now you can! This is a great time to buy established projects but also take risks on newcomers. Want to know which projects I regret not buying into in 2018? Sandbox, Matic, and Decentraland. Oops. This is a great time to take risks on new projects. They are cheap!
6. Find useful projects. There's been lots of FOMO and big promises. Now is the time to find projects that actually do something and learn how to use them. See which DeFi protocols work the best. Try out some NFT games. You get the idea. Find out who's actually developing their projects and who just makes promises.
7. Buy cheap NFTs. Everything is on sale. Was there a cool NFT project you wanted to try out? Buy an NFT!
8. Use smart contracts. Everyone complains about how expensive it is to use Uniswap and other smart contracts when the market is up. Like everything else you can take advantage of the cheap prices and start staking on DeFi.
9. Find out who the scams were. I am not saying there are no more scams. But I am saying the scams tend to dial down a little bit during a bear market. Now you can find out who got scammed and how they got scammed. There are only so many different scams in the world. The best way to avoid getting scammed is to learn about them.
10 Borrow. Want to borrow against your Bitcoin and get Stablecoins? Well, the price of $BTC is probably (possibly) as low as it's going to get. This means paying back your loan will get easier as the market goes up. Pretty cool.
Any other suggestions for newbies? Comment below!
