Bear Market Perspective

It is safe to say that we are solidly in a bear market. Ether is down over 30% just over the course of this last week. It’s down 75% since the all time high of $4,891.70 just seven months ago! In fact all of the markets are down as we face war, pandemic, inflation, and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, & Doubt).

While we truly feel for everyone who saw their bags get rekt over the last few months, we also want to offer a bit of our own perspective. Since so many conceive of blockchain as a financial investment opportunity, they are also seeing these losses as a catastrophic loss. Many are hurting and we do not, in any way, want to minimize that. Please take care of yourself. WAGMI (We are all going to make it!!)

For many, there are voices in their head screaming:

“It’s all over!”
“It’s never coming back!”
“Why am I here?”
“Numbers are down only”

This is especially true with those who entered the space in 2021. While the total values were definitely different the percentages were quite similar in the last bear market cycle in 2018. For the OGs that were able to survive that ride and come out diamond handing ETH into the next cycle, this time around is probably a bit less traumatic. It does sting to see the bottom fall out like it has recently.

If you have been reading along with the series, you might remember the post of framing in which we recommended seeing any money put into blockchain as tuition rather that as an investment. We wrote:

…we have considered it tuition money that is being spent on an education. We are investing in our familiarity and knowledge of the ecosystem, we are investing in learning the tools and pitfalls, we are investing in our ability to share our findings with readers like you, and what we have found is, each dollar spent “as tuition”  to buy an education does not return void. We are getting exactly what we set out to get.

This lens has been a helpful one when facing the inevitable battle of emotional self regulation. We have invested and we have learned. We are now entering into some hard lessons and learn we will. And since we haven’t framed it as financial investment for financial gain, speculation, gambling, or the like, we saw deep value in the tremendous use cases that we have been highlighting in this series. We have been blown away but everything that has been made possible by the blockchain, by the Ethereum Virtual Machine. We have seen DAOs emerging to demonstrate new models of decentralized, participatory democracy. We have seen real-estate transactions done on-chain in the form of ERC721 NFTs. We have seen Employment Cooperatives empowering self-sovereign workers. And the amazing thing about all of these incredible and valuable use cases, it that they still work. The functional value of Ethereum has remained in tact and since that is the treasure that we have actually been focusing on, we have not lost. Everything that was exciting about the space is still exciting. If anything this dip has made the ecosystem more accessible as the price of Ether has come down. While we are definitely entering into a crypto winter, we are also grateful for the existence, the functionality, the legitimacy, and the potential of the blockchain itself. We are grateful that we have invested in learning to swim as the tide ebbs and flows. We are more prepared for having invested in our education and familiarity with the Ethereum ecosystem.

While we all feel the pain of the decline in value of the currencies themselves, we hope that these perspectives are helpful as you navigate this valley.