Bear Market Gameplan [By the Numbers]
Quantitative follow up featuring the skeleton for a fella to go from zero to hero by the end of the next bull run.
If you haven’t already, read the initial post, “Jeff’s Declassified Bear Market Survival Guide”.
The following post quantifies the proposed strategy into numbers to show that you, anon, can be a millionaire starting from $0 once this next cycle is all said and done.
This strategy requires the following:
Conviction: You have to believe in crypto. There are many easier ways to gamble if that’s all you’re after.
Time: This guide is for the broke fellas that have a time-surplus and a coin-deficit.
Appetite for Risk: We are converting your time and energy into highly risky investments. If you can’t stomach this, move on.
Additionally, I am framing this from a POV similar to mine: young person in USA with little responsibilities and already more-or-less self-sufficient. If this doesn’t apply to you, obviously this framework isn’t apples-to-apples. You can, of course, apply your own spin on it.
The message is good regardless of to what extent you stick to it:
DCA into your favorite bluechip
Learn-and-Earn through contributing to projects
Leverage your portfolio and knowledge to kill the bull market
If you can:
Find an extra $2,000/month
Consistently contribute to projects
Not fuck things up in the next bull market
You can go from 0 commas to 2. And even if you don’t hit the benchmarks outlined, you’ll be pretty well off unless crypto unironically goes to 0 (assess your convictions before embarking on this gameplan).
The Meme Sheet
See the spreadsheet and create your own copy here
This spreadsheet asserts that if there is:
18 months of bear market from the time of publication
Average Price of ETH throughout that duration of $1,200
If you can then:
Buy $2,000 of ETH each month
After 3 months, start contributing and earning crypto for contributions
Earn +$50 in contributions each week
Earn 8% compounding your ETH through various APY opportunities
you will enter the 2024-2025 bullrun^2 with:
32 ETH
$24,000 worth of shitcoins
And if you can earn some decent multipliers on those coins, you become a millionaire.
Is it really that easy?
Obviously, nobody here can predict the future. There is a chance that the remaining bear market is shorter (I believe this, tbh, but I’m also bagholding and downbad).
But if God gives us another proper bear market, these benchmarks are pretty reasonable.
There is also a consideration that crypto has never gone through a proper recession, which we may very well be heading for. But everyone is fucked in that instance, and at least you will have comradery and maintain some sense of purpose sticking to an effort-based goal.
With that, let’s work through the numbers:
$2,000 a month into ETH
$2k/month translates to $461/week. Can you shave off $61/week from your budget? That brings your weekly down to $400. As I said in the last post, I’m not that guy to tell you budgeting hacks. There’s obviously some drastic stuff you can do for significant savings (ie +1 roommate) but I think, generally, a lot of people can shave a few dollars from their budget.
Now, maybe you can’t. Maybe you can do more. Let’s say you need to put together an extra $250-$450/week to hit your goal.
What I do know from my own experiences is that, 5+ years ago, it was pretty doable for me to consistently bank $22/hr net by multi-apping on delivery gig apps (like DoorDash and UberEats). Reading around, it seems like that number is closer to $30 or even $40 if you know what you are doing (ignore the official material telling you to take every order. They have to trick you because they can’t legally force you to take bad orders. Decline most orders and cherry pick potential high tips.)
Let’s say I’m high balling and reality settles closer to $20/hr. That’s 12.5-22.5 hrs/week. Can you work from 6-8 each day after work? If you commute, bonus points to pick up orders on your way back. That pretty consistently + some amount of work on the weekend gets you there.
Again, this is just one way to do it. There are many different types of gigs and odd jobs you can pick up. This is what I used to do, so it’s what I recommend.
Frugal King for $2k/month?
For what it’s worth, there seems to be a legitimate trend of non-premium cities incentivizing remote workers to move there. Did you know that Tulsa, Oklahoma pays remote workers $10,000 no-strings-attached if they move there? I think we will see more, not less of that in the future.
And for a lot of folks out there (perhaps some reading this), struggling to make ends meet in a low-tier neighborhood in Los Angeles is probably nowhere near the same quality of living as playing king mode in Tulsa. After the freebies, you probably need to take home another $40k/year to cover cost of living + invest $2k/month.
But anyways, there’s a bunchf of ((hypothetical)) ways to achieve this elusive $2k/month investment into ETH. If this seems too lofty, feel free to hop in the spreadsheet and adjust it to your liking. No reason why anyone can’t apply these same strategies at a smaller, more reasonable scale.
Contributing to Projects
A few months into this, you should be able to start earning shitcoins (term used endearingly) by working in different communities you are interested in.
Starting small, but if you are routinely doing 10-20 hours/week spread across a handful of protocols, you should be able to start earning consistently over a grand a month several months in ($3k/month may be tough at the high end, but that doesn’t change the outcome of the spreadsheet much).
More importantly, contributing is your way to make risk-adjusted bets (you are automatically accumulating good coins as projects are actually set up to take on contributors weighs out the bottom 90% of garbage or so) while also learning more about the space and building up your network. You’re also hoarding mature tokens that are continuing on through the bear run, which is a great portfolio into the start of a bull market.
Compounding your ETH
If you have 8% more ETH than you bought, that translates to about 10% APY if you start with 0 ETH and DCA an equal amount each month.
That may sound aggressive, but I don’t really think so. Opportunities present themselves to earn very high APY here and there. They don’t last long but they suffice.
Alternatively, there are some low risk strategies that can get you there with relative ease.
I’m a big fan of Lido stETH, a Liquid Staking Derivative (LSD) that pays holders out 4% APY and ultimately allows users to redeem stETH:ETH 1:1. That redemption only happens after the merge, but since we are ETH bulls here, it’s fine, we can wait. Others can’t wait, so stETH trades below peg.
10% APY is as easy as converting ETH to stETH when stETH trades 6% below peg. 6% + 4% = 10%. (This math isn’t entirely right, but it’s close enough). You can take on conservative APY strategies on top of stETH to drive APY a bit higher. As a pretty comfortable DeFi power user, I estimate my ETH-converted-to-stETH will net me closer to 20% by time redemption comes along (ROI, not APY).
“But what if stETH breaks”. Then we are all fucked, regardless of your exposure.
There are, of course, other opportunities, and you may additionally find your shitcoin stash to be yield bearing, too. But no matter how you stack it, compound a bit of ETH to get to the fabled 32eth benchmark.
What’s at Stake?
The purpose of this guide is to highlight the notion that you really aren’t best off scrounging every $$ together to push your exposure to crypto as close to 100% as possible.
If this guide is applicable to you, investing your time is much better risk/reward. Taking averages from the above, this guide is requesting you to spend ~30/hr extra to hit your goals. And since most of your hours translate to some ETH DCA, you’re unlikely to come away with nothing.
Let’s say absolute worst-case: your entire portfolio is only worth $10k when it’s all said and done and there is never again a good bull run. You spent a bit under 2,500 hours along the way, which sucks, but perhaps you pulled some non-worthless skill out of the time spent while also saving up a little bit.
Into the Bullrun
The spreadsheet above strives for a “conservative” 30x on portfolio.
It’s a mind-boggling amount, but very much not-so when you have the godlike advantage of knowing what you are doing (my crypto ROI throughout the last bull run was probably somewhere between 500-1000x bottom-to-top).
Ideally, here is what happens:
You make (and realize) some good gains on your shitcoin portfolio.
Your network exposes you to good opportunities early.
Your knowledge allows you to filter and play optimally.
Your ETH, put to work earning yield, gives you more bullets to fire off.
And, of course, you are encouraged to continue contributing throughout the bullrun. I’ve had some massive paydays from contributing in ways that anyone can. EX: I received 233,333 GRT for participating in their open-to-everyone-worldwide bounty proram, for maybe 10 hours of work total. GRT topped out around $2, for those keeping track at home.
Knowledge and talent hit short supply in a bullrun, where many of the lads retire on life changing gains and projects simultaneously find themselves on more cash than they know how to handle.
Continue to leverage your time while navigating the playing field for risk-adjusted gambling opportunities and while growing a solid portfolio accumulated from the bear market. Don’t let the influencers fool you, this is the highest % success rate out of every “kingmade” speedrun strategy in this space.
Again, if you want to gamble, there are much easier ways to do it.