Jeff's Declassified Bear Market Survival Guide

The comprehensive guide for the birth of a kingmade crypto enjoyer.

So, you probably lost some money. Maybe you are up overall, but you’re down significantly from ATH. Unless you are a gambling addicted bear (if you are, this article isn’t for you, shorting is cringe).

Otherwise, if you want to believe in crypto and you want to do your part and receive the ultimate reward for doing so, this is your guide.

A bit of Background

This guide is an extension of my own practices and my experiences that have brought me to where I am today (plus what I plan to practice into the future). It’s important to understand my background — in the space and IRL — as it drives my decision-making. This guide is only as strong as it is applicable to you, the reader, and as you recognize differences in your background and mine, understand that you may need to modify this guide for your needs.

My timeline:

• 2013–2014: Introduced to crypto. Post on the Bitcointalk forums and test sites for a few $$ of BTC at a time.

• 2015: Start freelance writing after applying to postings on the forums. Get paid in BTC. Use the BTC to buy my own PC.

• 2016: Start trading shitcoins, still contributing and doing microtasks. Start college (Computer Science and Economics).

• 2017: Start contributing to upcoming token communities, such as Pepecash. Spend all day trading.

• 2018: Push hard into freelance work. Leverage community involvements to earn better and better roles spanning tech writing, marketing, community, and PR.

• 2019: Do everything I can to keep accumulating. I even wrote food blogs for a time.

• 2020–2022: Graduate college into covid crash. Start working in the space full-time with brilliant minds that I’ve looked up to since the early days. Crypto takes off and this is where all of the previous involvement starts to pay off. I am a day 1 team member of Vesper Finance and Co-Founder of Governor DAO. 

Understand that I really navigated this space on my own. I got into it and for most of my time have just kept to myself. I only doxxed within the past two years. I didn’t have any savings to invest, instead I invested my time and energy into the space and myself, learning skills, enriching myself in the space, building out a network, and accuuuuumulating crypto. 

But despite my time in the space, things only really kicked off the past couple of years. I went from $0 to about $40,000 at peak in 2017, then round-tripped most of it back to a negative networth at the covid bloodbath, to two commas within the following year. My 2021 tax bill is a magnitude greater than average networth at my age.

My mindset has never really deviated from:

• Bet on yourself

• Bet on crypto

• Leverage your time and energy to bet more

• It’s okay if it all goes to zero, start over. At least you’re not succumbing to the rat race

With that, let’s dive in.

Crypto Make It Guide — Outline

1. Taker a Breather

2. Assess your Convictions

3. Situate yourself and set goals

4. Invest your time aggressively into yourself and how you exist in the crypto space

5. Wait…. and STRIKE

Take a Breather

Take a deep breath and hold your horses. Maybe the fireworks resume tomorrow, but there’s a good possibility things grind sideways for the next 1–2 years. 

Are you in a position where you need number to go up, now? Reassess. It’s cliche, but we are in survival mode. Do not expect to earn any coin from trading or investing.

You may need to do some personal accounting and apply a budget. There’s plenty of resources out there on this manner, and I won’t pretend to know the best ways to budget, but I do know from my own curiosities that there are plenty of unorthodox ways to make your dollar go further: 

• Dave and Busters offers consistent, unlimited entrees below $3 each if you know which games to play (you can exchange tickets for meal vouchers)

• Pound-for-pound, startup meal kit subscriptions may bring you better nutrition for cheaper than grocery shopping. Especially so if you struggle to consistently consume 100% of your grocery bill. I like Tovala.

• Anyone can sign up for gig apps like UberEats and DoorDash. If you are already traveling from A-B, see if you can find a delivery in the same pickup and dropoff vicinity as your existing trip. If you have the hang of it you can convert 10 minutes to $10 pretty reliably.

• Playing the algorithm across different apps (like Postmates and Starbucks Rewards) can give you pretty consistent discounts if you optimize discount-getting.

Whatever it is you need to do to protect your base needs, do it. You no longer trust crypto for anything. If you need to sell some assets to protect a bit of runway, do it.

This is a marathon were everyone wins if they make it to the finish line. Do everything you can so as to not tap out early.

Assess your Convictions

Why are you here? Why crypto, of all things? Seriously. Why is crypto the best place for you to make it?

The people who continue grinding throughout the bear market and make it out on top are the ones with 100% conviction that there is no more impactful use of their time than crypto.

There are a lot of opportunities to get rich quick. Some of my friends swear by sports betting. Creator economy has made many from all different backgrounds into kings. If you just want to gamble, Texas Holdem is great fun.

Crypto in this climate requires you to have an unwavering belief that there is no future where this all goes to zero, that crypto is working towards infrastructure to permanently improve certain aspects of society.

First of all, you need to understand, at least to some extent, what the fuck crypto even is or does. Then, you need to hone in on certain niches that you can navigate around like the back of your hand. For me, I’m into DeFi, DAO, and NFTs. I don’t involve myself with anything else, but I know with 100% certainty that DeFi, DAO, and NFT has already proven to be capable of redefining certain standards in the way humans interact with one another.

You can see a lot of my convictions laid out much more eloquently in an article written last year: Blockchain, Environmentalism, and a more Equitable Future.

I’m not here to tell you that you need to believe in crypto. That’s something you need to decide for yourself. There is plenty of material for and against crypto. Decide for yourself if you are a tourist that comes around when things are exciting or you’re in it for the long run. Both are fine, but this guide only applies to the latter.

“That’s cool and all but where do I actually go to learn.” This question comes up a lot, and it’s a valid one. Crypto education is nonexistent. I find that going project-by-project is a much better way to crowdsource an education rather than trying to find overarching blockchain education materials.

I would recommend working through the following concepts:

1. How does the Bitcoin blockchain work?

2. Contrast Bitcoin with Ethereum. What are the differences? Which usecases are better for each network? How do their respective cultures and philosophies support those usecases?

3. ERC20 vs ERC721 (tokens and NFTs). How do they work and what are the differences?

4. Work your way through top usecases on Ethereum. DefiLlama is a good leaderboard to scroll through. Each protocol will have documentation and a community with members eager to help you learn. Don’t hesitate to join these communities and ask questions:
   a. Uniswap (AMM). What is an AMM? How does it work? What does the UNI token do?
   b. Curve (AMM). What are the similarities and differences between Uniswap and Curve. How does Curve governance compare to Uniswap?
   c. Convex (voting aggregator). Convex is a platform that exists as a wrapper on top of Curve to coordinate governance activities across users. Why does it exist?
   d. Compound, Aave, Euler (lending): Why is a p2p lending market valuable? Who uses them? Since loans have to be overcollateralized, what’s the market fit? Does it correspond to real world usecases? And like above, how do each of those protocols and their tokens compare and contrast to one another.
   e. Maker, Abracadabra (Collateralized Debt Positions: Overcollateralized stablecoins): What is the purpose of CDPs? Who is using these protocols versus other alternatives (like just minting USDC). How does the token govern each of these. How do their incentive and revenue models differ?

5. At this point, you are better off than 99.9% of folks who consider themselves “interested” in crypto. Even major accounts don’t understand how some of these pillar usecases operate. From here, you can dig deeper into some of these concepts that intrigue you. If you like AMMs, compare Uni V2 to Uni V3. Check out Balancer and Bancor (RIP). Dig Deeper and hit SushiSwap and RadioShack. There are similarly more exotic lending platforms and more intriguing stablecoin mechanisms you can check out.

6. Perhaps none of the above intrigues you. Doesn’t matter, you have a good foundation to go learn anything. Take a similar deep-dive into NFTs, network layer technology, DAO structure, data & oracles, whatever. Just understand how the top 2–3 players in the space operate and their similarities and differences. This is a great foundation to check out smaller projects as they come along, you can have a grounded understanding of where they are trying to tap in to the niche and the availability to do so.

Remember, this is not a speed run. The stuff above will take any normal person weeks, if not months. You may get through some of this stuff and decide it’s not for you. You may get through the end and decide it’s not for you. That’s alright. You’ve put in enough energy at this point to understand if your conviction is there or not. It’s okay to educate yourself and decide to walk away — no shame in that.

Situate Yourself and Set Goals

What is your end game? Like, if things go as well as they can and two years from now you have amassed fuck you wealth, what does it look like? Do you even want that? 

It’s hard to stay grounded in a bull run. Set your expectations and goals in the bear market and don’t deviate. You can continue to gamble with house money as much as you like but make sure you take enough out to protect some of the more realistic goals.

The strategy below outlines how you can invest your time in the space. We all have time. There is no need to get caught up in the notion that the next bull run will be the “last one to end them all”. It doesn’t matter and that’s dangerous thinking.

Everyone’s goals are going to look different here, and so too will their benchmarks to get there. Last bull run, my magic number was a million dollars. I hit it in the beginning of 2021 and realized that things didn’t magically change — it was quite a disappointing wake up call. The money was there, and so what? I didn’t have any concrete notions for what I wanted to do with the money (and primarily just have kept everything in crypto).

What works for me now in the bear market is to strive for benchmark crypto holdings. For example, ETH validators require 32 ETH. Striving for multiples of 32 ETH is a pretty good way to ground myself. You could do the same with AVAX (2,000 tokens there). You can strive for some manipulation of 21 BTC (ie 2.1 BTC). You can shoot for 7,777 LINK and any combination of each of these.

Regardless of what happens, my plan right now is to keep stacking multiples of 32 ETH. My low benchmark is 96 ETH. I think in the bull market, yield on that 96 ETH will be enough to take care of my expenses.

In the bull market, we can shoot to take out benchmark dollars. In bear, let’s hit benchmark crypto holdings.

Exist in the Space

If you get anything out of this entire article, get the following.

Once all the tourists leave and the grifters get outed, the space gets real quiet. Engagement dries up. Communities go silent. This is your time to make friends.

From the above, you are going to find projects and communities that resonate with what matters to you in the space. Show up and hang out. That’s literally the best thing you can do. Just be present. 

Make sure you have your social media set up (Twitter at the very least). Be active in communities. Chat. Discuss ideas. Find people you get along with and follow them on twitter. Follow the project team as well (the entire team, not just the founders). Don’t focus on ratios and followbacks, all you need to do is curate your network.

Keeping looking for the projects and communities you like the best. Never stop researching. Once you find the ones you really vibe with, take your activity to the next level. Make memes. Compile write ups. Post about the project on your social media. Don’t expect anything in return. Just do it.

Maybe not immediately, but you will find communities that really appreciate your engagement. Do you have other skills you can offer? Where do they need help? Fill up your resume with “web3 gigs”.

Perhaps you have a widely applicable skill that many projects can take advantage of. For me, it was writing. Tech writing in particular allowed me to continue to grow my work and responsibilities. 

If you don’t have a strong skill to build around, this is your time to learn. I was in college last bear market and shifted my course load to accommodate a Computer Science degree.

If a more structured approach isn’t for you, crypto is uniquely great for hands on learners. Whether you’d like to get into coding, graphic design, community building, or otherwise, these communities you entrench yourself in will give you the opportunity to try and learn alongside them.

Eventually, you can start to see some decent monetization for your skills. I recommend using some quasi “labor investing” strategy where you get paid in project tokens you are bullish on in exchange for work done. It’s typically easier to get work this way, too, since they don’t have to pay out real dollars.

Strike!

If you’ve followed the above, you’ve totally entrenched yourself in the space, which did all of the following:

• Solidified your convictions in and knowledge of crypto.

• Curated a strong network of other ambitious individuals just like you.

• Built your web3 portfolio and earned more intimate relationships with projects and builders.

• Amassed a starter portfolio along the way.

This is your best possible foundation for the next bull run. The time to make risk-adjusted money is early on in the cycle, not late. While the charlatans are flat-footed and the tourists are still wary, you are poised to strike on opportunities as they present themselves. 

Most of 2020 was categorized by (actually) free money for people who knew what they were doing. Double your money through food farms if you can deposit through the smart contract before the website starts working. Farm ponzis before others understood the game theory. Buy literally any NFT or tokenized NFT platform. 

Crypto is like a massive casino with the caveat that many of the games have hidden tricks (tricks 10x more effective than card counting). Learn the tricks so you don’t have to gamble.

Later on in the bull run, when everyone is fat and happy, you can leverage your skills, network, experience, and track record to take on more meaningful and longstanding positions in the space or shift to longer time horizon investments (through private rounds or otherwise). 

But you only get to play the bull run on turbo easy mode if you grind throughout the bear market. This is the time that actually matters.