Optimistic Bears - The Daily Gwei #502
Remaining optimistic in a bear market.
The 2022 bear market gets compared to the 2018 bear market quite often but I think this comparison isn’t really a good one. Yes, prices of most crypto-assets have gone down very fast and yes, most retail users have left our ecosystem - but no one is actually doubting the viability of platforms like Ethereum. This is a far cry from 2018 where most people thought Ethereum was dead and that the only real use-case of blockchain technology was Bitcoin (to be fair, some people still think this, but it’s not the consensus view anymore).
Let me give the first cyclers reading this a quick history lesson of what the last bear market felt like. By the end of 2018 pretty much everyone except the most diehard Ethereans were questioning what Ethereum was good for. ICOs had completely died off, it turned out that Proof of Stake wasn’t just around the corner, CryptoKitties turned out to indeed be a passing fad and there was barely anything to do on-chain (DeFi was but a glimmer). To top it all off, ETH had fallen 94% off its all time high against USD and a painful 90% off its all time high against BTC. There’s no sugar coating it - 2018 was a very tough year to be an Ethereum bull.
Fast forward to today and barely anyone in crypto is questioning Ethereum’s existence. The applications and use-cases are also so abundant that people have had to migrate to other chains because layer 1 Ethereum became so expensive to use. To top it off, this time Proof of Stake is actually around the corner with The Merge due to happen in just a few short months. And we have layer 2 scaling live and working with improvements coming every day. And we have a vibrant application ecosystem. And ETH actually accrues value from all of this activity. I could go on but I digress for now.
Finally, to Linda’s point in her tweet above, the sheer amount of optimism in the air is simply infectious. The only real doom and gloom I’ve seen is from people who are speculators or people who entered very late bull market (October/November 2021) as they probably lost money. The builders are more energized than ever and many of them are glad that they can now build without all the noise of a bull market. Out of the 2018/2019 bear we got DeFi so I’m very excited to see what awesome innovations come out of this current bear market!
The 2018 and 2019 bear market was absolutely brutal and compared to back then, the current bear market is a cake-walk. Though that’s just my own personal experience since I’ve been around the block a few times - if you’re a first cycler then it’s totally understandable to feel fear and even a sense of hopelessness at this time. My advice always remains the same: if you’re actually in it for the technology then close the charts and work on increasing your knowledge of the fundamentals/technology - this will pay many dividends in the future!
Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano
Enjoyed today’s piece? I send out a fresh one every week day - be sure to subscribe to receive it in your inbox!
Join the Daily Gwei Ecosystem
All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.