What To Do In This Crypto Winter
How did you feel when you saw NEAR’s value drop? From 20 USD early this year to less than 4 dollars, did you have some mixed emotions? You may have had high hopes about what you were going to accomplish when NEAR was at an all-time high. You may have thought about your retirement, your next vacation, or even just your next big purchase, whether that’s a new car or the down payment for your real property.
Not For Traders
Hopes were high… until the crypto winter hit. Now, what are you going to do? Should you hold your crypto assets and wait for the market to bounce back? Or should you sell now to minimize your loss? Well, this is not financial advice. And this article is not trading advice either. This is because almost nobody knows what is going to happen next. Therefore, it’s not wise to speculate.
Build Instead
What we can do, however, is to build something valuable regardless of the market conditions. This is especially true if you are in the blockchain space itself. While the majority of people think about crypto in terms of trading and investment, we are going to talk about how to position yourself in the crypto field. True, trading and investment have their place; and we can be affected by the fluctuations of the market for better or for worse. Moreover, crypto assets are considered investment vehicles that can grow over time. But if you just base the quality of your life on the volatility of the market, you are in for a roller coaster ride with your emotions. If you are a professional trader and investor, this is not a problem at all. But if you are a professional trader, you may want to explore other means to benefit from blockchain.
Use Cases
What you can be assured of is that blockchain as a technology is here to stay. It has already been demonstrated that it could give birth to more use cases other than NFTs and FTs (Fungible Tokens). True, the prevailing applications revolve around Decentralized Finance and Non-Fungible Tokens. But as time goes by, we have yet to see where else blockchain is beneficial. There are fields in which blockchain offers a solution; these fields are as diverse as healthcare, real estate, shipping industry, government (bureaucratic efficiency), and Media.
Early Internet
In the meantime, while waiting to see how blockchain gives birth to other solutions, the technology is up-and-coming. We can compare blockchain with the early internet era. In the early days of the internet, people were skeptical about it. However, those who understood the value of the internet benefited so much that they became very wealthy. Mark Cuban was one of those. He started an internet radio company that was eventually acquired by Yahoo. Mr. Cuban became very wealthy as a result. Now, this is not to say that you are going to be a billionaire if you capitalize on the blockchain, although it could happen too. This is for you to understand blockchain’s significance so you can benefit from it, whether monetarily or otherwise.
Crypto Career
Develop your crypto career. Aside from trading, there are other ways to advance in the crypto space. One way is for you to find your niche. Within the crypto-verse, there are different subdomains you can choose to be in. There is DeFi, there is NFT. There are more technical aspects, such as becoming a developer, or founder. Then there is marketing. After you have figured out where to focus in the space, you can start figuring out which skill set you need for you to succeed. But you may find it hard to know where to start when it comes to which skills you need to develop.
Check Your Connections
The fact that you are reading this article implies that you are in the blockchain space deeper than most people who are just trading. You may already own NEAR or OCT or any other tokens within the NEAR ecosystem. You may already have connections with people who are NFT artists, blockchain developers, community managers, marketers, content creators, social media managers, chat moderators, and so on. If you are part of a chat community on Discord and Telegram, you may have already formed a relationship with some of the community members. This is a good start. Therefore, the best thing you can do is to copy what these people are doing.
Inclinations
Chances are, the type of people with whom you connect in the crypto space is a reflection of what kind of skills you have. If most of your contacts are developers, you may be inclined to do coding. If the majority of your friends are NFT artists, you may have a penchant for visual arts. It doesn’t mean you can draw, but you may need to develop your drawing skill. If you know what you are good at, you may want to capitalize on it. Do you enjoy writing? Perhaps you can join an editorial team in a crypto project. Do you have patience in graphic design? You may be part of the content department of a blockchain company. Are you good at handling people? Perhaps you can become a community manager.
Quantity is Quality
The next thing you can do is to widen your crypto network. Not only will you get updated with the goings on in the field deeply, but you can also form connections that can serve you well into the coming years or decades in the space. As Naval Ravikant said, you have to play long-term games with long-term people. Therefore, during this crypto winter when we are waiting for the next bull run, increase the quantity of your network. They say, your network is your net worth. And in networking, the quality is in the quantity. You can never have too much networking. And you can never have too many contacts. The more the better.
Lost and Founder
In the long run, once you have survived this crypto winter with some of the people you associate with, it can pay dividends in the future. You may forge a bond so strong that you and your connections may launch your projects and become part of the core team. This is because the longer you stay in the space, the more your knowledge grows. And the more your knowledge grows, the more insight you have. And the deeper your insight, the higher your discernment gets. You can discover some unserved market in the space that you can “exploit.” Who knows you could be featured as the hottest founder in the space.
Expertise
Even if you don’t become a founder or a member of the core team of a project, you can certainly sit on the board of advisors for the team to consult. Or you can become an ambassador representing your favorite project in your local area. You can help the people in your area to get onboard on the project of your choice. This is a win-win scenario. You are helping your people, you are promoting your favorite project, and you are helping the project gain adoption.
Start Today
Therefore, whether you have been with us for a while or you have just started your journey in space, there is a place for everyone. You just have to stay longer to discover opportunities that you may never have thought about before. This is an exciting time that we are living. You don’t want to miss the wave and regret it later on. You can start doing something today.
