It’s a torrid time out there at the moment in the markets. At the time of writing in June 2022, it’s not just Bitcoin and shitcoin prices taking a massive tumble, but also investments across the board with stock markets tanking as shaft-flation is in full effect (among other things).
With this increase in downward pressure, those who delved in to “crypto” beyond Bitcoin will have seen their beloved token’s prices disintegrate in front of their eyes.
I’ve been through this with my shitcoin upbringing in 2018, seeing an 85% drawdown in Bitcoin which ultimately cleaned house of the garbage I had “invested in”, the altcoins suffered 100% losses and it was brutal.
At the time, I was naïve, thought I could play the game of catch-up and FOMOed in to alts that “had promise”, hoping I could catch “the next Bitcoin”.
From my personal experience though after all that, the lesson learned was that I should have stuck with Bitcoin and this thought process was nurtured in market conditions like these.
As one of my favourite Bitcoin memes goes from Michael Saylor – “there is no second best” – the Interstellar version is a must watch:
Pressure Makes Diamonds
Anyone who had a mouth was telling me to just sell when I was “down” 85% but at that point, there really was no point in selling my Bitcoin and the other project tokens I had were irredeemable anyway.
Ultimately, this lead me to the only option which was to just HODL what little I had left and ride it out, after all, it was at least on my own cold wallet.
Like the high pressures that are deep in the atmosphere of Neptune causes diamond rain, the pressure of experiencing a bear market in Bitcoin forges the so called “diamond hands”.
Those with these diamond hands will hodl through anything and those with weak hands will hand over their Bitcoin at a discount and run for the nearest exits.
Options During Market Capitulation
There are different options that you may think about taking depending on your own situation or mindset during the turbulence of a capitulation in the markets.
Unfortunately, many a normie who found themselves stumbling unassisted down the rabbit hole will leave the scene, dump everything, chalk it off as a bad experience and stay well away.
The next option is to just hold on to what you have, do nothing and wait for as long as it takes for things to recover.
However, one option that is very popular once your diamond hands are forged is to use these capitulation events to scoop up some cheap sats by setting buy orders or dollar cost average.
For those whose sole aim is to acquire as many sats as possible, the third option is one that they go for and it’s one that I’ve learned to do.
Taking Emotion Out The Game
I remember how it feels during a capitulation like this, seeing how the fiat price of your holdings goes through volatile swings and I would be lying if I said it still didn’t affect me now.
Although nowadays, it’s a different mental effect for me as these draw downs are an opportunity to acquire some cheap sats and instead of panic, it’s a case of FOMOing lol. Steady lads, deploying capital!
The trick is to take emotion out of the game though and the best way of doing that? Make a plan or a goal of what you want from this all.
What that looks like will be specific to you but buying Bitcoin automatically at a regular interval without you having to think is a good way to stop looking at the charts.
If it all gets too much though, seriously, take a step back, look after your health, family, go outside and stay offline for as long as it takes! This is not for everyone.
As those who had “multiple digital assets” in their portfolio or degen traders get rekt, there will be a percentage of them that will consolidate into Bitcoin, wondering why they bothered with anything else in the first place.
And that’s when new Bitcoin Maxis are minted.
3 Responses
It really was the crash of 2018 and Crypto Winter that turned me into a maximalist. Like many, I held a couple altcoins because “just in case” they would be the next bitcoin, I’d see bigger gains. It just made sense! Maybe whatever coin that was $1 now would be worth $20,000 in a few years. It was lots of podcasts and Medium articles that really changed my mind.
Lots of people say that there’s a one-way filter to maximalism, i.e. you never go back to believing in a “multicoin world”, but I’ve seen a few surprising takes on Twitter recently that have proven that to be wrong. Or perhaps these people were always closet pluralists, and are just revealing their true selves due to bear market stress. Personally, I still can’t see a world where blockchain and altcoins have much do with Bitcoin at all, but there are plenty of smart people who think so. I’m just a humble pleb, and don’t have any unique or compelling argument that hasn’t been stated before, but I guess we’ll see.
The class of 2017/18 are really coming into their own in this cycle and it’s great to see, the movement is growing
I get you, yeah there are people who are “maxi” but are still willing to grab that altcoin exit liquidity as they try to stack more sats and pull value back into the network. The temptation for short-term gains will always be there, and people who have time on their hands and don’t know how to monetise that time will go that trading or shitcoining route, while some just throw their morals away for sponsorship deals and paid promotions or coin allocations. A lot of shady things going on, never trust, only learn and verify what you can for yourself.
We too are humble plebs, we ask nothing of anyone, our site isn’t about sexy charts or telling you, you’ll get rich, just our experiences and people can take it for what it’s worth
Humble pleb here too and seems like a few that lived through the 2018 crash are also inclined to be Bitcoin maxis. We’ve all been down that very familiar road but it seems that you either decide to learn more from your mistakes and appreciate Bitcoin a lot more or you just run for the hills back to fiat land.
We don’t know how this is all going to pan out but we’ll keep sharing our experiences here and we’ll see where it leads, don’t believe everything you read on Twitter, not everyone is who they say they are and can turn on a whim if their sponsors tell them to!