The greatest trick a market crash employs on an investor’s mind is it constantly allures you to separate your assets. The market literally trying to steal your tokens out of your hands, and these days, ironically you would voluntarily give them to them.

It is easy to do so. With the emotions at their peak, plus a fear index that could reach a minus level had it allowed to, without you realizing you could say goodbye to your assets and own nothing.

On the other hand, the greatest win you get from a bearish crypto market is to come out of it with more tokens, not less. However, many people would exactly be in the other situation, having fewer assets than when before the cascade started.

How can we not let the bear wins? Moreover, how to keep holding on to your assets without them getting transferred to the stronger hands than you, forcibly or voluntarily?

Think in terms of the amount of tokens, instead of their value in fiat

On a down market, it is easy to get fixated on the fiat value of your portfolio. But let me offer an interesting perspective: Focus on the amount of token you have. Such as 1000 ETH, 1 BTC .

During the peak of the bull market, it is hard for many people to own that much amount of tokens. Now, heavy discounts are everywhere. This is the opportunity to stack more, and a horrible time to have less.

If you even did due diligence on a project and calculated the fair valuation of the token, you must come to a target price. Think in terms of that target price, and realize that you actually don’t have much. This is why I feel that my accumulation game is not as aggressive as I thought.

Think of all the whales that could own your token if you sold

If there’s a seller, there’s also a buyer.

Think of your counterparty when you sell your tokens. Who is buying it?

On a crash, when people sell at a loss and afterward, being averse to even being invested again, nobody seems to buy anything. But they did, else the trading halt wouldn’t it?

The one buying in this situation is someone with seemingly infinite capital to deploy. It means VCs, whales, institutional investors, and even crypto funds.

If you are in crypto, you must be familiar with whales and VCs often getting unfair advantages such as holding a large number of tokens and being in control of a large supply of a token. This is one of the reasons. When everybody sells, they take your token.

Currently, public investment (buying on the market) is much cheaper to do than a private round on a private raising. To explain this, A VC would buy $1 per token on a private round but the token price on exchange right now is $0.25. Not to mention, unlike private round, buying tokens don’t require them to vest/lock their investment for several years.

The bear period is when whales are made.

You could be the whale, this market provides an opportunity, why let those already rich VCs get richer?

Not trying to time the market

I get it that people are selling because they want to wait and see what will happen with the market in the short term period. Some doing it because they hope to buy back later, hopefully, lower.

The truth is, nobody knows anything about the future. Bitcoin could go back to $60,000 next month for all I care. If you are a regular reader of my articles, you probably get sick of me preaching this: Don’t try to time the market.

But really, don’t. It is something you can’t control therefore you shouldn’t focus on it. Focus on something you can: Capital management, emotions management, and simply DCA-ing and fatten your portfolio. It’s an old investing trick endorsed that works well.

Avoid getting liquidated

The other biggest reason why people lose their tokens, besides selling, is because they lose them through liquidation.

Leverage is a luxury of an uptrend market, that’s when you can go offensive as much as you can. But on a very volatile bear period, a sudden wick on the candle can wipe your assets in an instant. You will not only lose your tokens but your capital altogether.

This is the kind of leverage people do, on-chain and off-chain.

Minimize your exposure to leverage or don’t do it at all. Hold onto your tokens for dear life in the wallet. It’s better to be defensive and just focus on surviving.

Not selling to preserve capital

I’ve always don’t like the idea of selling to preserve capital. I get it that some people don’t have other wealth besides what they’re investing in. Selling and rebalancing make sense in some situations, but for most people who aren’t pro — plus portfolio is not in the tens of millions or billions — it is not a good idea.

From my experienced, you gonna spend all your stash before the real bottom occurs. You might also sell too late, on the bottom, very cheap so you might as well just lose your money — and now, tokens too. On the other hand, you might get horribly sidelined, being forced to buy back later at a higher price. Not to mention, all these activities require a lot of mental work and mentally taxing execution that involves trying to time the market, which I beg you to not do (see the previous point.)

There are simply other alternatives.

Instead, get some money

I know this is probably a privileged stance. But if you have recurring income (i.e. salary, business profit), it’s better to depend on that as your recurring dry power to continue accumulating. Even better, try to increase your income somehow. Get a raise, work harder on your business, or get a side hustle.

It’s easier for your mind too when you focus on an infinite stream of income instead of dealing with a finite amount of capital. Abundance (growth mindset) vs scarcity mindset.

If you are like me, who’s now in crypto full-time, it’s a good time to take a look into crypto and web 3 jobs. They are plenty of opportunity in this industry that doesn’t require you to trade or focus on the price. CryptoJobList is a good start. I might write a dedicated article about crypto careers in the future.

Hedging

Hedging is better capital management than selling. It makes sure you still earn some profit no matter which direction the market is going. Even better, you can use the profit to accumulate your favorite tokens.

One of my favorite way to hedge is using the short derivatives exchanges offer, such as the following. You can buy it spot, therefore, no risk of liquidation due to leverage. It is the simplest and the easiest to use for retails who aren’t savvy enough to use perps or futures.

What else to invest in, anyway?

Lastly, this is another reason to stay invested in crypto.

What else to invest in these days? If you look around, the macroeconomics situation looks somber in every area. Equities look bad, commodities are beaten too, the housing market is in a bubble, and keeping your wealth in fiat you get inflation to deal with.

We need to look beyond all this hopefully temporary economic turmoil of the world.

When the dust is settled, what do you think will recover the fastest next?

Traditional tech seems to be on the decline. Facebook is no longer a household name. Netflix struggles. Plenty of tech startups continues to be startup even after a decade. Unsustainable business model, always burning cash, and no profit. Not to mention on the innovation side, things are very oversaturated. FAANG employees are called “Ads optimizers” not without a reason.

Web2 is a tired industry. Meanwhile, there is a lot of room to grow in the crypto industry. Potentials are not explored yet. Possibilities abound. Problems that need to be solved. There are a lot of demands for talents, funding, and strong and reliable projects.

This is why I’m placing my bet here.