Finding growth in a bear market
Everyone in crypto can agree that this is probably the most intense bear market in the history of crypto. If you don’t know, a bear market is the type where everybody’s price chart is bleeding red. Much like the stock market but this one breaks every part of you because you were “bullish” on your choice coins and tokens. LMAO.
Since the $LUNA crash, it was expected that this will happen and rightly so, because with the price of bitcoin going down steadily, who knows, Satoshi may find oil and kick Shell out of business.
Now apart from the darkness that clouds bear markets I did find a few interesting things about trying times like this; people with enough money will buy, fund and bailout a lot of other companies. The criteria being that they are building something that actually works; the product’s principles are grounded in functionality and utility, and that the financier gets a bigger piece of the market’s pie—CZ and SBF are doing this easily.
It is also from bear markets that some innovative and exciting projects spring up. Take for example: Compound and AAVE finance are products from the 2017 bear market. They are both successful DeFi businesses today. Objectively speaking.
So what can businesses and teams playing in the space at this time do to grow, maintain relevance and drive up revenue in the long run? Let’s find out!
1. Segmentation - where to play
You may not like it, but you have to respect it. Finding a niche allows you to drill down, build solid recognition for product then use that clout to spread into new markets or ship new products. Crypto is big but also not big at the same time. There’s very few spaces to play in but an innumerable amount of players. Some of the most popular crypto market segments are exchanges, staking pools, lending, financing, trading, investment, gaming, NFTs, wallets, and yield protocols. Within these segments, there’s at least 10 in that space and the top players have some sort of interaction/integration with other segments.
Why? Because they niched down first. So don’t be that guy.
2. Competitive advantage - your playing cards
This is pretty easy to follow through since it is expected that considering you know where to play, in the midst of many others you will be asked “what makes you special? or what do you do differently?”. It’s what determines if you succeed or fail because differentiation is everything in crypto.
You should say it loudly and say it proudly, at all times with every chance you get. That’s your winning hand.
3. Finding strategy - how to play
Now you have your playing cards, how do you set them up in such a way that you win against the house or hit a jackpot? That’s where research comes in. My personal opinion is that while it is nice to study what worked, I recommend you study what didn’t. That’s a clearer path to knowing how to figure out what will work for you.
How to play is more about knowing the rules; abiding by them, using them in your favour and most importantly knowing when to break them!
4. Defining strategy - how to win
I support Arsenal football club and I think they’re the best thing since sliced bread. After Cristiano Ronaldo, of course. Arsenal knows how to play football and it shows, but we have never won the UEFA Champions League which is the standard test for success in European Football. We know how to play but we don’t know how to win.
Don’t be like Arsenal: ensure you find a strategy that aligns with the core of your business/product, and then over time build other strategies that are defined by it. This ultimately allows you to play, and win.
5. Execution - when and what to play
So at this point it is believed that you have found where to play, collected your playing cards, discovered how to play and defined how to win. That’s nice and good but now it’s time to act. It is time to take things from Google Docs to the real world because knowing what to do is just as important as knowing when to do it.
The key to this is being able to identify times of opportunity and setting up people, processes and systems to enable you take your business from where it is, to where it needs to be.
Finally, bear markets are necessary evils. While we shed tears and pray for the market to bounce back, let us also get to work and build sustainable projects & businesses that will stand the test of another bear market.
WAGMI.