Opportunity Markets, not Bear Markets.

I recently read a story about “The Stallion” which emphasises how our labels of what’s “good” or what’s “bad” are very arbitrary and really just come down to mindset. I’ll let you read it below before carrying on:

And old farmer lives on his farm with his teenage son. He also has a beautiful stallion that he lovingly cares for. The farmer enters his stallion into the annual country fair competition. His stallion wins first prize. The farmer’s neighbors gather to congratulate him on this great win. He calmly says, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?” Puzzled by this reaction, the neighbors go away. The next week, some thieves who heard about the stallion’s increased value steal the horse. When the neighbors come to commiserate with the farmer, they find him again very calm and gathered. He says, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?” Several days later, the spirited stallion escapes from the thieves and finds his way back to the farm, bringing with him a few wild mares he has befriended along the way. To his neighbors’ excited rounds of congratulations, the old farmer once again says, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?” A few weeks later, the farmer’s son is thrown off one of these new mares as he is trying to break it in, and his leg is fractured. As the neighbors gather to commiserate with the old farmer, he once again reminds them, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?” The following week, the imperial army marches through the village, conscripting all eligible young men for the war that has just broken out. The old farmer’s son is spared due to his fractured leg. The neighbors no longer bother to come to the old farmer to congratulate him. By now they know what his response will be: “Who knows what is good and what is bad?”

There’s many analogies you can draw to this in your personal life but I think it’s useful to think about this in the context of the current macro and crypto bear market we’re experiencing.

It’s super easy to be discouraged about what’s happening around with the incessant scams and rugs being uncovered, but you’ve got to zoom our and look at the bigger picture. Is what’s really happening “bad” and what’s happened really “good”?

There’s opportunities everywhere:

• Things to build

• Tokens to invest in

• Friends to make

Crypto is an interesting game, one where survival and slow growth triumphs everything else. Right now there’s fertile ground you can use to your advantage to build a solid stronghold, it won’t be here forever. When the world comes to realise the need for the technology we’re building, there’s going to be more even more capital and talent allocated to taking every opportunity out there. Right now spirits are low and risk-on capital is limited. Make sure you’re doing the best you can with this time.

As a personal anecdote, in the last bear market people were skeptical of whether DeFi would ever work. Like as in whether people would actually deposit large sums of money into autonomous smart contracts written by developers. If you did believe that future did exist, you could purchase any amazing DeFi token for a 7 figure fully diluted valuation. Many of those tokens still maintain 8 or 9 figures in a bear market. A new wave of applications and networks are coming online as we speak. Showing conviction in the right things will be what makes you in the next cycle.

The bet you need to make now is whether you think on-chain blockspace will be used for anything more than gambling or if you think people will want to keep gambling. I think the answer is yes but if you don’t think so then you should probably pivot to AI now.

Keep the optimism up, the future is always brighter!