Flashbacks to 2018

In classic fashion, right when I talk about the alt market looking strong and LTC outperforming, we get a dip yesterday that mimicked the crypto winter of 2018/2019. I've said this many times and I get the feeling I might say it many times more: 2023 very well may be a very good year for Bitcoin, but the rest of the market may bleed into it just like we saw yesterday. Bitcoin dominance can easily ascend to 50% or higher.

Take pause whenever you see bitcoin drop 3% and many of the alts are dropping 10% or more. The hit to Hive has been pretty brutal, but Hive seems to have lost a bit of liquidity lately so it can still bounce back just as easily. However, that doesn't help if you need to sell today. These are currencies that people depend on, after all.

I was thinking Litecoin was doing pretty good and should be closer to $60. Lo and behold, Litecoin dipped back down near $60 and bitcoin is still at the same level it was a few weeks back. These things happen. BTC stronk.

If 2023 does end up being the Year of the Maximalist this will be demoralizing for alts, but also a golden opportunity to stack them for anyone holding BTC. That's exactly how I got the majority of my Hive stack back 2020/2021 buying Hive at 400 sats. Today we are still over 1700 sats per Hive. Hopefully if that ratio dips lower it's because Bitcoin is making gains and not because the market is crashing further.

Many of us here on this network are already grizzled beyond belief after surviving the previous crypto winter. These moments of morale in the gutter are the best time to accumulate, as most users are going to tap out and capitulate at the bottom as always. Of course, we never really know where the bottom is, so the only valid strategy is to DCA over the entire perceived bear market.

It's funny how we can all distinguish when we are in a bear market and when we aren't in one. And yet, very rarely do we actually DCA appropriately. When did the current bear market start? For me it was when Bitcoin dropped below the doubling curve at $30k during all the UST drama. For others it started a bit earlier than that, but not by much. Many where expecting that moment to simply be a dip with a strong recovery later. Never happened. Too bad so sad. It is what it is.

Binance FUD

All the distress over Binance finally got the best of me, and I have moved all my money off the Mandala exchange... which is basically just a rebrand of Binance that circumvents regulators with hard IP blocks to every country that it is not allowed. Easily accessible through VPN to Sweden, Switzerland, Mexico, or anywhere else that hasn't banned non-KYC exchanges.

I was perhaps playing with fire still having a few thousand dollars on exchanges. Yesterday I was majorly sweating it because withdrawal emails were completely broken and overloaded. By the time I ever got a 2FA email the code was expired. I woke up early today to try again and it worked... crisis averted. Losing a few thousand dollars at a time like this would be pretty demoralizing, especially considering I'd have no one to blame but myself. Of course if Binance goes under I perhaps have even bigger problems to worry about even if I have nothing on the exchange... just as it was with the UST and FTX collapse: The entire market feels it.

HBD Savings

For the first time ever in my 5 year history of this blockchain, I have just now, minutes ago, deposited HBD into my savings account. Feels nice. Holding HBD in savings is an epic way to support this network and keep the price of the token propped up while taking very little risk to oneself.

With 20% yield still on the table, it's a deal I feel foolish for passing up during the bull market. I could have easily put $200k into the HBD savings account at one point. 20% interest on that is over $3000 a month. And that doesn't even count compounded interest. Yikes. The thought of not taking that obviously amazing deal and opting for pure greed is cringeworthy on every metric. I'd like to say I won't make the same mistakes during the next bull market, but no promises.

On financial life support

Luckily this is a position that I am very accustomed to. I'm quite the minimalist at heart, and can get by quite easily spending less than $1000 a month total. I've capitulated enough to pay bills for... let me add up the numbers here... at least six months. I can tack on another 4 months to that for ten months total if I'm willing to max out credit cards. I probably won't do that as I'm rather liking my newfound non-dismal credit score. Back into the low 700s right where I've always been before I blew up my reputation with ze banks.

I'm still fairly convinced that we are at or near the bottom. At least I'm fairly convinced that Bitcoin is at or near the bottom. 6-10 months of runway at this juncture should be more than enough time for the markets to recover. Unfortunately, Alts have yet to prove that they can stem the bleeding into Bitcoin during the second year of a potential crypto winter. If history rhymes, we'll get a nice bounce in the summer and perhaps I'll be able to take a few more gains off the table to buy any potential dips that follow. Although to be fair my trading plans very rarely work out, so there is that.

Conclusion

Yesterday wasn't the biggest dip, but it was a brutal one because it gave me flashbacks to the bad times of the 2019 crypto winter. Luckily this time around I have A LOT more respect for Bitcoin and what it can accomplish in an environment like this one. I will not make that mistake ever again: underestimating Bitcoin is for newbies. Bitcoin is the most safe asset in the space by exponential margins. Considering crypto is the most risk-on gamble there is, Bitcoin can not be ignored if we are being responsible adults while avoiding degen gambler's syndrome.

In all likelihood Binance will be just fine and BNB will probably make an epic recovery. BNB is currently very oversold right now because of all the FUD, but I know it to be a token that always outperforms, regardless of how centralized it is.

It feels good to finally have runway set up and to no longer be "living from paycheck to paycheck" as it were. Selling the bottom is not fun, and now I won't have to for almost a year if I so choose. This is the kind of positioning I should have set up over a year ago. Live and learn.

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