Pushpendra Singh What 2018 taught me
I started in a falling market. That timing looked like bad luck for two years, and turned out to be the most useful thing that happened to me.
I came into crypto in 2018, which is to say I arrived just as everything started going down. For about two years that felt like the worst possible timing.
It was not. Starting in a falling market taught me things a rising one cannot.
Nobody was selling anything
In a bull market every conversation has something attached to it. A group to join, a token to buy, a course.
In 2018 all of that went quiet. The people still around were building or learning, because there was no one left to sell to. That is the only period where you can read about this industry without someone trying to move you.
If you are new and the market is dull right now, understand what you have. It is the cheapest education available, and it closes the moment prices move.
I learned what the projects actually did
When prices fall for a year, the story stops working. All that is left is whether the thing does anything.
Most did not. Projects that seemed obviously important in 2017 simply stopped, and nobody noticed because nobody was looking.
That is where I got the habit of asking who runs it, what it does, and who pays for it to exist. Not from a book. From watching a lot of things fail quietly.
I found out what I was actually like
You do not know your risk tolerance in a rising market. Everyone is calm when everything works.
You find out when the number has been red for eight months and you are still putting money in. That is the real test, and most people fail it without noticing because they simply stop opening the app.
I learned that my size was wrong before I learned anything about the market.
The boredom is the filter
People imagine they would quit during a crash. Almost nobody does. A crash is dramatic, and drama keeps you engaged.
What makes people leave is the long flat stretch afterwards, when nothing happens for months. That is when it starts to feel silly, and that is when most people go.
Everyone who was still there in 2020 had sat through that. Not because they were smarter. Because they were still there.
What I would tell someone starting in a down market
You are early, and it will not feel like it.
Buy small amounts regularly. Read while it is quiet. Keep records from the first trade, because reconstructing them later is miserable. And size it so that another year of nothing does not make you quit.
The people who do well in the next rise are almost always the ones who were still paying attention when there was nothing to pay attention to.