as the crypto winter thaws 🧊 here's how to benefit
So it looks to me like the crypto winter may be thawing.
As I talk a little about in the TikTok above, a telltale sign seemed to be the market's reaction to FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried's conviction on all 7 counts of fraud brought against him. Which is to say, there really wasn't any.
This told me that a negative outcome (for SBF certainly - and I can't seem to help the schadenfreude kicking in for me here, because guys that lie like that have gotten so much more venture capital support than I will ever see #misogyny - but also in the sense that a guilty verdict was a presumed negative outcome for the crypto sector at large) was already “priced in” - namely, cryptocurrency traders expected this result, and had therefore made trading decisions in advance to align with it.
And then a few days later, the market started to rebound. Fancy/evil(?) hedge fund Blackrock filed for an Ethereum ETF, or Exchange Traded Fund - essentially a stock market version of Ether. While I find cryptocurrency participation from old school traditional finance, or TradFi, to be dubious at best (because at root I want them to not exist), a “legitimizing” act like this, which makes a form of cryptocurrency more accessible to the mainstream, is a virtually surefire signal that we're going to see an uptick in price.
And so we did…and it seems to be holding, establishing a new price floor.
Since I started trading cryptocurrency in 2013, a version of what we're seeing now has happened every cycle. In my assessment, the cycle typically goes down kinda like this:
Some catalyst ignites the market. An invariable stimulant historically has been the Bitcoin halvening - and the next one is expected circa April of 2024. In 2017, a cycle and say, ¾s ago, ICOs, or Initial Coin Offerings - new projects built on top of the Ethereum cryptonetwork, because that was relatively easy to do by design - were a trigger. This last cycle, which kicked off with the halvening of 2020, NFTs (non-fungible tokens, cynically thought of as jpegs on the blockchain, but sometimes truly amazing, original art) played a big part.
Market momentum builds. Before long we hit a fever pitch. Many of the people who got involved when the market was low get rich.
New projects of questionable utility appear, trying to take advantage of the moment (see SafeMoon and its strain). A lot of new people sign up for centralized cryptocurrency exchanges like FTX, not realizing that they're structured like banks - they retain custody of our money - except that unlike banks, they're uninsured. So they can fail…and take our money with them. (Important note: self-custody wallets on good quality decentralized finance (DeFI) platforms prevent even the possibility of this. I personally mostly use the Metamask self-custody wallet on DeFi platform Uniswap.)
A large project of not-great-quality falters and can't recover. This last cycle, Terra/LUNA, a poorly-designed ecosystem with an arrogant (male) founder, was the initial failure point. The market lurches, but doesn't collapse.
A big centralized exchange fails. There are fraud accusations, founder convictions, and sometimes jail time (sounds familiar, right?). In 2014, this was Mt. Gox (weird fact: Mt. Gox is an acronym for “Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange" because the founder was way into that).
The market dumps. People in the mainstream who are a little familiar with cryptocurrency become convinced the entire thing is a gross scam (note: this links to an actual Krugman 2013 NYT piece entitled Bitcoin is Evil. I kind of want to link to the 1998 Krugman piece in which he claimed that, by 2005, the impact of the internet would be like that of fax machines. I guess I'll refrain, but wow do I wish the NYT was not generally in decline and was still overall smart and good.) This widespread perception is particularly hard for a social good project like Seeds - and something I'm trying to understand how to better navigate next time. I'm thinking the ideal solution would be that society - and Seeds! - evolve enough that it widely connects, and SEEDS become a driver of a future cryptocurrency bull cycle.
Though this anecdote is a little out of chronology for the cycle assessment I'm making here, it's worth noting that in 2013, just before a new cycle took off that fall, a form of this widespread crypto hatred manifested as the Feds shut down Silk Road, the ebay for every illegal activity known to man. Because people paid for things on this platform with Bitcoin, anonymously, Bitcoin itself was perceived to be shady af, instead of as a tool that could be used for bad or good. Bitcoin dropped to about $90 a coin at this time. That was when I started buying, as those negative actors were being cleared out by literal federal agents…and I think that moment in time may be analogous in energetic makeup to where we are today.
The point is that we may be seeing light on the horizon. For the nice, generous people especially, please hear this now. Don't wait until we're seeing new all-time highs before you get involved.
Heading into the New Year, Seeds has set a goal to reach $10000 in recurring gifts per month. When you give, you'll receive up to 125% of your gift amount in SEEDS cryptocurrency in thanks. You get the cryptocurrency while simultaneously helping someone in need.
While past performance doesn't guarantee future results disclaimers etc., SEEDS went up over 100x the last cycle, with an all-time high of about $0.20. And so again with requisite disclaimers (it's so weird to have to be like 'this isn't financial advice' when working to raise funds to help those in need, but this is because late-stage capitalism has so totally compartmentalized the idea of helping others while simultaneously building abundance oneself) it stands to reason that we'll revisit that price level (and possibly much more) with the next cycle surge.
Want to help us hit the $10000 goal, while empowering yourself to build abundance through giving at the same time? There are weekly, monthly, and annual gift options available. Your generosity is deeply appreciated. 💗
To greater abundance, for everyone!
-Rachel