IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME
In the world of cryptocurrency, emotions can often run higher than prices. One moment, you're euphoric watching your favourite ponzi skyrocket, and the next, you're in the depths of despair from the greed of not making more. This emotional rollercoaster is particularly evident when witnessing others making gains on things you almost bought, or once had and let go too soon. There is a terrible cocktail that is made from the greed of missing out combined with the guilt of not simply being happy for what you have, made even more potent by the jealousy of seeing your friends win.
Since the collapse of FTX, Solana has felt like a small community of believers and I like to think many of us got closer to each other as a result. Throughout the bear market, the opportunities were few and far between, even in 2023 where we’ve had a (mostly) sustained uptrend, it didn’t really feel like a bull market. That all changed in the beginning of November. Led by both SOL and BONK, we’ve seen noticeable signs of market craziness in the forms of multi-thousand % gains and NFT all time highs, all combined with yearly coin highs.
For the Solana community members, this run felt a bit different because after so much pain, we were finally surrounded by our own people thriving. There is a long list of benefits that come with market conditions improving, but our brains tend to focus on the key negative; being surrounded by people thriving more than us.
Our monkey brains were only ever meant to reward us for finding food and completing the tasks required for our own survival, the dopamine of live charts and infinite scrolling feeds are simply too much for most of us to handle without going insane. If you’ve been feeling the effects of the market recently, here’s a few thoughts and thought experiments that might help.
The Risk Tolerance Dilemma
One of the harsh realities of crypto is that the required risk tolerance to make significant profits is also the same risk tolerance required to lose it all. High-risk, high-reward is the mantra, but the flip side is high-risk, high-stress and no reward. When seeing others on Twitter post about massive gains, it's crucial to understand a few things.
Their journey is often filled with sleepless nights, mental health depreciation and a constant sense of uncertainty. If you’ve ever had an open leverage trade during a family gathering, you’ll know what I’m referring to. The sacrifices that need to be made for many of these trades to be successful are usually not something that is even possible for you personally, so why imagine the ‘what if’ when there simply is no if?
The money that they have made comes from having an extremely irresponsible risk tolerance, a risk tolerance seen in many as the exact reason for their demise. Being full-time in crypto for a few years now, I’ve seen many people make it, only to later lose it all; and trust me when I say all, I mean all. You are simply never too rich to give it all back, 3AC being the most obvious of many, many examples. I once knew a high-school kid who round tripped more wealth than he is likely to make in the next four decades of his life because he simply couldn’t stop. It is much harder to be that far down the risk curve and pivot to being responsible at the right moment than it is to simply stay within the parameters of the risk you can handle from the beginning. I personally can barely stomach holding something up more than 300%, so the idea of getting upset at thinking ‘what if’ to something that has gone up 100x to me is insanity. In fact, I often like to remind myself of how stupid I would think myself to be 500% up and not have sold yet trying to chase the 100x. This is not for everyone, but this is how I navigate the market.
Social media is designed to be a highlight real of everyone’s best self. On Instagram we might think of our lives as boring while we see friends travelling, getting married or partying, we must remind ourselves that our feed is a compilation of people’s best days, framed in the best light possible. Just as on Instagram, we should not be comparing our average day with the once-in-a-lifetime trades of others. Perhaps we have even had better trades in our own past, but they have been long forgotten. Comparing our everyday to someone’s best day—is not a good idea.
I don’t mean to get too cute, but there’s a beautiful line from Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet XVII.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
When we think of our journey, we must appreciate ourselves not only for what we have done, but the many things we are capable of in the future and the pain we’ve dealt with along the way. The light of a future win is hidden just underneath the surface of a current opportunity missed. When we think of the journey of others, we must not think of them just clicking two buttons and making a lot of money, we must think of the many hardships they must have faced in the past, or the many they will face in the future as a result.
To be constantly surrounded by opportunity is a blessing, but it is also a curse to those who can’t handle it. The best investment you can make is likely not in the form of a token or NFT, it’s learning how to handle the success of those around you. The only way for you to truly make it is to keep what you made, and to do you must be able to manage greed. Once you understand how to manage greed, you can begin to appreciate just how incredible it is to be constantly nearby success. The sun is always shining, but sometimes there’s clouds in the way.
Jords