@hivebuzz is telling me that I have 8 years on the Hive chain. That's a lot. During these 8 years (well, it's technically 9 years, since I'm here before @hivebuzz) I witnessed many things in the crypto world, including a couple of "crypto winters".
In case you didn't notice, we're just on the verge of another one.
But what is a crypto winter, anyway? And what's actually happening during these times?
All in all there are 3 main things that are becoming prevalent:
- development slowing down
- slow price decline across the board (a.k.a. bear market)
- accumulation of the filtered winners
Let's take them one at a time.
Development Slowing Down
The crypto cycles are mainly following Bitcoin halving, which is happening roughly every 3 years. The miner reward for winning a block is cut in half, diminishing the supply and creating an initial push, known as a "bull market". After hitting a new ATH, things start to cool down.
This cycle, Bitcoin went as high as $115,000, which is absolutely mind blowing for an asset that didn't exist 15 years ago. Now it's hovering around $80k, slowly prepping for the next leg up. Which will come, eventually, but nobody really knows when.
And we are now on the verge of a new crypto winter. Not too much innovation happening these days. No "DeFi summer" to save the day. Memecoin fatigue setting in. Little, if any, innovation going on.
For the next few months, it may look like nothing happens. Probably because nothing will happen.
Slow Price Decline
As the enthusiasm is fading off, and with no leading narrative, people will lose appetite for buying - prices will stagnate, then slowly go down.
Add to this specific cycle the current political and economical context, broadly shaped by tariffs, and you will get the picture.
There might a few outliers, that will thrive for a while, but generally speaking, during a crypto winter the asset prices will just slowly drag down, pushing some tokens beyond oblivion.
Accumulation
That's the stage that is mostly ignored, as it is happening beyond the first two. Since sentiment is so gloomy, there's almost no attention to this, but make no mistake, this is when wealth is built, during bear cycles / crypto winters.
While the overwhelming majority of the retail is looking somewhere else, a handful of people with skill, conviction and discipline is slowly accumulating the next wave winners.
That's the caveat, though: it's relatively difficult to know which are the next wave "winners". Some of the stars will keep shining, but many will be forgotten.
But I've seen this playing every cycle: a few survivors will come out on the other side with very strong fundamentals.
The winter is coming, that's true. But no winter will last forever.