Crypto is hyper cyclical.
You have short periods of mania, followed by long, slow, boring stretches where nothing ever happens.
In the mania phase, every waking moment is an opportunity. Memecoin launches, NFT mints, new projects emerging from stealth, angel deals to review, etc.
Everything is up only. People are euphoric. Your dumbest friends are contemplating buying a Porsche because a three-day-old coin that is vaguely associated with someone who made eye contact with Sam Altman in a restaurant four years ago is, for some reason, worth $1 billion dollars.
In the mania phase, glancing away from the screen even for a brief moment can be the difference between making it and making burgers for a living.
I know this feeling well. Being a Europoor, I was asleep when my friends shared the BOME presale details. I was asleep when Trump launched his memecoin. I was asleep when Ai16z did their Daos Fun raise.
I don’t think human brains are really built to wake up one day and watch their peers make reasonably sized house money overnight — and you missed out solely because you went to sleep at 3 a.m. instead of 3:44 a.m.
Operating in crypto during bull markets definitely takes its toll on you mentally.
I wasn’t shocked to find out that many of my internet friends have sought out therapy.
Even if you are in the top 1% of performers globally, the market, and Twitter in particular can always make you feel terrible.
There’s always someone who has made more than you. You always could have sold higher. You always could have got in earlier. Yes, every time you leave the house you will miss something, and every time you stay in, nothing will happen.
So you lock in more. You spend more time on Twitter. You stop going outside. You sleep less. You work out less. You drop all your other hobbies because nothing on earth can come close to the dopamine that a bull market can give you.
And just as you feel comfortable enough to size up or hold for longer, the market turns, and you beat yourself up for not doing the opposite.
The perfect recipe for addiction and mental torture.
And to be quite honest, that mental torture is a necessary evil if you’re good at this stuff.
Crypto, in bull markets, has been the best place on the planet to build wealth in insanely quick timeframes.
Many of my friends have completely changed their lives in a number of years by truly locking in and focusing, but a similar number of friends (including myself) have had their brains broken in the process.
The habits that allow you to win in a bull market end up destroying your life if they are not reined in once the mania has ended.
And that's kind of where I find myself now. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is check Twitter, then Discord chats, then Telegram. Before I go to bed, I do the same thing. When I go for a walk, I check. When I'm in the gym, I check. When I’m doing literally anything else, I find myself wanting to check. It’s hugely disruptive and limits my productivity massively.
And all the while, nothing ever happens. Because the time where it was worth it to check ended months ago.
And despite all the success I've experienced in crypto, oftentimes it doesn’t really feel that real. Because the success story is the internet me. The homeless dog character.
The real me tells everyone I'm a consultant and quickly changes the topic because I don’t really fancy getting kidnapped and robbed, or spending the next hour in the pub arguing with some uninformed lunatic about why crypto isn’t just for money laundering.
And now I’m writing all of this down. It sounds kind of insane. A huge first-world problem.
But it is a real problem for a lot of us.
And I've come to the conclusion that I’m acting because of an internet addiction, rather than first principles or strategic thinking, and I kind of want to fix things.
So I'm going to attempt to write more again. The whole point of having a pseudo-anon account is to allow me to post honestly, so I'm going to post honestly. If that makes me less money, or is embarrassing, then so be it.
I'm going to have phone free time slots, where I focus on being outside, and reading long form content and books.
I'm re-focusing on the gym, going for daily walks, and trying actively to be more present in the moment with friends and family.
I'm going to purposefully put myself in the position to do things that scare and challenge me - and go after opportunities that aren't solely focused on short term return on investment.
And for the first time in like five years since I stopped working normal human jobs, I started using the calendar app to schedule my day.
But anyway, if you’ve got a broken brain too and want to chat, you can always DM me and whilst I probably cannot help you, at least you’ll know that you’re not the only one.