GM HEARTLAND |
Or is it GN? Okay so we’re a little late. Time’s a construct anyway. Let’s talk about something unambiguously real, like underground internet money. |
—El Prof, Muhammed & Chad |
TOKEN | PRICE CHANGE | PRICE |
|---|---|---|
Solana ($SOL) | +5.87% | $154.41 |
Helium ($HNT) | -7.80% | $6.25 |
Pyth ($PYTH) | +8.20% | $0.35 |
Save ($SLND) | -23.05% | $0.60 |
(Price changes reflect past 7 days as of 10.18.24)
BUZZWORD OF THE WEEK
A decentralized community of people congregating on various public digital channels participating via a share public identity.
How high quality communities are built and a case study for brands looking to tap into their power.
When a meme or subreddit gets larger than life.
Sometimes, predictions take a year to age poorly, like when Sam Bankman-Fried made the Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2021. Sometimes, they take a week, like when I said GameFi is dead this cycle in our previous newsletter. Whoops.
I’m talking of course, like everyone else, about the release of Off the Grid, a Battle Royale style game in the Fortnite mold. It became the biggest game on Twitch for a time. It also happens to be built on the blockchain — Avalanche, to be exact.
Now, as a button smasher who hasn’t been good at Madden or 2K since ‘04, I can say confidently that I know nothing about the video game space. But I do know a thing or two about the blockchain space, and marketing in it, in particular.
Last cycle, as we were pitching and selling our smart wallet startup playhaus and its MVP growbot, we got a lot of feedback about how scary the terms in web3 were — not just to investors, but to consumers at large.
Buzzwords, terms, and narrow focus on redundant, fragmented, competitive architectures for blockchain infrastructure may give us degens those warm, fuzzy “in group” feelings. But functionally, they only serve to gatekeep potential adopters, and stop us from building fun, useful, or usable products.
Evidently, Off the Grid knew this. Most people excited about the video game have very little awareness of the underlying blockchain elements that make it so special. That appears to be due to a deliberate effort on the part of the game studio to emphasize what matters to the customer in their go-to market strategy, instead of what tickles some a16z VP’s serotonin receptors. They built something people want to use, and used blockchain as the backbone, not the selling point.
So does that mean GameFi will fill the role of NFTs in the next bull run? The jury is still out from this skeptic’s POV. I don’t know if the game mechanics have enough staying power to retain these users long-term, or if/how the introduction of a real liquid economy factors in, and I definitely don’t know if any inevitable imitators will take the right lessons from its launch.
Then again, I’m not the guy for those answers. You want a good gamer take? Text my brothers.
But I can say that, in theory, there is plenty of upside in the GameFi space. If all game mechanics eventually moved on chain, the existing market is $184B in annual revenues, absolutely dwarfing the music and film industries, which are 7x smaller individually and 3.5x smaller together than the video game space. And one of the clearest undisputed use cases of web3 — licensing systems for IP — happens to be at the heart of all three.
—El Prof
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Picture a long, harsh winter. Then, a grizzly, popping out and mauling you within an inch of your life. Then, a compatriot, murdering your own flesh and blood and leaving you for dead!
Okay, so maybe that’s just the plot of The Revenant. And maybe I’m overacting almost as much as Leo in his sole Oscar-winning role. (Seriously, Academy members? Did y’all watch The Wolf of Wall Street on quaaludes or something?)
But on the other hand, they don’t call it crypto winter, or a bear market, for nothing. And who knows? Someone may well coin “Pedicide Downturn” for the next one.
Point is, losing your hard-earned, diamond-handed cryptocurrency is never fun, as longtime degens like myself know from experience. Watching meme coins and tokens drop in value feels like a slow, emotional grind. You’re a helpless bystander as your hope warps into doubt, and trust me, it doesn’t feel great.
What many don’t talk about enough is the emotional stress a bear market inflicts. It’s not just about losing money — it’s about the constant anxiety and second-guessing that comes with it. You become obsessed with checking your portfolio constantly, but that only intensifies the stress. The market may be indifferent, but we degens aren’t.
It’s worth reflecting in times like this, which some market observers are calling the calm before the storm. No one has a crypto ball, but many DeFi analysts have taken a rather bleak short-term outlook. After all, crypto is far from the cultural force it was just a few years ago, and major catalysts for the previous bull run such as NFTs have lost much of their luster.
Personally, we’re optimists. (Solana’s recent price movement doesn’t exactly scream downturn to us.) But it’s always worth being prepared. And when it comes to surviving the bear market, that’s just as much about managing your psychology as it is about your financial strategy.
To be blunt, trading crypto is addicting. The (psycho)active ingredient? Hopium. The dopamine rush of an X user with a blue checkmark telling you the next bull run is around the corner, a chart going green for a moment when a whale rolls the dice, only to drop back into the red seconds later. Every small market movement feels monumental, fueling the belief that the upward trend could start at any moment. It becomes a game between you and the immovable, unstoppable market — testing your patience, fortitude, and ability to withstand pressure.
It can be a grueling, cyclical process. But it’s also in the bear market that you learn what kind of investor you are. Quick money investors tend to drop out, shaken by the lack of immediate returns. But for those who take a step back and trust the process, who see beyond the price charts and look for the underlying technology and long-term potential of crypto, the bear market becomes a rite of passage. It forges resilience. You learn the importance of having a solid plan, diversifying your portfolio, and staying grounded even when the market is anything but.
In the end, surviving the bear market isn’t just about weathering the storm — it’s about evolving as an investor. It teaches patience, strengthens your resolve, and prepares you for the eventual upswing. Because when that bull run finally arrives, the emotional and financial lessons learned during the bear run become invaluable. It’s those who hold on, who believe, and who learn to manage both their investments and their emotions who truly come out stronger on the other side.
How’s that for an Oscar clip?
—Muhammed
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