126. Why Bull Market’s Are More Painful Than Bear Markets In Crypto

We just want you to be reminded of what a bull market's actually like. It's not just as easy as number go up and we sell when it's all happy days. People usually buy when it's in green and going up and now you go sell your Ethereum for Solana. All of a sudden Solana corrects Ethereum pump. It's hard. If you've got a lot of pressure on yourself to make money in this cycle, even when it comes to selling, it'll be the hardest thing you ever do because you're making so much money on paper that trying to sell feels wrong. Feels like you're losing money by selling when it's just going to go up forever. The more hooked in you are, the worse your decision making becomes because it's now emotional in that dopamine MA I'm up 16% today and tomorrow, down 8% and then you start overthinking it and you feel about yourself. Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Bergs Podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of collective shift alongside Ms. Burgs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. Join us as we bring you world class crypto research and strategies to help you dominate this crypto bull market as well as behind the scenes view of us scaling a fully remote crypto subscription research business. Today we're talking about what a crypto bull market is actually like and what you need to look out for because it's not as easy as just market goes up and you just make money. It's actually a lot different than that. It's a lot of volatility, it's a lot of liquidations. There's a lot of things that go on in a bull market that most people aren't aware of and unless you are aware of, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble chasing coins, trying to sell out and trying to buy back in when the market dips. Trying to listen to influencers telling you why some random technical analysis thing lines up and you should be selling at this point because some RSA nonsense is cross some other nonsense. It's like it. A lot of it is really just chaos and fomo and reality is no one really knows how big this could get nor when the market corrects and goes up. No one's a crystal ball. So a lot of this is just around patience and holding and waiting until things get to a point where it's time to sell and not trying to get in and out. Because I think the more Complicated. You make it, the more difficult it becomes.

That's right. And this is just investing. Crypto isn't special. It's still investing. And the same rules apply. How much pressure can you withstand? How much are you willing to go against market sentiment and the current shiny thing? And this happens at lightning speed in crypto. It's a true global24.7 market. You could be rich and then wake up with a 99% drawdown. It is absolutely crazy. And, Ben, we've been through a few bull markets, 2017, and the peak was probably 21. And look, we've got. We've got a lot of lessons. First one is it's not as easy as the market just goes up. So if you're holding your tokens, and we've seen this in the last couple of days, bitcoin went on a tear from like 42,000 to 45 and a half thousand, almost pushing 46. And now it's back at 42. And. And you just see this, like an instant dump. You see, you know, huge pumps. When people buy a lot, there's liquidations which push things higher. But then there's an eventual pullback and you're like, hang on a minute, it was up, only everything's absolutely pumping. What has happened? Why is this going down? And you have to manage your psychology to see past that day, that week, that month, to what's going to happen and project out a bit longer. And it is one of the most difficult things to do.

Very difficult in the moment. Looking back, it's very clear that, you know this. These cycles have corrections and we've had liquidations. But I think at the time, it's kind of hard to step back and you feel that. You feel that intense fear of losing because you had this amount of money just yesterday and now it's out of this price. Now you're like, shit, I should have sold. So then you go and sell and then the market pumps and like, it. It plays with your emotions. So I think really staying patient and having that plan and those targets in mind is really important.

And, mate, I think the mania is already starting to hit, especially for me. I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is load up the Collective Shift app and look at my tokens, because quite a few of them have pumped significantly. And I'm like, hang on a minute. I'm doing this for that dopamine hit and to see what's happened in the market. I'm like, all right, this is like a signal of, first of all, Things are starting to kick off. But second of all, it's, hey, manage your psychology and stop looking at it. Have your targets have little alerts set up and when your targets hit, then you take the action you said you were going to do. Yeah.

Usually the more you look at it and the more hooked in you are, the worse your decision making becomes. Because it's now emotional in that dopamine, mate. Like, you're like, shit, I'm up 16% today. Then tomorrow you're down 8%. You're like, fuck. And then you start overthinking it and you feel shit about yourself, like.

And the classic example here is chasing the shiny thing. So I've got btc, I've got eth, I've got a few other coins as well. Don't hold any Solana. Look at this. Look at the Solana run from like, I know, 20, 30 bucks up to $118. All the airdrops we've got now got the LFG token look like less effing gas, where if you spend a certain amount on gas, on Ethereum, you can validate a transaction and you can get an airdrop on Solana. They'll even bridge it for you. There's so much going on. The shiny thing. We're going to do an episode on price is the narrative. And when price goes really hard, people do post rationalization and they're like, this is the reason. Because all these good things are happening on that chain. We've done a lot of research, we know the good things that are happening on chains. Ethereum is a good example. But the price hasn't gone significantly higher for that token. And it's up to us to manage our psychology and be like, don't sell my stack. Don't chase the thing. Don't go for those gains. Because our corner of the Internet is exclusively talking about that and saying Ethereum's dead. Keep your Ethereum stack or your XYZ stack because you've done the research and you know there's solid fundamentals behind it.

Yeah, emotion just gets out of control. And I think it's when you start seeing other people make money, that's when you start getting panic because you're like, shit, I don't have Solana. I should have solana. It's up 80%. People only usually buy when it's in green and going up. And now you go sell your Ethereum for Solana. All of a sudden Solana corrects and then Ethereum pumps, you know, so, you.

Know, this is on Being on like a five lane highway and you're in like traffic.

Yeah.

And your lane isn't moving so you change lanes, you go into that lane and you stop and the other lane starts moving again. There's the whole science behind it, man. It is, it is crazy. And even within our own business, right, we work in crypto, right. We should be right on top of this. There's posts like Matt put out a moonshot post on low cap altcoins and you and I both haven't bought those altcoins. That post been out for a week and a half, something like that.

We're like, yeah.

After these, like, yeah, you really need to manage what you're doing and it does play with your emotions, no matter how amazing you think you are. Even if it's your like us, it's our seventh year in crypto and we're still feeling it. We keep each other in check. We've got our plans. But mate, when things really pop off, it gets exciting and it is very hard when things are going through the roof to be able to execute on your plan and sell and potentially leave a little bit more profit on the table. But if you look back like five years from now, it'll be the best move you can make.

I think it's also hard if you've got a lot of pressure on yourself to make money in this cycle. Like I speak with a lot of our members who have a lot of pressure on themselves to pay off their mortgage or buy that investment property or, you know, pay off that credit card, whatever that thing might be. And this is their last chance to do it. So they put a lot of pressure on themselves which then equals them over complicating it. They're looking every day, they're looking every hour. They're trying to get in out of the market. You know, they, they think bitcoin, they some influencer spoken about some random TA chart that's saying bitcoin's going to go down the short term. So they sell their bitcoin. So now they have a taxable event they haven't thought about and now they're sitting in cash. And then the TA analyst, guess what, he's wrong. The market goes up. Now they're, now they're in cash, now they go chasers, they go buy it. Then there's a pullback. Now they've lost even more. Like it just happens over and over and over and over again. Like, guys, you need a crystal ball, honestly, to navigate this market in the short term. It is so Difficult to know when the market's going up and when it's going down. The short term. It's why we don't look that short term crypto is highly illiquid. There's lots of leverage trading, there's lots of manipulation. It's a relatively low market cap. It does not take much for the market to move. That does not equal, you know, some technical analysis chart, you know. And that's why, especially if you're not a TA trader, you should just be steering well clear of any short term trading.

Yeah, just like you and I, we got into trading with all we were traders. Everyone thinks they're traders. They lose a lot of money. It takes takes a long time to become a good trader. So you need to be willing to put in that effort over years to be a trader and live that life.

And whether, sorry. And whether the storms. Like one of the guys I follow on Twitter, Crypto Dog, one of the best probably traders you know there is out there, makes a heap of money, but also loses a heap of money, you know, and he shares those. Like you might make a million bucks, two million bucks in a trade, but he also might lose three million in a day. Like, are you ready to weather that? You know, and he's been in the market for a long, long, long, long, long time. You need to be ready to weather significant losses if you're going to start trading.

Oh, absolutely. And let's think about other things that happen during a bull market because things get crazy, like massive pumps, huge gold candles, huge drawbacks. Let's talk about liquidations, mate. So when people have a bunch of shorts on, let's say you got a short on bitcoin, it's gone too much. And their stops just get busted through and they have to sell at market price to cover their stops, which pumps the price.

And this is at huge scale. Like we saw this so many times in bull markets where people get super, super bullish, super greedy, massive long positions, leverage to the tits and then all of a sudden someone comes through a bigger whale shorts, the market sells off a bunch of btc. All of those longs like get liquidated and you might see like a 20%, like dip in the price in, in minutes, huge dead candle, things going down. People are getting scared. People, you know what I mean? Like, is the bull market over? All these things come back, you know, it is wild. It's not as easy just going up.

Yeah, because you can get massive leverage in crypto. Right. It's not like 1 or 2x. I remember you could get up to 100x. I don't know if you still can, but you can get massive leverage where you can get wiped out in an instant and that affects the rest of the market. And then, mate, what about the illiquidity and exchange pauses? So you got exchange pauses where first of all they've run out of bitcoin or there's too many people and they can't process the transactions or their software's just shit itself because there's too many people on there and you can't access your stuff and you need to either get in or out. Holy crap, that is frightening.

This literally happened so many times in the last bull markets, exchanges. You couldn't sign up, you couldn't log in, you couldn't get your crypto in there. It wasn't showing up. You're trying to get your crypto off your ledger. Gas fees are so high. Or you send bitcoin, it takes three days to get there. You get to the exchange, they've got no bitcoin to sell. You're trying to get it out.

Won't work, mate. Like.

Five six hundred dollar gas fees just to get a transaction through. And then you go through and the transaction fails, but it still takes gas and then you have to transfer more. So you cop a double $500 transaction. Yeah. And then with all this craziness going on, people are signing things like mad dogs. There's hacks, there's even bank pauses, mate, where like you try to do a transfer and your bank will take extra long or they'll pause it because too much is going in or out. Oh my God.

Then they block your account. They've got to wait for it. You go to the bank to open, to go in and it's just chaos. And all of a sudden Bitcoin's had another gold candle, it's up 60%. You missed out on it. Now you, now you're furious.

So I've, I've decided what I'm literally doing is when I want to take profits, I've got my coins, I'm literally going to go to A Dex and trade it to USDT or C. That way it's stable, it'll stay there. I can wait out the few days, transfer it to an exchange and then transfer it back to Fiat. I'll cop the slippage, that's fine. But man, it is, it is ridiculous. I'll have to cop the gas fees as well. Right? Because I'm either transferring to exchange with gas fees or leave on exchange. Cop that risk or use a dex and cop that gas fee as well.

So guys, what we've kind of say is like if this is your first bull market or maybe you're familiar with all these things, we just want you to be reminded of what a bull market's actually like. It's not just as easy as number go up and we sell and it's all happy days. Even when it comes to selling, it'll be the hardest thing you ever do because you're making so much money on, on paper, they're trying to sell fills. You know, it feels wrong. Feels like you're, you're losing money by selling when it's just going to go up forever. Guess what doesn't go up forever, guys? The market will end. No, it won't end. The bull market will end. It will come crashing down very, very quickly. And you want to make sure that you've taken profits on the way up and that you, you know, you've played your strategy right. Otherwise it's a sickening feeling to ride your portfolio all the way up and all the way down like most of us have in the past. You really want to set those profits?

Absolutely. And when you do your strategy, if your goal is to make a hundred thousand dollars, don't wait till you hit that goal to sell. Like, take some at 50, take some of 60, 70, 80, and just on the way up, just constantly edge away at those profits. And that is the way to do it. And hey, for me it's like it's, don't get distracted by the shiny thing and stick to my strategy. That is going to be the hardest thing to do. Well, all these memories have come back from like the previous bull markets where you just feel like you're a genius. Everything goes up. The last 10 tokens that have either, you know, just appeared or airdropped or ICO or ieo, whatever it is, you're like, oh, the next one will definitely go up. Everyone else is making money. Why am I not making money? I'll just put a few thousand here, a few thousand there. I'll sell off some of my Ethereum. They are the biggest traps, man. I can feel myself starting to gravitate towards that and have to pull myself back. And I've literally put physical steps in so I can't do it where it's like, you know, my passwords are, you know, in this software or, you know, I use this specific browser or my hardware wallet here. It's like I have to go through different things to actually do the Transaction?

Yeah, yeah, it's, it plays with your mind and it's one of the steps we take you through in our ten step strategy process. If you, if you become a member or you are a member, like walking through that psychology process, we have that template. If you go over to the Collective Shift website and hit the research button at the bottom of that page we have that strategy document. So you can go check that out. We might put in the description just to help you out. But you know, one of the biggest things I walk through with, with our, with our platinum members when we do that one on one is looking at each individual asset and having a plan for that individual asset. Not just looking at your portfolio and going, when I get to $200,000, I'm going to sell. It's like looking at each individual asset because some assets outperform others during the cycle. You know, Defi might have its run, then gaming Bitcoin might have a pullback. You know, they don't all just run up at the same time. So having an individual plan for each token is super important as well.

Absolutely. You need your targets. And just think back, like, I've spoken to so many people and a lot of them were millionaires on paper. They bought some random token, it went absolutely through the roof and had a million bucks. I wanted to get to 2 million because they wanted a house and it went all the way down to about a couple of thousand dollars. And for people listening, if this is not your first cycle, remember those moments. You will have had one of those moments where your token was absolutely pumping and you held it right to the bottom. Really think about what you can do with that money and how you can change your life. Because I guarantee you, in five years time, you're not going to care that the token went a little bit further and a little bit higher. You're going to care that you cashed out and you were able to change your life. That's the important thing. This is why we invest across a range of assets. Crypto is only one of them, but you invest because you want that money to then take the money and change your life and live a better life. Don't lose sight of that.

Yeah, man, you may. You make a great point. Having those goals in mind is super important because otherwise you have no real reason to to sell. And we've spoken a lot about on the podcast about getting that strategy together. That's why I really urge you to go to our website, click the research button, download that strategy document and fill it out. Because Having a goal can really give you that reason or that emotional attachment to selling. You know, for me, it was building collective shift. In the last cycle, I wanted to have enough cash to do that this cycle. It's buying my mum and dad a house. You know, these are real reasons why I'd want to sell my crypto. Not just because I think you can go higher, you know, that's. That's a poor reason.

Yeah. Oh, mate, I've just had another thing and this is already happening. What about all like, the spam and nonsense that happens?

Like, first of all, scams.

Okay, first of all, like, I don't know if they're necessarily won't put this in the scams category, but this is in the, the nonsense category where you've got all the influencers that are back. Mate, I bought you this token. I bought that token. Now here's my next token. Or they just do a random post. Oh, I found this low cap. Altcoin. You know, I can't believe no one's talking about it and they want to say what it is.

Yeah, we're gem hunting. Buy my course and you can see it like, oh, oh, mate. And even my favorite is like the. And I just tweeted about this. The, the, you know, unsuccessful people creating content about how to be successful. Oh, that's my favorite. It's like, like, it's just all bullshit. Like, and you'll notice for those of you listening, the podcast, like Bergs and I really, across all of our content, really focus on talking about from experiences and stories. In my experience, they're the only two types of content you should ever listen to people that have done it before or they have stories of people that have done it not from artificially created advice that they haven't followed through themselves. People that are giving advice is usually the worst sorts of, you know, information.

Yeah, look at better bergs we're basically building in public. We're talking about what we're going to do. We fail a lot of the time. We talk about our failures. We talk about our successes too. And then you look at collective shift and it's like, example is like the altcoins. It's like, yeah, these are the altcoins. Here's why we've selected them. Here's a research and here's why it makes sense. And here's what else you can do to further your research. Right? It's like teaching a man to fish. Rather than, hey, I've already bought these altcoins and now I want you to Buy them because you're my exit liquidity. And I don't know about you mate, but my DMs on every platform are obliterated with scams. It is incredible. Claim this token. Here's an airdrop. Oh bergs. You know, review this project, there's this, there's that. It is just absolutely crazy. And you know if you click that link, you're gone. They're taking all of your coins.

You really need to go deeper on the, on the people that you're listening to. I'm definitely. That's actually going to be a big thing for me in 2024, like really filtering who I listen to because it's fascinating. I've met people in person after seeing their content online and they project this successful trading, you know, e commerce, entrepreneur, all this and you see them in person, they're broke, they've got three credit cards, living in their parents house, you know, like that, you know what I mean? And they online Persona, until I was.

Actually in the game I didn't understand that. And I've met quite a few of these people now, some of them with you. And I'm like, oh my God, like your online Persona is immaculate. You meet them in real life. There's actually a meme about this. Like people are giving you life advice and then you see them racking lines in the bathroom.

Yeah.

And you're like, wow, this person is just really, really good at acting. And then you meet in real life, they've got none of that. They're like, nah, it's a lie. I never put on that trade. I don't have money. They're like, I live in my mum's basement. It is unbelievable, mate. And it's. But this is the other thing. Like you and I, we have like.

Why we get along as well is like our, our values, right? Like we have honesty, integrity as core tenants. You meet us at the pub or you meet us anyway, we're exactly the fucking same. Like we got nothing to hide. And yeah, it's really hard when it's just someone on the screen on the Internet and you're trying to work out, you know, how do I, who do I listen to? How do I make money? Everyone else is making money. You know, all these guys have so many followers and they're saying they made money. This is incredible. It reminds me of like multilevel marketing where there's a recent one, there's a girl from my primary school and she's posting all these like posts about I've found my Life. I now live here, I do this. But it's very nonspecific about what she's doing. So I saw, like, her friends and I saw it. It was like this MLM thing, and I'm like, oh, this poor girl. Like, she's going to. She got sucked into this thing. She's going to buy all this product, making someone else rich, and then has to get more people in to make herself rich.

We need to. We need to do a podcast on this. I have someone on my feed that's doing the same thing and haven't seen any of her content in forever. All of a sudden, I'm seeing posts of her, like, out the park going, are you not living the life that you want to live? Like, yes. Oh, my God. Yeah, I just showed away.

Yeah, you could do it 15 minutes on your phone. Just find pockets of time. All right. We're doing this podcast, right?

Yeah. It's like. It's like, do you. Do you not want the life that you want to live? Do you not want to make money while you sleep? And I'm like, oh, no, Click on it. And it's this big mlm, you know, like, freaking good vitamin, whatever. What? Oh, no.

And people, you need to understand a lot of crypto. This is what it is. It is mlm. So someone will create a token. They'll get an influencer in, they'll pay them in the token, and they'll pay them to advertise and market that token to the audience that they have. And people start picking it up. The first few people make a lot of money. Just see that pyramid forming. The first few people that have the token, then the influencers, then the first few people that get on. Everyone else is just exit liquidity. And you need to think of where you are in that stack, how you heard about it, because these things are going to come in thick and fast. You're going to see overnight tokens go up, like 6,000%, and you're going to be looking for the next one that goes 6,000. Because, mate, who doesn't like to make 6,000%?

Especially when someone's sitting in the dream.

Exactly.

And even.

Let's talk about this one. When your mates bring you a token. Have you had this?

Looks promising.

Looks promising. I'm like, what can you tell me about it? They're like, nothing. And I'm like.

It'S got a mask. Pancake icon. I love it.

Yeah, Just looked into this. Looks promising. I think it's got a lot of potential. Why? I don't know, and it's so hard.

Where you have to break their hearts and you're like, mate, this is probably what's going to happen. But they don't want to listen because they want to be the guy that's smart and we're not ragged on these people. Ben and I were these people in our first cycle. You know, fair enough. We worked in crypto. We did a bit more research than just picking a token, token and icon. But we were like, no, this has this team, it has this, it has that. Not realizing we were caught up in the mania. And outside of a bull market, this thing will never succeed. And you don't know when that bull market is going to turn. It's going to turn bearish. And these projects will just be, you know, downtrodden into a zero.

Only Zero. Only my. I'm blood. Yeah. Okay, we'll do a pod. We're going to do a pot on mlm.

Oh, we'll do it tomorrow. It's going to be amazing. So listen, the reason we've done this episode is just to highlight a few areas of what a bull market is like, to remind you so you don't get shocked when it all comes back in. And you may not have experienced those things, but they will come in thick and fast. And what you really need to do is honestly set up some alerts, have your plan written down on paper, and turn off the bloody screen. The hardest thing to do, but that is how you succeed. You cut out all that noise. You don't need to be on top of it. What's happening today, what's happening tomorrow. Check in every now and then. Stick to your strategy and win.

Let's wrap it up there. Great way to finish, guys. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you found that valuable. If you like our podcast, if you like what we post, we'd love for you to subscribe to us either on Spotify or Apple so you can see what other content we post. We come to you each and every week, twice a week. And if you're on YouTube, hit that subscribe button. It really helps us out, allows us to grow the podcast, reach new people, and hopefully we can help a lot more people crush this bull market in 2024. Bergs, thank you very much. See you next episode.

Thanks, man. Thanks, champions.