On 7th September, Alpha Guilty held a large online meetup with crypto industry leaders and experts. The event was dedicated to the following topic: DeFi investment and Go-To-market strategies on a bear market. Speakers were talking about the current problems on the crypto market, and shared some advice for investors and private holders to help them survive and even profit from this downtrend cycle.
The importance of this event is huge, because that’s exactly the moment when people do their wealth during the bear market. Our aim is to let our community and investors feel better and pick up some ideas for their investment portfolios or personal wealth
— said Mikhail Sitalo, CEO of Alpha Guilty, in his opening speech
Speaker 1. Lynn Nguyen, Head of Partnerships at Roseon World
Topic: How to benefit from your partners on a bear market
Miss Nguyen pondered on how a business can effectively use partnerships to go through hard times. Her main point — knowing how to collaborate can really help amidst a bear market.
If you want to expand your community and increase revenues, partnering with other businesses for promotion and events is a great way to do it
— said Miss Nguyen
She noted that a good partnership should be based on trust and respect, brand alignment, similar values and shared goals. A good partnership can double your network and increase capital you can throw on promotion.
Main highlights:
1. Leverage your partner’s platform — tap into each other’s resources to increase revenue
2. Your partner’s network can also help to expose your project to new markets.
3. Entering a new market is much easier if you have a local partner who deeply understands this market, the business and the reaction.
4. On acquiring new users, stay connected to them. Connected customers tend to become repeated customers.
5. Increase your brand awareness and brand trust via co-branding partnerships.
Speaker 2. Mikhail Sitalo, CEO of Alpha Guilty
Topic: Smart investment mechanics of tomorrow
Mr. Sitalo spoke from an investor point of view, and gave useful insights of the way investors think.
He started his topic with some depressive statistics, according to which 90% of startups across all industries fail. But on the other side, the rate of unicorns has increased by 351%, and that fact encourages investors to put money in startups.
The main challenge to the success of a startup is generating new approaches and vision of the world — that’s probably why NFTs were booming recently
— said Mikhail Sitalo, CEO of Alpha Guilty
Main highlights (Winner side moves):
1. Invest only the amount you can afford to lose, especially when it’s a downtrend.
2. Specialize in an industry or sector — if you invest in blockchain, don’t go into real estate.
3. At the same time, diversify your portfolio: try Layer 1, NFT, play-to-earn, etc.
4. Invest in due diligence — reach the founders, do some expert calls, get to know whether the solution is visible or not.
5. Participate in the board of directors: if you can influence the project’s decisions, you have lower risks.
See Mykhail’s presentation here.
Speaker 3. Leon Lee, Founder and CEO at Only1
Topic: How NFTs will change the creator economy due to bear market
Mr. Lee started with an idea that crypto has never endured a proper recession, and it’s still something to be tested. However, in the current bear market we should pay attention to brand new factors: the war, inflation, the US GDP growth, etc.
He got across some problems and trends on the NFT market:
— Fundraising via venture capital is not always good: VCs inject a lot of money into an ecosystem (e.g. Solana last year), so it becomes hyped and pumped. People start following money, not trends.
— Trends are changing fast in the NFT industry. Less than a year ago projects bursted with utilities, roadmaps, staking, and other good things. Today, users don’t care about roadmaps but just want to see good community and good artworks.
— Mr. Lee believes that NFTs can do so much more than being just a collectible.
— NFTs can play a big role in creators economy: NFTs as access to creator are becoming a trend (on the example of Veefriends).
— Leon Lee feels like the crypto market can reach new heights in the next 5 years. The driver to take us there will be mass adoption: better infrastructure, better bridges and wallets that actually solve real problems.
Speaker 4. Berker Zor, Business Developer at Babylons
Topic: “Safety guidelines” of launchpads could damage the ecosystem in the long run
Mr. Zor dwelled on the problem of safety measures and guidelines which culminates into endless runs of refunds on public raises.
He mentioned that launchpads divide into two school of thought:
1) real concrete price protections (most launchpads) — if the project’s token price falls very low, launchpads will initiate a retroactive refund;
2) price diagnostic — focusing on the roadmap and the project’s development. As to Mr. Zor, it is a real way to protect your community from pitfalls and abandoned projects.
The problem of the first school is that it creates a cycle of people expecting the returns. Users sell tokens, and buy later at a lower price. So projects launched on such platforms lose all funding, get bad marketing and bad sentiments. They finally take money from VCs, which are less and less enthusiastic.
Mr. Zor noted a serious decline of investments in new projects in the last couple of months, which was expected.
A possible solution is to create a set of principles which hopefully will be price diagnostic. As long as projects are price dependent, the problem won’t be solved.
Speaker 5. Mariela Tanchez, Global Head of Business Development at Gate.io
Topic: How to continue in crypto during bear market without risking assets
Starting her speech, Miss Tanchez admitted that the current bear market is probably the biggest drop in history. However, it’s not time to panic but to change the strategy, she said.
Main highlights:
— Still a lot of investments: VCs invested billions into crypto companies since the last crypto winter ($10 bn in Q1 2022 compared to $2 bn in Q1 2018);
— Traditional players are seeing the huge impact that crypto has and tools it offers.
She underlined that the bear market gives extra time to choose and research the project. Crypto is not about just buying and selling: it’s also about hedging, staking, getting APY, etc.
Miss Tanchez dwelled on several innovative and safer options of earning on crypto that Gate.io offers to its customers:
1) Single staking and flexible staking: choose how long you would like to stake and withdraw your funds at any time.
2) Liquidity mining: earn income from fees by providing dual-assets liquidity to the market.
3) Cloud mining: option for mining crypto without buying hardware
4) P2P commerce: buy low and sell a little bit higher to other people.
Mariela’s main point was — don’t fear to jump into crypto amidst the bear market. New startups, from traditional markets to web3 projects, are continuously onboarding. If you are among the first ones to join, you’re probably going to be in for a very good ride.
Keep an eye on emerging projects and don’t necessarily wait until things go up!
See Mariela’s presentation here.
The speeches were followed by the Q&A session where the experts were answering questions sent by our viewers, and discussed even more exciting topics.
To know more, rewatch the full record of the conference on Alpha Guilty’s YouTube channel here.
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