How the last year in crypto has changed my mental & physical health
Things are starting to move slowly in crypto again.
Here are some important events this month:
Personally, I'm super stoked about the merge. What's funny is that it is happening on the same date as CPI data comes out (Sept 13th). Should be a super interesting and volatile day for all traders!
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How the last year in crypto has changed my mental & physical health
Those who have followed me since the beginning know that my background is from the stock market blog that I started in 2017 and that I made a shift to full-time crypto in the summer of 2021.
While the stock market has a smaller time window for the opening hours, crypto is open 24/7. I'm an overachiever, and I don't give up on things when I find them exciting. Limiting myself to 6.5 hours per day (stock market opening hours) became impossible for me in crypto. As you will see later on this more or less led to burnout for me.
While I had some experience with trading $BTC and $ETH before 2021, shitcoins, DeFi, and NFTs were brand new to me.
What led me down the crypto rabbit hole was the NFT hype in the summer of 21'. I was forced to learn Metamask, OpenSea, and bridging coins.
I was hooked. I literally spent days on OpenSea and Rarity Tools flipping NFTs. I used to check the rarity to scoop the best deals on high-volume projects, then resell them later for more. A flippooor. Overall I felt that I spent a lot of time compared to what I got out of it.
Btw, when I say days I mean that I did nothing else. 15 hours straight. Sleep. Then repeat the next day. Maybe I spent like 30 min with my GF (I know, terrible).
Not long after NFTs, I discovered DeFi. I had experience from dividend investing in the stock market, and receiving yield in DeFi is similar in some ways that it is passive + the underlying token can increase/decrease in price.
In August/September 21' the bull market was back to full speed, and literally, everything went up only. I was so obsessed with DeFi that I basically did nothing else from August 21' - May 22'.
Let's talk about the side effects of being too attached to the crypto game.
1. Hobbies: I lost interest in everything else I cared about. Books, writing (besides crypto writing), working out, running, meeting friends, my GF, and family all became pretty uninteresting. It's sad to write this, but it's first in retrospect I was able to see how bad this had become.
2. Physical activity: I've always been interested in working out in the gym and running/cycling. Now I "didn't have time" and it took a toll on my physical health. I spent most days on the sofa or in bed, and like 5 out of 7 days I didn't even leave my house. As a consequence, my physique became pretty bad. I didn't gain weight, but instead, I got a little thinner because I simply forgot to eat.
3. Addiction: I was so addicted to my phone/PC that I simply tried to avoid all circumstances where I couldn't monitor my DeFi positions, Twitter, Discord, TG, etc. My GF tried to tell me how addicted I was, but I simply wouldn't listen.
4. Relationship: From prioritizing her on a daily basis to barely seeing her because I was too "busy" in the metaverse definitely broke our relationship. She never gave up on me, but eventually, we ended our relationship because I wanted to focus more on crypto. Writing this now makes me laugh at how stupid I was, because wtf? Focus more? I did nothing else! But I was too blind to see it.
5. Sleep: It became a routine to check Tradingview during the night + ApeBoard to just "control" my positions. I also had alerts on key trading levels + news aggregator bots in case there was big news to trade on. Obviously, this ruined my sleep pattern.
6. Mental health: While the bull run lasted, and as long as I kept myself busy in crypto I honestly had a really good time. Talking to great people, trying new things in crypto, and writing about my experiences. It was like playing a video game that never ended.
But in June when 3AC collapsed and $BTC went to $17K and $ETH went below $900 I got a wake-up call that I should have gotten a long time ago. The DeFi yield was mostly gone by February/March, and I focused more and more on trading. What I did really was simply to replace one crypto activity with another.
But my wake-up call came one morning when I simply asked myself what the hell I had spent so much time on for the last year. While I was invested in the stock market I had a healthy balance between investing and everything else I was interested in.
But now, I made crypto my only purpose. And when the crypto bull run was over and the market conditions got harder I was forced to ask myself the hard questions in life. What was the meaning of everything and how could I make a plan to get back to real life again, catch up with friends, get back in shape, and enjoy my hobbies again.
I had sacrificed everything for one year. Lots of drawbacks for one positive factor: money.
I felt sad that I had sacrificed so much for gaining wealth. This is not a thread about losing money or getting rekt, because money was the only good thing I got out of this year.
Financially I am in a much better position now compared to 1, 2, 3, and 5 years ago. But waking up that day feeling sick realizing that I was in bad health only because I chased more money, wasn't what I wanted. Something had to change.
In June my physical and mental health was at rock bottom. I won't say I was depressed because I still wanted to find a way out. I still had the motivation to try to get out of the terrible condition I put myself into. Because after all, what is money without health?
Step number 1 for me was to cut down on the time I spent on Twitter. Mindless scrolling and researching to stay on top of everything simply wasn't worth it anymore. I still love spending time here, but I'm more protective of time now. Yes, this has led to fewer tweets from me and less research, but I had no other choice in order to save my health.
I've gotten back in touch with several of my friends, I've started dating again, and overall I'm much less in front of the screen than earlier. Compared to my friends I'm still a lot online, but at least I'm making progress.
Last week I took 1 whole day away from Twitter. The last time I did that was in August 2019...this should tell you everything about my addiction.
One thing I haven't fully solved yet is my hobbies. I still find crypto my main interest, and I still prioritize it over reading books or writing. I hope to get more back to that later this year. Another thing I'm thinking a lot of is what I should focus on going forward.
A question I have asked myself lately is why have I traded all my time for the obsession of chasing money. One answer is that it is a way to keep score and that it is addicting AF. But I realized that I'd lost balance between time and money.
What I wanted was time, but here I was trading it all for more money. Going forward I will continue writing my newsletter, doing research in DeFi, trading a little, and in general stay in touch with all the amazing people I've met here on Twitter.
But there's a part of me that wants more structure in my life, seeing more people, and generally more routine. I've been considering going back to university, joining a crypto team (more like a normal job), joining a fund, starting a fund, or simply working for a crypto startup.
I believe @algodtrading had similar thoughts some months back. These days I find myself having a lot of time, and I miss working hard on a goal. Sure, I can always make more money. But this isn't my main driver anymore. If anyone has some tips and advice, that's very welcome.
I could be doing more research in crypto right now. There are honestly a lot of good protocols and people who build during this bear market. I just need to find back to myself again first. Money comes secondary. I've also signed up for a psychology session because I think it could be good to talk to someone about my experience over the last year. I wrote a thread about mental health in crypto some months ago, but ironically I was maybe the one that needed to read it the most.
Crypto is an intense game, and a huge admiration goes out to long-term players like eg. Cobie that's been in this game for 10+ years. This was probably a dark read, but know that I'm truly grateful for all the people I've talked to here, those I've met, everything I learned, and all the opportunities in the space. It's been a great experience for me, and it has created working opportunities for me I didn't think were possible.
I don't what's next for me, but I'll update you as soon as I know. I still spend a lot of my time on crypto-related stuff, but right now my health comes first. Maybe some of you can relate, in that case, know that you're not alone.
If you want to read this as a tweet thread instead or want to bookmark it, you'll find it below.
One Last Thing I've Been Thinking About Lately In Crypto
1) The Ethereum Merge
Everyone is talking about the upcoming merge.
Ethereum will make its long-awaited change from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.
Currently, out of the approximately 14,600 Eth issued daily, 13,000 comes from mining with the remainder coming from staking. Once mining is no longer an option, that means the only Eth produced will come from staking.
"The Merge" is tentatively scheduled for September 13.
If you want to deep-dive into knowing everything about the merge check out the replies to the tweet below:
If I were completely new to this I would start watching this video:
A really well-explained video made so easy that even if you know nothing about Ethereum you should be able to follow it.
One thing you should have in the back of your mind though is that most people are bullish on the ETH merge. And that's why you will see most articles, videos, and Twitter threads focusing on the positive effects of the merge.
To form a bias I think it's important to also view thoughts from people criticizing it, eg. this video is a good example: