How is this crypto bull run different from the previous cycle?

I’m at the Denver Ethereum Conference right now. A lot of people are asking the same question: “Is this cycle happening too fast? Does this mean it will be shorter?”

Frankly, this question resonates with me. The 2018-2020 bear market was much worse than this. It lasted almost a full year, and the disillusionment was 10 times worse. The entire industry is in tatters, and the situation gets worse every day the bear market drags on.

By comparison, 2022-2023 isn’t that bad.

If you are building an on-chain product, you may not even feel the bear market.

The project was still funded, and even in the middle of bear city, the conference still attracted 20,000 people.

This is a far cry from 2019.

This raises concerns that we haven’t suffered enough.

To me, it's a bit superstitious.

I understand the point that leverage needs to be unwound and the hype needs to cool, but it's happening.

Half the industry is out of business.

I looked around me today and saw all the signs of the early stages of the cycle.

We are in the midst of a typical spot market rally led by Bitcoin, and Bitcoin’s dominance appears to be peaking.

This paves the way for a huge rally in ETHBTC, which should be the next phase.

There are many other health indicators, thanks to @intangiblecoins: https://twitter.com/intangiblecoins for discovering and pointing them out. MVRV (which can be thought of as the combined cost basis of all Bitcoin holders) and the ratio of long to short holders both suggest that the cycle is in the very early stages.

Although Coinbase has moved up the App Store rankings, it still ranks low.

As a reminder, last cycle Coinbase held the top spot in the overall App Store app rankings for nearly a year.

Now it ranks only 14th in the finance category and 156th among all apps.

I think the best way to understand the current situation is that the bull market has already begun.

There is no reason to expect it to be longer, shorter, or different than any other crypto bull run.

Many people say this time (bull market) is different because of ETFs (exchange-traded funds).

While some of the arguments in favor of this view are compelling, I do not agree with them.

The market will always find a way to introduce leverage, and eventually the leverage will cause the bubble to burst. People will take profits and sell. These are timeless truths.

Nonetheless, I think the ETF will accelerate the trend of buying low and selling high, and over time, volatility should decrease as more lows are bought and more highs are sold.

But this is already happening; it’s an existing trend, not a new one.

There is no reason to believe that this cycle will be shorter (or longer) than past cycles.

The idea that “we haven’t suffered enough, so the bull market will get worse” is superstitious at best.

Stop worrying and just enjoy it, that's the fun part.