Crypto has a way of testing people. It tests your conviction, your patience, your humility, and -- more than anything -- your willingness to care even when it feels irrational to do so.

Right now, the market is pretty much as bad as it gets. Liquidity is thin, sentiment is dreadful, and every chart looks like it’s trying to dig a hole directly to Goblin Town. Most people are tired. Many are gone. And the temptation to tune out completely has never been stronger.

But this is exactly the moment when giving a shit matters the most.

Behold, a bonus editorial that I’ve been thinking about writing.

Bear Markets Don’t Just Expose Weakness, They Forge Strength

Anyone can care in a bull market. When prices are vertical, capital is abundant, and every mediocre idea gets funded.

Across the board, enthusiasm is cheap when things are easy.

In a brutal market, enthusiasm is a choice -- especially when things are hard.

These stretches filter builders from opportunists and legit signal from endless sources of noise. The teams that keep shipping, iterating, and communicating right now are the ones that will win the next cycle -- not because they were lucky, but because they were disciplined enough to care when no one else did.

Pay attention to those that are still showing up, because only the good ideas are being funded now -- so the odds of hitting a good one are drastically higher.

Giving a Shit Is a Competitive Advantage

Attention is scarce and real commitment is even more scarce.

Most people disappear during downturns. When they do, two things happen:

• The opportunity surface quietly widens.

• The people who remain become disproportionately important.

Beyond that, investors notice who shows up while communities notice who stays involved. Legit players really do remember who kept momentum instead of retreating into the easy silence.

In this environment, giving a shit goes beyond being admirable and becomes flat-out strategic.

Caring Isn’t About Optimism, It’s About Responsibility

This space is still small and it is so, so fragile.

And most of what people rely on only exists because someone decided it mattered.

Caring means:

• documenting and digesting the tech no one understands yet

• educating the people who are new or confused or lost

• pushing for standards and better UX overall

• holding builders accountable (kindly)

• sharpening your own craft and for god’s sake invest in yourself

None of that is price-dependent, but every single bit of it compounds over the long-run.

If you stop caring now, you will unknowingly step away from the phase where the real breakthroughs happen.

If You Only Care When It’s Easy, You Don’t Actually Care

While cycles may be inevitable, conviction is optional.

If your commitment evaporates when the market stops rewarding you, you’re not aligned with the technology -- you’re aligned with the good feels of green candles.

Crypto doesn’t need more people who show up to celebrate, it needs people who show up to contribute regardless of receiving flowers.

Giving a shit when the market is terrible is how you distinguish yourself from spectators and -- frankly -- is how you make friends.

This is because every cycle has two recoveries:

1.) Price recovery
2.) Reputation recovery

The first happens automatically and the second must be earned, so be sure to do your Ethos dailies.

When the next wave hits -- and it most certainly will -- people will remember who stayed connected, helpful, and engaged when sentiment was at its worst. They remember consistency, not convenience.

If you care now, you’ll be over-indexed later.

Caring Is a Form of Leadership

In crypto, giving a shit is the closest thing to a superpower.

It means you understand that markets don’t dictate value and that -- rather -- builders really do. It means you’re playing a longer game than most people even realize exists and that means something.

Just look at @icobeast, Tyler strejilevich, and @vohvohh. Those goofballs are actually creating MORE now than they did when we were all zooming. In turn, they are dominating my feed and earning even more of my trust.

In short, anyone can care when everything is up, it’s so easy to have faith and belief and ideas when the spice flows easily. But now, when we’re all stuck in this mud, caring actually means something to the real ones.

Be a real one.