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How does one prepare for the next bull if you are still bullish on crypto?

When I started actively writing on Twitter four years ago, things were different.

Like now, it was a bear market, but back then, CT believed with certainty that a new bull run would arrive.

Notably, a bull run in altcoins.

BTC was boring, and the upside seemed limited. Ethereum's modular roadmap seemed exciting, with potential sharding not in the trash bin just yet.

Solana was written off (before a monolithic vs. modular narrative reemerged with the $SOL revival).

To build an edge, one believed in learning about new technical crypto innovations before anyone else so they could ride a narrative when the general crowd caught up.

No surprise that technical breakdown posts of narratives did amazingly well on X:

Proof of humanity, soulbound tokens, quadratic voting... anyone care to learn lol?

Maker initiated Endgame Plan for Unbiased World Currency. They did the exact opposite of it (to be fair, pro crypto regulation changed their roadmap).

VCs were heavily deploying, ready to replay the previous bull run playbook.

Even KOLs were playing VCs, getting in at lower valuations than VCs in exchange for a few posts on X.

Liquidity mining in liquid tokens was still popular. Now replaced by points.

LP mining is basically dead. Dead as #hashtags on X.

Overall, reviewing my old posts, it's clear that this bear market is fundamentally different.

CT is unwilling to learn anything technical. Nobody reads or cares about white papers.

In turn, projects don't even have or share roadmaps: announcements come straight from the sky and bag holders don't scream "can devs do anything" anymore.

Price decline is seen as a natural state of affairs. No one to blame but you (or CZ).

Discords and projects' TG channels are dead.

We believed that crypto-native innovation would bring us mass adoption the moment that a "killer crypto app" appears.

Indeed! This turned out to be true: prediction markets, onchain perps, and RWA/stock tokenization are those killer apps.

Even more bullish is that revenue, especially that which goes to holders, matters more than empty roadmaps.

Yet besides $HYPE (and maybe $ZEC), there were no true token success stories this cycle ($SOL revival could be one more).

The high hopes for altcoin season were exploited by memecoin overprinting and low-float, high-FDV launches.

If reading whitepapers or technical threads on CT is not your thing, the 'research on your own' part still matters.

Simply daily checking dashboards on Defillama, Blockworks, Artemis, etc., for high-revenue projects will put you ahead, as you can whitelist those tokens for more bullish times.

I'm also not giving up on new TGEs and airdrops: following new projects that manage to raise decent amounts from VCs in this terrible market must have something up their sleeves.

I bet launching at high FDVs in a bullish market will make a comeback (thus juicy airdrops).

(Praying for Variational's $VAR stimmy).

Then don't forget to try out new apps: anything trending on CT is worth five minutes of your time:

Download the app, put a few USD in, and see if it clicks with your degen senses.

Finally, regulation is a big variable this time around:

The Clarity Act in the US (if passed) could give revival to some select altcoins while others might suffer.

Equally, the EU's MiCA regulation for CEXs is already changing the CEX competition: if Binance is out, then it gives someone else an advantage.

(Not gonna lie, I like Backpack's $BP as a proxy trade for the EU regulation plus tokenized stocks on the Solana narrative.)

In any case, researching isn't dead.

We are just researching real products now instead of trading on pure whitepapers and technical narratives.

Which should make things even easier this time as very few actually match the criteria.