How to Make Money in a Bear Market (NFT Edition)
Discover real-time on-chain threats in Maker, Lido, Compound, dYdX and more Fast forward.
Dear Bankless Nation,
Suppose this was the 2018 crypto bear market.
What investment opportunities will be available to us?
There was no DeFi. No NFT projects. No DAOs with opportunities for freelancing.
The upside of 2022 is that despite current bearish market conditions, market opportunities are everywhere if you’re willing to put in the effort.
Today, William shows us where some of these opportunities are in the NFT sector and how we can seize them.
– Bankless team
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Bankless writer: William M. PeasterBankless Contributor & Metaversal author
In a bear market, crypto prices fall from their all-time highs.
However, these downturns do not have to be periods where ETH earning opportunities also fall. This Bankless Tactic will walk you through five different ways you can use or build around NFTs to profit during a bear.
Many modern legendary NFTers started experimenting with NFTs years ago. They didn’t have all the answers then, but they were curious and they created. And now many of them across all kinds of styles are celebrated as pioneers because they persisted and their works have become highly sought after by digital collectors.
So let’s say you are curious and want to create with NFTs too. Your NFT work may also be celebrated as groundbreaking one day, but first you need to start publishing pieces to build your work. The good news is that you may not have to wait years to gain interest like OG NFTers did. There is so much attention on NFTs now that you can get your first serious collectors in no time! But you won’t know until you put yourself out there.
To that end, you’re in luck because there are now more than a few NFT tools that make it easier than ever to put yourself out there with NFT. New favorites creator tools include:
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Zora — The most web3 NFT marketplace protocol out there! This hyperstructure gives all kinds do-it-yourself NFT mechanismssuch as an auction house system, release variants, chained SVGs, and more.
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Manifold — The best web3 infra for creating your own creator-controlled NFT smart contracts. Do you want your own smart contract that you have full control over? Manifold Studio is where it’s at, offering support for a variety of file types and updating metadata.
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Bueno — Bueno offers a suite of code-free tools that let you easily adapt the art to large PFP NFT collections and deploy custom smart contracts for such projects. Bueno also offers a DIY micro-metaverse builder for NFT projects to create fun activities for their communities.
Let’s say you’re not really into making your own NFTs, but you love to browse around and analyze other people’s creations. A side hustle to consider is Zora’s on-chain finder’s fee system.
This is how it works. Set the course towards zora.cosign in with your wallet and then start browsing the available NFTs.
Once you’ve found a piece you think is awesome, click on it and you’ll be taken to the piece’s Zora dashboard. If NFT has a finder’s fee set, click the “copy” button and share the link far and wide – you will earn the percentage, e.g. 1% in ETH – from any subsequent primary sale.
This year has free-to-mint meta has taken over the NFT ecosystem. In other words, projects are increasingly allowing people to claim their NFTs for free (minus gas costs) and then optimize for secondary sales royalties.
Some of these projects, like goblintown.wtf, have given their early holders incredible returns. However, it’s not hard to tell that most free-mint NFT projects are going nowhere these days, so you certainly don’t want to go all-in on any of these efforts.
That said, the stakes of joining these projects are very low since embossing is essentially free, so it’s probably worth trying a few every now and then in case one of these projects ever lights up. The stakes here are asymmetrical: spend a little to start, and rarely do much later.
If you are interested, projects like mint.fun makes it easy to surf new free coins.
Write posts, make songs or record videos! Whatever approach you take to creating content, realize that it is valuable and that you can build an audience if you work at it over time.
To that end, don’t underestimate how many people are interested in learning about and experiencing NFTs and consuming content around these digital objects right now. And if you keep creating content, over time you’ll be surprised how many people will reach out to you with cool professional opportunities because you’ve become some kind of authority.
You’d rather be part of a tight-knit NFT team making a big difference than a lone-wolf freelancer. Fortunately, there are all sorts of upcoming NFT projects hiring for all kinds of positions right now, so you have options.
Want to become a professional shitposter? An NFT advisor or consultant? A community manager or designer? A wide range of NFT projects are currently hiring for a wide range of skills, so if you raise your hand of interest, more than a few projects may be interested in hiring you.
Target places where you think you’ll fit naturally and fire your shot.
Decentralized NFT marketplace NFTX offers users an innovative NFT warehouse effort system. This mechanism allows you to earn passive returns on your floor NFTs without having to face permanent losses. As such, this is a way to earn automatic compounding returns on your NFTs in a user-friendly way.
Will the 2022 crypto bear market be short-lived? It remains to be seen. But the good news is thanks to the smart contract enabled world of DeFi, there are a number of interesting ways to try to earn ETH via NFTs if things get even more bearish from here.
Granted, NFTs aren’t a catch-all solution for everyone’s finances, but they do offer unique types of earning opportunities that you simply can’t find anywhere else right now.
William M. Peaster is a professional writer and creator of Metaversal– a new Bankless newsletter focused on the rise of NFTs in the crypto-economy. He has also recently contributed content to Bankless, JPG and more!
Why this matters: Sales increase after Magic Eden launches Ethereum NFTs, indicating tougher competition for Opensea as the de facto NFT marketplace.
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Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell assets or make financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
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