How to find refuge: Recommendations on dealing with the freezing crypto winter.

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The crypto winter has been brutal so far, and it might be far from over. The speculators, the tourists, and the technologically challenged have all left the space. Only the true believers with unwavering conviction remain. This article is for them. The following is not financial advice, though. People who aren’t sure if crypto is going to make it might want to invest in some other industry. The remaining few will receive tips not only on how to survive the crypto winter. They will also learn how to better position themselves for when the inevitable bull market charges back.

As we all know, the crypto market works in cycles. The crypto winter has happened before and it will probably happen again. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, however. By looking at the facts about the present, we can achieve a clearer vision of the crypto winter we’re facing. We can also know where we’re going. The market is in the red right now, but so is just about everything else. This is the reality of the current crypto winter:

• Between November 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022 BTC dropped another 20%. That's on top of a crushing 70% decline from November 2021. Since November 2022, BTC is down 12.7%, a slight recovery from the 20% drop in November.
• Likewise, ETH dropped another 20%. That's on top of the 65% drop since last November 2021.
• We’re seeing a small rally in the new year with BTC and ETH up over 10% on the 7 day chart, but we all know the crypto winter is far from over.

Consider this, however. As the crypto winter progresses, the market is cleansing itself. Bad actors, scammers, and people with frail business models are gone or on their way out. Terra collapsed, 3AC imploded, Celsius evaporated, Voyager crashed, and who knows what happened at FTX’s offices. Were those people doing honest business, or were they suppressing bitcoin’s price by rehypothecating the BTC in their custody? That’s for the courts to determine. Our only concern right now is the following:

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How to stop the bleeding?

Ask any traditional financial, (or TradFi) investor, he or she will tell you to diversify your assets. It’s up to every person to decide if that advice translates into the decentralized finance world. If so, readers can decide which, if any, is right for them.  This is not strictly an either/or situation. Readers could easily use the three strategies simultaneously, or in any combination they see fit. 

These are our possible solutions:

1. Hold the faith. While it's not possible to time the markets, hold onto the crypto you trust, and consider doubling down on BTC's and ETH's inevitable reversal. Remember: if you don’t sell, it isn’t a loss. Hold on for dear life if you can afford to. 
2. Temper short-term losses by diversifying into gold-backed crypto. PAXG saw a 6% increase since November 1, 2022 and just a 6% decrease since November 2021. Of course, if it was easier to store, we would recommend a physical gold strategy. However, who has the wherewithal or the space to self-custody bars and bars of the precious metal? Only a few people in the world, and exchange is cumbersome.  One could store gold with third parties or invest in gold commodities. Or you could stick with DeFi with a highly liquid token like PAXG.
3. Finally, for the first time, holders, or as the industry phrase goes HODLers, can earn rewards on long-term Bitcoin, Ethereum and PAX Gold investments with TETRAGUARD. The decentralized ETF-like instrument is completely digital, with clear rules and the world’s most respected crypto staked in it. While BTC and ETH decreased by 17% between November 1st, 2022 and January 5th, 2023, TETRA increased by 6.7% during the same time period. And during this rally over the past week, TETRA has seen similar upward price action, given its crypto and gold exposure.

How has TETRA appreciated during both bearish and bullish conditions? What does #3 mean, exactly?

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Tetraguard and the crypto winter

The project’s whitepaper defines Tetraguard as “a decentralized smart token basket of major coins with shared transaction fees and staked ETH.” Since this is a brand new instrument, we want to unpack that and highlight how Tetraguard works. There’s actually a fourth asset in that basket, the instrument’s native currency, the Quadron or $QUAD. The QUAD collects the trading fees every time TETRA is bought or sold. The fees collected in the QUAD are in ETH, and are distributed among all the TETRA holders on a pro-rata basis. When holders sell their TETRA, they also collect their pro-rata fees collected in the QUAD.  

The project’s smart contract is fully audited by ConsenSys and runs on the Ethereum blockchain. That’s the reason for the wrapped BTC and PaxG, they have to be Ethereum-compatible to join the party. And, of course, the $QUAD is an ERC-20 token. Each Tetraguard basket is composed of:

• 1 WBTC 
• 13 ETH
• 26 WPAXG
• 23632 QUAD 

And Tetraguard was built to project five key principles:

• Transparency 
• Programmatic
• Decentralization
• Censorship Resistance
• Game Theory Compatible

So, it's purported to be very bitcoin-like. The question remains: Is Tetraguard the optimal tool to survive the crypto winter? Read the whitepaper and decide for yourself. If you decide it isn’t, two other strategies are still available.