It feels like it was only yesterday that Bitcoin hit $73,000 as a flurry of good news, including the approval of Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US, drove market sentiment to highs not seen since the 2021 bull run. Then it all came crashing down. As I write, Bitcoin has shed well over 15% in 24 hours and is struggling below $60,000, and the VIX volatility index spiked by well over 100% to levels not seen since the early days of the 2022 crash.
Paperhands are bailing, portfolios are turning red, and crypto startup teams are feeling nervous. Many may even be thinking about pulling the plug on their marketing plans. However, this would be a mistake. Success in crypto heavily depends on long-term crypto marketing strategies that don’t bend to the will of short-term market volatility.
Understanding the Market Downturn
Often referred to as the "fear gauge," the VIX measures the expected volatility of the S&P 500 index over the next 30 days. The VIX has surged since the Federal Reserve announced it would not be cutting rates on August 4th. The FED’s decision, combined with data that suggests that the US economy could be on its way to a recession and the Japanese central banks’s unexpected decision to raise rates, has rattled global markets and sent the VIX soaring to levels not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.
The brutal sell-off began in Japan, where the Nikkei 225 index dropped by as much as 14% on August 4th. This has since been followed by major indexes in Europe and North America retreating by up to 5%. The tech-heavy Nasaq has been particularly badly hit, with leading tech giants like NVIDIA and Intel crashing by well over 10% and 20%, respectively.
So, where does this leave the crypto market? Although Bitcoin and most leading alt-coins have actually been diverging from the US stock market over the past 12 months this time the crypto market has followed stocks into the red, according to an article from Binance.
Bitcoin dropped to a near six-month low at around $50,000 while Ether slipped below $2,200 for the first time since November 2023 according to data from TradingView.
Crypto futures have seen over $1 billion in liqudiations over night, and well over $500 million in total market capitalization has been wiped from the crypto market. This is all fairly gloomy and even just a few minutes on X (formerly Twitter) is enough to make someone think that the entire financial system is on brink of collapse.
However, before you pull the plug on your crypto project’s marketing campaign and sell your Bitcoin for tins of beans take a moment to zoom out and breathe. Yes, the weekly chart is ugly and the short term moving avarages are deep in the sell zone. However, it’s safe to say we have been here before and those that held on kept building reaped the rewards.
Bitcoin is up over 370% in the past five years, Ethereum is up just over 1000% and even the SPX is up a modest 70%. Although Warren Buffett might not appreciate his words being used in crypto circles, his famous saying about time in the market being more important than timing the market once again rings true.
Pushing on with marketing and development during downturns is vital. But don’t take the word of someone writing for a Web3 content marketing agency. Instead, let’s take a look at two projects that kept building even during the darkest moments of the 2022 bear market and have since reaped the rewards.
Toncoin and Render: Lessons From The 2022 Crash
The 2022 bear market was more profound and structural than the recent flash crash. The most recent drop appears to have been driven by macroeconomic conditions that are well outside the crypto industry's control. In contrast, 2022 was a product of both macro conditions and a series of black swan events in the crypto industry, namely the collapse of FTX and the Luna Terra debacle.
Several projects went under in 2022, while others simply gave up on Web3 digital marketing and disappeared from the community’s radar. However, two projects that stuck with their long-term marketing plan and succeeded are Toncoin (TON) and Render (RENDER). Although these projects offer very different value propositions, they offer a similar lesson in the importance of sticking to a marketing plan regardless of market volatility.
TON’s price crashed from around $4 at its peak in 2021 to well below $1 in December 2022. Billions of dollars were slashed from its market capitalization in months, and there was no guarantee that the pain would come to an end in 2022. However, the team pushed on with its plan as laid out in the official roadmap and continued its aggressive marketing campaign.
The Toncoin foundation made appearances at various cryptocurrency conferences, the social media accounts continued to push quality content to users via its blog, and continued efforts to onboard Telegram users meant that even during the bear market, the number of Ton wallets continued to move in the right direction.
Today, TON is among the top 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. It has surpassed its 2021 high, and even with the recent crash, it trades for over $5. The official Toncoin account on X regularly gets over 10,000 views per post.
Render is arguably an even more valuable example of why sticking to a marketing plan is critical. Render was launched in 2020 as a decentralized network for renting and lending GPU processing power. During the 2021 bull run, its native RENDER token reached $7.8 before collapsing to just $0.5.
Render suffered a severe crash both in interest on socia media and the project’s market capitalization. However, the team persevered and continued to market their services and pushed the narrative of renting GPUs at a fairer price than those offered by centralized cloud providers.
The Render team continued to make the project's value proposition known with crypto press release distribution, a solid SEO strategy, and ongoing social media efforts. As a result of Render’s marketing, the project managed to position itself as a leader in the crypto-AI sector, just as the Chat GPT launch sent the AI market into a frenzy.
Thanks partly to this long-term marketing plan, Render was able to take full advantage of the funds flowing into the AI market, and it became one of the best-performing tokens in 2023. RENDER’s market capitalization surged from around $150 million to over $4 billion, pushing the token to a new all-time high of $11.
Final Thoughts on Crypto Marketing During Market Downturns
Market downturns come and go. It's the nature of any financial market, and crypto is far from immune from these swings. The current crash appears to have been driven primarily by macroeconomic factors centered in the United States and, to some extent, in Japan. The proceeding liquidations in the crypto market have been painful and pushed Bitcoin and altcoins to multi-month lows.
But this is not the time to give up on a project’s marketing campaign. Several of today's leading projects came through the 2022 bear market stronger because their competition stopped reaching out to the community while they pushed on with their crypto SEO, PR, and social media campaigns.
Contact us today to get a comprehensive analysis of your project’s marketing strategy and find out how you can make the best of difficult times with our crypto marketing expertise.
