Crypto KOL: What assets am I holding during this bear market, and why do I believe they can survive both bear and bull cycles?
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Crypto KOL: What assets am I holding during this bear market, and why do I believe they can survive both bear and bull cycles?
Crypto KOLs' assets believed in and held during the bear market.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: Nat Eliason
Translated by: TechFlow intern
Note: This article reflects only the author's personal views and does not constitute financial advice.
Welcome to part three of the "Fun Is Over (For Now)" series. Part one was “Mistakes I Made,” and part two was “Good Decisions I Made.”
Maybe things will turn around and we’re not actually heading into a major economic recession—but who knows!? Regardless, I’m assuming that we won’t see massive liquidity flowing back into the ecosystem until money printing resumes, the next halving happens, or some other event justifies billions in new interest. And I don’t think the Merge will be enough to trigger that—though that’s a topic for another article.
But assuming crypto prices will remain relatively flat over the next few years, I’ve asked myself lately: Would I feel comfortable if I couldn’t touch any of my holdings for months? What would I forget about?
So here’s the checklist I used when selecting projects:
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Strong long-term conviction
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Requires little to no maintenance
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Accumulates value beyond simple token emissions
These are the key criteria guiding my holdings. Obviously, this is not financial advice—I’m not a financial advisor, just an unemployed philosophy major who thinks blogging counts as a real job...
ETH → stETH
The main token I hold is ETH. I’m bullish on the ETH ecosystem, especially during this cycle where we’ve seen shortcomings and liquidity drain from other L1s. All signs point to a smooth Merge, it holds the vast majority of TVL, and most new blockchain innovation is happening here—it’s hard to argue that it isn’t currently the strongest smart contract platform. That doesn’t mean it won’t someday become the IBM of blockchains, but for now, it’s where I have the most confidence.
I convert ETH to stETH because it offers not only a free, low-risk ~4% yield, but also trades at a significant discount right now—effectively giving you nearly a year of free yield upfront.
If you have 100 ETH, you can swap into ~103 stETH, earn yield over the next 18 months until withdrawals are enabled, and end up with roughly 109 ETH.
Recently there’s been some FUD around stETH due to its deviation from a 1:1 peg with ETH. But it was never meant to trade exactly 1:1, since you give up some liquidity in exchange for a 4% APY. stETH is not a stablecoin pegged to ETH—it’s a receipt for your ETH deposit, redeemable for ETH after the Merge. You’ll always be able to convert it back eventually; you just need to wait. So if you’re actively trading, it may not be ideal—but if you’re planning to hold ETH for years, holding stETH and earning yield seems like a solid move.
SOL → stSOL
While I’m most bullish on ETH, that doesn’t mean it will dominate the entire market or face no future competition. Tech platforms tend toward duopolies or small oligopolies (iOS and Android for mobile, Apple and Microsoft for desktop, AWS and Azure for cloud, etc.), so I don’t see why everything must live solely on ETH—even with L2s and sidechains.
So the natural question becomes: Who will be Android to ETH’s iPhone—or vice versa? Either way, the clearest answer today seems to be SOL.EVM-based L1s like Avalanche stand little chance in the long run against L2s and ETH itself, especially as teams like Polygon build dedicated subnets directly on top of Ethereum for companies that need them. The same goes for BSC.
What I like about Solana is that they're building something fundamentally different from Ethereum. It’s more centralized, focused on user experience, faster, cheaper, and likely to attract substantial adoption. Most end users won’t care about decentralization—they’ll care about performance—and Solana has a strong shot at delivering that.
For these reasons, SOL is my second-largest holding. Like with ETH, I prefer to stake it and earn a free ~7% APY. A big advantage on Solana is that since it’s already PoS, you can convert stSOL back to SOL anytime, meaning no liquidity premium—it’s always redeemable at par without discount.
MATIC → stMATIC
This one is a bit unusual because I think MATIC will struggle to drive long-term value for its token—or at least has struggled so far—but their business development has been excellent, and they keep launching innovative technologies built directly on Ethereum. So while I’m very bullish on L2s like Arbitrum and Optimism, and L1s like Solana, the Polygon team stands out as particularly strong. Perhaps my bias comes from believing they’re more professional, marketing-savvy, and technically sound than most crypto teams. For those reasons, I’ve included MATIC and am staking it via Lido to earn yield.
One thing I recently realized: I’m overly exposed to Lido… I wish there were more quality liquid staking options.
IMX
My rationale for IMX is similar to MATIC. They have a strong business team, consistently roll out new tech, and already possess solid infrastructure. As an NFT-centric L2 serving gaming and media needs on Ethereum, it makes sense to me. Plus, Illuvium’s land sales on Immutable X went smoothly and were priced affordably, which made me even more excited about the chain.
I also appreciate their staking model: staking earns you a share of NFT minting and trading fees, not just gas fees. This allows the token to accumulate meaningful value, unlike typical L2 tokens where gas should ideally be cheap or free. This design gives me higher expectations for their tokenomics.
CVX → uCVX
Convex is the first non-layer-one crypto application I believe is worth holding long-term. If you haven’t read my article “The Curve Wars,” I recommend checking it out to understand why CVX holds such power. In short, other protocols pay CVX holders to gain more CRV emissions, which helps secure deeper liquidity for their trading pairs. By staking CVX, you can earn surprising yields—around 30%—in CVX and other tokens. And if you use Llama Airforce Union, you can consolidate all your bribe earnings into a single token, avoiding repeated gas costs from selling.
Union is great if you want maximum security and yield aggregation, but I continue using Redacted’s uCVX (also accessible through Union) because they automatically use all earned bribes to buy more CVX, and your CVX isn’t locked. While I suspect the 1:1 peg might not last forever in volatile markets, you can always redeem uCVX for CVX 1:1 given enough time.
Either way, CVX appears to be one of the few applications capable of sustained value accrual, potentially growing all the way into the next bull run—as everyone needs liquidity. I’m happy holding and watching it grow.
Cryptopunk
My long-term reason for holding Cryptopunks is that it was the first NFT PFP project and, as a historical artifact of the Ethereum ecosystem, acts almost like leveraged exposure to Ethereum itself. If Ethereum becomes a multi-trillion-dollar dominant blockchain in the future and Cryptopunks aren’t among the most valuable NFT assets, I simply can’t imagine that scenario. I think Apes hurt themselves by constantly trying to add utility to NFTs—but that’s debatable. Apes are certainly a solid holding too, but I sense a slight fragility. The fact that Cryptopunks offer nothing beyond culture itself is what gives them lasting durability.
Smaller Positions
Beyond these core holdings, I have several smaller positions in projects doing interesting things that could evolve into strong assets.
RAIDER
I worked with the Crypto Raiders team to design their tokenomics and continue supporting their economy. But during this bear market, they’ve fully shifted focus to gameplay, downplaying economics and crypto aspects—which I believe is absolutely the right move. If they can build a great game over the next few years and then re-integrate tightly with crypto when the bull market returns, this could become a strong play. So I’m happy continuing to hold these tokens.
ALCX → gALCX
ALCX is down about 98% from its peak, but they appear to have generated substantial revenue from their treasury strategy. If people use their system to safely leverage ETH and stablecoins during the bear market, and profits are returned to token holders, this could evolve into a solid cash-flow-generating token. I really like Alchemix.
DPX → veDPX
Similar to ALCX, the Dopex ecosystem is starting to generate real cash flow, and now they have a token-locking mechanism that shares revenue—a compelling setup, especially as they expand their options strategies. If they win the race to become the leading on-chain options platform across L2s, the opportunity and profitability could be huge.
Overall, these are the main ones. I hold a few others like GMX and Looksrare, which I view as undervalued with high upside potential, but the ones listed above are my highest-conviction picks.
I’d love to hear what others think will be worth revisiting in a year or two. This is a short list, but keeping it concise helps reduce mental overhead. At the very least, looking back at this article in a year or two should be interesting.
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