Longtime Bitcoiner Dan Held says this ‘crypto winter’ won’t be as harsh as others

As the markets continue their bearish posture, Bitcoin is hovering over its 52 week low. Dan Held is the director of growth marketing at Kraken.

It was about 100 years ago that Held got into Bitcoin, because time moves so quickly.

Held said that back in the early era, it was just Bitcoin, there weren't even alternative coins, or there were very few.

Held said that the sentiment for the current market cycle is different even though there is a lot of talk of a winter in the community. The narratives have changed a lot over the years.

It was mostly retail investors up until 2020, when institutional players came in.

Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a big shift in the macro environment of a lot of people going risk-off.

There is also fear in traditional and tech equity markets. The S&P 500 is down 15% and the Industrial Average is down 10% for the year-to-date, according to MarketWatch.

There are a number of individual stocks that have plummeted as well, includingSnapchat and Netflix, which have both fallen by more than 50% this year. The stock of the video calling app is down 42% year to date, and it isn't zooming up the leader board. The conversations around traditional stocks tanking aren't nearly as aggressive or prominent as the commentary surrounding the market.

The narratives have been ebb and flow, from people being extremely risk-on, levered, having peak FOMO or excitement, to resetting and holding as markets pull back.

The aggregate value of cryptocurrencies fell to the lowest point in history after the total market cap was wiped out in the bear market.

The current bearish market is different from the last one because there are thousands of players who want to build things in the community, Held said.

Held said that VC funds are raising tens of billions of dollars to deploy into this system. A lot of players combined with a lot of funding will find and build products that deliver value.