In a bear market, one needs to stay positive. Needs to keep the faith, keep moving forward, and keep making things happen. When one does the opposite and becomes negative, and spreads it – it spreads like wildfire more than ever. It is easy to be negative in today’s market – that is why we must challenge our primitive monkey minds to not be overtaken and to be a positive mind, a positive light, a positive source of encouragement for each and every one in the community to get through this, together.

Another challenge in a bear market is to stay aligned. Stay the course. And we do not mean this only as a Handshake community, but the various “competitors” and “alternatives” in the market. It is easy to attack and namecall, to say I’m better than yours, and create long twitter threads bashing each other into oblivion. It takes a greater good approach to ALIGN for pushing the technology forward. Maybe even find synergies where one would see competitors. At least do not use your limited energy to bash competitors, as our energy is a limited finite resource. Align and focus on positivity and getting through the challenging market conditions is first and foremost.

Bear markets we build. It has been beautiful to see Handshake community members continue to build and ship products even under these market conditions. A third value of this conference, to build means we also need those first 2 values even more – positivity and alignment. It is always needed, but especially in a bear market – where it is too easy to do the opposite – if we can hold together as a community – see the good when others see bad – and stay together – we can make it to a whole new level once we get through this market cycle.

So there you have it – our three values and our overarching theme for the upcoming third annual Handycon event.