Prevailing sentiment is that builders should not be trading. As a builder you should be focused on creating value for your project and not splitting your attention elsewhere. However, product building and trading are both resource management games. And in crypto they are actually two slides of the same coin.

Crypto at its core is a set of capital allocation rails, if you don’t understand how the capital flows your project will have trouble capturing value. Even if you're not building in defi, you are still faced with market driven pitfalls like deciding on ecosystems, partners and integrations. If you don’t have an understanding of how the market evaluates these things you are flying blind. 

The market is what picks winners. Full stop. Technical people are consistently some of the worst traders I know, because they over index on the tech. Despite this they will often continue to believe their product will win on its technical merit alone. Even if you believe the market is wrong, it won’t have different criteria for evaluating your project.

Trading also helps build your risk tolerance. If you are at or running an early stage startup you may consider your risk tolerance to be pretty above average. The challenge is you’re not competing with the average. The most successful projects are ones that shifted the overton window, ones that took on an amount of reputational, product, or market risk that would make a day trader blush.

Crypto is a cyclical industry, if you don’t have your finger in the air you won't know when the wind is shifting. Being heads down building is fine, but you need to have a pulse on not only industry cycles but sub industry cycles. There is no overnight success, your biggest priority is surviving. Longterm builders are the ones who manage to not get stranded on the wrong chain in the wrong vertical or with the wrong risk profile when the tide goes out.

Prevailing sentiment is that builders should not be trading. As a builder you should be focused on creating value for your project and not splitting your attention elsewhere. However, product building and trading are both resource management games. And in crypto they are actually two slides of the same coin.

Crypto at its core is a set of capital allocation rails, if you don’t understand how the capital flows your project will have trouble capturing value. Even if you're not building in defi, you are still faced with market driven pitfalls like deciding on ecosystems, partners and integrations. If you don’t have an understanding of how the market evaluates these things you are flying blind. 

The market is what picks winners. Full stop. Technical people are consistently some of the worst traders I know, because they over index on the tech. Despite this they will often continue to believe their product will win on its technical merit alone. Even if you believe the market is wrong, it won’t have different criteria for evaluating your project.

Trading also helps build your risk tolerance. If you are at or running an early stage startup you may consider your risk tolerance to be pretty above average. The challenge is you’re not competing with the average. The most successful projects are ones that shifted the overton window, ones that took on an amount of reputational, product, or market risk that would make a day trader blush.

Crypto is a cyclical industry, if you don’t have your finger in the air you won't know when the wind is shifting. Being heads down building is fine, but you need to have a pulse on not only industry cycles but sub industry cycles. There is no overnight success, your biggest priority is surviving. Longterm builders are the ones who manage to not get stranded on the wrong chain in the wrong vertical or with the wrong risk profile when the tide goes out.