7 Onchain Strategies to Fight Market Pain
Global economies have been flashing with intermittent warning signs of stagnation for months, and official inflation data is still running too hot.
Investors are hoping that President Donald Trump’s administration can ignite a new golden era of American economic dominance, but at the moment, even his own administration is sounding the alarm. One top Trump cabinet official recently signaled that the president’s tariff policies – which have received much of the blame for the recent selloff – will be “worth it,” even if they lead to a recession…
Markets are hoping for better times ahead but savvy investors know to get the sails up when rough winds start blowing. Before the storm hits, arm yourself with these seven sizzling onchain strategies to help reduce potential portfolio downside.
Here's where I'm looking for refuge in this choppy market👇
💥 Crypto Volatility Index
You may have heard about the VIX, a popular “fear gauge" that measures the market’s expectations for movements in the S&P 500 index, but did you know that a similar product exists for crypto markets?
Crypto Volatility Index (CVI) is a decentralized index that tracks implied volatility on major cryptocurrencies – primarily BTC and ETH – and allows traders to profit from unexpectedly sharp swings in market prices.
The most recent iteration of CVI offers up to 16x leverage and introduces Ultra CVI, a new token that offers 3x the volatility exposure of CVI. By using native leverage in combination with Ultra CVI, speculators can amplify their volatility exposure up to 48x compared to the base CVI index.
💥 BOOM! UCVI jumped nearly 40% after Trump’s crypto reserve bombshell, check our chart!
— Crypto Volatility Index (CVI) (@official_CVI) March 3, 2025
CVI’s built for these wild rollercoaster days, helping you ride the chaos like a pro! 🎢😎 pic.twitter.com/1h1H6j0RpM
🪙 Bitcoin
During recent market dumps, Bitcoin Dominance has pumped! In fact, BTC’s share of total crypto industry value has been steadily increasing since the collapse of FTX in November 2022; the key metric was 62% at the time of writing.
With high hopes that an increasing number of individuals and institutional players will soon adopt BTC in the aftermath of President Trump’s recent Executive Order to establish the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, BTC’s “store of value” properties might help it float to the top among competitors in recessionary conditions.
Bitcoin’s position of industry dominance could come under threat if its status as the consensus crypto bet is called into question, but the token’s strong association with safety makes it likely to outperform riskier altcoins in a contagion situation.
💛 Pax Gold
Bitcoin’s store of value properties are held in high regard by many crypto natives, but its decade-and-a-half track as digital money looks like the blink of an eye when contrasted against gold’s eons-long track record as an SOV throughout recorded human history.
While all tokenized real-world assets come with custody risks, Paxos is regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services and backs all Paxos tokenized gold (PAXG) with 1:1 gold deposits at the reputable London Bullion Market Association. Independent ratings agency Bluechip assigns PAXG an “A” rating, the best among onchain gold products.
Kazu Umemoto Feb 24, 2025 • 4 min read
🐂 GMX Liquidity Provider Token
Hyperliquid’s recent HLP exploit no doubt spooked many from providing liquidity to perpetual trading platforms, but when armed with the proper guardrails, these products can be some of the best performing crypto assets in times of bear market malaise!
Due to their aggressive fee structures, perpetual platforms stand to make money from the trading flurry that would likely coincide with the normalization of recession concerns. Considering that liquidity providers play the role of house in this crypto casino, they stand to profit from such a period.
No strategy is perfect, but compared to the sizable 77% drawdown experienced by BTC off its $69k high to the bear market bottom of last cycle, GMX’s liquidity provider token dropped a relatively tame 42%.
🦁 Derive Covered Call Vaults
Although not a token itself, Derive’s covered call vaults can be used in conjunction with popular yield-bearing crypto assets – like ether.fi’s weETH and Lombard’s LBTC – to generate income that can offset losses from a market drop.
Derive covered call vaults expose their depositors to limited additional risks beyond the possibility their provided crypto assets fall in price and earn premium payments from speculators who purchase the rights to upside exposure on crypto assets beyond a specific point (the strike price).
It is worth noting that this strategy could make utilizers worse off compared to holding spot tokens in the event of a sudden market rally that pierces above their strike price, similar to impermanent loss suffered by AMM liquidity providers.
👨🦲 Coinbase 50 Index
Website | Twitter
Ticker: COIN50
Many students of financial markets know that portfolio diversification helps to smooth out returns over the long run and hedges against the unique risks associated with any single investment opportunity. This same principle can be applied to crypto markets!
The Coinbase 50 Index (COIN50) offers buyers diversified exposure to the top fifty crypto assets with USD pairs traded on Coinbase Exchange in proportions weighted by their market capitalization.
While the Index has underperformed BTC since its inception in November 2024, its market capitalization weighting methodology and quarterly rebalances eliminate the need for investors to make decisions and could help them outperform if BTC is dethroned.
The Coinbase 50 Index is available exclusively as a perpetual future to users of its Coinbase International platform, but any crypto investor can employ diversification strategies to mitigate portfolio risk.
⛰️ Mountain Protocol
Mountain Protocol is regulated by the Bermuda Monetary Authority. Its USD offering, USDM, is a dollar-pegged stablecoin backed exclusively by short-term US Treasuries, which are segregated in a special account held exclusively for the benefit of USDM holders.
Only incorporated businesses in supported countries can mint and redeem USDM, but anyone can permissionlessly purchase the stablecoin on the secondary market via popular decentralized exchanges, like Uniswap. USDM distributes daily yield to all holders through rebases, meaning the USDM supply grows as yield payments are accumulated.
USDM provides similar safety guarantees as PayPal’s PYUSD and Paxos’s USDP, and it is the highest rated yield-bearing stablecoin according to Bluechip.
The USDM Reserve Report for January 2025 is now available.
— Mountain Protocol (@MountainUSDM) February 6, 2025
This monthly report provides a complete breakdown of the Reserve assets down to the CUSIP level, ensuring clarity and precision for our users. pic.twitter.com/9EgvVWCkZf