How to Survive the Crypto Boom & Bust Cycle

Lodha says CoinTracker aims to help people use crypto with more confidence through portfolio tracking and tax software. In 2017, he and co-founder Jon were frustrated with traditional financial infrastructure and built a tool to track their own crypto assets. They later added support for crypto taxes.

Lodha describes crypto’s sharp swings between periods of rapid growth and prolonged downturns. In 2020, CoinTracker was six months from running out of money. He credits a long-term focus on the company’s mission, a strong co-founder relationship, and candid conversations with the team for helping them through.

CoinTracker grew 14 times during the prior bull run, but customers later said the product was not keeping pace with newer crypto activity. The team had fallen behind on advanced DeFi use cases such as liquidity pools and Uniswap. They paused other work for nine months to focus on product quality.

For CoinTracker 2, the team made user contact a responsibility across support, design, marketing, product, and engineering. Lodha says he speaks with users daily and looks for feedback on Reddit and Warpcast. The company also changed its principle to “Think long term, ship today,” which encouraged experimentation and faster execution.

Lodha says CoinTracker launched version 2.0 in January after a year of product quality work. His advice is to stay humble during a boom and keep believing through a downturn. He sees crypto winters as a chance to strengthen a company before the next wave of adoption.