A first-person account of switching from fintech (trading at Gazprombank) into crypto at the bottom of the market — right after FTX, with Solana in single digits. The switch wasn't luck: it was a non-obvious match of hard skills (edtech, finance, crypto, user research) and soft skills, signalled loudly over time through public writing and a finance PhD on crypto regulation. The bigger lesson: ugly markets hire for impact, not momentum — so a downturn is often the best time to jump, if you can cr...