Everything is better than mining in bear market except investing on altcoins and BTC using Fiat or stable coins unless you have almost free electricity, many miners became a king 👑 in 2020 because they failed to shut down their rigs in bear market.
Best time to buy coins is when coins crash 90% or more, that is the time to buy it, as always dont go all on it, use caution. I would not buy anything right now, as I said previously still has a lot to crash yet, 90% crash from top takes time.
History isn't repeating itself over again, as per last bull market in 2017 by now we should be in bear market already, I expected BTC to tanked to 20k range but it's not happening instead it's trying to such to reclaim 40k range I think bear market is still a bit far away.