Shorting can be quite lucrative, especially during bear phases. However, you can just as easily burn your fingers - I did quickly earn a nice 4-figure amount shorting ETH (and some BTC) in the middle of the year, during the first bear phase, but I got caught up during the bull phases afterwards, since I expected a pattern more closer to the bursting of the 2013 crypto bubble which was an overall bear, but with bull phases in between. This time it was an overall bull phase with short bear phases in between, and by the time I accepted my fail, I had lost all my nice shorting proceeds (and quite a bit more, but made up for that easily with price appreciations of cold storage cryptos, so I'm at least net positive now).
Shorting is king when the overall pattern is a bearish one, but when it's not clearly bearish, you've been better off longing at good entry points, as cryptos have historically been more likely to grow in price than to shrink. But as always...past market trends are no useful indicator for future trends.
[0]https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/bitfinex-never-repaid-their-t...
[1]https://news.bitcoin.com/bitfinex-bitcoin-cash-deposits-with...
As I think about it, this is actually another benefit of longing over shorting - it allows you to eliminate the risk of putting value on exchanges, at least if you're okay with limiting your ability to quickly react to market action.