How Crypto Lost Its Way — and What It Can Teach Founders

Crypto sucks. The industry is flooded with over 37 million cryptocurrencies, and the media is inundated with stories about the next 1000X and how crypto made people rich. If it isn’t the story of going from rags to riches, it’s a story of going from riches to rags with rug pulls and scams. The hype is at an all-time high, but the value is questionable at best, and the credibility crumbles with every scam story.

I knew the digital world of Web3 could make a difference, but the noise covered the value it offered. My journey started with an eviction from the college dorm for mining ETH, the native currency of the Ethereum network. Along the way, I learned that the difficulties of this industry can only be resolved with simplicity that conveys its value.

But these lessons don’t just apply to crypto — they reflect broader challenges most business leaders face when introducing a new product or service into the market. Whether you’re a crypto native or are avoiding the industry like the plague, these same lessons still apply.

Related: Assume Potential Customers Don’t Know Anything About Anything

Know your own bias

While people saw computers, I saw an infinite amount of opportunity pulsating through the chips and wires, a universe that I knew would catalyze our evolution. My interest took me to the top of Call of Duty’s global rankings and started me on my journey in Web3. But for those who don’t share this same passion, these achievements mean very little.

The truth is, as necessary as passion is to pursue ventures, it can be a slippery slope to failure if people don’t understand it. The biggest bias you can have is the assumption that people innately understand what you’re talking about. The reality is often that new concepts need to be conveyed in a language that makes sense to a wider audience.

This isn’t just speculation. Investors without prior industry knowledge simply lack the willingness to invest, not because the product lacks value, but because it is obscured by layers of jargon. Even with crypto, despite gaining national support, it is still met with confusion, as over half of U.S. adults still don’t fully grasp the concept. However, those in the crypto industry somehow expect people to know all about seed phrases and smart contracts.

For those aspiring entrepreneurs, it’s important to recognize how your own understanding of the service will differ from that of an end user, business partner or investor. Stepping outside the day-to-day will ensure you’re communicating in a way people will understand.

Related: Customers and Investors Don’t Want Products. They Want Solutions.

Profitable products aren’t always trustworthy ideas

But even if you’re communicating clearly, in simple language and concepts, it doesn’t mean people will automatically buy into your product. It’s not uncommon for a passionate business leader to meet a wall of mistrust despite the clear benefits their offering provides. The answer is simple — new ideas are often scary.

We’re seeing this now with the growing application of AI. Less than half (46%) of people globally are willing to trust AI systems, despite 66% of them regularly using them. Even when an innovation is gaining adoption, it doesn’t mean people fully trust its effectiveness.

I experienced this firsthand. Mining crypto in my dorm led my college board to suspect I was some kind of hacker. It didn’t matter how much I tried to explain the concept of crypto and ETH to them. Ultimately, they didn’t trust what I was engaging with, and it led to me being kicked out.

When it comes to trust, no one cares what the product does; they only care how it impacts them. The technical nuances in the back-end are discussions for developers, not general audiences. It doesn’t matter how the AI works, but it matters that it answers accurately and maintains people’s privacy.

Engaging with a new technology or system is going to be met with fear and suspicion from users. But that doesn’t mean you have to do a big campaign to educate the masses. Instead, you have to focus on the actual benefits rather than showing off about what’s under the hood.

Take telecoms, for example. Globally, over 7.2 billion people use smartphones, but few know the technical intricacies that go into the manufacturing of their phones or the code that goes into developing the apps they use. Trust in a technology takes shape when technology becomes deeply embedded in people’s day-to-day lives, with a clear functionality that gives them value and the assurance of privacy.

Related: 3 Essential Traits for Earning the Trust of Your Customers

Vision over product

Focusing on the benefits your offering has to users is just the first step. Making your business more than just “another product” and elevating it into a purpose-driven organization will set you apart from the competition. To do this, you sometimes need to get a bit creative and make bold statements.

For me, this was when I chose to burn a $90,000 Banksy to mint it as an NFT. The concept of burning a piece of art was going to shock a lot of people, but it was a means to demonstrate the value that this industry has to offer. And it worked, with the NFT selling for almost $380,000.

From there, my journey scaled to raising $36 million to launch XION, a consumer-first blockchain network that has onboarded over 150 global brands, including Uber and BMW.

Now this isn’t telling all business leaders to set fire to a piece of art. Instead, it’s about recognizing what your company is offering to the market and showcasing it in a way that grabs people’s attention. If you simply rely on customer adoption through conventional means, your brand will never be seen as impacting the market.

Whether it’s crypto, AI or another type of innovation, there’s a huge amount of opportunity out there. But it’s easy for these pioneering companies to fall into traps that limit their growth, scare away the customer base or simply fail to resonate with the broader market. Recognizing the biases you may have, communicating effectively and engaging with a broader mission can overcome these barriers and allow your business to excel.

Crypto sucks. The industry is flooded with over 37 million cryptocurrencies, and the media is inundated with stories about the next 1000X and how crypto made people rich. If it isn’t the story of going from rags to riches, it’s a story of going from riches to rags with rug pulls and scams. The hype is at an all-time high, but the value is questionable at best, and the credibility crumbles with every scam story.

I knew the digital world of Web3 could make a difference, but the noise covered the value it offered. My journey started with an eviction from the college dorm for mining ETH, the native currency of the Ethereum network. Along the way, I learned that the difficulties of this industry can only be resolved with simplicity that conveys its value.