Rebranding Crypto, for the Masses

Crypto has a branding problem.

Much like the internet in the early days, many still see crypto as an esoteric, overly-technical solution in search of a problem. As far as your average person is concerned, crypto is: internet money for nerds; a scam; for criminals; an environmental disaster; or, at best, uninteresting.

The parallels with the early internet are uncanny.

This is due in part to the fact that it takes time for people to wrap their heads around a paradigm shift in technology. People didn't understand why email was better than sending a physical letter, until they did.

However, this is also due to how crypto is currently marketed. Product positioning is either too technical, steeped in ideology, or simply uninteresting to the average person. Just because “we’re still early” doesn’t excuse a failure to capture the imagination of the average consumer.

Those within the crypto space know the promise and potential of this new ecosystem. It is incumbent upon us to put the average consumer (rather than crypto-natives) at the center of marketing efforts. This is how we bridge the gap between early adopters and everyone else.

Benefits > Features > Ideology

Here’s the hierarchy that drives purchasing decisions for 99% of consumers:

Benefits = the problem you are solving for the customer

Features = how you solve the problem (price, performance, convenience, etc)

Ideology = nice to haves (alignment with values, technical specs, brand affinity)

Crypto is no different. While many people discover products because they align with their values, adoption happens when the product solves a real problem, and does it better than anything else. Marketing efforts should focus on the highest tiers of the hierarchy in order to wins new users.

Repositioning Crypto in the Mass Market

What does this mean for crypto’s positioning?

We need to prioritize the things that people care most about. The average person doesn’t care about your zero-knowledge rollup, or settling transactions off-chain. They don't even know what those things mean. They just care that it works, and that it’s better than the alternative.

Can you imagine Visa running a marketing campaign touting their transaction throughput, or the way they batch settlements?

Hell no.

Visa isn’t selling tech specs to nerds; they are selling trust, ease of use, and worldwide acceptance.

Looking at crypto through this lens, we can see how to reposition products and brands by putting the benefits front and center:

Instead of: “A Permissionless Monetary Network”

Try: “Send Money to Anyone, Anywhere in the World”

Rather than: “Self-Custody”

Go with: “Digital Ownership” 

Don’t say: “A Layer 2 Scaling Solution”

Say: “Buy NFT’s, Pay Pennies in Transaction Fees”

For that last example, there is also the heavy lifting of explaining why the average person would want to buy NFT's, but let's take this one step at a time.

Rather than leveraging new concepts, capture the value proposition in terms that people already understand + care about. Repurpose Web2 value props for Web3; translate measures of meaning from the old world to the new.

Crypto marketing language is infused with ideology and technical terminology, which mostly appeals to those who have already fallen down the crypto rabbit hole. This is great if you're targeting crypto-natives, terrible if you're trying to onboard someone to the ecosystem for the first time.

I’m not suggesting that the ideological or technical underpinnings aren’t important, but I am absolutely saying that crypto won’t win millions of new users on this basis alone.

It needs to have a killer, mass-market value prop to compete with existing Web2 alternatives.

Examples: Mass-Market Crypto Projects

Below are a few projects that are making real strides towards bridging the gap between crypto diehards and the average consumer. How these products are positioned reveals what matters most when marketing for mass adoption.

Coinbase Wallet

Coinbase Wallet is at the top of this list because the product is solving first and foremost for the user experience, which is reflected in their marketing. They highlight that users can easily switch between networks, manage their NFT’s, and use DeFi protocols, all from a single wallet. Instead of getting bogged down in tech specs, they position as your one-stop-shop for all things crypto, and tout their intuitive UI.

By abstracting away confusing workflows, they are offering a product that is the most intuitive on-ramp into Web3. This marketing works for those who are crypto-curious but don’t want to watch an hour of YouTube tutorials just to buy their first NFT or setup a hardware wallet. Coinbase isn’t just selling their wallet; they are selling a lower-friction, easier crypto experience.

Strike

Full disclosure, I’m a shameless Strike fan. This is mostly because they are quietly building what amounts to a global version of Venmo. Similar to what Coinbase is doing with their wallet, Strike has pushed all of the technical jargon into the background and focused on building the best possible user experience for using the Lightning Network.

The value prop: send money instantly to anyone in the world, for almost no cost. While they do showcase that this is done using the Bitcoin network, they don’t let this overshadow the benefits to the user.

The result: this is a massive improvement in international remittance payments, and a case where the crypto alternative is a clear winner from the consumer perspective. By putting this value prop front and center, Strike has seen incredible adoption by those who can’t afford long, expensive remittance processes.

The Solana Labs Phone + Solana Spaces

I’ll say right off the bat that I’m not sure if Solana’s phone is the panacea for crypto adoption; the jury is still out on whether this offering takes off. However, it’s a great case study in consumer-first crypto marketing. Solana’s marketing content checks all the same boxes as the projects above by focusing on ease of use, removing friction, and an intuitive value prop.

Think about it: Coinbase built a mobile wallet app because the average person needs to be able to use crypto from their phone, like any other app. Solana took it a step further and made your phone = your crypto wallet. This is a full stack consumer crypto product starting at the hardware level. But, for your average user, it's still just a phone that does everything you expect it to.

I can see us transitioning from this being a novel concept, to something that is standard across brands. We used to have "camera phones" and "smartphones." Now, we just have "phones." Similarly, if Solana is onto something here, I think "crypto phones" will follow the same path.

Solana also innovated by offering a physical product that you can buy in one of their stores. For most people, crypto is an abstract concept; Solana made it real by building something you can touch, feel, and experience for yourself. This is an example of the product itself doing a ton of the heavy lifting on the marketing front.

Crypto’s Final Boss: UI/UX

The common theme from these examples is that all of the technical jargon and confusing workflows have been abstracted away, and what’s left is a great consumer product that just works. To borrow from a @Hsaka Tweet, "crypto’s final boss is UI/UX," meaning that the products that win will be those that simply make sense to your average, everyday user.

If UI/UX are what matter most on the product side, this needs to be reflected in the marketing for these products. Let’s ditch the overly technical, ideology-infused marketing language and focus on the things that matter most in order to capture the imaginations of the tomorrow's crypto users.