The Dark Side of Crypto: A Journey into the World of Token Hype and Manipulation

The Dark Side of Crypto: A Journey into the World of Token Hype and Manipulation

I worked full time in crypto for two years and didn’t really like what I saw. Justin has been able to get away with the kind of nonsense that doesn’t fly in any other sector. Worse than that, he is enabled by shills, journalists, bloggers, crypto exchange CEOs and others within the space.

Electrify Asia, Apex, Auctus, Zap, Soma, OCN, CNN, Gems, Internxt, Hero… there were hundreds of projects that were hyped to the moon over the past couple of years. People poured millions into them while the tokens all went to zero or thereabouts. Crypto has a higher proportion of failures than the average for startups. Most crypto projects are just straight-up garbage. Many projects that seem “good” (or at least, not terrible) in a whitepaper and maybe even complete a successful ICO, soon find that their ideas aren’t that great after all. While the teams may work hard and try to soldier on through the bear market, they are more often than not flogging a dead horse.

We have so many different blockchain platforms now, so many ecosystems, so many tokens providing the “fuel” for those ecosystems, when in reality, the platforms could have worked just fine without a new token. Research how to buy Bitcoin. Find an app to acquire Bitcoin. Move the newly bought Bitcoin to a crypto exchange. Exchange Bitcoin for a utility token. Sign up on the utility token platform. Move utility token to platform or learn how to use Metamask or some other service. Learn how to use the platform itself. For a newcomer, this is a lot of legwork. Sometimes when they realize this, project teams will go so far as to allow users to actually bypass even needing the token to pay for features and services in the first place.

If we’re looking at cryptocurrency as a form of digital cash, then sure, that’s a use case we can all get behind, but do we really need hundreds of different forms of digital cash? Do we expect vendors to accept all these tokens? It’s just creating more clutter.

Given how manipulated and immature crypto markets are, you come to understand that price action is irrational. There was a time when something as mundane as a rebrand could cause the price of a project’s token to skyrocket. People invest hoping to make big money, then more often than not, their investment decreases in value and they continue holding the token. It’s at that point they usually join “the community”—the bottom of the food chain. Near the top are the shills, influencers, early investors and VCs who have vested interests in creating hype and price action. These ringleaders work hard to mislead retail investors into believing that their token of choice is a great investment. Project teams and their mouthpieces do their best to convince others that they should “invest” in their token.

When you buy a token, you’re not buying equity in the company. You’re not really buying anything. Most others will be drawn to the lights by influencers, YouTubers, PR, press, crappy YouTube videos and other shiny objects. For a while, it seems like everyone is in it together. People are excited, looking forward to the token sale, and then looking forward to that first listing on a crypto exchange. They think they’re all going to make money and be rich.

At some point, the relationship between project and community falls apart with any crypto project and community, it will go to shit. Why? Because there is no real link between the community and the project. Most crypto projects have already offered their tokens to private investors at heavily discounted rates before any kind of public sale. That’s where the real money is made. Then along comes the community and they get to buy at a higher price and immediately put at a disadvantage.

Project teams have to keep up appearances by providing just enough updates and AMAs and morsels of meat to feed the hungry mouths. The goal is to keep spirits high enough so that there isn’t a public outcry about how the team has stopped providing updates on development of the roadmap seen in the whitepaper. Gradually, the community will start to become unsettled, unhappy with progress, and this will mutate into anger, with frequent outbursts in Telegram or on Reddit. The only thing the community is really interested in is the price of the token. They couldn’t give a shit about the tech. They simply want to sell their tokens at a profit.

The team has no obligation to the community to deliver on any kind of roadmap or keep the project active, although there have been a small number of class-action lawsuits and charges filed by the SEC. Project teams will sometimes do their best to get listed on big exchanges (for hefty listing fees), to build hype, to work with market makers, to try and ensure that the token gets pumped at some point so early buyers can exit with the nature of how volatile crypto is, there will always be those who don’t sell, those who buy the top, those who hold when they should have sold. Optimism has evaporated and there are now countless posts asking for updates from the team, who are usually trying to figure out how to break the news that they’ve completely run out of money (the curse of running a company with no revenue streams).

Investors become aggressively, emotionally attached to their tokens, but they elevate founders, CEOs, CxOs and leaders within the space to near godlike status. Justin Sun (founder of TRON), CZ (founder of major crypto exchange Binance), Charlie Lee (creator of Litecoin) et al are celebrities now. The crypto rich and famous have been able to build a brand around being the “good guys”, in it for the community, contributing to a better tomorrow, when the reality is that most of them are selling snake oil—or worse.

Mass adoption comes when we have products and services that people can use and that make their lives easier without even knowing about crypto or blockchain. Most crypto content creators are just filling the airwaves with noise in the hope of getting paid for it. General media’s reporting on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is usually bad and focused on extreme negatives or else wild stories about people getting rich. Real crypto news sites like CoinDesk and Cointelegraph, where at least some real journalism goes on, but the quality overall is still relatively poor. Crypto outlets like The Block, Decrypt and Breakermag (RIP) add real value, but even these reputable sites have staffers who have posted inaccuracies. Crypto journalism is shoddy. Corrections and edits are frequent. Justin Sun represents the worst of what crypto has become.

Hope that the space matures and can one day really make the world a better place. There are some great minds in crypto and they are tackling some of the big issues of our time — privacy, access to financial services, financial inclusion and more.

It’s Simple, You’re Killing the Onboarding Experience

It’s a carousel of onboarding cards for me to get to know this app, and it looks familiar because it’s what we typically see when we open apps. This is one of the most pervasive cliches in app design today and something often blindly dropped into a design without much user-centered thinking.

The emergence of one way of onboarding suggests user research isn’t happening. Unoriginality and ignorance of user needs are evident. We've missed the opportunity to create something original, inspired by user insight.

Onboarding that relies on text and image aren’t going to be inclusive or relatable. Before someone downloads an app is a great time to tell them what the app does, at a high level. Once they’ve downloaded the app, it’s a different story because you should be immersing them in what they’re there to do; that’s probably not swiping more explanatory materials.

What if the app is so easy to use, so in tune with user needs, that we don’t have to explain it? Learning by doing: Are you addressing what users need to do first? A highly intentional guided level design that is simple and to the point so users are carefully onboarded. With all the patterns out there, it’s easy to get distracted and graft a solution on without thinking about if it’s right for our users. Think about what they want and need to learn, and find a way to deliver that by authentically building an experience to support it.

For all the talk about user-centered design these days, there’s an awful lot of homogeneity and cliché out there. We need to break free from these patterns and truly understand our users in order to create meaningful onboarding experiences.

Actionable Advice:

1. Conduct thorough user research before designing the onboarding experience. Understand the needs, expectations, and pain points of your target audience.
2. Create an onboarding process that is intuitive and focused on what users actually need to do first. Avoid overwhelming them with unnecessary information.
3. Strive for originality and authenticity in your onboarding design. Don't just follow the trends, but truly understand your users and build an experience that supports their needs.

In conclusion, the world of crypto has been plagued by token hype and manipulation, with many projects failing to deliver on their promises. The community often becomes disillusioned and only cares about the price of tokens rather than the underlying technology. On the other hand, app onboarding experiences often lack creativity and fail to address user needs effectively. To overcome these challenges, it is crucial to prioritize user research, create intuitive onboarding experiences, and break free from clichés in design. Only then can we hope for the crypto space to mature and make a positive impact on the world.