Why People Hate Crypto (and What We Can Do About It) | Natasha Hoskins, Deana Burke

hi hi lot a nice blue hat love to see it man this is so intense you guys really intense I did see someone sleeping in the back so I think I think it's it's going to be okay Dina um who came out to the voice club party last night let's hear around we're still recovering so bear with us we're we're on this together so you're on our team now um and thanks for being here uh okay Welcome to our Ted Talk why people hate crypto and what we can do about it okay um so I'm Natasha Hoskins this is Dena Burke we are the co-founders of voice club we started voice Club in 2021 to bring new voices to the new internet and how we do that is through podcasts and newsletters and parties um being in person is is very important to the work that we do we also have thousands of people who hang out online in Discord and we spend all day talking about yes crypto and emerging technology and things like that but also our skincare routines and our favorite TV series and our social lives and our work lives and we've cultivated a community where people feel like they can show up as their full selves which might sound sort of trivial but is actually Central to what we're doing and should be Central to a larger conversation we're having in crypto um we started Bo Club because we saw this opportunity to be a part of building a brand new internet in ways that we were not able to participate in previous versions and iterations of the internet and we thought it was very important that we brought a lot of people along for that ride and a lot of people to participate in the creation of this new internet so surrounding ourselves with people who aren't purists about the technology has been incredible it's kept us really really honest about what's happening in crypto um one thing that we think about a lot and that we keep coming back to is about this idea that major technological developments um like whether it's the invention of the internet or the launch of the iPhone or what's happening right now with AI and gpus they happen um in ways that are intertwined and connected with people's interests and desires um they're very much a part of culture these things don't happen uh in parallel or separate to culture and we think and want you be looking at crypto with that same lens okay so a little bit more about boy club to give some context um you might to know us as those girls who throw parties and we do do that and I am nursing an unbelievable hangover today um but we do a lot more than that we have had 125 podcasts with very legitimate guests that range from Mr Reed WR own himself Chris Dixon um to Jesse Pock to cashm Hill the senior reporter for tech at the New York Times we've had McMullan in the audience here lots of people lots of great people here um and we've hosted conversations um rooted in Curiosity on everything from eak to Costco we have had over We've ran over a 100 newsletters that have reliably shown up in tens of thousands of people's inboxes every Wednesday and every Sunday for two and a half years I was a court reporter during the SPF trial um anyway we've been here long time we've been building we've been thinking about this intersection for a really long time if you still don't get it that's okay there's only like 10 minutes left of this talk um so hang in there okay so again we have this really really strong thesis that crypto doesn't exist in a bubble um we think that crypto needs to be considered in the context of two things one it's an enabling technology that's happening at a time where there's a lot of other enabling technologies that are coming into maturity and two uh we're spending more more and more of Our Lives online culture is Shifting beneath our feet um we need to be understanding crypto in this context and also in the relationship of um how we think about ownership how that relates to the internet we love this quote from py McCormick this isn't about onboarding the next billion users to crypto this is about using blockchain networks to do things that people billions of people want to do better this really sums it up but I think in order to really deliver on this idea you need to have a deep understanding of people um a deep understanding of their media diets and what their stated and revealed preferences contained okay so let's start with the mainstream media diet and narrative that we see it's bad it's very bad we know it we see it every day and it's really toxic and we have a thesis on why this is happening it's sort of a self-fulfilling cycle where traditional media looks for spectacular headlines with a lot of money on the line and crypto has a lot of those and we know them well we don't need to get into it um but that happens and it creates bias and then that bias makes the price go down the price drops the bias is then confirmed big brands are doing experiments very publicly and then unwilling to continue that experimentation when it doesn't quite work or it fails that again confirms bias the regulatory environment is uncertain again bias is confirmed and we go on and on and on and on in the cycle okay but it's not all doom and gloom it's not all bad news we ran a survey recently um in the last uh 6 weeks we got 600 respondents uh these are not boys club members these are not our newsletter subscribers these are not our Twitter followers this is a totally random sampling of folks across the US 16 and up uh split across incomes and ages and the incredible news is we asked this question are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of blockchains and crypto 67% said yes so this is was really shock honestly shocking to us not bad not bad at all and um I think is uh really interesting compared to the previous slides around the sort of narrative mainstream media narrative around crypto um but it's uh not you know just some sobering uh news go along with that when we T when we asked about the top three positive quality qualities associated with crypto the top one was uh no surprise investment return I think when we're thinking about this it's like okay that's obvious all we've given them is the casino side of this industry and that again comes as no surprise but I think one thing that we're thinking a lot about is about how the values of a more creative less corporate internet are actually shown in people's revealed preferences um we just haven't given them language for that so if you're a builder in the room tune in these are some things you can be thinking about um a very tried and true go to market truism is find a parade and get in front of it so these are our parades oh and basically what we're going to do is walk through five cultural movements that are happening today in the year of Our Lord 2024 and sort of how they dovetail in into uh larger themes and uh values of web 3 yeah we think they're really opportunities for Builders to tap into these larger movements um to again find a parade and get in front before we do that huge shout out to zerox designer who uh we collaborated with on these slides uh if you don't know them they do these incredible uiux mockups that are really showing the values of web 3 and the ideas of web 3 bringing it to life uh they did one every day last year and yeah hire them pay them sponsor them incredible work thank you for your collaboration on this okay so we're going to start with this idea of algorithmic flattening and monoculture so the idea of algorithmic flattening is that we are all living on machine learning informed feeds that are designed to keep us within the platform so what we see on our feeds are mostly content that won't we won't turn away from that we're maybe most likely to engage with and the result of that is kind of boring pretty unchallenging not surprising not shocking content on your feed and content creators are locked into this Loop where they are fighting against the algorithm to try to remain on your feed and end up producing pretty neutral monotone content that is needed in order to survive if their content creators so how does web 3 fix this um the enemy of mon culture is decentralization when there isn't one algorithm or one platform that is deciding all of the ways that we think um there is an opportunity and many platforms with many different algorithms that are allowing us to engage in different ways to have ownership over how the network looks and feels and what we see a thousand flowers can Bo can bloom so when incentives are aligned social media platforms their incentives are aligned with the users when switching costs are incredibly low and when value flows to the edges of the network instead instead of the center this is how we fight against these Trends okay next big Trend future of work the discourse is discoursing here we've all seen the headlines genz Millennials disillusions especially post-pandemic uh AI fears uh the AI and jobs conversation I think is about to enter the culture Wars in a very significant way uh credentialed identities aren't going to solve for all of this but I do think it speaks to a more uh streamlined and efficient work life where when all of your skills and experiences are on chain they're transparent um you're able to oh thank you uh we could see a world where opportunity finds you an opportunity that's really suited for your experiences and skill sets are finding you instead of going out and on the job hunt and applying for a zillion roles and doing all that applying um another thing that we're really excited about um with the future of work is this idea that um you can enter into uh relationships with employers or partners that are governed by smart contracts that have maybe Revenue sharing that's built into them and yeah just generally I think there's a lot of opportunity to create a much more higher agency future for workers uh using web 3 okay okay fake news Bots deep fakes the fears are here and they are mounting and they are very very real um this is an urgent uh conversation from DC all the way to Hollywood and it is an opportunity to bring the blockchain there um so how does that work I mean we all know that blockchains are incredibly well suited for verification which allows for media to be able to be verified on chain where attribution can be identified where provenance can exist this is a huge opportunity like it love it or hate it it's there okay next one big Tech skepticism uh related to this is consolidation of Power by Tech Giants mistrust of tech leaders a huge conversation in modern culture surely we can find some common ground with these people uh the why web three of it is really clear when you own your data when you have the opportunity to be compensated for the ownership of that data when you are owning the network when you're um participating in the governance of that Network when you're speaking into the decision-making processes around that Network you can't get an Elon Musk and um yeah I I feel very strongly that we need to make uh a really concerted and strong effort to align with these people and not alienate the anti- big Tech crowd I feel like this is the Battleground for crypto to win okay media landscape SL hellscape if you have been paying attention at all in the last few years you have seen that traditional media is having a reckoning from ID to Vox to NBC to Pitchfork layoffs closures it's it's pretty bleak and the reason for this is that these Publications relied on traffic for their ad models and they got very comfy in the 2010s where Facebook was feeding them a lot of traffic and then the algor gorithm changed and they got totally and now they're relying on Google search which works if you can like elbow your way to the very top of of the search results but that has absolutely eroded the trust between Publications and their readers so New Media is here um it is beehives and substacks and podcasts it's niche Comm Niche communities with a thought leader at the HM um and subscriptions work for these businesses but I we at boy club really have a belief that ad models are inevitable and that they will happen so we think that the future of media is exciting and when data is interoperable when consumers can opt into the types of advertising that they want curated through distribution channels that they trust it's going to be a much much brighter future and a much more interesting media landscape okay so that's that web 3 Builders these are the things you should be aligning with blockchain fixes it just don't be cringe okay thank you so much [Applause] bye thank you thank you guys