When blockchain projects show that their technology can provide something that the traditional Internet does not have, large investors will participate.
This concept is very common among investors keen on the potential of blockchain dominated Web3, because it has become a new Internet infrastructure However, if you exchange "stock" for "cryptocurrency", you will get Warren Buffett's famous saying - word for word. Of course, Buffett will never say such words to cryptocurrency, because he thinks it is worthless.
The same is true of many other heavyweights, from Warren Buffett's close ally Charlie Munger to the golden poster boy Peter Schiff. Add to the list Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, Paul Krugman, economist who won the Nobel Prize, and even Elizabeth Warren, Senator of Massachusetts, a progressive democratic party member who is not famous for agreeing with billionaires.
The cryptocurrency industry obviously has public relations problems, which can be partly attributed to itself.
Since its debut in 2008, Bitcoin (BTC) has successfully made significant commitments that have not yet been fulfilled. First, it should play the role of currency. When the currency use case does not work, the general interpretation of the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is as an inflation hedge. Then, the inflation rate soared to 8.3% in the United States and 9.9% in the United Kingdom. According to this logic, Bitcoin should be on the moon now.
The first cryptocurrency in the world has no false commitment of monopoly. We all know the story of the irreplaceable token (NFT), which should have changed the way we exchange ownership, turned out to be a cash grab that trumpeted JPEG. In the end, they made way for the game of "Play Now, Earn Now" (P2E), and then evolved into the meta universe and Web3 platform - in name, of course.
Crypto and extended Web3 need to sell what it actually builds. The first thing any PR professional tells his clients is not to oversell journalists. Reporters don't like to be tricked into opening a click bait email campaign that exaggerates the value of the story. If you dare to send them an email, they will publicly humiliate you on Twitter and block your email address to let people know this. Who can blame them? PR aims to convey the actual value of your products in objective language, rather than your fantasies about the future.
In this case, Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimmons in the world feel that the cryptocurrency crowd is overselling them in large numbers, and they are also responding in kind. This is bad news for the industry, because one of the second things any PR professional tells his clients is that having a big brand will ensure that they get better PR results. If the encryption experiment is to succeed, it needs the best and brightest people in the financial and financial technology fields to join, except for the temporary but promising support we have seen from Elon Mask and others.
Every mediocre P2E game or NFT auction house claiming to be "Web3" is causing huge damage to the image of the entire industry, just like a large number of investors gamble on projects that are obviously over hyped. Of course, since so many investors lost billions of dollars in the bankruptcy of more legitimate companies in the encryption field (from Celsius to Three Arrow Capital (3AC)), we can expect even less.
We can also expect to reduce our opposition to regulation, which is another important part of the public relations work in this industry. Imagine trying to improve the image of a company that does not follow the rules or norms traditionally governing its affairs. Employees can publicly swear at their bosses, steal money from the company's treasury, and deal with competitors. This is the current encryption industry, considering that most of the rules and regulations related to finance - even false advertising - are hardly applicable.
Only companies that actively build new Internet infrastructure can label themselves as Web3. For example, this includes using tokenization to improve document sharing, and using the advantages of blockchain to build a privacy protection and secure communication platform. There are legitimate blockchain companies building Web3 products, and they should be noise makers.
In PR, your success depends on your story, and your story is your product. Only when blockchain projects can show major participants in the financial industry that their technology can provide things that Web2 can't really provide, will the largest investors participate.
Eric Sumner is the content director of ReBlonde, a technical public relations company specializing in blockchain and Web3. He resided in Tel Aviv and was the editor of the Jerusalem Post.
"If you don't think about owning a cryptocurrency for 10 years, don't think about owning it for 10 minutes."