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The Q2 2026 Marketing Growth Hack
Recorded: April 7, 2026 Duration: 1:07:28Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Sound check.
Can you guys hear me?
I hear nothing.
You're nothing.
How about this?
Ah, much better.
Someone's repeating me back to me.
That's a little strange.
Mic check, mic check.
Yep.
Okay.
There was a bit of an echo there.
And a little bit of a delay.
And a little bit of excitement.
That I could pick up from the voice of Mr. Crimson, who I must say, before we begin this discussion, will be the individual officially closing us out.
Nadim, I have sent you an invite to speak.
Feel free to accept it or to request to come up as speaker. To everybody that's
joined, thank you so much for being here. I believe it's been a month since I hosted an X Spaces.
And because it's been terribly long, I just want us all to crack the ice by giving a brief update on what's been going on in our lives.
We're going to kick it off with you, Mr. Joel, since you were the first to speak.
Then we'll somewhat just go around the room as we retweet, as we buy the others that had vowed to join time to join us and as we get
warmed up so please joel what have you been up to hey hey everyone and thanks mr console for
having you back i always appreciate your energy um so So my name is Joel and I do business development
and marketing for Dash. And what have I been up to a lot? It's one of those things where
it's been, it's one of those curses of success, I should guess. Dash is sort of positioned in
the privacy sector. And since the last quarter of last year,
the whole sector has gone crazy and in a good way.
And unfortunately, that's good.
Unfortunately, that means a lot more work for me.
So just having to juggle a bunch of different marketing initiatives,
onboardings, et cetera.
And it's just a lot of work,
but it's growth and growth is good. Oh, yeah. The privacy narrative,
that was on everybody's lips and is bound to continue to be on everyone's lips, especially as we see institutions with traditional financial guardrails
get involved in crypto. I love that and I'm absolutely happy that things are booming for you
in your corner. All right, let me throw it over to Crimson. Mr. Crimson, it's been a while.
throw it over to crimson mr crimson it's been a while tell us since we last spoke
what's new and what's been evolving in your world
hello everybody i'm the crimson caravan and you all look extraordinarily beautiful today
i uh i've been up to uh a lot of personal stuff.
I'm still doing the social media manager and the community manager for SoulForge,
but I've been focusing a lot on me.
I got all the way up to seven girlfriends.
Now I'm back down to a pretty consistent four girlfriends. So, you know, a little stability there, but trying to get back into the spaces,
come back to all you wonderful people.
Four girlfriends?
I don't know when you converted into Islam, Mr. Crimson.
No, no, just an ADHD guy.
I love that and i absolutely want to highlight that you are focusing on you and i think in as much as crypto twitter is silent it's bought some of us that freedom and that space and that time and walking in this ecosystem is no longer a race.
It's more of a very chilled, intentional space now.
We will definitely zoom in on that narrative.
Crimson, invite your four girlfriends.
We need a lot more people in our audience here.
One of them's already in the audience.
I see. I see. And I want to give a shout out to Crimson Girl. Hey, don's already in the audience. I see, I see.
And I want to give a shout out
to Crimson Girl.
Shush, shush, shush, Joel.
Shush.
Joel, sorry. I spoke over you, buddy.
No, no. I was saying silly things.
We love
silly talks, especially when we are about to tap into growth hack strategies concerning Q2.
But before we get there, Cleanie Boo, what up?
Welcome back.
What have you been up to, sir?
All right, GM, GM, thanks for having me. So right now I'm with Black Office.
It's a venture builder. Basically, we help startup scale by plugging in as a fractional CMO,
CEO, and CFO. So right now I'm working closely with teams on positioning GTM and overall growth strategy.
On the marketing side, I'm also involved with our marketing arm, which is Activate, where
we handle 360 marketing from strategy to execution, basically.
So we've worked with a range of projects across the space. And yeah, lately a lot of my focus has been around helping teams to cut through the noise,
especially with how fast AI is changing content and distribution.
Ooh, I appreciate a few remarks that you've made.
One, among us is a go-to-market strategist.
Two, you've spoken a little bit about AI, the buzzword of the century, the buzzword of Q1, 2026, definitely.
And AI has absolutely changed the distribution game.
That's also going to be part of our discussion.
My friend, Nadim, who is also part of the panel, keeps disconnecting, reconnecting.
I see he's just messaged me that, oh, it's strange.
I can't hear anything.
Nadim, I'm hoping that you'll be able to find us in our...
Are you back, Nadim?
Can you hear us now?
Yo, finally.
Yeah, I can hear you guys.
I just wasn't sure if it was me
or if you just weren't talking for some reason.
We were having a moment of silence to welcome your greatness, sir.
Why, thank you, my lord. I do appreciate the courtesy.
All right. Mr. Nadim, tell us, what have you been up to?
That's how we're cracking the ice here.
Friends have not met in a while.
We haven't hosted the X-paces in a minute we just want to have this
general overview on how everybody's doing and to feel everyone's temperature so what have you
specifically been cooking it's it's been nice man um well i lost i lost i got fired like what two
months ago um ever since then i've've just been in Egypt with family,
just traveling around,
going into like some really cool rural beach spots
and deserts and stuff like that.
So it's both a really fantastic time,
but also a challenging time
because the last time I was looking for a job
was a couple of years back.
And it's pretty different, man.
Like getting into the job market,
the skills required are different.
The things that people are interested in
are very interesting.
And the next phase for me,
I'm back in Canada next week.
So I'm gonna be like really lock in shortly
and focus on building certain skills.
I've already done it.
And I'll just like for marketing, for example, like teaching myself certain skills. I've already done it. And I'll just like for marketing, for example,
like teaching myself certain skills
around building some marketing workflows with AI.
I'll talk about that when it's my turn
when we get into that.
But it's weird, bro.
Because like I am in a region right now
that's kind of full of,
there's like a lack of confidence in the future.
Things are getting more expensive.
There's like a curfew at night to preserve gas and oil
because of the regional conflict so that's weird and kind of sad but
apart from that bro trying to be positive optimistic i'm very happy the spaces are back
absolutely love that you're here i love that your mindset is clear. In regards to me as well, to give you
all an update, my contract was also paused because the company that I was a community manager in
needed to seek further funds. And somewhat I view that as a blessing because there's no better time to get building. There's also, on the other side of that statement, a distribution bottleneck.
But above everything, when you're back in the field, it forces you to upgrade your software, you know, to get up to speed to the times.
up to speed to the times. And thus, I've been just like you, looking at AI automations,
looking at new ways to go to market. And that's definitely the purpose of this discussion.
We have three key themes that I want to explore with you guys. I want to pick it off from
what Nadim said. And for those who are not aware, Nadim is currently in Egypt.
And for those who are further not aware, there's a bit of tension in the Middle East.
Okay, we're not going to get political here. happening geopolitically is captivating a lot of mindshare and forcing some CMOs to change their
plan. So I want to ask, as the first question of our discussion, do you guys think it's wise to
change your marketing strategy in regards to what's happening? Do you pause? Do you pivot?
Do you push through?
And give us your reason why.
Let's kick it off with you, Joel.
Yeah, it's interesting because it really depends on what you're promoting.
Some things are very, some products and solutions are very kind of now and today. Other ones are very much not now
and today, very timeless. And I happen to be, I guess, grateful to be in a relatively timeless
part of the world as far as part of the industry. So basically, the message is always the same for what we provide.
Global financial freedom and censorship resistance.
And own your own money and your own data.
And that just works for everyone, everywhere in the world at all times.
Now, when the messaging hits differently, sometimes people, the message should be, you understand the message, say,
sold, I want this, this is great. But people, of course, take some convincing. And a lot of times,
even the people who are convinced take some, I guess, convincing that now is the right time to
sort of act on that. So when you do want to, you want to frame every narrative in the, I guess,
the modern framing, wherever it's acceptable, but not too much of a weird sellout thing.
So all that to say, I kind of feel like today, there's a lot of, first of all, there's uncertainty around global trade and sanctions
and things like that.
It's a great time to mention uncensorable cross-border payments.
Another thing is in the time when there's a lot of uncertainty about maybe the value
of certain currencies, like fiat currencies, like the US dollar, there's, it's a great opportunity to say,
let's talk about digitally scarce sound money that doesn't have these kinds of problems.
And, um, it's definitely, it's kind of a thing. Um, if you have universal infrastructure or
something that works for everyone, um, then I think that it's a great, you have a bunch of
different messages surrounding the same basic thing. And so for example, one thing that like
right now, this is, and this is something that of course resonates to me personally a lot, but I'm
sure a lot of rest of the world too. A lot of, you know, governments and wars and things like that around the world are financed
not through direct taxation, but through inflation of the currency. Whenever you want to spend
something, you don't have to actually ask the people to say, hey, can you pay more in taxes,
or we're going to collect more in taxes. Instead, they just take more out of the supply. They dilute the supply.
And I kind of feel like there was a,
we're sort of hitting the stablecoin mass adoption
kind of the beginning stages of that.
And now is a great time.
That's not a great time for that.
But now is a great time for all the
monetary focus projects and products that don't
focus on a stable to USD value to kind of say, yeah, this is why, you know, if you, for the
people who care, I mean, I guess there's always a lot of people that just say, well, whatever my
government wants to do, that's fine. But for the people who don't, it's like a form of protest
in some way. And so I'm sure every single marketer in the world always would like to frame whatever
product or service that they're pushing as a form of protest against something that everyone is
upset about. But in some cases, it just works out. I would always say, make sure you're realistic
and honest. Like if everyone's angry at, you know, AI, for example, and you have a code base that
has a lot of AI help in being written and all tools like that, you can't really come out and
be like, oh yeah, AI skepticism. It just doesn't work out. So, yeah, or definitely,
so for example, if you're a centralized, censorable stablecoin provider, there's not a lot
you can say that's against regimes and there's not a lot you can dip into the political situation
and say, yeah, we're a solution to this because the same people that you're
upset with for these reasons are now have control over the underlying value of the stable
coin and can also send an order to censor payments on these coins.
So it doesn't really work out.
But as always, find the timeless virtues and then craft your narrative of the day around
them.
I absolutely love that. And I want to highlight, I never send the panel the script beforehand.
And the reason why I don't do that is because I want that natural instinct, that inner predator to just jump on the questions
and you've done that exceptionally well.
I want to throw it over to Crimson.
I want to build up off what you've said.
It is clear that there's geopolitical uncertainty.
And you're right.
It depends with what you're promoting and how you can adjust
your messaging to be relevant to the times, to tap into the emotions of the people.
One industry that I know, or rather records show, does well during times of uncertainty
and recession and economic weirdness is gaming.
So Crimson, what do you think here?
Do you think gaming is going to see an adoption?
Do you think gaming might get hit?
Do you think people are gaming more?
Do you think people are gaming less?
Talk to us a little bit about that.
And what do you think games should do to somewhat tap into this spicy geopolitical situation?
Well, let's be clear. Games are always going to be games.
So in times of uncertainty, there's several things that people go to, you know, alcohol, tobacco, games, things like this.
Their industries always spike in these kinds of things, but hey, this
whole geopolitical conflict is going to make one hell of a Call of Duty game in the future, just
no lie. We're going to get a Call of Duty game about everything that's happening right now, and
it's going to be the next multiplayer sensation, probably. But yes, no, games are going to get
picked up. More people are gonna begin playing them especially as they
need an escape um and uh oh man i forgot what i was gonna say oh
yeah well let me you're just saying that call of duty sucks and uh it'll never stand a chance
exactly like i was saying call of duty sucks and it will never stand a chance i absolutely love that and i think there are some industries which are poised to definitely
win with what's happening geopolitically i love and i want to pick off what joe said in regards
to crypto because crypto essentially was barged during a point of time
in history when there was uncertainty, that being the financial crash. So do you guys believe that
maybe with whatever's going on, we'll see a surge back to the ethos of cross-border payments, non-government intervention and things of that degree.
And should marketers try position themselves to this narrative or to completely avoid it?
Cleanibu, let me throw it over to you to hear your point of view here.
Yeah, I think cross-border payments will definitely continue to be a strong use case,
especially with everything happening globally.
So when there's uncertainty, people naturally look for faster, cheaper, and more reliable
ways to move money like across borders so and that's where
like crypto has always like made more like most sense but I don't think it's about like going back
it's about more like maturing that use case and like making it more accessible and rested from a
marketing perspective I wouldn't say everyone should suddenly focus on customer
payments because it really depends on whether it's authentic to your product.
So what does it mean?
So if cross-border payments is your strength, then yes, lean to it.
But keep positioning in a way that resonates with today's market, which is less about speculation
and more about real- world value and trust.
True.
Yeah.
And it's a narrative that marketers have to be very careful about, right?
If you're just jumping on the bandwagon for a little bit of algorithm boost and it has
nothing to do with your ethos, your brand identity or what you
even believe in as the person pushing the go button for the marketing plan, it can essentially
backfire. Okay, just want to hone in on this theme a little bit longer before we transition to the
next one. Nadim, you did mention that the
attention is where you are. You did mention that energy prices are somewhat spiking and things of
that degree. And in such times, when such realities occur, companies somewhat start to slice the marketing budget, right? It's a very almost natural response
in the corporate world. When things are going a little bit strange, marketing, kill it. Stop the
ads, stop the campaign, so on and so forth. What do you think about this narrative to just shut down the marketing arm the traveling
of course makes sense if you had conferences to attend to in dubai but the whole it's now a
recession let's save money let's stop marketing narrative how does that sit with you and how do you think companies will play into this in q2
as we approach q2 right um that's a lot to unpack here i'll just say one thing to start which is
um there's there's places in the middle east which are massive crypto hubs and what's happening right now, like Dubai's image as this luxury, safe haven for people to go and enjoy life and do all sorts of things.
It's just been completely shattered.
rebrand itself for the past 20 years, working very closely with the United States and trying
to make itself seem more as like a tourist destination, a safe haven, less religious.
That's been shattered.
So there's a lot of things that are happening very quickly and the market just hasn't caught
up to it in terms of pricing futures, in terms of what's going to happen in this part of
the world.
Things are just moving so fast that we haven't really adapted or really understood what the impact is going to be right now in Egypt.
It's insane because I'm lucky, right?
I'm very, very fortunate.
I came here with my Canadian dollars, not even American,
but Canadian dollars, and shit's just super cheap here.
It's insane like i took like a six seven
hour bus from cairo to this other part near the libyan border which was like a really beautiful
beach area i paid 12 bucks canadian right so like for me shit's insanely cheap but for the locals who work here and earn their living with the local currency they they're
living day to day and you mentioned something earlier about how the war is impacting prices
and energy and all that and it is having a huge impact like gas is getting much more expensive i
think it rose by more than 20 over the last two weeks uh food's getting more expensive they've implemented a curfew at
nine uh which most people are breaking by just going outside but like businesses can't stay
open after nine so less people go out but the crazy thing is for me is like this also has had
the impact of reducing the power of the local currency so this means is somebody who's coming
here with foreign currency just won't even feel any sort of increase because like the power of the Egyptian pound relative
to the Canadian dollars also falling alongside all of this. So that sort of like offsets
any thing. So what I'm trying to say is guys visit Egypt if you're with a local like a
foreign currency like it's crazy cheap. You're gonna have the time of your life. But no,
there is like a very real impact on the people on the region. And this is going to have the time of your life um but no there is like a very real impact on the people on the region and this is going to touch you know blockchain in many ways could be more difficult to
go to all these networking events that are happening in places like dubai uh token token
obviously token 2049 has been canceled this year in dubai probably still happening in singapore um
i i can't really tell where the market's going. Like I thought right now the market would have completely crashed.
I'm sorry, I've been going on a little bit of a tangent here.
Let me just get back to marketing for a second.
So what I'm noticing as well is marketing is a lot of the times the first to go
when shit hits the fan.
And I don't know, like I can see the logic behind that.
But at the same time, if the market's's going under, there can be many reasons why.
It could just be like, for example, in Web3 Gaming, I lost my job.
The industry was shrinking.
Web3 Gaming, there's a macro side to this,
and then there's a more granular side to this,
which is how the company itself is performing,
how competent the leaders are,
how efficient the you know shipping
and execution and planning and all that stuff is like from a macro level what your game is just
collapsing and because it's become apparent like a lot of these projects weren't really a lot of
these games don't really have actual gamers they just had a bunch of farmers and these people don't
last very long and these people like they will immediately jump ship as soon as there's nothing
left to extract and that reality has been hard and a lot of people are like sort
of struggling against that narrative but that's been the reality web3 game is going down the drain
man in so many different ways and some of you might disagree out of passion or or just kind of
like look i mean i hope i'm wrong um i'll leave other people to tell me what they think for now
but like yeah that's that's where i'm going i'm gonna i'm gonna cut in here real fast web3 gaming i'm i'm glad good you're right you're
right it is collapsing and i'm glad it's finally starting to collapse we've talked about this
before in the past years about it it falling apart in order for us to move forward as an actual
gaming industry everything we have right now must be burnt to the ground.
Everything.
Because all we have right now
are extractive models.
All these assholes are doing
are making games.
I guess Mr. Consul is drugging.
I hope not.
Yeah, no.
I could hear you perfectly, bro.
I could hear you perfectly, Crimson.
Keep going, man.
Yeah, GMDX.
It seems as if you can't hear Crimson.
So, GMDX, if you don't mind reconnecting, that would help.
But Crimson was going on a very passionate rant there.
Crimson, let me throw it back to you.
But these guys are only making games to extract value from you.
And as soon as that value has been extracted, they dump it and
they move on. There are some companies and some people who have made several games. They'd make
game one, extract, dump it, turn around, make game two, extract, dump it. And this is something
that's been going on for, I don't know, seven years, eight years now, as long as Web3 Gaming
has been a thing. And it's horrible to see, but I'm glad to see it finally starting to shift.
As soon as everything collapses the way I hope it will, we can finally start making real games with real assets that you can actually own.
And nobody's trying to just sap your crypto.
But on a few things back,
he was talking about how the currency isn't so great.
This is going to lead to games.
So there are people like Axie Infinity.
Remember back there were people like in Singapore and Thailand
who were playing Axie like just hardcore,
and they were making cheap money, right?
You know, $10, $20 20, 30, $40 as they,
you know, got their axes and tokens and stuff. But to me, $40 is a tank of gas. To these people
in Singapore, $40 is rent money, is feeding their family for the month and things like that.
So yeah, local currencies are always going to be trash versus crypto and other things like that.
And also, I believe the market's going down.
I believe the four-year cycle held and we're transitioning into a bear market.
You know, your points make me somewhat wonder,
is the cost of user acquisition going to be cheap for blockchain-related products?
You've spoken about how it's the easy money that somewhat drove this surge in interest in Web3 games.
Nadim has also mentioned how local economies are just currently cheap.
also mentioned how local economies are just currently cheap for those who are in western
dollar denominated economies will user acquisition for targeting certain regions outside of you know
the west be affordable joel what do you think here? Sorry, can you repeat that?
Yeah, just wondering off the points that have been raised,
whether there's going to be a little collapse in the cost of user acquisition.
Marketing budgets are being cut.
There's local economies that are being hurt. And there's also the fact that the un-factor in Web 3
might have a little bit of a wow factor
if you compare it to the local destructive economy
that's being caused by this geopolitical climate.
And that's my last question
on the geopolitical state of the world.
Yeah, I mean, let's be honest about one thing.
About cost of user acquisition,
I would say what users?
Most people have no users.
So like at scale,
like think about the top blockchains.
I mean, I know one of the ones
that's gotten the most grief for this has been Cardano because it was in the top 10 for a very long time and also just seemed to be a ghost town in terms of like total number of transactions.
even though these aren't,
blockchains aren't companies necessarily.
Some are, too many are maybe,
but it's important to sort of look at it similarly
where you think about the market cap of a,
say of like a billion dollar cryptocurrency, right?
And think about a company that's valued at a billion dollars.
Are they, what are their revenue figures
versus yours and at some point it just becomes astronomically different so um i think that um
yes we are in a little bit of a contraction um the biggest contraction i think is what i would call
sort of like the de-slopification of the space i think we had just tons of time again with like
whether it's the extract of
Web3 Gaming, whether it's DeFi rewards that are just paid by new investors or, you know,
just by hype, whether it's just whatever it is, there's just been too much money going after
things that don't actually make value back. So for an example of this, in a past life, many, many years ago,
I worked in nonprofit fundraising. And so at one point, I was a head of a small nonprofit of the
development department, as they call it, which is the fundraising department.
department, as they call it, which is the fundraising department. And when I would execute
donor campaigns, I would see how much would it take in. And I'd have to evaluate that versus
my own salary. So like my own money that I get paid was, it was, it came from what I was able
to raise. And hopefully I'd be able to raise a lot more money than, than I was able to raise. And hopefully I'd be able to raise a lot more money
than I was able to actually take in salary.
And so it's kind of a similar thing
with everything in life, right?
You have to, in order for you to work out as a cost,
which employees are all cost,
marketing budgets are all cost.
How many, let's just say dollars valuation do you bring in versus
how much you spend? And that's something that I think that people didn't really want to say.
It's more like, oh, we need to market. And a lot of times, you know, a lot of splashy spaces,
community events, giveaways, airdrops, what conference sponsorships are the big one,
events, giveaways, airdrops, conference sponsorships are the big one, just didn't make sense.
And this is something I'm sort of going through a little bit right now because I'm working with
an entity to run a crypto conference, which by the way, Cypherpunk Week in Amsterdam,
the first week of September, you should definitely go.
There's a few good conferences as part of that.
So as part of the helping, sponsorships have really significantly dried up.
And it doesn't mean that they aren't there.
There's plenty available, but it's just not easy anymore.
You don't get some protocol that's doing super well to just like oh
yeah we'll drop forty thousand dollars on a sponsorship a top tier thing oh yeah we'll pay
for our whole ticket uh for we'll pay for our whole team to come out and like a thousand dollars
a ticket like some of these events those days are over bro yeah it's done it's just done and it's done. It's just done. And it's not like this doesn't happen in other industries either. It does still happen, but you have to have like some random protocol that had like, you know, 25 developers.
And then you just, you know, just in about like 25 or 26 users and you just show up and do a big
sponsorship that doesn't happen anymore. So I do think that marketing budgets are going to severely
constrict, but I do think that you will have money available for people who can bring in money.
So if your protocol or your company or whatever it is makes money from users, which a lot don't, which is insane to think about.
But if they make money from users and someone is able to bring in enough actual users so that the money that those users spend is less than this person's
salary spends there's or this marketing campaign there is always going to be money for that
one super quickly here sorry sorry host go ahead jump in damn i'm sorry guys i interrupted the
legendary host i apologize profusely i just wanted to um echo something crimson said which is so true um he said something like i completely agree with and it shows how
insightful the dude is like for this to get better the whole thing has to collapse in and on itself
it has to the whole thing has to just evaporate all the idiots running these projects i'm not
going to name the project but i work for a project where the owner made um he got some crazy investments
one of the very first web3 games that had play to earn elements and had like turning NFTs into game characters.
Like one of the very first. And investors were just drooling back then.
They were like, this is going to be the future. This is going to be crazy.
And they didn't really look closely at the team.
They didn't realize that the founder was just severely incompetent.
And the team surrounding him was just absolutely out of their depth.
So that project made
a lot of you know had a lot of investment at first and they're still running on the remnants of that
money from 21 22 and a lot of projects for a matter of fact that exist today and what through gaming
they don't actually a lot of look i'm not gonna say all of them maybe some of them making some
revenue but like i think a lot of them are making almost no revenue and there's existing because of that runway and they're eventually going to
shut down so we're gonna see like more shutdowns this year last year we saw more than 40 uh games
we didn't even imagine would shut down like that came as a shock for a lot of people even k wells
were very invested in the space and a lot of them were like damn man what the fuck i can't believe
that project shut down um so yeah shit yeah, shit's getting out of hand
as it pertains to Web3 Gaming. Let me just say this
real quick. So for the energy costs right now,
they're getting out of control.
It's like, not only does 20%
of the world's energy pass through the
Straits of Hormuz, which is the whole
contention of this war in the Middle East,
but 30%
of the world's fertilizer does as well.
So that means food cost is also going to explode.
And the other thing is that we haven't seen the actual impact of this yet.
I've been watching a lot of military analysts and people who talk about the world economy
and a lot of them are saying, look, even if the Strait of Hormuz were open now,
and again, this is the strait where 20% of the world's energy
and 30% of the world's fertilizer comes from.
If that were, and that's shut down, obviously.
I don't know how much you guys know about this,
but it's been closed since February, since the war began.
But anyway, if this were to open right now,
then we would start to see looping effects
of how this would increase the cost of travel, the cost of food.
The cost of everything, basically, on God's earth is going to go up.
And we haven't seen it yet because it hasn't rolled out yet and things are happening very quickly.
So, yeah, guys, hold on to your cash, ladies and gentlemen.
I pulled everything out of the stock market personally.
I'm terrified.
Crimson's correct in my – in my, like, I agree
with him in the sense that we're heading towards a brutal bear market. Um, I don't see any sign,
like, I don't, uh, yeah, I don't see any signs of a bull or anything like that, or moon bro,
or pump or any of that bullshit. Like, I do think we're heading towards a very difficult time in
human history and I hope I'm wrong but man it's scary right now like well
sorry one last thing germany just passed a law like they just passed a law that any said any
german citizen between the age of 18 and 45 can't leave germany for a period of more than three
months before getting like an approval a certificate of approval from the army like dude we're looking
at like crazy policies being rolled out in European countries right now. Like, what the fuck? Like, what's coming?
Even in American countries, they scrapped the, they raised the age in the military up to, like, 42 or 43, and they scrapped the marijuana restrictions.
Yeah, what are they doing?
I'm scared, bro, honestly.
Actually, this is exactly what I wanted us to talk about, because whatever is happening
is going to have consequence. The prices of fuel, fuel, which, in my opinion, is what the economy
runs on. Its energy has spiked, yes, but it's been mitigated due to the fact that some countries have reserves.
But once those reserves run dry, oh my days, the cost of living is about to shoot up.
It's going to happen in Kenya as well. And a lot of companies are going to cut their marketing
budget. That's just one thing I foresee with a lot of clarity, at least in my soul.
That's how I feel.
Nonetheless, I actually want to transition us from talking about the geopolitical tensions
and how that will inevitably affect any marketing growth hack or plans or go-to-market strategy.
I'm glad to hear that the panelists on this forum are thinking about it intrinsically.
But I also want to shift and talk about another elephant in the room.
That being crypto Twitter.
We've spoken about Web3 Gaming somewhat being annihilated but is it only web 3
gaming when i look at what is going on i only see rwa's winning the sigh whatever the hell that is is down. A bunch of DEXs went under. Deep in. Jeez, I've just remembered that right now. I
completely forgot about it. It seems like it's an issue affecting crypto Twitter at large. And the
silence used to signal a bear market. Now it just feels like something different kills the energy.
Maybe it's the algorithm change by Nikita and Elon Musk.
I want to respect the hands, but Klini had told me he's about to jump off in around two minutes.
GMDX, please, I need your participation in this discussion as well, so please raise your hand.
But let's hear it from Klini Boo, then we'll come to you joelle as well as you nadim cleanie boo boo
oh yeah um like for for me like with what's happening in moment in the crypto space across all of the sectors.
But I think geopoliticals really changes how teams should think about GTM because it directly affects user behavior and the access as well.
So in an uncertain environment, users become more cautious as well, right?
So your GTM can't just be more about like reach anymore. It has to be more about like credibility
and relevance into the market you are entering. So I would like to position from what we're doing
at the block on our side at Block Office. So basically we help structure that expansion
properly, aligning strategy
and like the partnership so teams aren't just like entering markets but entering them correctly
and with our like um marketing arm activate we execute on that whether it's through like
targeted campaigns ecosystem so like place like base ecosystem, like curated events, like making sure that the messaging actually resonates
with the right audience.
So yeah, geopolitical doesn't slow growth.
It's just like forces you to be more intentional about it.
Also, because in this market, right,
it's not about going everywhere.
going everywhere.
It's about entering to the right markets right away.
It's about like entering
to the right markets right away.
100%.
Right now, you have to be very lean,
be very aware of who your user is,
and you have to have your cost
of user acquisition on lock.
If not, you'll be the 41st web 3 game that's called it good night to a sleep it'll
never wake up from all right let me throw it over to you mr joel what are your thoughts here and
let's transition into the silence on crypto twitter let's talk a little bit about that more
and transition from the geopolitics which I believe we've covered quite extensively.
Yeah, and I should really say what people aren't paying attention to is two big things.
One is it's X itself, Twitter itself.
The algorithms have changed significantly over many times over
the last few years but recently in particular it does seem like there's a very active
kind of allocation of attention resources on the platform that go towards very specific trending topics and things like that.
So I've noticed, for example, my popular posts do as well,
sometimes even better than they used to.
But my average posts do really not very well at all.
And there's been massive dethrottling.
Like the Dash account itself has about 440,000 followers.
And sometimes some posts don't reach 1,000 total views,
whereas they were almost guaranteed to many times exceed that
in previous iterations.
So the algo is really not in our favor and is changing.
And I think that it's definitely,
you've seen the head of Product of X, Nikita Beer,
have some very anti-crypto, you know, which is funny because he kind of works with Solana, but that's a different story.
Some very kind of anti-crypto moves that have been made, including auto banning accounts that post about crypto for the first time, which I'm sure will really have some great effects.
about crypto for the first time,
which I'm sure will really have some great effects.
And as a result of that,
I do think also as a result of the changes,
I think that a lot of people
who spent a lot of time putting out good content on X
have just moved on to other platforms
or just been silent.
And so I think that the X platform changes
have been some of the biggest culprits for this but then also um i would say there's a definite um retail is gone vibe in
crypto and this is kind of um sort of this indicative of this last cycle where it's you
know the cycle without retail is kind of the vibe of it which is funny because
crypto valuations have gone up higher than ever before maybe not all cryptos but on the whole
the space has been higher than it's ever been before all metrics are up as far as transaction
counts as far as companies in the space development a a lot of businesses that run on crypto.
If you think Coinbase is getting any smaller,
like everything is growing clearly.
But as far as after,
I think a little bit after the FTX bubble and crash,
but also just as a natural progression of the space,
a lot of retail that came in expecting whatever they were expecting did not get fulfilled and they just left.
And so therefore, the people that are still in are either the diehards, the builders in the space, or a combination of whales and things like that able to just come in and find new ways of playing with their money or extracting value or whatever it is.
And so I do think that at some point when we hit, I don't know if this is ever going
to really change.
I do think that we sort of have two big things that we did wrong as a space, I guess.
I don't know how much I can blame people for doing this,
but it is what it is.
One is we do not produce useful apps for end users.
There's just nothing out there.
So therefore, retail's not there.
So they left.
So whoops, no one's talking about this stuff.
And I do think they are going to come back or a
new people will come in the next five years we will hit mass adoption of crypto but I don't know
like how many PayPal users are out there on x every day being like yeah man I just said some
money with PayPal so great to be PayPal fam like no one does that they just use it so same thing
with bank cards oh my gosh my bank card it's know, look at my Wells Fargo account, my TD bank, whatever it is. No one does that. So there'll be silent people. The other thing, and again, I'm too easy, too early to say something specific on this, but we at Dash are working on a solution on this, but I think that people have really let down, made a major mistake in not creating a good decentralized social media network.
Everyone talks about Farcaster.
Farcaster is such trash that I have been using crypto for 13 plus years and alternative social media things for at least that long.
And I have never managed to successfully sign up and start using farcaster.
It's just garbage.
Like,
why don't we have our own,
like build your own crypto Twitter?
Why has no one done it?
They have just not done that.
So yeah,
I kind of deserve a little bit.
So things will,
everything will be back at some point,
but it won't be back for us.
It just unfortunately won't be.
It'll be back for whoever solves the problems
and onboards the real users at scale.
The crypto.com bubble is over.
And with that, I do have to take off.
I have to do a podcast in a few minutes here.
It's been great sharing a stage with all you guys.
Thank you, Mr. Consul, for the invitation as always.
Good times.
And I'll have you on one of my spaces soon too.
Peace, everyone.
Bye-bye.
My hands are held together for you, Joel.
And yeah, do invite me for your spaces.
Hosting this has made me realize that I missed deep in my soul having these discussions with not only like-minded fellows and friends, but people who are looking at the data.
It is a true joy to have such intellectual intercourses on these X spaces.
Damn, intellectual intercourses on this x basis damn intellectual intercourse yum i want to throw it over to you but i want to throw it over to you from a different angle
clearly as joel has mentioned there's a lot of algorithm changesors now have to somewhat use the paid partnership tag. Info5 was killed.
You name it. I look at my feed no differently to my feed being TikTok. And it makes me think,
should projects which are trying to onboard those masses, as we've or rather joel has mentioned will be the winners
should they be looking to diversify the distribution beyond crypto twitter what are your thoughts here
nadim a hundred percent man like we're fighting the machine the machine's trying to kill us dude
the machine's not on our side the algorithm's not on our side the people controlling the algorithm
are not on our side they don't want us are not on our side. They don't want us
They don't want the shit we talk about
They don't want our shit coins even the good takes and even the good K wells man
They're they're all getting lumped up into the same group of dipshits who just post about nothing who just post about crap all the time
So it's really unfortunate because like there are really good creators out here who add great value great create really good content but unfortunately they're being
painted with the same brush and they're suffering because of you know the drug that one drunk driver
made the speed limit lower for every single one of us so yeah of course you need to diversify
and like i'm not happy about it like i did step back from like you know i was posting a lot about
um stuff related to projects on web3, gaming and all that.
I kind of stepped back from like, OK, look, is this is this the direction I want to go in?
And I don't know if it is. I think I do want to start talking about different things in the future.
But I think a lot of people are seeing that, too.
Like I saw a post by Luke today saying that he's he's seeing the timeline much you know a lot less activity on it a lot
a lot less engagement on it and I've seen a lot of other people talk about the same thing so it
there is something happening here there is something changing and I do think it's time to
look at more interesting things that that people actually want to be a part of that people actually
want to be talking about now farcaster Farcaster, Joel, the previous speaker,
he touched on that.
Now, look, Farcaster,
I think the initial positioning for what they were
was really interesting,
but I've been following them for a while.
I was marketing on Farcaster
for some projects in the past as well.
And I do have feedback that they were very poor
at marketing certain features on their
platform like warps warps were just like the super confusing feature on their platform that just i
just couldn't get i couldn't understand it and it wasn't just me a lot of people like what the
is this how do you use it i think they just bombarded people with a lot of features that
they failed to explain clearly the platform was clunky uh the feed sucked like it was just full
of at least for me and
people i've been talking to it was full of like very technical developer jargon but i'm like okay
are you guys marketing only to developers there's like a platform social media platform just for
developers where they can get to talk about shit if that's the case sure but if you're telling me
that you're marketing to the masses and trying to onboard people onto the new decentralized social
media world then your your feet sucked your algo sucked it
was just full of things that people were would never in a million years be
interested in and then finally there is a realization that the average social
media user like the Instagram chick or the or the soccer mom or just the
average person isn't gonna be like oh my goodness I need to delete Instagram and tick-tock and go on Forecaster because oh it's decentralized my data like nobody
thinks that way right so I don't even know if the value proposition had a
chance to succeed to begin with but again I did I did feel like their
marketing and their go-to-market their messaging was just really off
really off.
100%.
I mean, I was on the Web3 gaming side watching Socialfy with the keys and the little euphoria
within the same channel of distribution, within the same community of users, show excitement and it just died in less than
three months, right? Socialfy also died. It's not just Web3 Gaming that's experiencing a little
spanking, right? It's across the board, this crypto Twitter thing. And I think distribution
needs to happen on different channels. And that by itself includes using different terminologies.
JMDX, let me throw you in the discussion here.
I don't think we'll have enough time to jump into the AI segment of our discussion.
But nonetheless, we'll save it for our next chat.
we'll save it for our next chat.
GMDX, I want to pick your brains
on what's been mentioned
in regards to the ghost town
that crypto Twitter currently is, right?
I'm really scrolling these days
because I don't see my friends' posts
unless I have the notification stand on
and things of that degree.
Should we, as marketers, as projects,
be looking at different ways to attain virality?
What are your thoughts here, GMDX?
Well, to me, I feel like everybody has actually taken a break
or maybe a whole idea or something.
But yeah, it looks like we actually are right now in the beard season
and a lot of things are just actually are right now in the beard season and a lot of things is just actually
quiet right now you know people are actually trying to like wait for what's the next big
thing coming up so everyone's actually trying to wait and i was actually um while i was actually
on the listener section i was just trying to listen to what everyone was actually saying
concerning their marketing growth hack and we have we've actually dropped our points and all of that but we've actually naturally come to a conclusion of what is actually the
solution when we come when it comes to go attack because definitely the new
actually needs to be a solution there and because being a project or whatever
you're building definitely you need people to actually you need to actually
keep in players or you need to have to keep in people into whatever you're building definitely you need people to actually you need to actually keep in players or it needs to be keeping people into whatever you're building so it's more comes of
how can you actually retain these people into what you're building you know that's where the
quote actually comes in and also as a matter of fact um i think we're actually also talking about
um gaming aspects of free gaming and i know a lot of people saying what you gave me
is dead blah blah blah but the honest truth is that people are actually going to play games and
you know we are actually going to play games you know we're still going to play so that's actually
just the main thing and the way i feel and what i'm actually going to be using a space variation
so about concerning uh more about um the future of actually gaming so i think'm actually going to be using a space variation so about concerning uh more about
the future of it you're giving so i think we're going to be breaking down a lot of things and
what we what we actually going to be expecting later in time because the way i see what you
gave me right now and i feel like actually moving into a new circle and we falling through the old circle, you know, tokens, NFTs, token DOM, blah, blah, blah,
stuff like that.
So I just feel like we're actually going
into a new circle right now.
And I know a lot of people have actually given up
on Web3 Gaming.
I still believe in gaming, actually.
I still believe in Web3 Gaming.
And I still have passion for it.
And so actually how many years right now in Web3 gaming space?
And I've actually been talking about gaming,
bringing people into the Web3 gaming space,
people playing games, having fun, anything and stuff like that.
So I'm actually a very big believer when it comes to Web3 gaming.
And I know that there's a lot of potentials that's going to be coming up later,
even if it's not now, maybe in 10 years, 5 years, 20 years to come to come i don't know but one thing i tend to believe that a lot of people are still
going to play games a lot of people still still play games but i just feel like um there's going
to be a balance because web to get web two players just want to play games and they don't want to end
but web two gamers they want to play and they want to make profit they want to end money they want to
end cash so i just feel like there's like there's going to be like
a strike balance in between with two gamers and web three and sometimes i treat few surprised like
you see a project who is like 20 20 million dollars 15 million dollars and the next thing
project showed down and i'm like what's what's actually happening is it that these guys can actually keep players or is it that they actually mainly focus more on their tokens and
not the players and not the community and stuff like that and they're actually actually actually
crazy so what i feel that actually gonna be coming up very very soon it's um a new cycle
will be coming in yes i just feel like it's not about what you gaming is dead but I feel like this actually like a reset going on yeah because yeah gaming is
still part of the web tree space by the crypto ecosystem and it's one of the
easier onboarding narrative to bring people into web tree or the blockchain
so of that's about my own take about what you give me although like I said
we're still gonna talk more about it tonight so yeah so take your presence mr console thank you yeah yeah for sure and i'm
actually slotted to be a speaker on that spaces so if you have the pin please be kind to have it
up top i have it in my schedule and it will 100% be there.
Crimson, I want to have you share the final take.
You run social media for a very well-respected project.
The algorithm has been changing.
There has been a bit of silence, quote unquote silence in crypto Twitter.
What are your thoughts in regards to distribution, other social platforms, and what's happening with the ecosystem?
It's not just a Web3 gaming thing.
I want to highlight that, right?
It's more of a, just I guess pivot is the polite word to use in the ecosystem.
Or maybe a lack of grabbing attention is also another way to phrase the silence.
But Crimson, what are you thinking about the algorithm and the changes that have been happening as a lead in social media?
The algorithm is trash, the changes suck,
and it makes everything so much more difficult.
The social media and the Twitter part,
everyone's being quiet.
It's making user acquisition difficult.
But it's, so like, this is just on Twitter.
You need to diversify.
And I agree with the people that are saying that.
You need to go out and do other things
not just Twitter, go post things on Reddit
run some ads on Facebook
make TikTok videos about your project
or whatever
these are all other places you can go to do these things
with social media
but as far as social media in general
it's not doing great right now
and I believe it's because of the market
you said that it's not just Web3 Gaming sucking.
It's the market in general.
Everything is sucking right now.
Like I said earlier, I believe we're moving into a bear market.
So things are just winding down.
People are leaving.
Retail is gone.
I believe it was Joel that was talking about how we had a cycle that was without retail.
And it kind of feels like it in a way, because everything didn't explode like everybody thought
it was going to. We all thought it was going to happen like it was in 21, and it didn't.
The four-year cycle still held, I believe. We just didn't see 1,000% growth on your altcoins,
and ETH didn't quite hit 8K like we thought it would. But Bitcoin got to 125, so that was good.
That was actually really close to a lot of people's estimates of where it was going to go.
But it's going to get better.
We just got to wait.
We need to work at it and learn from all the bullshit that's been going on as best we can and move forward.
100%. I think anybody who's in this ecosystem that's trying
to get their messaging, their posts, attention on the timeline will wholeheartedly agree that
whatever the hell has been happening on an algorithm front is not too friendly,
but there's always signs of hope
and there's always signs of freedom
for those who can endure.
Ladies and gentlemen,
that brings us to the end of our airspaces.
I don't want to extend it further than the hour
for the fact that I really cherish the panelists
that have joined us
and in turn want to respect their time.
Nonetheless, we, or rather I,
also wanted to talk a little bit about AI
and how products are being shipped super fast,
but distribution is becoming quite a bottleneck.
I guess we'll save that for next week,
Tuesday, 3 p.m. UTC.
I urge everyone that's been here,
both as panelists and listeners,
and to those who may be weirdos
that listen to recordings and are hearing me,
to join us next Tuesday at 3 p.m. UTC.
I want to build back the momentum.
I want to talk about marketing.
I think marketing is going to really be king.
And for those of us who've been building communities,
it's our time to finally shine.
With that being said, let me throw it over to our boy
to close us out officially.
But once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting, for being part of the discussion, and for just tuning in and hanging out with us.
Crimson, the mic and the floor is yours.
Hey, thanks everybody. I appreciate you all for showing up. You're all amazing and wonderful people
I love this part. Yeah, I know you do
Everyone loves this part. You're all wonderful and amazing people and with that being said this is Crimson Caravan reminding you to remember
You're nobody until somebody loves you and that somebody is me. I love you
Oh, we love you too, bro.
And the bear market loves you guys as well.
It loves you even more.
All right.
Take care, guys.
Much love.
Catch you next week, Tuesday, 3 p.m. UTC once again.
Mwah!
