You smell like fiat

Soon, gold rush fever will hit PR firms as cryptocurrency and blockchain projects take off and start solving real world problems. Every crypto team will want press and attention. Every flack will promise to make them the next Google.

In an act of foolish generosity considering that my firm, Zealot Communications is working in this space, these are some insights that guide my work in cryptocurrency:

Timing is everything.

These are early days. The decentralized applications that run on cryptocurrency are mostly in alpha release (or not yet launched). They are slow. They are not user friendly. They have frustrating bugs. They are just like Khaleesi’s baby dragons — while it is clear they are going to be scary in the future, and they can even breathe a little fire today — they aren’t ready to take on the Seven Kingdoms just yet. As a marketer you need to resist the urge to push your client to launch prematurely.

We all remember the DAO fiasco. I believe the decision to launch the DAO before it was ready had a lot to do with the Slock.it team’s desire to capture mainstream attention before other Dapps and DAO’s were introduced. Remember their blogs clarifying that they were “The DAO,” not “a DAO” ?

In an insane hype cycle it’s hard to keep your eye on the ball. As a PR pro you better be a mature voice in this process unless you want to focus exclusively on crisis communications.

Develop the broad view and emotional intelligence of Andreas Antonopoulos.

This Bitcoin pioneer’s passion is advancing decentralization, rather than pushing any particular application, team or coin. Sure he focuses his talks on Bitcoin, but anyone who has heard him speak or has read his work, knows he’s agnostic at heart. He doesn’t take sides and he doesn’t take Reddit criticism personally, which allows him to be a diplomat in the community and an outstanding ambassador to the mainstream.

As a PR pro, if you want to have staying power in this relatively small community, you’d best tithe to the greater cause of decentralization. Spin your project’s merits, but don’t trash other blockchains or projects gratuitously. An even harder imperative: don’t respond like a six year old when you or your project are being trashed by the trolls. When they take the low road, you take the high road, dammit. You’ll be doing a service to the mothership (decentralization) at the same time you are helping your client.

A note on words.

The challenge and the glory of using words in this space is that half of them are too technical and belong in a textbook (i.e. Merkle Tree, Turing Complete) and the other half have been created or redefined recently (Ethereum World Computer, Smart Contracts).

What can I say, this is why it is fun to be a communicator in cryptocurrency. You get to do what we do best: define, clarify and provide context for concepts that usually have no meaning outside of GitHub; and create new language to describe the amazing functionality and benefits of decentralization. God knows civilians need a way to understand this stuff — so get to work.

Don’t work for scammers.

There are a lot of snake oil salesmen out there. If it sounds too good to be true — it is. Avoid them at all costs.

Cryptographers and game theory geniuses are not like you and me.

Cryptographers and the people they associate with are strange, especially when compared to the standard, glorified engineering “geek” with the Twitter profile stating that they “build things” with a picture of them edgily playing ping pong at work.

Cryptographers tear shit down (figuratively) then build it back up as a secure, decentralized alter ego version of the original, using advanced game theory, encryption and other bad ass skills. In addition to being math savants, technologists in this space often have a libertarian political bent. They generally mistrust authority, are less concerned with money and more concerned with pioneering a new field — building up a new Internet, one block at a time.

You will have no idea what they are talking about half the time. Don’t be intimidated. They need you to challenge them so that you can tell the story. Force them to talk about the problem they are trying to solve. It may still be three levels too deep, terminally esoteric (and probably brilliant). But you have enough to work with.

And finally….

If your blockchain project has a story worth telling, please get in touch at Zealot Communications. Don’t forget to hit follow to subscribe to this blog, Citizen Crypto.

Thank you!