How Twitter Serves As the Town Hall of Crypto

Twitter is (for now) indispensable to following blockchain technology. What might look to outsiders like idle badgering and joking, is in fact the process of people forming allegiances and making deals. Axios reports: 'Crypto Twitter' or 'CT,' refers to all the people tweeting about various blockchain projects all day. They don't all necessarily follow or interact with each other, just as everyone in a town doesn't necessarily know everyone else, but a town still has its own character and so does CT. 'Crypto is 24/7/365, and it needs a medium that matches that pace,' Variant Fund's Spencer Noon tells Axios.

Sources prominent on Crypto Twitter mostly feel that Twitter has been a useful space for the crypto industry, but not without caveats. Several say it's key to staying abreast of what's hot right now. 'Twitter is kind of a 'Great Equalizer' of sorts, where broadcasting continues to be a good way for newcomers to build a brand,' Archetype VC's Katherine Wu tells Axios. The best use of Twitter depends on whether you're a trader, investor, content creator or founder, but lots of our sources pointed to Twitter's power as a place for discourse. 'To me what matters most is the dialogue,' Adamant Research's Tuur Demeester said. 'Sometimes I like to just throw ideas out there to immediately connect with those that share similar interests and want to brainstorm,' Linda Xie of Scalar Capital said.

It takes a while to get your bearings on CT. There are a lot of inside jokes and in group language that takes time to learn. As [Castle Island Ventures Nic Carter] put it, those obstacles serve as filters to make sure folks in the conversation know something about what they're discussing. 'It's like an in-group binding mechanism,' Matti of Zee Prime Capital says. 'You feel rewarded that you're an insider if you get something, and then comes that sweet release of dopamine.' Some notable moments in CT include when ConsenSys staffer Jordan Lyall tweeted a gag in the middle of DeFi Summer that turned into a real project, with a token called MEME. And when Coinbase announced acquiring Neutrino in 2019, 'a company with staffers known for enabling some very controversion spying,' reports Axios. 'The hashtag #DeleteCoinbase trended.'

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