Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Bitcoin

Crypto's Massive Marketing Efforts Have Drawn Few New Investors (washingtonpost.com) 99

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Over the past year, crypto companies like FTX, Coinbase and Crypto.com have shelled out tens of millions of dollars to attract new customers. "Fortune favors the brave," Matt Damon famously said in a Crypto.com TV spot as he tried to induce Americans to open their digital wallets. Now a core metric of how successful they were has been returned, and experts say it's an eye-opening one: not successful at all. From a report: The number of people who invested in crypto has not expanded since last September before the push began, according to a new study led by Pew Research Center. The results, released Tuesday, build off an initial survey in September. Back then, Pew researchers asked 10,371 Americans if they have "ever invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency." Some 16 percent said they had. Last month, the nonprofit asked another sample group -- slightly smaller, at 6,034 Americans -- the same question. The number hadn't grown, with the same 16 percent saying they had at some point invested or traded in the alternate currency.

The results suggest that, despite numerous splashy campaigns by crypto interests, the great majority of Americans remain immune to their sales pitches. "It's pretty striking that for all the spectacular commotion around crypto in the last year, the number of people who invest or trade in crypto didn't budge," said Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center's director of internet and technology research, who spearheaded the study. "Attempts to bring in new buyers to the market didn't seem to move the needle at all."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Crypto's Massive Marketing Efforts Have Drawn Few New Investors More

Crypto's Massive Marketing Efforts Have Drawn Few New Investors

Comments Filter:

  • Pyramid scheme marketing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Saturday August 27, 2022 @08:18AM (#62827429)

    You can spend all the money you want to advertise your scam but by now most people with available play money have already figured it out.

    A few of my younger family members push it hard on the rest of the family but no bites. No one else will touch it.

    • Money loss can be terrible. It has the potential to drive you into a downward spiral, and it almost did in my situation. I had put my money into a platform, and everything appeared to be legitimate until it was too late for me to understand I had been duped. For days, I was depressed until a buddy remarked that he had heard of a platform that could assist. I reluctantly agreed to give them a chance, and it turned out to be the best decision I've ever made. My money was quickly recovered. Please be sure you

  • Is anyone surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jarik C-Bol ( 894741 ) on Saturday August 27, 2022 @08:34AM (#62827449)
    Is anyone surprised? The non-tech people still see crypto as confusing and complicated. The tech crowd that does not find it ‘new and scary’ is pretty well firmly divided into two camps, the “already owns crypto and thinks everyone should” group, and the group that thinks crypto is just a new model of pyramid scheme, and refuses to touch it with a 10 foot pole.

    If they can’t sell it to boomers and the elderly, they are going to run out of new suckers to sell this stuff to in my opinion.

    And with near weekly articles describing some crypto exchange or another shuttering snd running with everyones imaginary, or closing down withdrawals, or the total collapse in value of another cryptocurrency, They’ll be hard pressed to gain many converts from the ‘anti crypto’ crowd.

    Early on I could not see the point of crypto, its initial incarnations (as ‘internet currency’ seemed like buying chuck-e-cheese tokens for use on the internet. Then it morphed into a high value stock market like investment, and I briefly wondered if I had misjudged, and then the circus of failure and collapse started, and I was re-assured that I made the right choice.

    • divided into two camps, the “already owns crypto and thinks everyone should” group, and the group that thinks crypto is just a new model of pyramid scheme, and refuses to touch it with a 10 foot pole.

      I suspect the first camp also thinks crypto is just a new model of pyramid scheme, which is why they own it and think everyone should.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      That nicely sums it up. Of course, with hindsight one could have made some killer profit, but if I could predict the future, I would just play the lottery and make an even greater killing. Fortunately (for a number of reasons), the future is by its very nature unpredictable.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Seems some of the scammers have mod-points. Here is news for you cretins: The facts of the matter do not change if you try to hide them. They are blatantly obvious and clear to anybody not befuddled by greed.

        • Seems some of the scammers have mod-points.

          You've been here this long, and you haven't figured out who the other users are?

          They don't need to be scammers. They're merely neckbeards who wish they were the scammers. It is a more credible fantasy for them to have gotten in on a pyramid scheme early than to have started a company or something to get rich.

          They also likely bought in during the pandemic, and thought for awhile they had a giant stack of free money, then saw it evaporate. They may have bought some earlier, that is still way up, but they so m

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Seems some of the scammers have mod-points.

            You've been here this long, and you haven't figured out who the other users are?

            I have. I just like to insult them occasionally. I do not consider the stupid to be a protected group that deserves special consideration.

            They don't need to be scammers. They're merely neckbeards who wish they were the scammers. It is a more credible fantasy for them to have gotten in on a pyramid scheme early than to have started a company or something to get rich.

            They also likely bought in during the pandemic, and thought for awhile they had a giant stack of free money, then saw it evaporate. They may have bought some earlier, that is still way up, but they so much more later when it was up that they're now way down overall, but they still look at the portion that is up and dream about a future where all of it is up that much.

            98% of users are complete assholes, and dumb as a nail. But they're very certain they have all the answers, on account of how sciencey their received knowledge is.

            I do not disagree. They are still part of the scammers though.

    • If they can't sell it to boomers and the elderly, they are going to run out of new suckers to sell this stuff to in my opinion.

      This is the right opinion about all tech. There's always early adopters for new technologies, who can make up their own stories about how a technology might be used and choose to buy into a new technology. But every technology's purpose should be gauged by the "elderly grandmother" test. If a 70 year old woman (just picking some profile here, could be any average person) can understand why they need your technology, then you've got a story that can break into the wider market and the tech has a chance to

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by hoover ( 3292 )

        Heh, for a while I regretted "not having invested in BC" early on when they were available for a few cents. Knowing myself though in hindsight I probably would have sold out once they were at $1 and I'd be kicking myself now, earlier or even later for not having held on to them longer, so it was probably for the better not getting involved in crypto in the first place.

    • The headline should reasd "Crypto's Massive Marketing Efforts Have Drawn Few New Suckers".

      Is anyone surprised? The non-tech people still see crypto as confusing and complicated. The tech crowd that does not find it ‘new and scary’ is pretty well firmly divided into two camps, the “already owns crypto and thinks everyone should” group, and the group that thinks crypto is just a new model of pyramid scheme, and refuses to touch it with a 10 foot pole.

      In other words, everyone who can figure out Crypto has figured out its a Ponzi scheme. The celebrity ads were just an attempt to keep the bottom layer of the scheme filled with willing suckers. Sounds like it's not working.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      I'd think that the recent returns of crypto investments have more to do with their lack of widespread adoption.

      I don't care how much advertising you do or how easy you make crypto transactions... when your investment is down 60% for the year (Like Bitcoin currently is), most people aren't going to think that investing MORE money in it is a good idea.

    • I agree. I believe crypto will really take off after the generational wealth transfer from boomers to GenX (and some GenY). I also believe that the apex of that event in the future will coincide with 1) the availability of a large array of stable and useful dApps on top of proven PoS reconciling layers, and 2) stubbornly persistent inflation of the US $ (it seems that neither political party has the will to stop this money-printing train).

      • Ever watch how closely the NASDAQ and bitcoin are correlated? That's because the big runup was the late trend asset gatherers and momentum chasers like Cathie Wood and Microstrategy. Look at Friday, bitcoin took a big dump just when the shorts pulled the trigger.

        "This Hedge Fund Trend Monitor, which analyzes 795 hedge funds with $2.4 trillion of gross equity positions ($1.7 trillion long and $764 billion short)"

        All those shorts that were carried out on stretchers in the "most hated rally" since June, came b

        • Ever watch how closely the NASDAQ and bitcoin are correlated?

          So I did that, I went to yahoo finance and loaded the bitcoin chart, clicked "comparison" and then "NASDAQ" and there is no significant correlation at all.

          Stop being an idiot who repeats shit they heard on social media. This is a website for nerds. Look shit up before you make claims. You're way outside your wheelhouse, and still didn't look up your claim? That's called a "moron."

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by linuxguy ( 98493 )
            You sound bitter. Did you lose a lot of money with your Bitcoin *investment*?

            BTW, you are correct. Bitcoin does not track NADAQ very closely. NASDAQ is down 22% for the year. Bitcoin is down 60% for the year. I hope you don't have a lot of money invested in the crypto Ponzi scheme.

      • What wealth transfer? You really think that you'll inherit anything from the boomers? They're gonna blow their dough on the way out, either trying to have a few last thrills themselves or to buy themselves a longer life.

        • Hospice care is $7k per month. And it is earned. Us olds will be spending you kid's inheritance on a few months of torture before the end. Move to Oregon, suck the helium, when the cancers gnaw and bite, I've come to believe. My father died mid December so I know more about death than I wanted to. So plan to spend $7k+ for each month you spend dying. Well worth it.
          • Yeah this is really the crux of things. Unless you plan *very* carefully, it's not possible to leave anything to your children. The very rich have ways of doing so while avoiding taxes. But the rest of the world, greedy for-profit nursing homes and hospitals drain their bank accounts entirely before people die. It's a crying shame. I guess I need to hurry and do some estate planning.
    • Everybody knows somebody who lost their shirt in crypto. Testimonials work!
  • September last year was already a crypto autumn. The number of crypto users certainly grew allot since September 2020 because the bitcoin price grew.

  • What with all the stories of outright fraud, hackers stealing funds, crypto portfolios changing value faster than a roller coaster, who wouldn't want to invest?

  • And stay away. As usual, the small hopeful morons are the ones getting fleeced, some exceptions (that were luck, not smart) notwithstanding. Better play the lottery.

  • I think the word you are looking for is "suckers" - the real players will get out when enough "customers" have sunk their money into the market.
  • If people come to the realization that the value of their earnings and savings is based on what Jerome Powell and his gang decide, as opposed to something hard to produce (whether it's gold or crypto or something else), that would be enough of a win in my book. Fiat already destroyed people's earnings and savings in countries like Lebanon, Turkey, Venezuela.. etc.

    • The means of exchange is just an incentivizing tools to have people be productive.

      The value of savings is based on what future people are willing to give you for it. People who might very well decide they don't want your gold and certainly won't want your fucking bitcoin, however hard to produce a bitcoin is now ... what do they fucking care? They put real honest work into products, not burning electricity on creating digital tokens with no intrinsic productive or leisure function.

    • Cryptocurrency as an "emergency" or "crisis" currency is bollocks. You need working computers and a working internet, two things you might not really have if push comes to shove.

    • The US dollar has significantly *increased* in value vs other currencies in the latest round of inflation. And well everything has increased vs BTC. Maybe it's not fiat currency that's the issue in the countries you mentioned but rather authoritarian leaders who build a following of people who value party over country. Did you ever think of that?

  • I couldn't figure out why... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Big Hairy Gorilla ( 9839972 ) on Saturday August 27, 2022 @09:09AM (#62827503)
    only people under 30 seemed to buy crypto. I also was amazed to read that Coinbase laid off 20% of the their workers, 1000 people. As asked elsewhere, wtf were 5000 people working on? If most cryptos are just a wrapper around Etherium, then you don't need thousands of programmers/engineers. Based on the recent news, they weren't working on data security.

    Social media traps you in a bubble of misinformation and fomo, so then I put 2+2 together and figured they were working on promoting cryptos on social media... makes sense to me... All the younger people I've surveyed have a kind of religious fervour, a system of "beliefs" lacking logical rigour, with all the talking points at hand. You don't want "The Man" knowing all your business, do you? ...Crypto is decentralized, etc...

    I'm going to say that cryptocurrencies ARE a form of social media. Amirite?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      The majority of people in any crypto business are in the "Sales" segment. Or as we generally call it "Hype and Astroturfing".

    • Modern crypto is like multi-level marketing perfected. You don't have to deliver a product, or worry about weird accounting. Once people buy, they start convincing their friends on their own.

    • then you don't need thousands of programmers/engineers

      The only thing you can run exclusively with programmers/engineers are tiny tech consultancies. As soon as you get more than a couple of engineers you end up with overheads which include other staff.

      Coinbase is known by all. Coinbase has business dealings with others. Coinbase is quoted in stories involving the FTC. Coinbase was on TV. Why is this relevant? Marketing, Legal, Sales, Finance, HR, PR. If you staff those by programmers/engineers your business will fail.

      That should be self evident by the fact tha

  • There's your problem... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Saturday August 27, 2022 @09:46AM (#62827571)

    have shelled out tens of millions of dollars

    You're supposed to shell out your own cryptocurrency units. They were supposed to magically solve all our problems, remember? Using real money instead of your made up bullshit just shows how little confidence you actually have in your own bullshit product.

  • Cryptocurrencies are currencies not investments (Score:3)

    by tdailey ( 728882 ) on Saturday August 27, 2022 @10:04AM (#62827607)

    Cryptocurrencies are currencies, not investments. Their purpose is to facilitate a transaction like $, €, and ¥. Yet they fail at being currencies because people seem to think they're investments to be bought & held.

    • Cryptocurrencies are not Holy Grease. They are a mechanism to part the stupid of their money. One should, for obvious reasons, rate the Cryptocurrencies in "Barnums".

    • Re:Cryptocurrencies are currencies not investments (Score:5, Insightful)

      by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Saturday August 27, 2022 @10:39AM (#62827691)

      Cryptocurrencies fail at being currencies for many reasons, including slow/indeterminate transaction times, high transaction costs, high volatility, complicated exchange, and more. After bitcoin, new cryptocurrencies set out to address one or more of these issues and none are a stand-out success. The intention of crypto may be to be a currency but in practice crypto falls flat as a currency.

    • Mostly because they fail at being currencies. If it takes forever and a day to pay with a currency, unless you're willing to accept ridiculous costs of doing business, it's quite useless.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Ed Avis ( 5917 )

        That's not quite fair. If you live in the USA and you wanted to pay someone in US dollars, but they lived in a different state, you'd have to drive there and hand over the cash. It would be even slower and more expensive if they lived in another country.

        In practice it's fast because you are not paying in physical currency, but in a kind of electronic promise made by banks. Your bank balance falls, the other person's increases, and everyone trusts that in the end you will be able to convert the electronic

    • They fail at being currencies because they provide none of the value of an actual currency. They aren't backed by a stable government. They don't have central banks to actively manage a monetary policy. They swing wildly in value. They're hard to exchange. If you want to use a currency to exchange goods and services, $, €, and ¥ work swimmingly

    • While I don't agree that cryptocurrencies are real currencies, even if they were, the argument doesn't make sense. Real (traditional) currencies are also bought and sold as investments. For example, people who hold euros, a currency that is falling in value, might well buy dollars as an investment to hedge against their own depreciating currency.

  • Apparently there isnâ(TM)t a sucker born every minute.

  • Like with every pyramid scheme, at some point there simply are no more people who can be duped into joining.

  • There's another saying, "a fool and his money are soon parted". The latter is more applicable to the shill of crypto.

  • Cryptocurrencies are at best a gamble and at worst a scam

  • So what I'm getting from this is Bitcoin needs more than one new investor born every minute to stay afloat.

  • The hype train no longer works, when everyone knows someone who saw their own ass on the way down.

    We've all chatted with family or colleagues bursting with enthusiasm (greed) at some points during the hype.
    If you had to ask them again "hows your cryptocurrency thing going?", it would probably end up with them changing the subject.
    "So, how much did you lose?"

    It would be interesting to have some stats on how many actually made a profit - I'm willing to bet, very few.

    Most "retail investors" get onboard a hype

Slashdot Top Deals

Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

Close