Crypto User Personas

As a user of crypto products for four plus years, and a product person, I wanted to capture on paper some of the main user personas one may encounter in crypto.

Retail User (Normal Person/the Gambler)

Motivations:

Make money
leverage money more productively than sitting in cash
buy bottom sell top

Personality Traits:

Not afraid of risk
Interested in new technologies

Tech Experience:

Fairly familiar
Works at a Tech Company/Fintech

Flaws:

Mercenary
Gullible
Blinded by Greed

Strengths:

Alfa
indicator
resilience

Venture Capital Fund

Motivations:

Make money
Get in before everyone else at ridiculous terms

Personality Traits:

Greedy mfers
usually smart AF tho
long time horizion

Tech Experience:

Could be very experienced - sometimes more sophisticated strategies than trading firms
leverage money more pro

Flaws:

too early
too late

Strengths:

Alfa
indicator
longevity

Airdrop Hunter

Motivations:

Make money
leverage money more productively than sitting in cash
climb the “figure” ladder - 4, 5, 6 figures

Personality Traits:

Will do anything
will try anything
complain about it along the way ;)
abusive?
mercenary

Tech Experience:

dumb enough to try, dumb enough to cry
free UX / QA tester

Flaws:

too early
too late

Strengths:

Alfa
indicator
longevity

Traditional Finance User

Motivations:

Make money
leverage money more productively than sitting in cash as a part of a well-balanced portfolio; tranches and such

Personality Traits:

s-s-s-suitsssss; no one wants to be a suit; they just are
“let me add to the portfolio; lots of promise, uncorrelated”

Tech Experience:

Excel
Word
Google suite

Personality Traits:

“Suits were the superior fashion, indicative of a superior society”
“want to grab lunch?”
“haha don’t say that in the office”

Flaws:

too late
Zombie co.’s
sometimes weak hand “I herd somethin’”

Strengths:

ape hard
consistent injection of capital flows
counter-indicator
longevity

Market-Maker

Motivations

Make money
make markets
volatility
showmanship

Personality Traits:

no dimension is wrong; it’s all perspective
Young, dumb,
old, frothy,

Tech Experience:

High frequency trading; install the fiber optics
“I don’t trade, my bot does”
“I created a custom program to exploit aribtrage blah blah blah”

Flaws:

can’t make up mind on direction
in obscure technical market making oriented projects
use of greek letters, like who gives af

Strengths:

can’t make up mind on direction
well informed; maybe a node validator
fund obscure technical protocols which are popular with rich nerds which you miss out on
longevity

DAO/Protocol with a Treasury/Smart Contract Developer

Motivations:

Make money
leverage money more productively than sitting in stables

Personality Traits:

“Regen”
runs the gammut

Tech Experience:

Make protocol
varied

Flaws:

lose money
don’t gain money
sit on fat treasuries and just kinda chill

Strengths:

somehow hit every narrative with insider info
great story tellers
inspire idealism
longevity

Smart Contract Exploiter

Motivations:

N. Korean
Make money
Gloat on the timeline

Personality Traits:

sneaky
showy

Tech Experience:

enough to steal the monies
sometimes just a chatgpt exploit

Flaws:

fuck people over
fund weapons which actually end up in dead people
sometimes hard to actually cash out

Strengths:

great at stealin’ ze money
scammers are great storytellers
inspire better cybersecurity
sometimes point out an unknown scammer in community as deflection (truth teller)

Fed