Killing more worthless projects will be a gain for crypto

“If you don’t think about owning a cryptocurrency for 10 years, don’t even think about owning it for 10 minutes.”

Such a philosophy is common among investors who are enthusiastic about blockchain’s potential to dominate Web3 as it becomes the infrastructure of the new internet. Still, if you swap “cryptocurrency” for “stock,” you get a Warren Buffett quote—word for word. Of course, Buffett would never say such a thing about cryptocurrency because he believes it is worthless.

So do a number of other heavy hitters, ranging from Buffett’s close ally Charlie Munger to golden poster boy Peter Schiff. Add to the list JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, and even Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren—a progressive Democrat not known for agreeing with billionaires.

The cryptocurrency industry clearly has a PR problem, for which it can partly blame itself.

Bitcoin BTC has managed to make big promises since its debut in 2008 that it has so far failed to deliver. First, it was supposed to function as a currency. When the currency use case didn’t work, the prevailing explanation for Bitcoin’s intrinsic value was as an inflation hedge. Well, inflation has skyrocketed to 8.3% in the US and 9.9% in the UK. By that logic, Bitcoin should be mooning right now.

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The world’s first cryptocurrency does not have a monopoly on false promises. We all know the story of the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that were supposed to transform the way we exchange ownership, which instead turned into a hoard of hyped-up JPEGs. Eventually they gave way to the play-to-earn (P2E) games that then evolved into metaverse and Web3 platforms – in name only, of course.

Crypto, and by extension Web3, must sell what it actually builds. One of the first things a PR professional tells their clients is not to oversell journalists. Journalists don’t like being tricked into opening a clickbait email pitch that exaggerates the value of a story, and they’ll make it known by shaming you publicly on Twitter and blocking your email address if you dare send them one. And who can blame them? PR is meant to communicate in objective language the actual value of your product, not your imagination for the future.

In this case, the Warren Buffetts and Jamie Dimons of the world feel like the crypto public is massively overselling them, and they respond in kind. It’s bad news for the industry because one of the other things PR pros tell their clients is that having big names on board will ensure them far better PR results. If the crypto experiment is to succeed, it needs the best and brightest people in finance and fintech on board, in addition to the tentative – but still hopeful – support we’re seeing from the likes of Elon Musk.

Every mediocre P2E game or NFT auction house claiming to be “Web3” does massive damage to the entire industry’s image, as do the legions of investors who gamble away their money on clearly overhyped projects. Of course, now that so many investors lost billions in the bankruptcy of even the more legitimate companies in the crypto space – everything from Celsius to Three Arrows Capital (3AC) – we can expect less of that.

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We can also expect less resistance to regulation, another important part of the industry’s PR efforts. Imagine trying to improve the image of a company that does not follow the rules or norms that traditionally govern corporate affairs. Employees can trash-talk their bosses in public, steal money from the company’s coffers and engage in side battles with competitors. That’s the crypto industry right now, considering most rules and regulations related to finance – and even false advertising – barely apply.

Only companies that are actively building the infrastructure for the new internet should brand themselves as Web3. That includes leveraging tokenization to improve document sharing, for example, and leveraging blockchain’s benefits to build privacy-preserving and secure communication platforms. There are legitimate blockchain companies out there building Web3 products, and they should be the ones making the noise.

In PR, your success depends on your story, and your story is your product. Only when blockchain projects can show the big players in finance that their technology has something to offer that Web2 really doesn’t, will the biggest investors come on board.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.