Manifest Magic, [1/28/2025 3:56 AM]
Got a question for you.
Manifest Magic, [1/28/2025 3:57 AM]
So you obv hold crypto.
Manifest Magic, [1/28/2025 3:57 AM]
I'm launching this TakeMe startup so getting your feedback would be helpful as we build it.
Manifest Magic, [1/28/2025 3:58 AM]
First and most basic question, if a company sold crypto plushies, what are your thoughts?
The company must be a big one, right? I think immediately about what kind of group could pull that off and Pudgy Penguins comes to mind. I don't think you need a big business, but a big brand is one that commands enough loyalty and attention to sell plushies.
After all, plushies are for the superfan. I think it's a type of specialty consumer good but it's difficult to gauge sentiment off polls and social media alone, so you could test it first, with a lower cost ask.
See if you can't get people to buy prints of art, stickers, and the like at first. T-shirts could be low cost to create, but I don't know. Once you see who accepted the stickers and the shirts, you could tier up right then and there to go to plushies.
See, I don't think crypto people are so wary they won't shell an address. You're not Coinbase, you're not obligated to share their transaction history with the IRS for taxes, for example. All those users still get their Ledger mailed to their home address, DoorDash delivers food, Amazon whatever you sent for comes straight to an address, all while these people gamble on memes.
Then, what do I think is the biggest constraint? The consumers themselves. I may've already spoken to it, but I think it's important to know what you're selling well and who you're selling. In my freelance working days, I got the chance to get some great advice on business creation.
You want to make sure you're offering painkillers before vitamins.
This is about meeting business needs in general. We did an exercise to look at business problems and the related business solutions. It's funny, the needs boiled down to Maslow's hierarchy, food, water, but also higher order things like security of assets, personal safety, and some of the harder ones to deliver are at the top, like self-actualization, achievement and esteem, etc.
I'd call the plushie a vitamin, but maybe you offer some kind of painkiller for crypto bros, somehow. You legitimize projects maybe? Now, with their project legit, like no fear of rug or dev abandonment, you can sell plushies to a community whose needs are already met. They believe in the token since they have assurances, and they'll buy the plushie.
Then we looked at customer segmentation. This involves creating a imaginary picture of your ideal customer. We get into demographics, consumer preferences and habits, until we create 1-3 models of that ideal. "We have Joe from the US. He's 28, out of college, working. Is interested in crypto but hasn't taken the plunge." Be as specific as possible in this process, because it really determines success. How well you imagine your ideal customer will help you sell to actual customers who may vary anywhere in between that ideal.
To sum up, I think plushies are a masterful move in crypto done well. There were steps I didn't know to legitimize freelance ventures- I didn't know about like consumer profiles and segmentation. Ultimately, I think if you meet one or two business needs of crypto users, then you're free to sell them anything.
People at $TURBO started shilling hot sauce once they were over a couple hundred million in market cap. Near the bottom, people didn't even want to hear it unless it was another listing.
GoFundMeme
A token that might take me on a tangent but highlights the problem with crypto. Everyone's making it easier to create more tokens. To gamble. And that's why the prevailing sentiment is that the digital asset industry is speculation. A large amount is. Then, you have the people left behind the pump and dump. Sure, these communities are largely speculators, but who isn't? I speculate that Bitcoin prevails as the major digital asset as it sits at the the genesis of this technology.
So the problem becomes the legitimacy of crypto because of two things: the speed of creating speculative assets and the lack of community infrastructure following the speculators' exit.
Why does this matter? Whether or not you subscribe to the thinking that every token is a meme because they all compete for attention, tokens inevitably spark decentralized organizations. As their survival depends on liquidity brought by attention, we specify that they are decentralized media organizations.
I'm not to first to say the token generation velocity is too high; but I think there's a big solution somewhere and that excites me. I'm going to spend my time looking at it.
I mean, look here. Here's how a Velodrome / Aerodrome Finance contributor made $1 million in 1 hour during the $VVV launch. It's not even a memecoin but it's been so blatantly frauded. There has got to be something better than this.