Crypto’s Next Billion Users Will Follow the Creators - Here’s Why
The creative class just became crypto's most valuable asset.
From Influencers to Onramps
Forget technical specs and whitepapers—the next wave of crypto adoption rides on storytelling. Artists, musicians, and digital creators now wield more influence than any blockchain protocol. They're not just building audiences; they're building onboarding ramps for millions.
The Trust Transfer
Traditional finance gatekeepers keep losing ground. Banks lecture about risk while creators demonstrate value—through NFT drops that fund careers, DAOs that launch projects, and communities that bypass traditional institutions. Wall Street analysts scratch their heads as TikTokers explain yield farming to millions.
Creative Capital Flows
When artists tokenize their work, they're not just selling digital art—they're creating economic models that work for creators first. The same institutions that once dismissed crypto now scramble to understand why a 15-second video moves more capital than their quarterly reports.
The revolution won't be televised—it'll be streamed, minted, and community-owned. Traditional finance can keep its spreadsheets; the future speaks the language of creativity.
Creative exposes product-market fit
Marketing is diagnostic, and a creative is the prescription. Every creative campaign begins with the same questions: Who cares? What do you promise? Does it work? Too often, crypto projects hesitate to take any hypothesis to market, paralyzed; they test nothing, learn nothing, and remain stuck in their echo chamber.
Creative work exposes friction points and forces you to smooth them out, not just making technology easier to explain, but easier to use. Campaigns invite users, and when a campaign’s success hinges on a CTA, you better believe your product works better on launch day. That’s because designers simply can’t let it go, copywriters cannot stand a broken voice across touchpoints, and every person in the room, upon closer inspection, sees it too.
The future of culture is digital, and crypto is the rails. [Some] crypto projects mirror the biggest questions of our time, like how power is distributed, how people organize, and how value is exchanged. Literal money is at the center of it all. So why do these brands look like products from outer space? Bad design makes you look cozy in your category; great design positions you as a contender among the leaders of your broader competitive set. We’re there. More eyes on crypto than ever. It’s time to meet the moment. Creatives help technologists articulate their place in the market and create entry points for the masses. With few exceptions, looking like a degen-only crypto product is asking to be ignored.
Creative branding exercises over endless off-sites
While you’re searching for product market fit, your brand and product should still be standing on a solid foundation. You have an audience, a team that believes, and users (hopefully). I wager that a conversation between your team and creative people, equipped with the tools to actually help visualize the why, brings more clarity than any off-site ever could. We have a saying, “We need to start seeing JPEGs.” Because it’s true. Creative completes the sentence. To see your brand in action will unstick you and set you and your team free. More importantly, it’s the blueprint for you and your team to say something out loud to the rest of the world. Progress.
“Creative will make your product work” is a crazy thing to say to people who are on hour twenty-five of coding something right now, or who rightfully believe that every single last dollar needs to go towards engineers, product owners, and the people who make this darn thing turn on. Fortunately, this op-ed won’t find them.
But to those of us creatives who make sure the world sees, understands, and cares about technology, let me wax poetic: We connect products to users and prevent developers from building in the dark. We turn features into ownable values, and spec sheets into differentiators that stick. Creative isn’t decoration; it’s the translation LAYER between technology and culture, and it’s the Intelligence Era’s barrier to entry for exponential growth. Because until the wheels come off—yes, yes, every user cares what it looks like, and yes, you make these products work.
Jenny Mauric is the Head of Creative at Blokhaus, where she leads brand strategy and campaign development at the intersection of web3, blockchain, AI, and culture. With a background in design and creative direction, Jenny has shaped globally recognized campaigns and immersive brand experiences for clients including Solana, Art Basel, NEAR AI, Algorand, Red Bull Racing, SXSW, and more. Passionate about technology and storytelling, she helps emerging tech brands connect with audiences and claim their place in culture.
