Seth Benton
Sep 5, 2018 · 2 min read

I just asked my girlfriend, who owns her own successful B2B marketing agency, what she thought about working (for free) to evaluate a proposal. Her response was, probably not. She said that marketers (good ones) typically get paid a lot per hour. Also, many (including herself) have been burned working for startups for stock options that ended up being worthless. I tried to explain the instant liquidity of most coins, their volatility, and how Decred’s voting system worked. She thought it was very interesting, but probably wouldn’t work for free until she learned more and there was a clearer link between her contribution and the value of her investment (and really, as it stands now, most coins just move in tandem with Bitcoin anyway).

Marketing in crypto, as far as I can tell, is still mostly relegated to some pioneering pros funded by the recent boom, and bounty programs where armies of (mostly) unskilled freelancers shill via creating content, sharing on social media, joining telegram channels (to inflate valuations), and perhaps even vote buying (to get on exchanges, etc.) — though I haven’t seen that yet in my brief exploration of the bounty space. Bounties however, do seem to be a growing and somewhat effective way to market. And most participants get paid in coins. Often pre-ICO coins that may never get listed — which is sad because it’s like watching the dotcom boom again, where ill-informed people work for worthless options, albeit on a micro scale. If only there was a DEX where all those pre-listed coins could be atomic swapped and traded for pennies on the dollar in “secondary markets”…