The Way to Success: “readers should never be confused” — interview with Nate Whitehill, CEO CryptoSlate.
Imagine a world within a world. Who would’ve thought there would be so much diversity within a crypto news platform started by a man with a dream?
Well, the main formula of their success is no secret. Transparency is one of the main components of this company allowing it to be trustworthy and safe.
Today, Nate Whitehill the CEO & Co-Founder of CryptoSlate gets more in depth about the survival of new projects during crypto winter, the male/female ratios within the industry, top recommendations for a safe start in the crypto market and much more.
Eleonora Etinger:
Great. Okay, so the first and very obvious question. Could you just do a little introduction for the readers?
Nate Whitehill:
My name is Nate Whitehill, I’m the CEO and Co-founder of CryptoSlate. CryptoSlate is a data and news website for cryptocurrency that’s been operating since 2017. We receive from 750,000 to a million unique visitors per month from all around the world: 35% from North America, and 65% from Europe, Asia and Africa.
Eleonora Etinger:
Can you also highlight a few things that you personally find more interesting? What’s the vision behind this company and what’s your main motivation?
Nate Whitehill:
I first learned about cryptocurrency probably in 2012 — it was something about Bitcoin. But I didn’t buy my first Bitcoin until 2015, when one of my good friends told me to download Coinbase. Shortly I realized that there was much more to cryptocurrency than just Bitcoin, and it was right around the time when ICOs were on the rise. I started researching and learning as much as I possibly could. I have a technological background. I’m a programmer and designer, plus I’ve created many tech businesses in the past. And my grandfather was a stock trader for most of his life, so I have a little bit of a financial background as well.
My goal at the time was to build a website that combined the utility of a data website like CoinMarketCap, with the kind of qualitative analysis that you get from Coindesk or Cointelegraph. The vision of CryptoSlate originally was to provide all the news with the analysis and high-quality data combined with the quantitative side as well. CryptoSlate grew from my intent to build something that was easy to use and visually appealing to provide information about the crypto market to people all around the world.
Eleonora Etinger:
That sounds very impressive. And I noticed that you’re kind of a one man orchestra, if you can say so.
Nate Whitehill:
Yeah, certainly at the beginning, I have a team now but when I first started I designed the logo myself, I programmed myself, I went to every single page on CoinMarketCap and every single coin just because I wanted to learn and enrich our database. I saw way too many coins that one would consider a shit coin back in 2017, many of them are simply unrecoverable.
Eleonora Etinger:
I think it’s true for at least 50% if we’re talking 2017, harsh stats. But do you think you’ve managed to achieve this combination of news, data and deep market analysis? And do you think it is what makes CryptoSlate appealing for readers?
Nate Whitehill:
Yeah, I think because we have so many pages that are very well search-optimized. There’s over probably 12,000 or 13,000 individual pages on CryptoSlate that are indexed by Google, so it creates a lot of discoverability for people who are looking for a particular topic, a person or company, and they can go to CryptoSlate to learn about it. By having such a wide range of different types of information we’re making our platform appealing to people that are just trying to learn more about this crazy world.
Eleonora Etinger:
I’m sure you have some plans for scaling and some strategy but from what I hear, it’s a lot of work and dedication. So how are you planning to reach new all time high for CryptoSlate?
Nate Whitehill:
I think the most important thing for us is to continue extending our journalism team, which we’ve been doing lately. And one thing I’m actually really happy and proud to say is that we have as many female writers, as we do male writers now, which is the first time that’s ever happened I think. It would be nice if there’s an equal mix of men and women.
Over the past few years, there have been a lot more women interested in cryptocurrency, many of which have journalism backgrounds. And that’s been very good for us, because we want not only to provide content for all different types of people, but we also want it for people of different ages, races, genders to represent CryptoSlate around the world.
Eleonora Etinger:
Do you think this level of diversity is beneficial for every project and every industry, or are there some exceptions?
Nate Whitehill:
The more I talk to other companies and other people, the more I notice that there are way too many men. There are some groups like Women in blockchain talks here in London, where they try to explain what are the reasons to learn more about cryptocurrency and the whole new financial paradigm. Seems like across the industry that there is underrepresentation of women. That’s why specific groups dedicated to women’s education have started to actually bring more women into the world of cryptocurrency. Often I hear that women are the ones managing the finances for families, so it kind of makes more sense to have women learn about this new financial world.
Eleonora Etinger:
It’s great you brought that up, because I believe it’s very important. I’m not sure why women don’t consider blockchain a suitable industry or technology for their career path or for their studies.
Now I’d like to talk more about current trends. We already mentioned that at least half of the coins you saw back in 2017 don’t exist anymore. With this rapid rush of ups and downs and constantly appearing new trends, can you name some trends you find the most interesting or the ones that are here to stay?
Nate Whitehill:
Obviously, DeFi is definitely one of the biggest emerging trends over the past year. I think that there’s a ton of different applications and utilities in DeFi that are just starting to have a good enough user experience for daily usability. When trying to explain DeFi to my father, for instance, he still doesn’t really get it, and I have to explain things like 10 times before he’s able to really get the idea. For people that are not into crypto, DeFi is still kind of a scary, unfamiliar concept, but for crypto native people, I do think DeFi is something like a killer technology. It’s bringing a lot of previously traditional financial operations into crypto and kind of emulates what the centralized financial systems are doing. It’s credits, loans, insurance, as well as yielding dividends or yielding interests from particular assets.
I do think DeFi is probably the best use case so far, but DeFi is more for advanced users while, for instance, NFTs are more beginner-friendly. The concept of collectibles is attracting a lot of brands like, for example, Budweiser — they recently just bought their crypto domain and started buying NFTs. Visa recently made a move towards the NFT direction as well. I believe big, well-known brands are taking part in NFTs as a way to demonstrate that they’re savvy about crypto and that they understand that this is the future.
Eleonora Etinger:
You want your readers to have a full understanding of what the project is about, and warn them about potential pitfalls. Do you think that’s the main thing that makes CryptoSlate so special?
Nate Whitehill:
We were probably the first website to integrate both the qualitative side and the quantitative side, the data and the news. I think in the early days, that was one thing that made us special. Nowadays, one thing that stands out is that we’re very big on transparency and disclosure. Anytime that any writer holds any particular crypto asset that he or she is writing about, we ask them to disclose that at the bottom of the article. There’s a section at the bottom of the article that says it’s a commitment to transparency and it basically says the person who is writing about this asset also holds the asset. That also applies to advertising too. Anytime we take money for any advertisement we disclose to our readers. A reader should never be confused, whether they’re looking at an ad or not. In many countries like the United States and the UK, these laws about disclosure and transparency, and it’s something that we’ve always taken very seriously.
Eleonora Etinger:
Thank you. Both for the answer and for being honest with readers. Can you maybe just share a couple or five recommendations for those who are just starting their way and don’t know whom to trust?
Nate Whitehill:
The first thing I would say is always take time to do personal research and understand the project and the team prior to making an investment. Too often, crypto has this kind of allure of getting rich quick. That does happen, we hear stories of that all the time, it also leads people to invest in unreliable projects without carefully analyzing it first. The strategy I recommend is to go slow: research, study different projects, try to fully understand what one is investing in prior to actually sending money or buying cryptocurrency. So much of 2017 was people investing in projects that only had a white paper, and many of them made investments without even reading it. People are making decisions too quickly, oftentimes with such large amounts of money and, if they get scammed, that their life is significantly worse off. Of course afterwards they leave crypto thinking it’s all a scam without giving the technology itself a chance. I think if people would be a little bit slower, that they can actually make better decisions and be more skeptical about the hype that we hear on a regular basis.
Eleonora Etinger:
I completely agree, we want to ensure that the first crypto purchase is safe and as easy as possible, so the first-time crypto buyer would have a nice impression not only about Indacoin, but about crypto in general. But contribution to the mass adoption makes crypto purchases more accessible for fraudsters as well. Do you think it’s time to take a deep breath and wait a little until the global community will be ready to embrace the power of blockchain?
Nate Whitehill:
That’s interesting, since you’ve been around for at least one or two of the bull market cycles, you know that in between these bull runs, we have a crypto winter full of FUD. It’s easy to think about mass adoption when the prices are going up and everyone wants to buy but the more difficult thing is to continue building during the bear markets and for any project that that is starting now, the one thing that I always want to know is will they be able to survive a two or three year crypto winter? The projects that have a stronger focus on the product market fit and technology, solid team, and kind of the ecosystem as well doesn’t rely so much on the hype. For example, the Solana ecosystem is doing really well and there’s a lot of smart money that’s being attracted to it.
Eleonora Etinger:
Sure, Solana is skyrocketing like crazy. I believe there are very few projects who can compete with them in terms of growth speed.
Nate Whitehill:
Maybe Avalanche, they’re doing really well too.
Eleonora Etinger:
Yeah, I think their bull run is just around the corner, they haven’t reached their ATH yet. So I have just one more question for you: what do you think about mass adoption in terms of the technical understanding of exactly how blockchain and crypto works?
Nate Whitehill:
I think it is similar to the internet in the early and mid 90s. At the time, people thought they had to understand the internet in order to use it. But over time, people were using the internet and benefiting from it without understanding how it actually works. It’s kinda similar to people wanting to understand how crypto works prior to investing in it, which is a good thing. But I must admit it’s very complicated. We’re in the process where the industry offers numerous applications, which provide value and benefit to people without them having and If they do, then they don’t need to understand how cryptocurrency works or what the difference between decentralization and centralization is. I think it’s just that it’s a process now. And the more that builders think about solving problems and providing better systems than the previous centralized systems, then this idea of needing to understand how cryptocurrency works, or decentralized finance works will be less relevant.
Eleonora Etinger:
I agree, for instance I don’t need to understand how my microwave works to warm up my food.
Nate Whitehill:
Exactly. Yeah, that’s a great example.
Eleonora Etinger:
it was a delightful conversation, I have no doubt our audience will love it, thank you.
Nate Whitehill:
It was a pleasure to talk with you, thank you for inviting me!
