A Crypto Analyst’s Hero’s Journey

(Title by TBI — Content by Jack)

Written by Jack Purdy

“Fortunately, you, dear target audience of 23–27-year-old entrepreneurial-fintech-geniuses-who-love-crypto, are looking for a way to break into this industry, but you aren’t a hard-core systems engineer…”

A year and a half-ago I read those words on one of my three monitors during a slavish shift as a banking analyst, a profession I had no long-term interest in.

It felt like the author was standing in my office yelling at me through a megaphone — even if, as a 22-year old banker, I could hardly call myself a genius in anything.

I had spent the few years prior lurking on crypto twitter, reading medium posts and trying (poorly) to trade crypto. But after reading TBI’s The Apprentice: Crypto, I knew I was ready to start getting more deeply involved.

One particular section of his post stood out:

I wrote every single day for a full year before I started full-time at DCG.

Every. Single. Day.

For free.

It was agonizing at times, but it was also an incredible learning experience and brand development tool — for better and for worse. I got to know the people building the industry’s infrastructure, and they got to know me. My daily digest was gobbled up by most of crypto’s top brass at the time.

Why do I bring this up?

1) You should write every day, too, if you want to break into this market long-term.

I studied finance and math in college, though.

The last time I could remember writing much of anything was in my college applications. Still, I forced myself to publish my first medium article on crypto two weeks later.

While I cringe when I read it now, it was my first step towards a more intensive learning experience and an inevitable job in the space. With each post I wrote, I kept coming back to Ryan’s call to arms for Messari community analysts. My early articles centered around the excesses I saw in crypto mania, so I already felt strong alignment with the company’s mission to bring more transparency and rationality to the space.

Eventually I built up the confidence to write what I thought was a pretty good equity research-esque report and submitted it as my application to join the Messari analyst community. They accepted the research, and I began writing research for EOS, Stellar, and others.

I was among a hundred or so analysts who, like me, were passionate enough about the space to contribute part time to build something we believed in: a community library of cryptoasset research. The time we spent, helped form the backbone of the current asset pages you see on the Messari website today.

Why am I telling you this?

The analyst network was incredible for me.

I learned a tremendous amount simply because I had the excuse (and outlet) to share more focused crypto research, and the social pressure from delivering that to the Messari team and broader analyst community.

I had little to no following on twitter/medium at the time, so having my articles pushed through Messari’s distribution channels allowed them to reach a 100x larger audience. I was actively looking to move full-time into crypto, and the work I did at Messari was a huge help in getting a foot in the door for interviews (including Messari, obviously).

That was true for many of us.

Ben Sparango is now an analyst at Multicoin Capital. Phil J Bonello is now the Head of Research at Ikigai Asset Management. Other contributors have gone on to join BD teams at crypto projects or exchanges, or started their own funds and companies.

The early Messari analyst community was awesome. But the contributions died down somewhat naturally after we completed hundreds of asset profiles.

We’re hoping to change that this summer, and looking to revamp the community once again, covering new assets that may have been uncovered, and writing resource pages and curated boards that help create a free! library of “Investopedia-like” entries on crypto jargon, trends, and sectors.

We’ve already begun receiving contributions on topics such as the BitLicense and Delegated Proof-of-Stake. There are hundreds more we’d like to add.

So if you, dear target audience of young-ambitious-college-student/young-professionals-looking-to-start-writing-more-in-order-to-contribute-to-the-ecosystem-make-a-name-for-yourself-and-possibly-turn-it-into-a-full-time-job are interested in joining the movement, please reach out via email (jack@messari.io) or twitter.