1confirmation Founder: The Crypto Industry Needs to Merge the "Faith Builders" with the "Speculative Hype Men"

Odaily reports that 1confirmation founder Nick Tomaino has discussed the marketing challenges faced by long-termists in the Crypto industry. He believes that true builders need to understand and attract Degen users while maintaining authenticity, rather than criticizing speculative culture from a superior standpoint. He has been trying to solve this problem for the past 15 years, often with mixed results. He admits that users holding different asset positions might perceive him as "condescending," but he himself engaged heavily in speculation and experienced losses in his youth, and therefore he does not look down on the Degen community.

Nick Tomaino argues that many of the truly predatory participants in the crypto industry tend to exploit Degens for arbitrage precisely because they look down on them. He believes current crypto market participants can be divided into two main camps:

First category: True believers. Represented by the leadership of Ethereum and Coinbase. These teams have persisted through multiple market cycles, continuously building new products and infrastructure without chasing short-term traffic and capital, focusing instead on long-term value.

However, the problem with this camp is that they are sometimes overly idealistic, failing to fully participate in high-heat areas like Memecoin trading and perpetual contracts, resulting in a relative deficiency in marketing and user acquisition.

Second category: Hype men. This includes some altcoin project teams, executives, and KOLs. This group excels at generating attention, attracting Degen users, and capturing market hotspots.

Tomaino believes that some of these participants are more focused on short-term capital and traffic, lacking genuine innovation. They merely package themselves with industry narratives without actually pursuing long-term value. Hype men are better at capturing attention and trading demand, while true believers have stronger authenticity and long-term credibility, but both have their shortcomings. He believes these two cultures will ultimately converge. The key question is whether long-term builders can better understand and attract Degen users, and whether traffic-driven participants can shift from short-term hype to creating genuine long-term value. The future direction of the crypto industry will depend on which side can influence the other—whether long-termists can guide more speculative users towards building, or whether traffic players can gradually transition to a healthier, more positive-sum ecosystem.