Bitcoin UX & Marketing with Dan Held

WBD236 - Dan Held - Large Banner.png

Where to find the show

Download Episode MP3 File
The file will open in a new window. Click down arrow to download the file.

“We each have independent narratives, in terms of how we talk about Bitcoin, but we’re each part of the same team and I think we all agree that our objective here is to convert as many people to Bitcoin as possible.”
— Dan Held

SHOW DESCRIPTION

Location: Zoom
Date: Friday, 19th June
Company/Project: Kraken
Role: Director of Business Development

The very early believers in Bitcoin tended to fall into two camps, the Libertarians who were drawn to the censorship resistance & self-sovereignty of Bitcoin and the tech-savvy developers who saw a new experimental technology that was the first to truly offer a distributed & decentralised digital money.

As Bitcoin has gained in value, it too has grown to appeal to audiences that don’t necessarily fit into these two camps. Fewer tech-savvy people have come to Bitcoin for ‘number go up’ more than the censorship resistance and decentralisation.

For these people, coming into Bitcoin can be hostile and confusing. The community is understandably frosty to those not willing to learn about the importance of holding their own keys, protecting their privacy and being self-sovereign and the software can be confusing and unintuitive.

For newcomers running a node is difficult, holding your private keys daunting and interacting with the community scary. So, improving both the UX and marketing of Bitcoin is key to attracting less technical people to the space.

In this interview, I talk to Dan Held the Director of Business Development at Kraken. We discuss the importance of easy user experience, how Bitcoin can be a daunting experience, self custody and why marketing matters.

TIMESTAMPS

00:05:20: Introductions
00:05:47: Importance of marketing
00:08:21: Bitcoin logo and early marketing
00:11:26: Project Management and UX
00:16:35: Communication to different consumers
00:20:14: Technicality of CoinJoin
00:22:19: Private key management
00:26:52: Standardisation of Bitcoin terms
00:27:51: Multisig
00:29:18: Tolerance for people’s differing views
00:31:14: Uses for various Bitcoin podcasts
00:37:47: Liberatarianism
00:40:00: Empathy for new consumers in the space
00:46:01: How do we bring more people in?
00:51:00: Bitcoin’s identity problem
00:54:18: Cryogenics
01:05:12: Framing conversations about Bitcoin
01:09:25: Receiving flak from the community
01:13:47: Final comments

 

SUPPORT THE SHOW

If you enjoy The What Bitcoin Did Podcast you can help support the show my doing the following:

If you are interested in sponsoring the show, you can read more about that here or please feel free to drop me an email to discuss options.

SPONSORS

 

SHOW NOTES

PodcastPeter McCormack