How To Get a 36-Year-Old Who Has Never Invested in Anything and Knows Nothing About Cryptocurrency…

Cryptocurrency

Efron Koen, MFA, MA

Just now·10 min read

An Inside Look at a New Market Segment

Photo by MayoFi on Unsplash

Until three days ago I knew almost nothing about cryptocurrency. Yet, here I am today, the proud owner of 2,000 Student Coin (STC) that I purchased through Student Coin’s Launchpad ICO. I’m sitting here dreaming about purchasing a home with cash when STC goes to the moon. How did I get here, and how can you tap a new cryptocurrency market segment like mine?

Note — There are no affiliate or partner links in this article. If I’ve provided links it’s just so that you can check out what I’m talking about and to lend validity to my story. If someone wants to pay me to advertise for them in the future, by all means, I’m here for it! You can contact me at efronkoen@gmail.com.

It Started On Social Media

A friend of a friend kept posting on Instagram about how much money she was making “trading crypto.” I’m a librarian (AKA: Professional Googler) and I have some legal training, so my close group of friends will often be like — “Hey, do you know anything about this? Want to look into it so we don’t have to?” That’s exactly what happened here. A trusted friend asked, and I was obliged to look into it.

My Demographic — The Sometimes Innovator, Old Millennial

I wouldn’t say I’m typically an innovator — I’m more of an early adopter. However, I will be an innovator for certain things I’m very passionate about. For instance, I was definitely an innovator when it came to eBooks and started using them when they were super new and terribly clunky. I also adopted completely online banking very early when I started banking with Simple shortly after they launched. What I love about both of these innovations is that they make my life easier by giving me what I want and need faster and without leaving my home.

Agewise, I’m an “old millennial,” born in 1984, the same year that Apple launched the Macintosh personal computer — on which every 1980s kid would eventually spend countless hours playing the Oregon Trail computer game. People my age have pretty much grown up in tandem with digital innovations. New technologies arriving on the scene are not new to us, we expect the way we do things to grow and change, and in fact we can be annoyed when subpar technologies aren’t improved quickly enough. We expect excellence in technology.

My Psychographic State: The ‘Fuck It!’ Point

In her book Everything is Figureoutable, Marie Forleo coins the phrase the ‘Fuck It!’ point. She writes, “I got to a point when I just said, ‘Fuck it!’ — I can’t do this,” and instead of following a traditional boring career path, she went her own way and embraced what she calls multipassionate entrepreneurship.

It’s safe to say I have reached my ‘Fuck It!’ point this year. In theory, I really like being a librarian and I think helping people find good information is an important and valuable trade. However, I’m not really sure I can stand how we are doing that much longer. Coming back to that old millennial thing, I’m so sick of being stuck working for people who hate change, and who are completely obsessed with ensuring that the 9–5 cubicle life they are completely enmeshed with won’t be “eliminated” by technology. Working from home during the pandemic for the past year has been a dream come true for this old millennial who is obsessed with efficiency, and, I don’t know, things that make sense — like not wasting an hour a day commuting to do the same work in an office with no windows that costs money to maintain. Combine that sentiment with the fact that I’m practically living paycheck to paycheck, have shitty health insurance, and can’t get a mortgage because I owe over 200k in student loans for the education that enabled me to have a job that ensures I will not see sunlight for the entire months of December and January, and you will find yourself at my ‘Fuck It!’ point.

My Psychographic State Continued: The ‘Fuck It!’ Politics Edition

While there is now a U.S. president in office with empathy for the human condition who believes that Coronavirus is real, we are still inching along letting people die, starve, and lose their homes while congress negotiates whether or not to throw people living in poverty a few measly dollars. I guess I might as well admit here that I was a Yang Ganger in the 2020 election. As a pretty hardcore feminist, it was very atypical for me to back a male candidate, but here I am typing this on a laptop bearing Yang’s famous MATH slogan. I guess I was a Yang Ganger because of the ‘Fuck It!’ point I had reached, and because he was thinking outside the old box and proposing new things like Universal Basic Income, and because he was backing his plans with math and statistics. When Andrew Yang talked about eliminating the penny because it costs more to produce than it’s worth — my mind was blown. I guess I needed the opportunity to see that there is a better way of doing things to be willing to say goodbye to the old, even if the old meant finally seeing a woman leading my country. I decided in 2020 that MATH is the thinking we need to better our lives today and it is only becoming increasingly more clear that traditional politics doesn’t care about math. I’m officially done waiting for the government to help me financially or otherwise — bring on the crypto.

My First Crypto

The first thing I did after my friends asked me to look into crypto trading was download Coinbase. I’m not sure that Coinbase is the best exchange I could be using, but in the moment it seemed to be well-tested and reliable. The well-known exchange seemed to ensure at a minimum I wasn’t putting money into a scam. I started by putting just $10 into my Coinbase account (it was super easy to hook my Simple bank account to the app using Plaid — gotta love technology that works). The fact that I could invest without having to risk a lot of money was a huge factor in my ability to “try on” crypto trading. I’m totally willing and able to throw around $10 or $20 for a chance to change my life. Once inside Coinbase I was pleased to find that a handful of altcoins would give you some of their coins in return for watching their pitch. This quickly increased my $10 Coinbase balance to $30. Now I was feeling pretty good about this little experiment. I’d already “made” $20 (minus a couple of dollars in fees to purchase or cashout my crypto). The analyst information available right on Coinbase was enough to make me want more information. So, I started Googling, reading different articles from different sources using my discerning librarian’s eye to try to find reputable information. Eventually, I ended up downloading the Coin Stats app to get more analytical and alert capabilities. I could easily connect Coinbase to Coin Stats. Coin Stats is where it happened — I saw an advertisement for Student Coin and clicked it.

Advertisement Within the Crypto World

I don’t think that I would have clicked on the ICO advertisement if I had seen it on Facebook, Google, or Twitter. I know enough about advertising on those platforms to know that just about anyone, can target just about anyone with social media advertisements. However, when I saw the advertisement for Student Coin on a cryptocurrency app, I trusted its validity a little more. I’m not saying that my judgment in finding this more valid was accurate — just that I thought it.

I clicked on the advertisement in Coin Stats and found myself on the Student Coin Launchpad where I began reading about the project. I saw that it had some seemingly educated people and some pretty big-name universities involved. I also clicked away from the Student Coin site and looked for articles from other sources that might legitimize it as an investment, and I checked out the buzz on Reddit. Interestingly enough I have found Reddit to be a well-controlled environment regarding crypto advice. The moderators seem to keep things fairly factual, and Student Coin actually has people from their organization responding to posts with clarifications on their ICO process. Controlling the Reddit space around your ICO seems like it might be a good idea for new launches. With all of that “research” now mentioned, let me tell you what really got me to buy Student Coin. Just a few well-thought-out strategies from the Student Coin website are what really hooked me.

The Next Facebook

The first thing that caught my eye on the Student Coin website was this text: “Similar to Facebook at the beginning of its journey, Student Coin connects students and organisations from over 500 of the world’s best universities.” Most people, including myself, know about the meteoric rise of Facebook. While I know intellectually that anyone could make this comparison regardless of how much their project actually resembles Facebook, I thought the Student Coin website actually made a good case for their product mirroring the beginnings of Facebook. While I’m sure there are other investments that were just as meteoric as Facebook, Facebook is the one that I know, and thus it piqued my interest.

The Future of the Economy

The second thing on the Student Coin website that piqued my interest was: “‘Tokenisation’ is the future of the economy, where every person and company has its own token. Student Coin allows the creation of custom tokens and can be used for crowdfunding, trading, governing, voting or payments.”

As a librarian, I’ve worked in enough universities to know that higher education already does a lot of business via student ID and that many universities are also greatly invested in digital badging initiatives. Both these practices seem to lend themselves towards a future of tokenisation. I’m also fairly aware that people love creating and personalizing digital objects and spaces for themselves so the concept seemed to track to me. Just to be sure I did a quick Google search and found plenty of reputable sources talking about tokenisation as the future of the economy.

Cheap — With the Potential to Moon

The third and final element to my capture was that the investment was cheap with the potential for astronomical growth. If I lost my $10 it would be no big deal — but what if I didn’t? I’m willing to gamble the cost of a couple of lattes for the chance to finally experience true financial freedom. One article in Yahoo! Finance (quote below) really convinced me this was a “Damn, why not?!” situation. It was written by Student Coin, so, I’m not saying it’s unbiased, I’m just saying it was convincing.

“The cryptocurrency market, however very risky, is also associated with the biggest gains of the century. Have people wondered where would people be now, if people had bought Bitcoin for $10 in 2010? People would have had almost $400,000 now, and according to some Forbes’ predictions — even $3,000,000 in 2025. This may sound like a fairy tale, but it is actually based on deep fundamental analysis of the most trusted professionals. Another fact that stimulates thinking is that S&P Dow Jones will launch cryptocurrency indices in 2021, whereas Wells Fargo called Bitcoin the ‘best performing asset of 2020'.”

All media signs were pointing me to the fact that cryptocurrency is growing in validity and value, and here Student Coin was claiming to be the next big thing in cryptocurrency. They have convinced me that while I missed out on the biggest returns from Bitcoin, I could rectify that by buying Student Coin now during their initial coin offering (ICO).

Easy to Buy Without Getting Out of Bed

I purchased my STC late at night laying in bed. Although there was an option to buy it without already owning crypto, I would have had to get out of bed to get my account information. Luckily, I already Bitcoin and ETH in my Coinbase account, and the fact that I could seamlessly purchase the STC using Coinbase Commerce without getting out of bed really sealed the deal. If I had had to get out of bed and find my debit card it probably wouldn’t have happened. And would I have gone back the next day? I can’t say for sure that I would have. All things aligned for this to happen quickly and easily and that was key for my investment.

Recap

So, to recap, if you want a 36-year-old who has never invested in anything and knows nothing about cryptocurrency to invest in your ICO, here’s what you should do:

Create opportunities for trusted friends to recommend buying, trading, and investing in cryptocurrency through social media.
Target the innovators, early adopters, old millennials (30-somethings), and people who have reached the “Fuck It!” point in regards to work, student loans, housing costs, or politics.
Create opportunities and encourage the target demographic to buy cryptocurrency.
Advertise your ICO within cryptocurrency apps and exchanges to increase the perception of legitimacy.
Compare your venture to something that everyone knows has unarguably mooned — like Facebook.
Make claims backed up by reputable news sources that your venture aligns with one of the next very big lucrative trends. Be sure there is evidence of this trend in easily findable mainstream business media.
Make it cheap and easy to invest in the ICO right from your phone without getting out of bed. I’m dead serious. There are so many things I wouldn’t have bought if I had had to get out of bed to buy them.

Will I become a millionaire from investing in Student Coin? I have no idea. But do I feel great about my investment? Heck yes! I not only feel empowered by taking a step towards trying to secure my financial freedom, but I love that it is in a way that says “Fuck It!” to traditional, slow, boring financial institutional structures. I suspect that I am not the only one who has been pushed to the “Fuck It!” brink in the past year of pandemic living and that a new market of old millennials like myself is ready to take the leap into cryptocurrency investing. Got a great ICO pitch? Let me know where I can find it!