The secret formula for Bitcoin adoption

How to apply strategic marketing to accelerate Bitcoin adoption and attract talent to the ecosystem.

Despite being on everyone’s lips, the idea that people generally have of Bitcoin is distorted to say the least. In continuous search of sensationalism, mainstream media continue to present it as purely speculative technology, useful only to circumvent laws and moreover highly polluting. Most young talents, therefore, aspire to work at Google, Apple, Ferrari or Prada, totally ignoring the disruptive growth of the Bitcoin industry.

Many bitcoiners share the dream that every inhabitant of Earth reads the White Paper and the book “Bitcoin Standard”. Someone might even want to impose it as mandatory text in school, perhaps in place of the now outdated Promessi Sposi. Even better, they would want all students and workers to follow a course that explores every aspect of Bitcoin, technical and non-technical. The truth is that all this is not only impossible, but also inefficient.

Considering the degree of development of the technology, market volumes and the growth of the ecosystem of companies, it is time to opt for a more mature and strategic approach in trying to reach the much-desired mass adoption. Above all, it is essential to act distinguishing those who can contribute to the development and diffusion of the technology from those who will remain mere users.

This practice, known among industry experts as “Funnel Marketing”, is a fundamental pillar in the work of any marketer. It consists of imagining a flow that, step by step, leads people from being totally unaware of the existence of a certain product, service or movement to becoming evangelists of it.

Such flows are defined as “funnels”, precisely because they assume a shape that recalls the kitchen tool. The reason is that of all the people who start the flow, only a minimal part reaches the bottom. It is up to the marketer’s skill to ensure that the percentage of people who pass from one phase to another is as high as possible. To do this, they use data analysts and designers to make each interaction more pleasant and effective, in a process of continuous optimization.

There are countless funnels, since it is a framework applicable to any product, service, political or cultural movement. The same company could implement different funnels simultaneously, creating specific ones for each audience segment or business line. However, it is possible to distinguish four main macro phases:

• awareness: this is the phase in which people discover the existence of the product. They don’t know it yet, but they begin to notice its name or hear about it. The goal is to get noticed and arouse curiosity;
• acquisition: those who have discovered the product begin to be interested in it. They want to better understand its usefulness, observe and collect information. A first involvement begins, still without commitment;
• revenue: after having gained confidence, the person chooses to purchase the product. This is the moment when the offered value is recognized and the commercial relationship begins;
• retention: those who have purchased the product remain satisfied and continue to use it. Trust grows, the possibility that they will repurchase it and recommend it to other people increases.

Bitcoin should not be an exception. To achieve the goal of having more talents working in the industry, more users, more investments and a general better perception of the technology and the cultural movement behind it, it is necessary to act following these consolidated principles.

To bring more people to work in the sector, it is necessary to adopt an analogous approach. Obviously, of all those who encounter some form of communication regarding Bitcoin, only a minimal percentage will reach the bottom of the flow, starting to work for some company or launching their own business.

Communication science is a discipline that is both analytical and creative. To create a successful campaign, it is equally important to create effective content and make it seen by as many people as possible. Even before that, it is essential to have a good product to succeed in the long term, otherwise the promotion will be ephemeral, if not even counterproductive.

Bitcoin is certainly an excellent product. It solves in an innovative and efficient way problems that affect billions of people. It has spread without a marketing office with pharaonic budgets or a quirky CEO, despite extremely limited usability in the early years, and still today with wide margins for improvement. It succeeded organically thanks to the commendable initiative, albeit tendentially amateur, of thousands of individuals and communities around the world dedicated to its dissemination.

Today this is no longer enough. We can observe entities with enormous firepower attracting many more individuals to use their services, far from the principles underlying Bitcoin. I refer to centralized exchanges capable of affording testimonials of the caliber of Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, or to investment funds with their ETFs whose CEOs frequent television salons daily.

To counter them, Bitcoin companies, faithful to the protocol values, starting from those with the highest revenues, must take responsibility for communicating it in a more engaging and captivating way to more and more people. Some stroke of luck can happen, but in the long term there are no shortcuts: it is necessary to allocate consistent budgets, primarily to hire the best professionals and buy the increasingly limited attention of people.

By doing so, the first objective of the funnel is achieved, namely having a wide basin of individuals who discover this technology for the first time. At least they will begin to see it through another lens compared to the one they are used to. It is a purely statistical discourse: the larger the number, the greater the chances that among them there is the new genius capable of disrupting market balances and bringing disruptive innovations.

The first screening will make only those with whom the message has resonated continue in the funnel, because they have perceived the benefits obtainable in their daily life. No ideology, what is needed is pragmatism and Machiavellianism. Clearly one must not renounce values and philosophy, but rather leave them implicit to emphasize real cases and concrete benefits. Anyone must be able to understand and share, regardless of level of knowledge or political creed.

The second step of the funnel consists of first use. Nowadays there are various products and services capable of offering a first simple interaction with bitcoin: hardware wallets that allow purchase directly from proprietary software, bitcoin payments integrated into video games and platforms to meet other bitcoiners in person with whom to make peer-to-peer exchanges.

After the first good initial impression, this second passage is crucial in determining whether the interested party will begin their journey in the Bitcoin world. If before communication specialists were necessary, in this phase it is the task of product and experience designers to make use intuitive and pleasant. A few cumbersome interactions or too slow loading will be enough for the person to exit the site and return to scrolling the feed of their favorite social media.

Some technicians would respond to these potential problems by providing detailed documentation, perhaps accompanied by aesthetically poorly curated video tutorials. Probably, they would judge users who are not able to use their solution as obtuse, perhaps categorizing them as unworthy of accessing such a magnificent service, which thus becomes almost esoteric. However, in this way they would find themselves having to close the business in a short time, or limit it to a tiny niche of nerds that will hardly make the business economically sustainable.

Long informative content is not useless, it simply cannot constitute the first landing of the new user. In fact, only after having easily and quickly understood what is being talked about, the new user could actually decide to delve deeper in a second phase. Surely the most prudent and doubtful could want to delve deeper immediately, but this does not remove the need to proceed gradually in the complexity of the content presented.

In the Bitcoin world, enormous importance is given to the theme of education. However, as said at the beginning, it is not possible and not even desirable to educate the whole world. First of all, it is difficult to scale this activity without compromising quality due to inevitable economic and logistical limits. Secondly, when education becomes forced, its effectiveness drops drastically. Finally, it is normal that interest in a certain topic is limited only to certain groups of individuals.

For this reason too, it is essential to prioritize attractiveness and usability, concentrating on services rather than on the technology itself. An example in this sense is the internet: used by over half the world’s population, only an insignificant percentage of users understand its functioning. Like Bitcoin, TCP/IP doesn’t have a marketing office either. If today they have spread so much it is only thanks to the multitude of companies that, thanks to these protocols, have managed to improve people’s lives.

If most users will remain passive, some will want to delve deeper through educational content. Some will do it for personal pleasure, others to acquire skills potentially spendable in the job market. Here we arrive at the third phase of the funnel, aimed precisely at transforming a small slice of users into individuals expert in the matter capable of actively contributing to the diffusion of the technology.

Therefore, light informative content is necessary, which allows neophytes to approach the topic with lightheartedness, without the pretense that they immediately become experts. But even more important for the purpose of attracting new talents to work in the ecosystem is the provision of professionalizing training paths. Even better if offered by prestigious entities recognized internationally, so as to be well seen even outside the bubble of those (few) who have already understood Bitcoin thanks to the authority built over decades of history.

What is instead becoming increasingly useless is the creation of new courses on Bitcoin by small independent creators. Today there is an infinity of educational content on the topic, already translated into many languages; reinventing the wheel is foolish. Equally useless is trying to make those who do not nurture a deep and sincere curiosity about it follow a course. This is a dynamic particularly observable when dissemination transforms into a training business.

We arrive at the last phase of the funnel, during which industry professionals most inclined to speak in public and create content in various formats, at this point deeply passionate, begin to share their knowledge. This dynamic happens naturally for a combination of reasons: on one hand the disinterested will to share knowledge considered enlightening and indispensable, on the other the personal incentive to put oneself in the spotlight to obtain returns of various kinds.

Even in this case, forcing the phenomenon is not desirable. People talented in their sphere of competence might not be able to effectively communicate their knowledge to others. If they were forced, they would feel out of place and the quality of explanations would suffer heavily. Nothing strange: it’s called specialization of work, a dynamic so dear to Austrian economists that has made the economy prosper by making it increasingly articulated.

In this way a virtuous circle is triggered that leads the one who once totally ignored Bitcoin to become an evangelist, in turn attracting new people to the ecosystem. However, relying solely on the passion and goodwill of some bitcoiner who prefers to make speeches or social media posts instead of enjoying their free time walking in nature or playing with their children, is not sufficient. At least it is no longer so in 2025.

Rather than reinventing Bitcoin developers into divulgators, it is much more effective to find people expert in marketing and communication and make them passionate about the topic. While relatively few chats, videos or readings are enough to no longer be able to talk about anything else and be hated by relatives at family lunches, it is much more difficult to acquire a competence matured after years of field experience.

The Bitcoin sector is historically well nourished with technicians and economics enthusiasts. Some in their respective fields will go down in history, such as Adam Back for cryptography. Of other profiles, such as designers or business managers, there is still shortage. The solution is analogous, create a virtuous circle: good designers attract other designers, eager to be hired by companies that distinguish themselves for excellent results. The benchmark is not other companies in the Bitcoin industry, but all other existing industries.

After sixteen years of spontaneous diffusion, we have the need to attract a multitude of professionals, possibly the best in their respective spheres of competence. We must ensure that the next winner of the Red Dot Design Award is a bitcoiner. If they are not, some particularly wealthy company should strive to hire them. Surely it would have enormous benefit, for itself and for the entire sector.

Let’s not make the mistake of thinking that persuasive marketing and captivating design are only for shitcoiners.

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