Jeff Kim | DeSpread

CBO at DeSpread

[Dougie @DougieDeLuca]

https://t.co/q5LVbaaPpx

[rosie @therosieum]

https://t.co/txiQ9eSxY3

[Jeff Kim | DeSpread @jeefeekim]

@eungcc @SonicLabs 진짜 대단하시네요 ㄷㄷ

[DeSpread @DeSpreadTeam]

What an incredible day at DATCON2025! 🎉

The discussions were incredibly engaging as we dove deep into the Digital Asset Treasury ecosystem with industry leaders from traditional finance to cutting-edge DeFi players.

From three comprehensive perspectives, we explored:

▪️DAT Players: Firsthand stories and visions from the pioneers behind today's DAT movement, covering BTC, ETH, SOL, and HYPE strategies

▪️Active Investors: Institutional perspectives on DAT industry growth potential and global positioning strategies

▪️Specialists: Future of the DAT ecosystem from industry experts across security, governance, and onchain yield strategies

The depth of discussion around how DATs are evolving to sustainable business models was truly remarkable. Every session highlighted the maturation of this space and its growing institutional acceptance.

This is just the beginning. We firmly believe DATs will serve as the critical bridge connecting traditional financial markets with the crypto space, and Korea has immense potential to lead the Asian DAT market.

Thank you to all speakers, panelists, and attendees who made this inaugural conference a success! 🚀

[DeSpread @DeSpreadTeam]

DATCON 2025 | Who is the Korean Michael Saylor? 🏢

This year, DeSpread is bringing an unprecedented and truly unique event to KBW!

You’ve surely heard of MicroStrategy. Companies like these—so-called treasury companies—go far beyond simply holding digital assets. They enhance corporate value and broaden market accessibility through sustainable strategies, making them one of the hottest trends today across both TradiFi and Crypto industry.

This conference highlights the essential importance of DAT (Digital Asset Treasury) companies and is designed as a pivotal first step toward their full-scale adoption and expansion in the Korean market.

As Korea’s DAT ecosystem is still in its infancy, this event is expected to attract significant attention both domestically and globally—serving as a catalyst to showcase Korea’s potential on the world stage and accelerate future investment into the DAT industry.

🗓️ Date: Monday, September 22, 2025 | 13:00–19:00 KST

📍 Location: SAC Art Hall (534 Samseong-ro, Gangnam District, Seoul)

📌 Participants: Galaxy Digital, SBI VC Trade, DeFi Development Corp., Animoca Brands, IVC, MEV Capital, and more to come!

[Steve @Steve_4P]

Advice to founders thinking about leaving shortly after a token launch:

If you’re leaving just because tokens have unlocked and you want to cash out, then be prepared to face the market’s criticism. If you launched a token without being ready to bear that level of scrutiny, that’s on your own ignorance and foolishness. That’s karma.

If you’re not a grifter or a jeeter and feel wrongly accused, then lock up your own tokens voluntarily and make it public. At the very least, that will silence those particular criticisms.

Above all, I honestly don’t understand why tokens are issued so casually. A token is like original sin. Every time I talk with crypto VCs, I hear the same thing: “If you launch a token, we’ll invest.” But I know I’m not prepared to carry that weight, which is exactly why I choose not to mint one. Be prudent.

[Ponyo @ponyo_fp]

“We Love Korea” (한국 사랑해요)

Suddenly every project founder loves Korea.

They love us so much they jet in, host local meetups, toss a few hundred bucks at attendees, and reserve airdrop allocations for the loudest Korean CT yappers.

The playbook works! Innocent Koreans yap a couple times, show up to a meetup, pocket good money. “Wow, they’re so generous!”

CT amplifies, newcomers copy the meta, and next thing you know office dads and moms who think metamask is skincare are queueing for meetup stickers.

Traction looks incredible. Photos of packed halls, endless threads about how deeply these projects adore Korea. Must be a serious team, right?

Then listing day hits. Token drops on Upbit or Bithumb, airdrop lands, yappers and insiders dump, and everyone applauds the founders’ generosity.

Latecomers ape because “everyone was talking about it,” charts nosedive, and (surprise) after TGE the love letters dry up—fewer meet-ups, slower replies, community who?

You know the story.

For many projects Korea isn’t a growth market; it’s exit liquidity. It always has been. Now rumor has it some meetups double as off-chain cashout desks: pay 100 real attendees, claim 500 showed up, funnel the rest into ghost wallets. Clean extraction.

I wasn’t vocal about it, but it’s getting stinkier by the day.

I won’t name names. You know who you are.

If you actually care about Korea, drop the cheap noise. Ship product, create value, build real businesses that actually stick here.

[Emily Lai @emilylai]

Vibe Marketing w/ The Boring Marketer (LIVE from Onchain Growth Summit) https://t.co/BdiYD3GEk6

[Asaf Nadler @AsafNadler]

Did @cookiedotfun "borrow" @KaitoAI users and blueprint?

Or did they expose the truth that your users were never really yours?

Kaito built YAPS.

Cookie3 forked it with SNAPS and onboarded >10,000 creators in 24 hours.

Same product concept, same vibe, different logo.

Mass migration. Zero hesitation.

It takes months to innovate. And way less to replicate.

Kaito ran the playbook.

Cookie3 re-ran it with flair.

No one cared who built it first.

They care who drops the next airdrop.

You didn’t lose your users, you just found out they were rentals.

And this is Web3’s real disease:

Bigger than bad UX. Bigger than low adoption.

It's zero gravity. Zero loyalty.

Users don’t orbit around products.

They orbit around hype, tokens, and whatever smells like free money.

If Cookie3 announces a $SNAPS airdrop tomorrow, is Kaito’s $33m run rate at risk? I’ll leave that to you to judge..

And is that unfair? No. That’s the nature of competition.

It sharpens execution.

It raises the bar.

It forces everyone to move faster, think smarter, build better.

Still, here’s the brutal founder truth:

You’re not racing to be first.

You’re racing to be remembered after someone copies you.

Because in Web3:

• First doesn’t mean best

• Better doesn’t mean sticky

• And building doesn’t mean winning

You can raise $10M+.

Ship a slick product, and grow faster than “Barry Allen”

And still die when someone rebuilds it in 30% of the time, drinking coffee in a bar and half the team scattered around the world.

Founders, listen:

You’re not fighting for market share, you’re fighting to not be disposable.

Because…

• The user you onboard today is already in 3 Discords promising something better.

• The moat you’re building? It’s made of hopium.

• The “differentiator” you brag about? It’s a day from being forked

Web3 doesn’t reward innovation.

It rewards replication, and speed.

The market didn’t blink, and your favorite influencers are all over it.

So before you launch another product.

Ask yourself:

“If my users didn’t get tokens… would they still care?”

Because right now?

Web3 doesn’t need more products, it needs more reasons to stay.

The graveyard isn’t full of failed builders.

It’s full of founders who got copied faster than they could scale.

[Jeff Kim | DeSpread @jeefeekim]

Very well stated. Partnerships need real value

[Stecu @St3cu]

Don’t suck at partnerships

As a BD I gatekeep my marketing from people requesting logo x logo partnerships with no substance, couple times per week

If you are looking to partner up with a project try to come up with something creative or tangible

If you do not show any effort why should we?

Out of 100s of messages where I share what could be a great idea for them to think about only few actually take time and circle back with an actual proposal

Try to learn what the prospected partner is doing and dive into:

- content opportunities
- product-based collaboration
- community activations where the community would actually care
- ecosystem support

I won’t be doing your job for you, I can help you tho

So many „partnership leads” do not get this in endless pursuit of clout chasing for another logo to the book

Don’t suck at partnerships, use your creativity or prompt your way into understanding what you can do if it is such s skill issue

[Jeff Kim | DeSpread @jeefeekim]

It's time to come up with a new playbook in all aspects

[Caesar @CaesarJulius0]

https://t.co/YD9hU582a1

[Jeff Kim | DeSpread @jeefeekim]

No more buzzwords, redefine value

[Jasonyeah | DeSpread @jasonyeah0503]

https://t.co/UtKZ8MRwmS

[Emily Lai @emilylai]

overthinking marketing frameworks will actually hurt you in crypto

i often see beginner marketers get hooked from other crypto marketers using these as lead gen or easy fix pills

1. crypto is fundamentally different than web2 where there’s shadow factors involved: market makers, whale liquidity, otc, lockups, vcs and not many marketers mention this
2. there’s no playbook
3. time cycles for desensitization of marketing tactics is increasing, someone saying something works means there’s a time delay and it likely isn’t as effective by the time you’re reading it
4. there’s so many frameworks, overwhelm and overthinking hurts your creativity which is fundamental in the space due to attention fragmentation across a small audience (google marketing frameworks, there’s over 24 aggregated)

what actually works:
- you need to think from first principles of your project, in relation to market sentiment and use creativity to stand out (which means not blindly following frameworks)
- in a space that is fundamentally pre pmf and sometimes pre-product, accept you need to do things that don’t scale (examples include white glove onboarding, cold bd)
- coordinate with your team from bd, product, and c suite to make sure listing partners, business partners and the actual product expectations are aligned with messaging coms

[Jasonyeah | DeSpread @jasonyeah0503]

Every cycle, different GTM strategy

It’s always interesting to see how different projects GTM playbooks

The same playbook no longer wins in this market, too many projects

@megaeth branding, long term community alignment, and founder driven storytelling are rly impressive

Pre-TGE GTM is exciting but I’m more interested in seeing successful post-TGE cases like @virtuals_io

Post-TGE is a tougher game than pre-TGE and keeping high mindshare is harder

The real game begins when it steps into the ring

[nate @akachacolate]

marketing rant incoming

in 2025, there are somehow STILL thought leaders, founders, and senior execs in crypto that think marketing does not matter. this is f'ing delusional

in the interest of time, let's narrow the scope here and talk about just one aspect of marketing:

brand, and in particular, packaging/presentation

if you have bought any of the following, you have been swayed by this as consumer:
1. a nice watch
2. luxury handbags
3. any car that isn't a beat up toyota prius/minivan
4. fine dining
5. sneakers
6. nice clothing
7. a sports jersey
8. literally any type of deodorant, shampoo, soap, or hygiene product

supreme will take a brick, engrave it, and then someone will buy it resale for $1000: https://t.co/hw61sNaKgo

the infamous CDO from the 08 financial crisis was a lesson in how powerful packaging/presentation can be. see clip with anthony bourdain below (rip a legend)

and before you say "CrYpTo iS dIfFeReNt," no it's not:
1. chatGPT wrapper/bots -> AI agents
2. NFTs
3. Undercollateralized ponzi -> LUNA/UST
4. any of the multitude of ponzis this industry has seen over the years

and before i get hit with strawman arguments:
1. no, marketing does not cure a dogshit product with zero demand
2. no, i am not saying the above is "morally good," i'm just highlighting the impact of packaging/presentation
3. smart packaging/brand is not mutually exclusive with enabling users to make/save money

[Jeff Kim | DeSpread @jeefeekim]

great to have met so many builders in Korea

[DeSpread @DeSpreadTeam]

SPREAD YOUR OWN NARRATIVE

Last Friday we had hundereds of builders coming through for a jam packed event all about growth and GTM strategy in crypto.

Check out our video and see if you can spot any familiar faces 📺

[DeSpread @DeSpreadTeam]

It was the first event in Korea for web3 Growth and GTM strategy.

More than 300 builders registered, and many builders joined to share their insights.

With all the great feedback we received, we’re planning to hold this event regularly.

Thank you to everyone who participated!

[Jeff Kim | DeSpread @jeefeekim]

Staying strong @DeSpreadTeam

[DeSpread @DeSpreadTeam]

Celebrating DeSpread’s 5th anniversary 🎉

The past five years in this volatile crypto market have been challenging but truly amazing!

What changes will the next five years bring? We’re looking forward to it!

[DeSpread @DeSpreadTeam]

🔥We are hosting the Web3 Growth Summit on Nov 29th.

This event unites Web3 builders to share strategies on GTM, community growth, user acquisition, and branding.

Register below
⬇️
https://t.co/Qgkg6EOcPG

[DeSpread @DeSpreadTeam]

Korea has emerged as a key market for many crypto projects, but still struggle to navigate the scene.

During Korea Blockchain Week 2024 we roamed around Seoul to show the world what Korea is all about.

Watch now 📺