Nov 8, 2022 at 06:20Contents
Crypto is an industry where people come from all different backgrounds: those who have studied finance and technology for years and those who knew nothing about it at all.
The hero of this interview came to crypto from Hollywood. No, we’re not talking to Brad Pitt 🙂 But he has an excellent story and an experience to share.
Nathan Leung is one of the three founders of the YouTube channel Cryptonauts. They have 73k+ subscribers and 25+ years of combined experience in Hollywood. Nathan tells us why this comes in handy not only in video production but also in crypto investing in an interview with buidlbee.
“We are media”
“Besides YouTube, I am building a Web3 short-form video app Andiam and investing in crypto projects,” starts Nathan. “As a Cryptonauts team, we are also doing a lot of production side and collaborations, but I still like to present our position as media.”
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Nathan says this because of their background. They’ve done “a lot of stuff” in Hollywood before moving to blockchain.
“Our combined experience is 25+ years in Hollywood,” he shares. “We worked with big names and did a few Super Bowl commercials, movies, and TV series. But the problem with Hollywood is that everyone is always fighting for the same job.”
So Nathan looked up to San Francisco, Silicon Valley — to meet with giant tech companies like Google and do some commercials for them.
“That’s kind of how we also fell into crypto. Because this is a new emerging industry where people are raising funds and need commercials as well.”
But at that time, he was no longer a complete novice in crypto. While still in Los Angeles, on the shooting, he happened to meet a director named Giordany Orellana who was very interested in the field.
“He sent an email about crypto — like this is the next big thing — to 10 people, and I was the only one who responded,” he smiled. “So he offered me to make YouTube videos about it. We called the project Cryptonauts.”
It was in 2017. There were only two people on the team, and then Nathan’s cousin Phillip joined them. He’s a session director in LA, and also worked on many commercials like Apple, the Olympics, etc.
“We took a super old camera — just put it on top of a piece of wood,” recalls Nathan. “Then we put the iPhone in the pocket, which was the audio. And then we just synced it and added animations.”
Nevertheless, this first video did really well, and another one did even better. And then…
It’s all gone to waste
Nathan shares, “we were so excited with 3k views in the first 24 hours for our first video, and with the second video, we hit 80k views. So, on the third time, we were kind of feeling our stuff.”
The very first video of Cryptonauts
For the shooting, they rented a huge studio and hired a model. But the audience didn’t like it at all — they wanted the old format. Most of the community was gone, so the guys started thinking about what they could do to rebuild their reputations.
For the fourth video, they recorded an interview with the engineers of the IOTA project and then locked themselves away for three months, editing it.
“We could have done something hype, but it wasn’t our style. We do things differently and want a video to live on the channel forever. So everything we do is as good as we can make it,” he says.
Thankfully, it worked.
“We rely on what we think is important”
Cryptonauts have their own idea of the content. Nathan says they are not competing with other crypto YouTube channels, but with all channels in the “explainer” genre. Their competitors include Kurzgesagt, Wendover Productions, PolyMatter, ColdFusion, etc.
“We rely on Google Trends, but we also try to create content that we think is important. For example, we made a video about the Ethereum merge a year ago. It didn’t get many views then but now we have 50k views in 2 days,” adds Nathan.
Nathan also relies on his opinion on crypto investing.
“I don’t consider myself an expert, but I don’t think there are any experts in this industry yet because it is so new. Everyone is a genius in the bull market. But I can do things like invest in Dogecoin — my motivation was that this project was fun and silly enough to succeed.”
For beginners, however, he advises starting with fundamental projects with good infrastructure.
“That’s what I did. My first crypto investment was all in Ethereum,” he says. “Although then I made the mistake of not selling it at the right time. This is my biggest regret.”
Dogecoin, on the other hand, became a win 🙂
“It is all about community”
It’s often said these days that the Web3 industry comes down to the community, and Nathan completely agrees.
“You can invest 10–20% of your investment in trending projects,” he advises. “But I recommend doing research — what value they bring or what might be of interest to people. Because that’s when the community starts to gather around. Otherwise, it’s just an app that nobody downloads.”
The community, or rather connections, help Nathan invest as well. When asked what information he relies on when building his investment strategy, he answers that he often communicates with founders and industry people.
“Back in 2017, when I first started out, I set a goal of talking to 100 CEOs in a year,” Nathan says. “I didn’t meet that goal — I only talked to 38 — but I got a thorough understanding of everyone’s project.”
He recommends that newcomers get a thorough understanding as well.
“It sounds boring, but it really works”
“I tell people when they first get into crypto not to buy anything,” Nathan insists. “Just watch charts and prices for three to six months at least and then start learning things.”
He says he himself went to read the Bitcoin whitepaper first. “Then I jumped into GitHub: I didn’t know anything about coding but I understood concepts. It sounds boring, but it really works.”
He uses the CoinGecko app to monitor prices — in his opinion, it’s more responsive than CoinMarketCap. And, of course, he recommends everyone who wants to know more about crypto to watch Cryptonauts videos 🙂
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