I hope everyone in the crypto industry is taking a well-deserved and much-needed break in the final weeks of 2022. This year was one of the most tumultuous years the crypto and DeFi industry has ever seen.
In this crypto wave, the highs are very high but the crashes are equally intense too.
Here’s a TL;DR of the ups and downs of 2022 for you:
Ups:
- The Ethereum 2.0 upgrade
- The growth of many new ecosystems and chains (Cosmos app chains, Polygon network, Polkadot Network, Tezos Blockchain and Binance Smart Chain)
- Larger DeFi protocols have held up amidst extreme market volatility
- Everyone gets a wake-up call to get back to basics of crypto and focus on building
- Big reminder about self custody of crypto
Downs:
- Crypto winter has lasted over a year
- Of the top 10 crypto hacks ever, six occurred this year
- Terra/ Luna collapse
- 3AC/ Celsius crash too
- FTX collapse and contagion (need I say more?)
- FUD and negative stigma hits crypto again
Despite all of this, YAP Global had learned to build resilience in this market by continuing to grow in team size, the quality and scope of our services, and expand our reach around the world in the US, UK, Europe, Africa and the Asia Pacific region.
I’m proud of every team member who is and has been a part of YAP Global this year. I’ve seen my team achieve many personal goals and work hard to lift the standards on cypto PR and comms each day. Most importantly, we’ve been able to keep up with it all, which is a major achievement in and of itself!
We have been privileged to partner with the leading players in the industry which include Lido Finance, Safe, ENS Domains, Gitcoin and support major conferences such as ETHDenver, ETHCC [5], Comsoverse and BuidlAsia (Seoul & Ho Chi Minh).
It has been an honour to be able to speak to learn from the web3, crypto and DeFi pioneers and innovators every day. We don’t take this for granted!
After a week of rest and reflection in Sweden with my family, I thought to pen down some big wins we achieved this year.
A stronger dream team
In a year defined by tech company layoffs, we managed to grow globally from 18 to a team of 25. You can now find Yappers in the UK, USA, South Africa, Singapore and Malaysia.
We also put a strong emphasis on upskilling our team weekly with cweekly crypto news catch-ups with knowledebale George Harrap as Head of DeFi and weekly PR sessions with Jeremy Wagstaff, a journalism legend (former Reuters tech correspondent & WSJ columnist). We also have weekly 101 PR training sessions where members of our senior team deliver an hour-long session covering a topic that is important in the moment.
Topics covered include:
- How to handle Crisis comms
- How to create a six month media strategy
- Improving the way we pitch to journalists
- How to 10x leverage a media opportunity and many more
Coming together in a Spanish ‘YAP’ Casa
One of my favourite memories from this year was the YAP Global offsite in Sitges, Spain. For too long we had been separated by international borders and computer screens and this year we FINALLY managed to organise a time and place for all of us to meet-up.
It was amazing to fly everyone from the US, UK, Europe and the Asia Pacific region to hang out and do IRL workshops.
While lots of fun and food was had, we also managed to do a lot of planning, analysing and strategising. A lot of this year’s success was fueled by bringing everyone together during the offsite. Read more our reflections HERE.
Growing our voice
YAP Cast
This year we successfully released the second season of ‘The Story of Money’ by YAP Cast. The podcast focuses on looking into the history of money and understanding where money is heading through the lens of crypto and decentralised finance (DeFi).
For season two I got to interview some interesting thinkers on the future of money, which ranged from Jacob Goldstein, the Authour of ‘Money-The True story of a Made up Thing’, Ambre Soubiron, CEO of Kaiko, Hart Lambur Founder of UMA protocol among many others.
Some highlight episodes include:
- Law & Money with Hart Lambur, UMA
- Financial Privacy vs Transparency With Will Harborne, RhinoFi
- The Importance of Managing Money With Mona El Isa, Avantgarde
- Money is Fiction with Jacob Goldstein and many more.
Stay tuned for season 3 in 2023.
Find more episodes HERE.
The Context Newsletter
This year we also launched ournewsletter called The Context. The aim of the newsletter is to help everyone, particularly mainstream journalists, stay up-to-date with developments in crypto, decentralised finance (DeFi) and web 3.0 that they may have missed. This newsletter is not here to evangelise or criticise, but is here to add perspective and provide context by serving readers with three key top-line trends they need to know each week.
What sets our newsletter apart is that it is created by former journalists for journalists. We aim to provide a grounded perspective that is fair and objective.
Read The Context HERE.
Taking events to the next level
YAP Global Events
This year, we officially launched YAP Global events our events offering and had fun organising great parties, drinks, mixers and meet-ups around the world at various crypto conferences.
We’re also very proud to have launched the Contextualised event series. The aim of Contextualised is to keep the industry players and broader audiences up to date with the hot topics and current trends in the crypto space featuring talks and panel discussions. This year we hosted two in London and one in Singapore.
Watch a recap of the ‘Emergence of Crypto Ecosystems’ event we did in London: HERE
You can also catch up on our panel discussions here:
- The Emergence of Crypto Ecosystems (London, May, 2022)
- DeFi Adoption in Asia (Singapore, September, 2022)
- Rethinking DeFi (London, November, 2022)
PR Partnerships
ETHDenver is an annual Ethereum-focused event dedicated to hacking and networking. This year YAP Global helped out as a PR partner. We had six Yappers on the ground at the event, helping out and making sure that everything went smoothly. The highlight was securing coverage in TIME magazine, WIRED, CNBC and more.
Overall we managed:
- 312+ pieces of earned media
- 21.2 million estimated views
- 2.2 billion+ audience
- 16k+ social shares
- 180+ media in attendance
- 80+ media outlets in attendance
- 40+ crypto publications
- 25+ mainstream media
- 20+ YouTubers, podcasters and content creators
ETHCC: PR Partner
In July, the YAP Global team took to Paris the PR partner of ETHCC. We managed the press room, facilitated on-the-ground PR interviews and secured pre-conference, conference and post-conference media coverage.
We secured:
- 372 pieces of earned media
- 15.1 million estimated views
- 37k+ social shares
- 58 media in attendance
- 36 media outlets in attendance
- 16 crypto publications
- 12 mainstream media
- 18 Documentary producers, YouTubers and podcasters
In September, four Yappers jetted off to Columbia to be the eyes and ears of Cosmoverse while the rest of the team did mission control from where they were based. It was a great conference, especially for South America’s first crypto event and we managed to achieve a great result!
- 83+ pieces of earned media
- 1.81 million estimated views
- 598 million+ audience
- 950+ engagements
- 46+ media in attendance
- 34+ media outlets in attendance
- 12+ crypto publications
- 4+ mainstream media
- 25+ YouTubers, podcasters and content creators
gm to 2023
So, 2022 wasn’t the best year for crypto, and the main thing I’ve learned in my 5th year in the crypto industry is that it really is all about surviving in the winter and then thriving in the bull market. It takes a lot of grit to withstand the highs and lows in crypto and even more grit to continue to develop, grow and build through the volatility. Thankfully, we’re still here.
It’s time to get back to the basics of crypto, again. It was Bitcoin as a decentralised peer-to-peer payment system that drew me to this industry. It was its potential as the foundation of a future financial system that excited me about crypto technology. We need to all remember why we got here and why we believe this technology is going to be a big part of the future. This is what will fuel us for 2023.