Ran Neuner built Banter into a 24/7 crypto media operation by treating his audience like family rather than followers. He argues degens who chase high-risk tokens play a necessary role in crypto, while Bitcoin maximalists miss how the ecosystem actually works. Bitcoin stays relevant as a store of value, not as cutting-edge technology.
Foreign. What's up everyone? It's Jovan here from Breakpoint in Lisbon. I have the pleasure to be joined by Ran Neuner. How are you doing, Ran?
Good, how are you, my friend? So good to see you.
Great. I'm doing great. So let's talk about what you have been doing in the media sphere. In the last few months. You managed to create quite impressive media operation. The last few months you grew exponentially. We have like almost half a million followers now on YouTube. Can you tell us about the secrets, the main aspect that allowed you to generate such exponential growth in terms of followership?
So what we're building is something that's really needed. We're building 24 7, 365 credible crypto content. And that doesn't really exist in the traditional world. If you want to get a view of the markets, then you switch on CNBC and you switch on Bloomberg and within half an hour you know what's happening in the entire world from a credible source. But in crypto, that doesn't exist. So if you want live crypto content now, where do you go? You got Twitter, which is crazy. You need to spend your whole day on Twitter. You can go to telegram, but I don't know what your telegram looks like. My telegram looks like a fruit salad. Or you can go to YouTube. The problem with YouTube is that most of people are paid to talk about tokens. So you never know whether what they're saying is because they believe it or because they're being paid. And so you asked me what was it that made us turn and all of a sudden become the biggest live show in the world today and maybe one of the top stations in the world. It was when I realized that people wanted me to be myself and I started being authentic. It is what it is. Like it or not, this is who I am. Follow me if I'm good for you, and if I'm not good for you, don't follow me. And I found that I attracted people similar to me. And we built today what is the most loyal subscriber base in crypto. And that's not what we say. YouTube Give us the statistics to say that we have the most loyal subscriber base in crypto. And we've just found a bunch of people who are like minded. We call them the Banter family and we walk them through this journey of crypto effectively. What I do is I learn crypto during the day, all day. I learn and I study and I study. I come to conferences and then one hour a Day I tell them everything that I've learned and what I'm going to do about it. So I'll come out of a conference like this and I'll say, look, I learned that Solana is this and Audius is this and Metaplex is this and this is what I'm going to do about it. And then I do it and I do it live on the show and they can see it. And so we're on this journey together. It's not me, it's me and this family on this journey.
Let's talk about more about this family that you're talking about because I met some of them yesterday at your party and it was very interesting to talk to them. They seem to be very, very passionate about what you're doing. Still, you call most of your followers as you define them as degens. So this very specific type of crypto investor that is very much into small coins, emerging coins, these coins that have a lot of growth potential and that are very risky too. So how representative is this bunch of people, the degens in the context of the overall crypto community? Because it seems that it's just a part of the crypto community. Or you see in a different way.
The degens are me, so the station is me. It's authentic. What you see is what you get. So the way I see it is you get bitcoin maximalists. I have a problem with bitcoin maximalists because I think they're narrow minded. Just like the fiat maximalists were narrow minded about Fiat or Peter Schiff is narrow minded about Gold. The bitcoin maximalists are the same, but just for bitcoin. I don't know how you can be a maximalist today. Look around, you see what's happening on other blockchains, Audius, solana, metaplex, metaverse, NFTs and still say that bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that can exist. So we're not for maximalists. And then the idea is how risky you want to go and from anyone that's not a maximalist. We cater for you, we tell you specifically, look, this is very high risk. Ethereum is low risk, Solana is slightly more risk and we guide you through this. But we're made for higher risk takers. We're not a conservative channel. We do very well in a bull market and we do less well in a bear market.
And let's talk about bitcoin. Now you said you're not a bitcoin maximalist. We just talked to the managing partner at Multicoin Capital, who is also not a bitcoin maximalist. He says that on the opposite, he said that in 10 years Bitcoin will be irrelevant. So do you agree with this statement?
No, I think technologically, in 10 years, Bitcoin may be irrelevant technologically, but I think as a store of value, Bitcoin is the next store of value asset. I think that's happened already. I think bitcoin has already disrupted gold, silver and any other store of value asset that's happened. That's historical. It's actually not future, it's historical. But the use of blockchain technology is way, way, way beyond a store of value. It's decentralization, it's sharing, it's collaboration, it's all of that. And there we haven't even started yet. And to be honest, there, bitcoin is irrelevant because bitcoin is just a store of value. I mean, you can't do NFTs on Bitcoin, can you? Yes, you can, through stacks, but that's not what bitcoin is made for. You know, you can drive a truck around a racetrack, but that's not what it's made for. So, yeah, I think it's. It's definitely not going to be irrelevant, but I think it's going to be less exciting.
Thanks a lot, Remote.
Very good. Thank you.
