The invisible crypto playbook

How do we onboard the real fans? The normal ones, who would stare blankly if you mentioned MetaMask.

This question has nagged at Cooper Turley, the founder of onchain music label Coop Records, for several years. Is it possible to craft a crypto experience that artists would be excited, not embarrassed, to share on Instagram stories?

Today, when pitching an artist to bring their songs onchain, Cooper assures them they won't have to talk about crypto. Better to avoid alienating their current audience.

Instead, Coop Records has built an engine for connecting EDM bangers (plus a smattering of other genres) with the population of so-called "trench warriors," who mint music NFTs based on a combination of genuine enthusiasm and speculative fervor.

Think of it like this: Coop Records is the connective tissue between Spotify's New Music Friday playlist and the degens with memecoin portfolios. Frankly, this works — it makes money for the musicians and for the label. Coop Records has onboarded buzzy artists like Barry Can't Swim with this approach.

But it's not enough. "The reality is, there are just not that many people in crypto," Cooper told Splits in a recent conversation. "We need to get real music fans to use this product." As things stand, NFTs are an effective model — but a niche one. You have to be crypto-native to participate.

The reputation problem#

The dilemma faced by Coop Records is the same one dogging all of consumer crypto: the existing audience has been saturated. To grow, as startups must, requires expanding the crypto population. Even the bootstrapped SMBs are itching for net-new customers.

Problem: normal people associate the industry with gambling and scams, with ample justification. (Three letters: SBF.) "Crypto really is low-status and trashy," as @keccers.eth bluntly posted. "It has afforded me a lot of opportunity but it's also embarrassing and not something I am excited to tell people about."

Cooper himself pointed out:

With all the crazy stories that happen in crypto at a certain point you gotta wonder…

Who's really trying to "get into crypto" these days?

For some perspective, in a 2024 survey of almost 400 women, 77% rated crypto as an "unattractive" hobby for men. Sorry… don't shoot the messenger.

Now you see me, now you don't#

The reputation issue is dire. How about we just… sidestep it?

With the advent of seamless embedded wallets, a new solution has become possible. Apps can use crypto on the backend, reaping the benefits of onchain efficiency, without requiring regular users to have any idea. Call it "invisible crypto."

Art-collection app Rodeo pioneered this paradigm. JokeRace, a platform for community contests, is giving fiat compatibility a whirl as well. Even $QR, the most crypto-native business possible, added support for Apple Pay. The benefit of regular ol' money is that everyone already has it, unlike USDC, let alone ETH.

How this emerging playbook works under the hood:

• Use Privy, or new entrant Para, to give every user an embedded wallet.
• Have each user buy "credits" or whatever using Apple Pay.
  • Optionally, offer USDC deposits for users already familiar with crypto.
• Represent those credits on the backend however is convenient for you (e.g. Rodeo uses internal-only ERC-1155s).

Voila! Now your product is interoperable with the rest of the crypto ecosystem, but the crypto aspects can be hidden (unless you decide to reveal them to committed power users). "Users will mint a collectible, join a game, launch a token and be onchain without realizing it," posited pet3rpan of crypto investment firm 1kx.

Pursuing that future is the next step for Coop Records. "You press 'get started,' you sign up with an email, we give you credits, you collect your first songs for free. Once you run out, you top up your account with Apple Pay." Easy-peasy.

Because easy is important: "I need to be able to sell this to people at a music festival," Cooper explained. "I need to be able to go up to someone in the crowd, tell them to visit a link, tell them to download an app, and have them be able to realistically use it."

"The most gratifying thing is when I go to Coachella and we have nine artists playing and I hear like 30 of our songs being played throughout the festival. Now it's just solving the disconnect: there's a song and an artist playing at Coachella, but no one cares that the song is onchain. No one even knows what that means."

How much crypto is the right amount?#

"The name of the game for crypto is getting creators paid more than anywhere else on the internet," Cooper posted on X. "And doing it in a way where their earliest supporters win too."

That first imperative, getting creators paid, is why the "coin everything" model doesn't work for Coop Records. The creator's take from "cointent" is simply too small. When your cut is a tiny percentage of swap fees, you need crazy volume to generate the same revenue as a moderately successful open-edition NFT.

"If I just nix this whole collectibles model, there's so much revenue to the creator that's immediately lost out of the gate," Cooper explained. "And I don't think that we'd be able to work with the same level of talent."

Still, when it comes to "doing it in a way where [artists'] earliest supporters win too," the ERC-20 model is intriguing. Coop Records has toyed with coining songs and plans to try it again. A blended model like Zora's previous iteration, in which the most successful NFTs automatically "graduate" to become coins, could work. 

"What I'm trying to figure out is, what's the sweet spot between Rodeo and Zora, where it's really simple to understand. There should be a very strong creator incentive at the beginning," without ruling out "that eventual end state of 'maybe this thing could moon.'" Crypto shines when it does both: make money for creators, and give their supporters a piece of the upside.

"Success for us is not that someone's putting in $10 and making a thousand because they bet on like five or 10 viral songs." Users making a profit is great, but the collector's motivation needs to be genuine passion.

"Success is people buying the songs because they love them."