Dear Bankless Nation,
Congratulations on your purchase of the 2024-2025 edition of the Crypto Bull Market.
This newest release of Crypto™ is jam-packed with hundreds of new chains, thousands of new tokens, and millions of different ways to lose it all!
Endless treasure and opportunity await those who successfully navigate the interminable frontiers of Crypto™, and remember to take some profits along the way! You'll need to make sure you can pay 2026-2027 taxes and still afford the 2028-30 edition of Crypto™ in order to play again.
Good Luck!
Picking your Character Class
To play Crypto™, you'll need to select your character class!
Every character class in Crypto™ represents a strategy for playing the game and making it through to the end. While you are free to create a custom build and carve your path, your path likely converges with one of these character classes anyway.
Each character has skills and abilities, and your personality type will likely resonate with some character classes over others. As you read through this guide to Crypto™ character classes, watch for the character that sparks joy!
In this guide, we cover the eight base characters of Crypto™
- Token Degen
- TA Trader
- NFT Collector
- DeFi Yielder
- Twitter Influencer
- Content Creator
- Airdrop Hunter
- Silent Staker
Crypto™ Players are not confined to a single character class. The abilities of one character class can be significantly enhanced by the capabilities of another. Full-time Crypto™ players can progress multiple skill trees at once, and having multiple character classes gives Crypto™ Players more optionality when presented with challenges or obstacles they may come across, as well as adds some additional Luck stat points.
Additional character classes are also unlocked for players who have earned the prerequisite achievements and accolades.
For example:
- Dual characters like the TradeFluencer are available to players who max out the Trader and Twitter Influencer character classes.
- Specialist Characters like The Researcher are unlocked via the Content Creator character class.
- The highly sought-after Venture Capitalist is available by evolving multiple different base characters together.
Token Degen 🎰
Description:
The Token Degen is likely the typical player's first pick when entering the crypto rabbit hole. Tokens are a core mechanic of the game of Crypto, and almost everyone enters the game as a Token Degen by default before exploring other alternative character classes.
The Token Degen is looking to get ahead of the other players in Crypto by scouring the frontiers of the Crypto landscape, looking for valuable tokens that the rest of Crypto's players miss. Searching for hidden gems can be a grind and potentially exposes the Token Degen to danger and traps, but the potential reward that the tokens offer makes it all worth it.
While there's always a little Token Degen in all Character Classes, often too many players select the Token Degen simply due to being unaware of the other available character classes and how their skill and personality might fit better in different archetypes
Toolkit:
Evolutions and Co-Classes:
- Community Leader – Sometimes, a Token Degen finds a token they love SO MUCH that they turn from a token Nomad into a token Settler. They cease scouring the frontier as they discover a token that makes them feel at home. They settle down and set up shop near others who have also decided to call this token home. Community Leaders leverage the skills they've developed as a journeyman/woman of the frontier to share their perspectives and learnings with their newfound community.
- Twitter Influencer – There's always demand for experienced guides to the token frontier. As a Token Degen refines their skills, they can broadcast their discoveries and analysis via Twitter to help others grow along their journey. This can help show the way for younger explorers and illustrate the skills needed to explore the token frontier.
Examples:
TA Trader 📈
Description:
Traders are the most boring character class. Technical Analysis (TA) Traders exist inside and outside of Crypto, and traders often see the game of Crypto as a place to farm in-game currency and sell it to incoming new players for "real-world dollars."
However, many traders find the game truly compelling and fun, and they evolve from mercenary to settler after picking an additional character class and choosing a more specific direction for their skill points.
Toolkit:
Evolutions and Co-Classes:
- TradeFluencer — The TradeFluencer emerges when a Trader picks Twitter Influencer as their second character class. The trader starts to broadcast their trades and collect clout when the trades work. They attract a following of copy-traders or fellow traders who check each other's TA.
- NFT Collector – When traders trade too much Crypto, they might start trading pictures instead of tokens. They usually get to this point after realizing that most assets are just memes, so why not have fun and trade JPEGs? Markets are markets after all. 🤷♂️
Examples:
NFT Collector 🖼
Description:
NFT Collectors are our world's fine art admirers, acquiring digital pieces directly from artists or from loot merchants (i.e. secondary marketplace traders on OpenSea) based on what they creatively enjoy. From 1/1s to generative art series, they look at and beyond the pixels of both new and old artists to find cryptoart they think will age well. A great collector collects purely out of love, but it’s not lost on them that shrewd pickups might be worth more ETH later!
Toolkit:
Evolutions and Co-Classes:
- NFT Influencer – The NFT Influencer emerges when an NFT Collector picks Twitter Influencer as their second character class. The collector starts to broadcast their acquisitions and trades and gains clout when the trades work. They attract a following of copy-traders or fellow collectors who follow their taste.
Examples:
DeFi Yield Farmer 🌾👨🌾
Description:
The DeFi Yield Farmer character class entered the meta in 2020 and has been a leading character ever since. Yield Farmers come in all shapes, sizes, and strategies, and Yield Farmers are known for their flexibility in adapting to the crypto meta as it evolves. Yield strategies can be risk-on, risk-off, or everywhere in between – all depending on the current climate in Crypto.
This is the game that Yielders play in Crypto – it's a constant fight of optimizing between risk and reward. They all want to stack tokens, and while some are satisfied accumulating governance tokens, the most mercenary sells rewards for their preferred crypto money ASAP!
Toolkit:
Evolutions and Co-Classes:
- Silent Staker – The risk-on DeFi yielder finds natural harmony in selecting the Silent Staker as their second character class. The safety and security of their ETH staking piggy bank offers them a foundation to depend on as they venture out into further frontiers of DeFi yields. They rotate their DeFi harvests into ETH yields to lock in their progress. It's all about compound interest, baby!
- Protocol Governor – Did you accidentally farm that governance token a little too much? Is your bag so big that it's too heavy to carry to the market? Congratulations, you're now a Protocol Governor! Since you now have significant voting power over that DeFi Farm that you farmed so hard, it's your responsibility to tend to its health and longevity, or else you'll *never* be able to liquidate your harvests.
Examples:
Twitter Influencer 📣
Description:
Twitter Influencers are the Bards of Crypto. They desire to be heard and loved. Every Bard has their tune and their style, but the ultimate destination is the same: a personal brand. Becoming a Twitter Influencer is usually a stepping stone towards a more specific final form, such as venture capitalist, research analyst, or social media manager. For most playing the game of Crypto, becoming a Twitter Influencer was always just a means to an end for finding a more specific strategy for navigating Crypto. The skills of Twitter Influencers are best leveraged to amplify the skills of a different character class rather than be a class in itself.
For those who proceed with the Twitter Influencer strategy, however, proceed with caution. The Likes and Retweets become addicting and can delude one from reality if consumed too much. Maintaining one's original vision while leveraging Twitter to get there can be a thin line to walk. Without a focused direction of Twittering, one might find themselves accidentally allocating their skill points into Shitposting and Engagement Farming, which can make it difficult to make progress in other domains.
Toolkit:
Evolutions and Co-Classes:
- Content Producer – Sometimes, the dopamine hits from crafting a perfect tweet aren't enough, and Twitter Influencers turn towards longer form content, perhaps a newsletter or podcast? While the class requires the same tenaciousness to be present and opinionated day-in and day-out, the challenges mount as content producers are required to dig deeper and give more of themselves in the process.
- Venture Capitalist – VC is often about influence and standing out from a crowd, skills that the Twitter Influencer must home as well. While a substantial Twitter audience may communicate to potential LPs that you have a unique advantage in deal flow, it's certainly to be a good VC that it is to be a good tweeter.
- The Researcher – While you can get awfully popular on Twitter without ever saying anything original, over time, the more ambitious will probably want to become a source of alpha, which may push them to level up their analysis skills and pick up The Researcher class.
Examples:
Airdrop Hunter 🏹
Description:
Airdrops are an infrequent occurrence, meaning the Airdrop Hunter's greatest skill is patience! They patronize tokenless protocols and persevere toward an unknown payoff, often in the absence of official guidance. Airdrop Hunters have long been envied for their ability to "live off the land" by earning tokens from engaging with tokenless Web3 projects.
Many exploring the frontier of Crypto™ unknowingly assume this role and fortuitously receive tokens for interacting with tokenless crypto protocols.
Toolkit:
Evolution and Co-Classes:
- The Researcher – Airdrop Hunters can't just bridge their tokens to L2s willy-nilly, they have to transact with confidence. A desire to score airdrops often naturally leads Airdrop Hunters to double down on seeking out alpha with The Researcher evolution so they can discover which tokenless protocols have worthwhile buy-in and traction.
Examples:
Content Creator 🎙
Description:
The Content Creator exploits a very specific property in the game of Crypto™. For some reason, in the Crypto world, all players are addicted to content. They consume it like water. They re-read and re-listen to the best bits of content, and they share it with others for further discussions and debates.
While making quality content is hard, achieving proficiency in this character class can open up many doors for further character evolutions. The Content Creator is able to select from many different possible evolution paths, depending on the content they create. Research and analysis content can open up The Researcher or the Venture Capitalist characters. A narrow focus on one application or one sector will evolve a player into the Community Leader character class. However, the Content Creator skill tree is sufficiently deep that a player can solely focus on perfecting this one strategy and successfully navigate the entire Crypto landscape.
Toolkit:
- Substack
- Mirror
- Podcasting Setup
- Midjourney
Evolutions and Co-Classes:
- Venture Capitalist – A highly sought-after and glorified character class in Crypto™, the venture capitalist is a combination of the skillset that helped them level them in Crypto™, along with the network of people that they've built along their journey. Venture Capitalists are adept in thesis and narrative articulation, which is how the skills of Content Creators become applied.
- Community Leader – If a content creator chooses to focus their abilities on one specific subject or project, then the Community Leader skill tree becomes accessible. The Content Creator evolves into becoming the foremost expert about this specific subject and is able to unlock Deity status among the respective community, earning them an army of followers and loyalists who will support their endeavors across crypto-twitter and the rest of the Crypto™ Frontier.
- The Researcher – The Researcher and the Content Creator are a match made in heaven. While the Researcher is an extremely valuable skill type in Crypto, Researchers often remain hidden and undiscovered without a supporting co-class. While most elect to be a Twitter Influencer in order to broadcast their research, the Content Creator character class offers Researchers a much more sophisticated combination of skills and strategies.
Examples:
Silent Staker 🤫
Description:
The Silent Staker is one of the safest and most dependable character classes available in Crypto. This character is humbly focused on stacking sats, gettin' gwei, and slowly but surely accumulating their most preferred asset.
In Crypto Classic™ (the pre-2020 edition of Crypto), this character class was known as the "Sat Stacker", but with the addition of the ETH Staking mechanic to the game of Crypto, this character class has been renamed to the Silent Staker.
The strategy behind this character class is enjoyed by Crypto™ hobbyists and part-timers, who typically play on weekends or after work. These people enjoy the game of Crypto™ yet still partake in other games (TradFi and Life, for example). While these players enjoy hearing about the risky and daring adventures of other crypto players, the Silent Stakers are satisfied with the slow and steady accumulation of generational wealth opportunities.
The Staker appears in many forms, such as stETH or rETH holders or the more advanced home solo-staker. While the Silent Staker is known for their humility, the skill tree does progress quite deep, especially with the addition of the Restaking expansion pack.
Toolkit:
Evolutions and Co-Classes:
- DeFi Yield Farmer – Sometimes, over time, the Silent Stakers are tempted by the opportunities realized by less risk-averse DeFi Yield Farmers. They may also use both classes to diversify and fine tune their risk appetite. They may also venture into this class after deciding that they want to invest more of their time and energy into Crypto™.