Creator Spotlight: Noah Edelman of WTF CRYPTO

About the creator

Noah Edelman is a college student who grew up in Manhattan and has a passion for start ups, crypto and psychology. He spent about a year learning about crypto and decided he wanted to be a resource where people who didn't know about crypto can learn. After realizing that the majority of his friends and family were unfamiliar with crypto and didn't necessarily hava a medium to learn a lot of the language used in the space and some of the more foundational aspects, he wanted to change that and provide his friends and family an accessible resource.

His goal is to teach people about crypto in a way that makes sense and is funny and relatable. He started writing from a perspective of what he would want to be reading himself. He uses creativity to explain things using analogies, humor, and a conversational tone to keep it light and fun to read.

About your newsletter

How do you ensure that your newsletter is unique to your readers and that your voice shines through?

NE: I've attributed a lot of this to my parents. In the last year or so, I've been having more conversations with them and finding ways to explain and define things to them in a way they would understand and then I find unique ways to transfer that into my writing.

Whenever I'm now writing, I'll ask myself "will my parents understand this" and if the answer is no, I know it's time to re-write it or think of another version of the writing so that they could understand it.

What is your content strategy?

NE: Over time I've found ways to make the process of creating super efficient. It typically consists of:

• Formatting everything and outlining what I'll be writing about

• For each main point, I'll identify what I want to talk about and how I can make it understandable to readers. Also identifying different analogies that can be used. For example, "A block chain is like.." or adding in relevant jokes

• Creating pictures and memes that can grab peoples attention

• Finding advertisers to help promote

Describe your newsletter using a slogan:

NE: Crypto education in a way that makes sense

If you could choose two posts to share with someone interested in crypto, which would they be and why?

NE: Here are my two favorite posts (& why I liked them):

The Ethereum merge (for dummies) — demystified the merge in a fun and relevant way.

 Is crypto good or bad for the world — I think this shared a unique perspective bridging the gap between crypto-maximalists & crypto haters.

Who are your readers?

NE: Majority of my readers have come from my launch on either Product Hunt, LinkedIn or just students around campus. The one unifying thing about all of my readers is that they're all crypto-curious and not really experts in crypto minus a few who have a really good grasp on the topic and do it full-time. A lot of the readers I've spoken to are either students or people who work in tech or business-related fields who want to learn more about crypto and hadn't found sources that were helpful to them.

What feedback have you gathered on content that has been the most digestible for your readers?

NE: People have mentioned that they find the different analogies around different terms in crypto really helpful, because if you don't understand the terms used, you essentially won't understand anything beyond that point.

What is your growth strategy currently and any plans on where you want to take it?

NE: One thing I'm focused on right now is tapping into different blockchain clubs at different colleges across the world. I'm trying to make connections with people also creating different blockchain clubs at their schools and building different incentive structures for them to recommend the newsletter in their clubs.

Additionally, I'm working on a college ambassador program which is similar to what Morning Brew did to grow theirs. So I'm essentially paying ambassadors from different schools to promote the newsletter and giving them the opportunity for exposure in my newsletter if they are also writing any content about crypto or are maybe dropping any products.

Moving forward, I'm focused on learning more about paid social media marketing that can help in more growth overnight since as college gets busier I won't have the time to build new growth hacks weekly. Additionally, I plan to launch a referral program soon to spearhead growth from my current subscribers.

Other beehiiv creators/newsletters that have inspired you?

NE: There's a few since beehiiv newsletters pretty much consume my inbox at this point. But one would have to be Milk Road, since I look to them for the standard of what I want my newsletter to become. I'm inspired by the way they talk about different ideas and make it really personable and the fact that they're teaching hundreds of thousands of readers in a really fun and easy to understand way. I think they do that better than any other newsletter that I've seen. I also love reading Cyber Patterns where Jason discusses different ways to succeed on the internet. I also love Jack Raines' newsletter Young Money and really appreciate how he just writes about whatever he wants and doesn't care about what people think.

What is something you've learned about being a newsletter writer in the crypto space?

NE: I think there are a lot of ways to go wrong in crypto. So much of the media coverage in has to do with scams, or people impersonating others, different schemes, etc,. It can be tempting to write about those things because that is what gets views and attracts eye balls. So I've made an active effort to try and stay away what everyone else is talking about and focus more on the cool stories about how technology is being applied including the different types of people around the world using this technology.

I think that's where I attribute a uniqueness to my audience is that it will always focus on what's new.

…Learn more about the challenges of being a newsletter writer in the crypto space and what inspires Noah to continue working on it.