The founder of dYdX, a decentralized exchange, Antonio Juliano, believes that crypto developers should focus on serving customers outside the US for the next five to ten years, experiment in other markets, and return when the timing is right.
In a recent post on Twitter, Juliano argued that founders should prioritize non-US markets as they will face fewer obstacles to growth and user adoption.
Juliano’s comments were particularly directed at startups that are still in their early stages, as he believes they can scale faster in more friendly markets overseas.
“Crypto developers should temporarily stop serving US customers and focus on finding product-market fit in other countries. It’s not worth the hassle/compromise. Most of the market is already overseas. Innovate there, find PMF [product-market fit], then do more.”
As the US government continues to drag its feet on crypto regulation, Juliano suggests that the crypto industry needs to grow further to have a greater influence on US policy. In the meantime, he argues that entrepreneurs or startups should focus on finding PMF abroad and then let large user bases empower them.
“The US is certainly important for crypto developers. But until regulations become clear, spend your energy where you will get better returns. Crypto laws in the US will be followed by the rest of the world. Crypto is not yet ready for global adoption/product-market fit, which means we don’t have much influence in politics. We need products with mass adoption that users (voters) will say, ‘wait, I need this’.”
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also made similar remarks about this issue. We need to reach a point where voters defend crypto. If we want politicians to create regulations in a crypto-friendly manner, what the dYdX Founder mentioned must happen. We need successful popular applications used worldwide.
In response to the altcoin founder, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said:
“I understand what you mean. But I think things will get better sooner than you think. I would guess probably by next year.”
Evgeny Gaevoy, CEO of Wintermute, also agreed with Juliano’s perspective:
“I think it will take 2-3 years for crypto to succeed, but if it doesn’t, it will never be successful.”
