The Crypto Whisperer—Published as ghostwriter in Forbes, Decrypt, & Entrepreneur. Content read by 2M+ readers across the globe.

Romeo Fardeen

Diego Borgo ᵍᵐ

Everyone talks about bringing crypto to the mainstream. I'm actually doing it.


With 20+ years in branding and 8+ years in blockchain, I help crypto founders translate complex products into narratives that mainstream audiences understand.


I've advised:

- adidas on their first NFT collection (€24M in minutes, setting the benchmark for how global brands enter Web3)

- Fortune 500s including Prada, Salesforce, Unilever, L'Oréal, and Mastercard on navigating blockchain and emerging tech

- Leading Web3 projects like Pyth Network, Aptos, Cookie3, and Nomina to attract mainstream partners, institutions, and users

Today, I help crypto founders translate their products for mainstream audiences, so they can actually scale beyond the echo chamber.


Here's how I help:

- Clarify your brand narrative so it connects with mainstream audiences and drives adoption

- Define a unique market position that wins recognition, relevance, and long-term growth

- Design go-to-market strategies that accelerate traction and scale effectively

- Coach you and your team to become trusted, influential voices in your industry


My content has reached 50M+ people on LinkedIn. I speak at Web Summit, Paris Blockchain Week, and other global stages.

If you're building in crypto and want to go mainstream, let's talk ❤️‍🔥

Top Voice for Web3 & Immersive Web

Elected LinkedIn Top Voice for Web3 and Immersive Web in 2024 for contribution to the community, content and understanding of Web3 and Immersive Web.

Diego DAF

"The best blockchain products will be the ones you never know you're using."


I keep saying this to every crypto founder I meet, and most of them still don't get it. 

They want people to "understand the technology", they want normies to care about consensus mechanisms and on-chain validation. 

But nobody cares 🤷 

People care that their payment went through, or if their data didn't get leaked or even simpler, they just want that things work. 

I'm advising a project called BEATOZ, a hybrid Layer 1 out of Korea building exactly this way. 

They built a single hybrid mainnet, not two separate chains stitched together. 

One network with clearly separated roles, a private side for compliance and sensitive business operations, a public side for transparency and blockchain connectivity, all converging into one unified on-chain state. 

These layers connect at the protocol level through their own native bridge, instead of relying on external bridges (which, let's be real, have been one of crypto's biggest security nightmares). 

The point? 

A Korean bank can run compliant stablecoin payment flows on the private side while the public side handles validation and transparency. 

Blockchain does its job in the background without anyone needing to "adopt crypto" as an identity. 

They're running live PoCs across banking, card networks, travel, commerce, and K-culture verticals. With actual enterprise partners testing payment and settlement flows. 

HashKey Cloud is already on board as a validator and the end users in this PoC don't even know they're touching a blockchain. 

That's the whole point. 

This is what mainstream adoption will look like, no need for better wallets or simpler onboarding. Those developments are just making blockchain disappear. 

LFGrow 🚀 
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Diego Borgo

Executive Advisor to Crypto Founders | Brand Strategy, Positioning & Go-to-Market

11.6 MILLION CRYPTO PROJECTS DIED IN 2025


That's not a typo.

According to CoinGecko's analysis, 11.6 million tokens failed in 2025 alone - which is 86% of ALL crypto failures since 2021.

53.2% of every crypto project launched since 2021 is now dead.

So what killed them?
Here's what the data actually shows and it's not what you think.

The October 10 liquidation event wiped out $19 billion in 24 hours. 
Q4 2025 saw 7.7 million tokens collapse in just three months.

But most of these projects didn't fail because the market crashed.
They failed because they had no reason to exist in the first place.

If you didn't realized in 2025 crypto stopped being judged on narratives and started being judged on outcomes.


About fuck*ng time.


"Privacy-preserving" identity projects that assumed perfect users and perfect wallets? Dead.

"Revolutionary" DeFi protocols that leaked metadata when devices got compromised? Dead.

GameFi projects riding the narrative wave? Down 75.1% as a category.

The pattern was the same everywhere: 
Founders built for ideal conditions instead of messy reality.

Your tech has to survive contact with the real world and your positioning has to match what you actually deliver.

You can't position as "privacy-first" if your system collapses when a device is compromised.
You can't position as "revolutionary" if you can't explain why it's useful.
You can't position as "play to earn" if your tokenomics collapses when the token dumps.

The lesson from 2025 is brutal but clear:

The projects that survived  had one thing the dead ones didn't - a position their product can stand by when sh*t gets real.

What's yours?

LFGrow 🚀
#RightClickSaveAs

Most Bitcoin startups tell you to hold, Airbtc makes you spend and replace.

A new XFounders Accelerator Stories episode is live, and this one follows Jake Seifert, founder of AirBTC.

When I first heard the idea I was skeptical, a Bitcoin-native alternative to Airbnb and Booking sounds romantic and brutal at the same time.

But spending time with Jake changed my view.

AirBTC is not a travel marketplace, I like to think of it more as a circulation engine. You book short or medium stays anywhere in the world, pay in Bitcoin, hosts receive Bitcoin. 

No detours, no "crypto-friendly" branding exercise, just simple adoption.

Jake understands something most founders miss. 

Bitcoin doesn't grow by being explained, spend and replace is what actually moves the needle.

That's why AirBTC focuses on places where money actually moves.Local hosts, small operators, communities that banking systems never served well.

Working with Jake was not about polishing a pitch, it was about sharpening the narrative around something he already believes deeply. He is direct, provocative, and deeply conviction-led.

Those are the types of founders that either disappear fast or build something that pulls people in despite the odds.

This episode shows what happens when belief drives product and product drives behavior.

You don't have to agree with his worldview, but you can't say he's not walking it.

Watch the episode, link in the comments.

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥
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Crypto growth marketing is backwards...

And this happens because most marketers in the industry optimize for dashboards instead of building something people actually want.

You're running KOL campaigns that spike your follower count, paid partnerships that pump your TVL for two days, and reward programs where everyone claims tokens then disappears.

There's no brand being built here, the only thing you're building is a pitch deck for VCs so the founding team can say:

"Hey look at our growth, now give us money!"

Meanwhile your retention is 12% and nobody can explain what you do.

This is what's killing so many projects, growth at all costs isn't growth, it's a vanity metric parade with 3 main characters:

1. You paid KOLs to promote sh*t they don't use
2. You bribed users with tokens they won't hold
3. You celebrated 100K wallets knowing 88K are already dead

The crypto marketing playbook in 2026 is broken because it confuses movement with momentum.

If your strategy is "pay people to show up" then you don't have a product, let alone a brand.

All you got is an expensive experiment in renting attention.

Here's the real question very few marketeers ask their founding team:

Are we actually building something to last or looking to exit before anyone else does?

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥
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If you are in London come by, we are in town! 


Dropping a keynote at 11:10 am at Digital Assets Forum with Daniel Cushing, come say hi! 


LFGrow ❤️‍🔥
#RightClickSaveAs

I keep saying this to every crypto founder I meet and most of them still don't get it.

You know what the most common feedback founders get from VCs right now?

"You need more AI in the product."

And you know what happens next? 
They go home, add AI and then come back. 

Right after VCs say, "Now you need RWAs." 
So they add RWAs. 

"What about lending?" 
So they build a lending protocol too.

Three pivots later, still no money. 
And the founder is sitting there like WTF am I doing wrong? 🤷

Listen, when a VC says "you need more AI", they're not giving you a product roadmap, they're telling you they don't understand your value proposition yet.


That's ALL.


The whole thing comes down to clarity, and you're out here adding features trying to solve a positioning problem. 

Let me be real with you, no amount of new sh*t bolted onto your product is going to fix a pitch that doesn't land in 90 seconds.

I've seen this so many times now, incredible tech, incredible teams, seven features packed into one pitch deck, and investors glazing over because nobody can explain what the thing actually DOES.

So if you're still adding features because investors told you to, STOP IT NOW. 
All you need to do is explain why should anyone care and If your grandma can't get it, your investor probably doesn't either.

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥 
#RightClickSaveAs

Clarity is the real growth lever most founders ignore.


Most tech founders I know totally ignore storytelling because they think "it a marketing job"

So they leave it to the "content intern", or even worse treat it as a nice to have.

Storytelling actually sits at the core of why your company exists.

It is how your technology gets translated into a human reason to care, it is  also how your product becomes meaningful outside your own team.

And all of that starts and it's anchored with your narrative.

Narrative is the belief system your brand stands for, it defines what you want to be known for over time and also anchors your decisions, priorities, and direction.

You built and frame that through narrative and storytelling is how you present that to the world.

It uses real moments, real customers, and real decisions and turns abstract ideas into something people give a fck.

Strong storytelling for tech products does a few things well:

1. It is practical
2. It is instantly relatable
3. It turns complexity into meaning
4. It connects engineering choices to real customer needs

Very few founders have this skill, but every founder needs it.
Most are convinced they don't need.
But the best tech founders I have worked with understood this deeply.

They could explain complex products in simple human terms, they are able to make people want to buy into the vision, not just the product roadmap.


If not, your narrative is not clear yet, start there.


DM me if you want help building a narrative people understand, feel, and repeat without effort.

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥 
#RightClickSaveAs

In 2017, Coinbase made a bet.


They could've gone full crypto-native with technical language, degen culture, all the insider sh*t that makes the space feel like a secret club.

Instead they position themselves with simplicity, for the mainstream and went to market with a simple value prop:

"Your first crypto purchase."

Every feature, every UI decision, every campaign reinforced the same thing - this is easy, this is safe, this is for you.

And over time something happened. 

People stopped seeing Coinbase as just another exchange, they started associating it with trust, with being the front door into crypto, with the thing you recommend to your friend who's curious but scared.

That association didn't happen by accident, it was a deliberate positioning choice about what they wanted to be paired with in people's heads.


Most Web3 founders get this completely backwards.


They position themselves with complexity, with jargon, with whatever Crypto Twitter thinks is cool this week and then they wonder why nobody outside the bubble gives a f*ck about their product.

Think about it like the lunch table in high school, the table you chose to sit at informed how everyone else viewed you.

If you keep sitting at the degen table talking about ZK proofs and modular rollups, that's how the world sees you. 

> Technical, niche, and irrelevant to 99% of people.

But position alone isn't enough, you need repetition.

Coinbase didn't simplify their messaging and move on, they did it every single touchpoint, every experience, every part of the jounrey.

I tell my clients this all the time and most of them hate hearing it. 
They get bored of their own positioning after 3 months and want to pivot into something "fresh."

But that moment when you're bored of saying it? That's usually the exact moment it's finally starting to land with your audience.

So two questions for you:

1. What are you positioning your brand ? (and is it the right thing?)
2. Are you repeating making it live across every single part of your business or just as your "messaging"?

If you can't answer both clearly, that's a positioning problem and that's exactly what I help founders figure out, DM me if you want to changing it.

LFGrow ❤️‍🔥 
#RightClickSaveAs

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Diego DAF's LinkedIn Performance

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