Curious Questions for Your Crypto Friend

Answering is easy, but asking the right question is hard

So you've heard that your friend Joe just joined a crypto company. You are with him now at a dinner party, or an alumni event, or just catching up over a beer at a bar. What kind of questions could you ask Joe that would come across as interesting, non-imposing and smart?

At a casual level, you have a slight fleeting interest in crypto as you just read some sensational headline stories from that industry. Now you can find out more to keep this innocent party conversation going without boring either party too much.

At a more serious level, you have a growing interest in crypto because it was the hottest talk for a few years before AI sucked up all the air in the room. You work in finance and find it mildly amusing that this crypto thing with puny market cap tries to disrupt your industry. Or you work in big tech and find it entertaining that crypto people talk about AI as if that is THEIR thing.

At a more professional level, you are thinking of pivoting your career into crypto, too. You want to size up Joe to see if he's a legit insider in the know, who can make some intros for you. You want to know if this crypto industry is worth investing the next few years of your life to build a new track record. You might even want to start buying some tokens and try to see if your friend knows much alpha.

Asking the right question demonstrates real intelligence and the radius of one's knowledge boundary. Here are a few questions you could throw at him/her. As someone on the other side of the table, I rarely get them, which says a lot about crypto's strenuous long march toward mass adoption and challenges in driving mindshare in the general public. Maybe these questions are just my own wishful thinking, but let's have a try.

Any big event lately? Which one did you go? How was it?

This is the easy opener. Crypto is a very event-driven industry. People go there to speak, social, source leads, and catch up with friends. From the event location, the sponsors, the hosts, the crow size, to the speakers, you can get a glimpse into which direction the wind is blowing - they're constantly changing.

What is the current sentiment among your crypto friends?

Another softball question that almost everyone can catch. There is hardly a dull day in crypto. Either a community gets rug-pulled, or a wallet is hacked, or a country head issues a memecoin, or Vitalik is dating a new girl friend (ETH selling signal), or Bitcoin just drops another 5%, or another project out of nowhere just soars 100x, or a T1 project announces another generous air-drop to all token holders sending the market into stratosphere. Let him talk.

What are the hot topics in crypto now?

Crypto has a roller-coaster ride of rotating trending verticals every few months. From NFT, metaverse, gameFi, socialFi, DePIN, RWA, PayFi, BTCFi, BTC L2, DID, Data Availability, memecoin, stalecoin, ZK, FHE, modular chain, intent-based protocol, launchpad to now AI agent, we're in a constant war of narratives. Many fade out quickly in just a few months. This is where you can tell if Joe just follows the crowd or he truly has some unique perspectives.

What do you do and how is this different from your last job?

Working in web3 is night and day different from working in a traditional industry. I'll share in a separate post later on this topic, for the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Other than Bitcoin, what other tokens do you think would be a good buy?

Most people in crypto agree on the value of Bitcoin so the real question is not whether or not you should buy Bitcoin, but what else you could buy. Everybody has some other tokens, which is a good reflection of his work, his technical conviction, his portfolio strategy (if he has one), and his long-term belief in this industry.

Have you seen any cool applications recently?

Very few people get this far. It's such an easy, sensible and stimulating question. I can talk for hours and introduce you to all the interesting new new things from Web3. Maybe in traditional industries (except for AI), there are simply not that many new innovations or ground-breaking products people feel worth talking about, and they have lost that curiosity all together.

How do you get news for crypto? What do you read?

This will be the topic for another post later on. It's a super important question in 2025 as everyone is bombarded by all sorts of narratives in echo chamber. We need to pick information filters carefully, and avoid being enslaved by it. It's becoming increasingly harder to get to the high-quality information source.

How do you buy your tokens?

Asking this question shows that you've finally stepped over an invisible hurdle and are thinking about crypto seriously. Before this, you are just dancing around with a curious look and no skin in the game. This will be the start of a more intellectually stimulating relationship between you and Joe. Take the dive and see what advice Joe can offer.

What are the things that only crypto can do?

This is probably the best question of all. It will challenge many Joes in crypto and tells you how much Joe actually understands crypto. Many great innovations in crypto are doing financial transactions in a different manner. It's probably faster, with higher leverage and a flair of decentralization, but its contribution to the society as a whole could be still debatable with many nuances if one digs deeper.

Also, it's best to avoid the following questions.

How much do you think Bitcoin's price will go? Is it a good time to buy?

Joe will dutifully and probably eagerly offer his grandiose view even though he actually has absolutely no idea. Nobody in the industry does and everybody wants to sound smart, especially in front of his good old Web2 friends. This question may sound like a cute hook to kick off a conversation, but it's a meaningless discussion. Buying an asset is not a difficult decision. When to sell is the hard part.

What about data privacy? Why is that important?

Don't go into the hornet's nest. Your friendship with Joe may not survive this question. Everybody has a different view and nobody can convince others. There is a Hamlet for everyone and everyone has his own definition of data privacy, data ownership and data sovereignty. The society at large is not ready for achieving a consensus on this topic yet.

Having said that, don’t sweat about which questions to ask. Crypto is fun and truly cutting edge on many fronts. You can jump off anywhere and find a beautiful gorge.

"There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question."
— Carl Sagan