For years, emerging projects were competing for distribution and attention with 2 types of brands: large mature businesses with unlimited marketing budgets (think, Binance, Coinbase, or Ethereum) and new projects with a growth-hacking mindset pulling guerrilla stunts (e.g., Grass, Cluely). But, in 2026, the most powerful distribution channel won’t belong to any of them - it will be owned by governments. Here’s why. it will be owned by governments. The crypto world used to run on one simple emotional loop: greed and fear. Greed pulled people in - fear flushed them out. That made sense when the market was primarily driven by retail looking for speculative gains. Controlling your price action was easy: you got yourself into a list of top 10 AI coins, hopped on a hot narrative, paid for a few KOL posts, and, suddenly, your token is gaining traction. That framework no longer works because the real metaphor explaining the 2026 market isn’t greed vs fear. It’s a concentration of power. concentration of power. Institutional players look for ROI - not vanity metrics As the CEO of LKI Consulting, crypto advisory firm, I’ve advised Web3 Founders for the past 6 years. The truth is: the majority of them don’t understand the concept of ROI because they were brainwashed by unrealistic expectations. Flukes like 100x multiplier on the launch, 100K+ ACTIVE communities with no working product, and 1M users onboarded with a CPA of $3/user in the US get treated as the norm. The norm required to impress investors, the norm presented to marketing agencies, and the norm that puts some entrepreneurs on Xanax as they struggle to be “good enough” for this industry. Institutions don’t live by these vanity metrics because they chase long-term adoption. So how do they achieve it? Institutions don’t live by these vanity metrics because they chase long-term adoption. 3 communication principles institutions use to achieve long-term adoption Principle #1: Normalizing the fear. Most founders are reluctant to acknowledge what could go wrong: risks get minimized, trade-offs are buried, and uncertainty is reframed as a temporary condition - just a side effect of being “early.” Institutions take the opposite approach. They name the fear first because they understand that it already exists. Ignoring it does not make it disappear; it turns it into distrust. When governments talk about blockchain adoption, they openly address concerns around security, misuse, sovereignty, and control. The reason behind it is simple: people are more willing to engage when their anxieties are recognized rather than dismissed. people are more willing to engage when their anxieties are recognized rather than dismissed. In institutional communication, fear becomes a mechanism for alignment, not an obstacle to progress. Crypto marketing playbooks look at fear as reputational liability, a red cloth for a bull, if you will. Instead, they should treat it as the starting point for trust. Principle #2: Uniting people through shared identity. The deadly sin of retail founders is trying to build something marginally better and selling it to the market as innovation of the year: a slightly faster protocol on Solana, a slightly cheaper payments provider, or a slightly more exciting RWA coin. The thing is: when you default to incremental benchmarks, your message doesn’t resonate beyond a narrow, technical audience. Institutions frame the problem-solution differently. They appeal to a deeper fear: the risk of being left behind. the risk of being left behind When governments speak about blockchain adoption, they do not measure themselves against other companies’ features. They speak about shared identity and the pride of the entire nation. For example, the government of Kazakhstan adapting blockchain as a part of its 2026 governmental strategy, doesn’t care about technical superiority. It competes with Singapore, the UAE, and the US for relevance and standing in a global order that is rapidly changing. Uniting people through shared identity engages pride as much as anxiety: the prospect of public embarrassment is a stronger motivator than any minor efficiency gain. Principle #3: Making ultimate success visible but not attainable My grandma always said, “If you start at 100, where else are you going to go?” Clearly, crypto Founders didn’t get the memo because the majority of them still try to throw money at the problem, offering the best perks, biggest rewards, and strongest offers pre-TGE. This results in sharp adoption spikes where the userbase grows quickly but leaves even faster. Institutions move differently: they promise a big vision (i.e., a 10-year program), but start with one thing done exceptionally well, like enabling business registration in 30 minutes. start with one thing done exceptionally well, People are given a tangible glimpse of what is possible, and they stay for the roadmap because early delivery has earned their trust. Conclusion Distribution can no longer be engineered through incentives or attention alone; it increasingly flows through institutions that control infrastructure, regulation, and public legitimacy. Governments are not approaching blockchain as a growth experiment but as a strategic capability, which explains their emphasis on restraint, credibility, and long-term alignment. Whether the next phase of crypto is shaped by founders or absorbed into institutional systems will depend less on innovation than on whether the industry is willing to adapt its assumptions about power, trust, and adoption.

The is an opinion piece based on the author’s POV and does not necessarily reflect the views of HackerNoon.

3 Lessons From Institutions Crypto Founders Still Don’t Understand About Power & Fear

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