The Survival Guide to Crypto Podcasts: A Group of Passion-Driven Individuals Seeking the Meaning of Voice Amidst the Cracks
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The Survival Guide to Crypto Podcasts: A Group of Passion-Driven Individuals Seeking the Meaning of Voice Amidst the Cracks
All media are chasing “speed and thrill,” while podcasts resist nihilism with “slowness and clumsiness.”
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Ada | TechFlow
One late night in 2025, Sea, host of the podcast Sea Talk, opened his laptop to edit a newly recorded episode. He found this stage the most grueling: trimming filler words, fragmented expressions, and awkward pauses from two hours of raw audio.
Yet this was only halfway through the entire workflow. Next came writing show notes, generating video subtitles (with meticulous proofreading of technical terms and mixed Chinese-English capitalization), designing cover art, multi-platform distribution, and promotion.
Before that, he’d already spent a week contacting guests, listening to all their prior interviews, reviewing hundreds of their X posts, calling them in advance to understand their current interests, and drafting a 20–30-question interview outline—only then proceeding to the actual recording, which itself took over two hours.
Almost simultaneously, an AI-generated, ten-thousand-word analytical report on the same topic appeared on X. Its “not… but…” phrasing and AI-generated charts and conclusions unmistakably revealed its origin. Yet it still attracted significant attention. While Sea’s self-assessed successful episode plateaued at 1,481 listens, the AI article had already surpassed that figure within just 12 hours.
This is the stark reality of today’s Chinese crypto content ecosystem: one side is an industrialized flood of information; the other, a handcrafted, artisanal mode of content creation. By market logic, the latter should have been eliminated long ago.
Yet curiously, more people in the crypto industry are launching podcasts than ever before.
Why?
To answer this question, we conducted in-depth interviews with six hosts of Chinese-language crypto podcasts: Liu Feng of Web3 101, Bill of Bill It Up, Mable of HODLong Houlang, Vivienne and Zhiyang of Cryptoria, and Sea of Sea Talk.
Their podcasts vary widely in format and commercial maturity—but their stories converge on a shared insight:In an information ecosystem rapidly colonized by AI, algorithms, and emotion, the podcast has become one of the few remaining formats where “a human being is still present” in expression.
The Cost of Independence
“I often refuse money when people offer it.”
Mable is a pioneer among Chinese crypto podcasters. At the end of 2019, after joining the prominent crypto VC Multicoin Capital as a Partner, she launched her podcast 51% (also known as “51 Shuo”) in 2020—a program that became many newcomers’ first gateway into the crypto industry. Yet its description always included a small line: “Presented by Multicoin.”
In 2022, after leaving Multicoin to launch her own startup, Mable founded her fully independent crypto podcast, HODLong Houlang. Simultaneously, as a consumer-sector investor, she co-founded another podcast focused on Chinese brands, Pai Pai Zuo.
Though one podcast centers on crypto and the other on consumer brands, they share one crucial trait:No one tells her what to say—or what not to say.
Mable has long operated solo—no team, no sponsors. She handles every aspect herself: topic selection, recording, editing, and publishing.
Preserving editorial independence has always been her guiding principle. She loves creating content and pursues quality rigorously—she refuses to be constrained by ads or sponsorships. “If I accept money, I lose the freedom to interview whomever I choose—and speak freely about whatever I want.”
But this pursuit isn’t without cost. Independent podcasting yields extremely low financial ROI—it simply can’t function as a business.
“So why have you kept going for so long?” we asked.
“Because I still want to speak,” she replied without hesitation.
Liu Feng, host of Web3 101, shares that same desire for free expression. Former Editor-in-Chief of the crypto media outlet ChainNews and ex-Bloomberg journalist, Liu is a well-known industry media figure.
Liu defines Web3 101 clearly: he aims solely for vertical, in-depth content—and sponsorship holds little interest for him. His stance in interviews is firm: if a guest engages in overt PR, he will cut the promotional segment outright—even scrapping the entire episode.
“Aren’t you worried this might harm future relations with guests?” we pressed.
“Then we won’t interact at all—they’re not respecting our show either,” Liu answered decisively.
If even elite creators must pay a price for free speech, how high is the cost for ordinary people to be heard in public discourse in 2026?
The answer may surprise you. As text is algorithmically fragmented, video demands on-camera presence and persona curation, and social media devolves into an arena of emotional competition, podcasts remain one of the few channels still permitting “deep expression by ordinary people.”
According to interviewees’ timelines, the earliest creators began experimenting with podcasts back in 2018–2019—though at the time, neither mature platforms nor commercial expectations existed. It was largely a “convenient tool for casual expression.”
Real change occurred post-2022, when podcasts gained traction precisely because other forms of expression began systematically failing.
Text content gets compressed by algorithms into “opinion fragments”; X evolves into a battleground of positions and emotions; video demands identity exposure, high production costs, and intense emotional management.
Against this backdrop, podcasts’ value was rediscovered. Their information density may not be highest—but their information “form remains intact.” Their reach is slow—but cognitive impact runs deep.
When every medium chases “speed” and “thrills,” the podcast’s “slowness” and “clumsiness” become a moat against meaninglessness.
The Paradox and Dilemma of Monetization
Not all podcast hosts reject monetization like Mable does.
“We started getting sponsors when we only had a few hundred followers,” Vivienne said, admitting she found it unbelievable herself.
“Honestly, beyond feeling lucky and deeply grateful, I have no other explanation. If we were doing an emotional or personal-growth podcast, this would absolutely be impossible at this scale.”
This reveals an intriguing paradox in the crypto podcast space:The ceiling is low—but the barrier to monetization is also low.
The reason is simple: it’s a B2B market funded by high-net-worth clients. Projects need a voice in the Chinese-speaking world, yet traditional advertising channels either fail to reach target audiences or demand exorbitant fees. A niche crypto podcast—even with only a few hundred highly targeted subscribers—can hold more value than a general-interest account with 100,000 followers.
But that’s only half the story. The other half? Even with sponsors, most crypto podcasts still don’t turn a profit.
Why?
Fundamentally, it’s an extremely niche market.
Liu Feng stated bluntly: “If you want to make serious money from Chinese crypto podcasts via monetization, you might consider giving up. But if you treat it as a passion project, everyone can keep going.”
He explained: Deep content has always been consumed as long-tail material—and inevitably loses out to traffic-driven products. Yet educating elite audiences is prohibitively expensive—and no one wants to foot that bill.
The Wall Street Journal once reported that custom content episodes for top English-language crypto podcasts command fees up to $100,000 per episode. In China, no podcast currently reaches that scale.
That gap reflects more than just money—it’s a structural difference in influence.
In the English-speaking world, podcasts have long served as a critical channel for elite discourse. Elon Musk spends three hours on Joe Rogan’s show; Donald Trump campaigns on podcasts; NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang sits down for deep discussions on AI’s future. These conversations carry influence equal to any formal press conference.
But in the Chinese-speaking world, podcasts remain nascent. Entrepreneurs, policymakers, and industry leaders still prefer traditional media interviews or official statements. Podcasts are perceived as “niche, informal, and low-impact.”
In other words: earning modest income from podcasts is easy; scaling to major revenue is hard. Building influence is feasible; monetizing it is difficult. This is the shared dilemma confronting every Chinese crypto podcast host.
Sea understands this clearly: “I don’t view crypto podcasting as a monetization vehicle. It’s my expressive medium. I hold no commercial expectations for it—so my expectations stay low, and communication friction with others drops accordingly.”
That’s why, when exchanges and market makers approached Sea for brand collaborations, he firmly declined—both due to lacking urgent monetization needs and because such sponsorships clash with Sea Talk’s tone.
Intangible Rewards Beyond Money
Judged purely by ROI, podcasting is a terrible investment. Yet nearly every interviewed host mentioned one term:Cognitive restructuring.
“It forces me into deep thinking,” Vivienne said. “It helps me understand the industry better—and clarifies what suits me, and what doesn’t.”
Over the past year, she vacillated between job hunting, switching roles, and returning to traditional finance—but podcasting helped her clarify her direction. She knows this self-awareness would have taken much longer to develop through regular employment alone.
Liu Feng echoed similar sentiments. To explain a topic thoroughly, he must constantly deconstruct surface appearances, interrogate underlying logic, and test assumptions—effectively forcing himself to learn and restructure his cognition. Often, after recording an episode, he realizes his understanding of a subject has completely shifted.
This reveals a hidden value of podcasting: it’s not merely an output channel for content, but a mandatory cognitive training mechanism. Preparing each episode involves systematic topic mapping; every guest conversation probes the boundaries of one’s own understanding.
Sea interprets this differently.
“I joke with my daughter: ‘If you ever get interested in Bitcoin, just listen to my podcasts from these past years.’” He paused, then added, “The power of a voice recorded ten years ago differs fundamentally from text written ten years ago.”
He compares each episode to “a snapshot of a guest’s thoughts at that exact moment”—like blockchain, permanently recorded and archived for posterity. This is a temporal value: it yields no immediate return, but slowly ferments over time.
More simply, the podcasting process itself brings joy.
But here, “joy” needs redefinition. Preparation and live recording bring pressure; editing induces anxiety. Only upon completion does joy arrive. This is the authentic experience of every podcast host. Or, metaphorically speaking:The joy of podcasting is “rebirth after self-inflicted hardship.”
A Methodology for Success
During interviews, one repeatedly emphasized yet frequently overlooked fact emerged:Most failed podcasts don’t lose on ideas—they lose on product sense.
“Many people just record their chats,” Liu Feng said. “But that doesn’t equal a program.”
The gulf between “recording a chat” and “producing a program” is fundamental. Audio quality, editing, and pacing determine whether listeners can consume the episode fully during commutes or workouts. A poorly recorded, sluggish, rambling episode filled with verbal tics and redundancy—no matter how brilliant its insights—will struggle to retain listeners.
Mable offered a sharp observation:“Although homogenization is severe, it doesn’t feel intensely competitive—because most aren’t very good. There are few high-quality crypto podcasts with strong product thinking.”
Product sense is merely the baseline threshold. Harder still is producing genuinely valuable content in an industry where narratives shift rapidly and ideas are constantly rewritten.
Liu Feng distilled a formula:Identify topics widely cared about, invite the most insightful and influential people, and conduct sincere, in-depth conversations.
Bill’s advice focuses more directly on the creator: produce content aligned with your strengths, then reflect on what users and listeners need today—and what information or insights could truly help them. Only by combining both can you sustainably create great content.
Yet there’s an even subtler challenge.
Many expressers exist—but finding peers capable of deep dialogue is difficult. Open X or WeChat Moments: countless people express themselves, striving to broadcast. Yet sit down for a real 60–120 minute conversation, and you’ll find many can only sustain coherent expression for 15 seconds—depth proves elusive.
This is the aftereffect of the short-video era. People have grown accustomed to fragmented output—and lost the ability to structure and sustain extended expression.
Sea validates this observation from another angle: “Many people have ideas—but unlike KOLs, they don’t tweet daily. Their insights remain buried in their minds. Without someone asking, those insights never surface.”
Thus, as a podcast host, you must act like an information miner—with structural capability. It’s not enough to talk—you must control conversational rhythm, capture core threads, and reorganize information seamlessly—without interrupting your guest.
From this perspective, a great crypto podcast functions as a “slow variable.” It doesn’t generate viral moments—but over time, it cultivates relationships, trust, and profound insights.
How to Keep Going?
Vivienne remembers clearly: it was Cryptoria’s 15th episode.
That day, she casually remarked in her listener group: “I’m feeling exhausted lately—unsure how long I can keep going.” She’d only meant to vent—but the group exploded.
Someone immediately reached out to project teams: “We run a podcast—would you consider sponsoring?” Another launched a group crowdfunding campaign: “Let’s each contribute $50—enough to fund three months!” Others wrote: “Don’t stop—we listen to every episode. It’s our most vital source for understanding the industry.”
Vivienne read those messages—and suddenly burst into tears. “That moment, I realized: people really are listening—and they care about what we’re doing.”
She now calls her listener group her “energy refueling station”—not because it generates funds, but because it proves,Your work matters—to some people.
That’s why Vivienne recommends building a listener group on Day One: “Don’t test human nature.”
It makes sense. Sustaining effort without timely positive feedback is nearly impossible—even with deep personal passion. The earlier you establish a listener group, the sooner you receive content feedback, enabling quicker adjustments to structure, depth, and topic selection—and attracting like-minded people.
Bill’s advice is concise and powerful: “Share what you love and excel at. Persist relentlessly—don’t abandon it due to short-term difficulties.” To him, content creation is an infinite game. Platforms change; formats evolve—posts, articles, videos, podcasts—but the enduring mission is spreading ideas.
Epilogue
Returning to the opening scene: when a painstakingly crafted episode still underperforms an AI-generated “hot take,” should you persist?
This is a real-world interrogation—and its answer lies embedded in the essence of podcasting.
That AI-generated analysis vanishes beneath the next wave of information within 24 hours—no one remembers what it claimed. Meanwhile, the carefully produced podcast episode continues to be listened to three months later, discussed in comment sections, and shared with friends. It becomes the “canonical reference” for that specific topic—cited repeatedly.
Mable is right:“In the AI era, being noticed and remembered as a real person holds intrinsic value.”
In an environment saturated with copy-paste content, AI generation, and profit-driven messaging, an authentic conversation and an honest expression of views are becoming exceptionally rare. This may be the most distinctive value proposition of crypto podcasts.
It doesn’t make money. It’s inefficient. Its audience is limited. Yet it records real people, real ideas, and real moments from this industry.
As Zhiyang put it: “Podcasting brings unexpected rewards—and these rewards come to you, rather than requiring you to knock hard, one door at a time.”
Chinese crypto podcast hosts may not realize how profoundly important their work is.
They think they’re merely documenting an industry—but in truth, they’re resisting a trend:The industrialization of information squeezing out human expression.
They may never get rich from it; their shows may always attract only a few thousand listeners. Yet looking back a decade, these voices could become the most precious annotations for understanding our era.
On the ruins of traffic-driven content, they’re rebuilding a bastion for deep content.
While blockchain records wealth, podcasts record living souls.
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