What Makes a Great Crypto CMO

Most crypto companies hire their first CMO for the wrong job.

They want growth. Downloads, signups, a big number on the board slide. So they hire someone who can buy attention.

Attention is cheap in crypto. Trust is expensive.

I've done this job twice. As Head of Marketing at Bitpanda, we grew from around 100,000 to over 1.1 million users. At Relai, where I'm Chief Growth Officer and CMO, monthly active users grew 10x in two years, and around 70% of 2026 signups are organic. Both companies went through a full crypto winter while I was there.

This is written for founders hiring their first CMO, and for marketers thinking about making the jump into crypto. Six things the job actually is. Then how to hire for it, and what the first 90 days should look like.

What is a crypto CMO?

A crypto CMO is the executive who owns how a crypto company grows, competes and is perceived: brand, acquisition, retention and the trust that holds them together. On paper the job looks like a fintech CMO's. In practice, three things make it different. The category has a history of failures, so trust comes first. Demand rises and falls with the price. And Google, Meta and regulators put conditions on the usual growth channels. That's why the best crypto CMOs build on owned channels (search, app stores, AI search, referral) and plan for the whole market cycle.

01Trust is the product

In February 2022, Coinbase ran a 60-second Super Bowl ad. A bouncing QR code. Nothing else.

More than 20 million people hit the landing page in one minute. The app jumped from 186th to 2nd in Apple's App Store. Then it crashed for about an hour.

Brilliant ad. And proof of something every crypto marketer learns eventually... getting attention is the easy part.

That same cycle, crypto brands bought stadiums. Crypto.com paid more than $700 million for 20 years of naming rights on the arena where the Lakers play. FTX had its name on an arena too. By November 2022, FTX had collapsed, and it took a big piece of public trust in crypto with it.

Before anyone puts savings into your app, they ask one question. Is this safe?

So the crypto CMO's first job is making the answer obvious. Who's behind the company. Where it's licensed. What it costs. How you get your money out. Said plainly, in every channel, in the same words, in a bull market and a bear market.

At Relai, the brand is the part people compliment first. In our category, it's also the one thing a competitor can't copy with a bigger budget.

02Demand follows the price: plan for bull and bear markets

Google search interest in "Bitcoin" hit 100 in May 2021. Two years later, it was 18.

Same product. Same team. Less than a fifth of the attention.

Price moves first. Attention arrives later. And when the price falls, attention leaves faster than it came.

Most marketing teams are built for steady growth. Crypto doesn't do steady. A great crypto CMO plans for the whole cycle, not the quarter:

• In the bull market, demand comes to you. Capture it. Fast onboarding, support staffed up, paid kept tight. Overspending at the top buys users who leave at the first red week.
• In the bear market, attention is cheap and competitors go quiet. Build what compounds: search rankings, content, brand, product. This is where the next cycle's winners get made.
• Before either, write the "what if the market halves" plan. Budget, hiring and targets, agreed with the CEO while everyone is still calm.

03Crypto ad restrictions: half the fintech playbook comes with conditions

Ask a fintech CMO how they'd scale and you'll hear the usual list. Google, Meta, referral bonuses, affiliates.

In crypto, every one of those has strings attached:

• Google. Since 23 April 2025, crypto exchange and wallet ads in 27 European countries need a MiCA licence and Google certification.
• Meta. Exchanges and wallets that let you buy, sell or swap need written permission from Meta, backed by a recognised licence.
• The UK. The FCA bans incentives to invest in crypto, refer-a-friend and new-joiner bonuses included. First-time investors also get a 24-hour cooling-off period.
• The EU. Under MiCA, information to clients has to be fair, clear and not misleading, and marketing has to be labelled as marketing.

You can still grow fast under these rules. You just build in a different order.

Bring legal into week one and treat them like part of the growth team. Know which channels are open in which country before you write a single brief. Then put most of your energy into the channels nobody can switch off for you.

Fintech CMO vs crypto CMO

04Owned channels: build the engine that runs in a bear market

If paid is limited and demand swings, what's left?

The channels you own. Search. App stores. AI assistants. Referral. Your email list and your community.

They're slow to build and almost impossible to copy. And they keep working when the market goes quiet.

At Relai, around 70% of 2026 signups are organic. We rank top 5 in Germany and #1 in Switzerland for core Bitcoin buying and savings searches, behind only Coinbase, Kraken, Bison and Ledger. On a fraction of their budgets.

My rule: switch paid on in a market only once the organic funnel converts and retention looks healthy. Paid amplifies whatever is already there, including a leaky funnel.

AI search deserves its own line in the plan now. People ask ChatGPT and Perplexity whether an app is safe before they download it. Check what they say about you every month, in every language you operate in. The full method is in How to Launch a Consumer Crypto App in Europe.

05Market to the 91% who don't own crypto yet

In December 2024, the ECB reported that 9% of people in the euro area held crypto, up from 4% two years earlier.

That growth is real. But 91% still own none.

Most crypto marketing is written for the 9%. Charts, tickers, memes, "WAGMI". It works brilliantly... on people who already bought.

The next million users don't care about hashrate. They care whether their savings will be okay, and whether this app is for people like them.

So a great crypto CMO speaks a second language: plain English. Short words. Real faces. Fees on the first screen. Risks said out loud. If your mum can't explain the product after one ad, the ad was for Bitcoiners.

I wrote more about this in Bitcoin Marketing Is Different. Here's Why.

06Growth is a company job: why the CMO needs a seat at the table

Onboarding speed. Top-up methods. Support response times. App store rating.

In crypto, these move growth more than most campaigns. None of them sit in the marketing team.

That's why the role works best with a seat where product and budget decisions get made. At Relai, I'm one of five people on the leadership team that sets company strategy, not only marketing strategy. It's the only way I know to fix a conversion problem that lives in the product.

A study of 13,000 US CMOs, published this month, put median CMO tenure at 36 months, roughly 30% shorter than CEO tenure. In my experience, a lot of that churn starts with a mandate that's too small for the expectations. Crypto makes the gap wider, because the market moves your numbers whether you like it or not.

If you're hiring, agree up front which numbers the CMO owns, and which ones the market owns.

How to hire a crypto CMO

Here's the scorecard I'd use. Five things to test, the question that tests each one, and what good and bad answers sound like.

Two more red flags. "Community" means a Telegram group. And they've never killed a campaign because it would cost trust.

The first 90 days

• Days 1-30: listen. Read 100 support tickets. Talk to 20 users. Ask ChatGPT what it says about you. Learn what already works before changing anything.
• Days 31-60: fix the leaks. Onboarding, top-ups, the app store listing, and the answers to the questions people ask before they trust you.
• Days 61-90: build the engine. One organic channel to own, a budget that survives a halving market, and a one-page brand guide every team can check their work against.

Anyone can buy attention in a bull market.

The CMOs worth hiring are the ones still growing when it ends.

Frequently asked questions

What does a crypto CMO do?

A crypto CMO owns how a crypto company grows, competes and is perceived. In practice that means building trust first (who is behind the company, licensing, fees, how to withdraw), planning budget and targets around market cycles, building owned channels such as search, app stores, AI search and referral, translating the product into plain language for people who don't own crypto yet, and working across product and support on the things that move conversion.

How is crypto marketing different from fintech marketing?

Three things. Demand follows the price, so interest can fall by more than 80% between cycles. Many standard fintech channels come with conditions: Google and Meta require licences and certification for crypto ads, and the UK bans refer-a-friend bonuses for crypto. And trust carries more weight, because the category has a history of failures such as FTX.

Can crypto companies advertise on Google and Meta in Europe?

Yes, with conditions. Since 23 April 2025, Google requires crypto exchange and wallet advertisers in 27 European countries to hold a MiCA licence and be certified by Google. Meta requires written permission for exchanges and wallets that let users buy, sell or swap, backed by a recognised regulatory licence.

When should a crypto startup hire a CMO?

Once there are early signs of product-market fit and at least one channel that brings users in repeatedly. Before that, founder-led growth with a strong growth marketer is usually enough. The first CMO should be able to build owned channels and brand trust, and should have a seat where product and budget decisions are made.

What should you look for when hiring a crypto CMO?

Bear-market experience, a track record of organic growth with real numbers, the ability to explain the product in plain language, knowledge of which ad channels are restricted, and a habit of working across product and support. Red flags include plans that lead with influencer budgets or going viral, and not knowing acquisition cost by channel or retention by cohort.