Stocktwits Jumps On The Crypto Bandwagon
Howard Lindzon, cofounder and CEO of Stocktwits, at MoneyConf 2018 in Dublin. (Photo By Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
Stocktwits is launching its boldest expansion in years with Cryptotwits, an offshoot of its 17-year-old social media platform for traders and investors, now with a focus on digital assets.
This isn't just a product update. It's what prompted founder Howard Lindzon's return to the CEO chair after an eight-year hiatus, and a bet that the same formula that once worked for equities can resonate with the crypto crowd. He left the post in 2016 after nearly a decade at the helm, thinking someone else might steer the company better. But by 2024, dissatisfied with its drift toward brokerage, he decided to come back.
An early investor in Robinhood and eToro, Lindzon believed Stocktwits had missed the window to compete with them. Shortly after his return early last year, the company sold its 15,000+ brokerage accounts to Public. 'I thought, let's just focus on what we do well—the 'degenerate' betting economy, crypto, having fun—and then AI will make our data more useful,' he says. 'It's taken about a year for the vision to happen.'
Lindzon, 59, has a whole spiel about the 'degenerate economy.' What was once considered irresponsible behavior—speculative trading, high-risk bets, meme stocks and coins—has been normalized by a generation raised on smartphones, gamified finance apps and commission-free platforms. He even created a 'Degenerate Economy' Index composed of stocks like Robinhood, Coinbase, Reddit as well as bitcoin. It's up 38% over the past year.
'I do not endorse crypto,' Lindzon says. 'I don't endorse 99% of the stuff that kids are playing with that they don't understand. But I believe that these products are coming whether we like them or not. So we better learn how to trade them.'
Cryptotwits is Stocktwits' answer to this new reality. It features more than 17,000 coin pages, proprietary indicators that blend message volume with trader sentiment and customizable watchlists. Rug-pull and FUD scores are on the way to help users avoid dubious projects. An integration with Gemini enables an easy navigation to trading dozens of popular cryptocurrencies, while Grayscale will co-sponsor a new Stocktwits show offering bite-sized market insights. Additional launch partners include crypto tracker CoinGecko, payments provider MoonPay, Alto CryptoIRA and Helix App.
All of that data may be valuable, but much of crypto's social activity already happens on X, in Discord servers, Telegram chats and bottom-of-the-barrel shitcoin groups. Lindzon isn't blind to it. 'Hats off to Telegram and Twitter (X), but that's just an opportunity for Stocktwits, for this next generation of curious people who are already here and just discovering crypto,' he says. 'People still use Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, Apple Stocks. It's a huge white space, and we believe it's just the beginning.'
The traction helps make the case. Since Lindzon's return, Stocktwits says monthly active users are up 20%. The total user base now exceeds 10 million, primarily aged 25 to 35. It's not X-level scale, but it's not nothing. And in Lindzon's view, you don't need 100 million users to matter. He sees room for a platform that lets people talk about crypto without diving headfirst into the deep end of the degen pool. Stocktwits' relatively strict moderation and 17-year-long history, in his view, are trust factors.
The challenge, of course, is that much of the "degenerate economy" thrives on precisely the kind of unfettered, often toxic behavior that Stocktwits tries to filter. Can a platform that prides itself on rules and fighting bots truly capture the zeitgeist of a market that often glorifies anonymous founders and treats rug-pulls as a cost of doing business?
'Everybody's gone for the fast buck. Everybody can now be Goldman Sachs,' quips Lindzon. 'And that's not going to end. Nancy Pelosi is trading stocks (she has consistently denied this). Trump's got a Trump coin. The nihilism, or the degeneracy, is coming straight from the White House. Platforms like us, and hopefully X, and Telegram, and other companies that we've inspired will put up more guard rails because the government's not going to help us.'
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