In this opinion, the argument unfolds around a provocative question: what will it take for crypto exchanges to become true super brands? The core idea is that brand strength in crypto is not merely about awareness; it hinges on customer captivity—habit, switching costs, and search costs. As this piece reframes Bruce Greenwald’s demand-based advantages for the crypto landscape, it argues that exchanges are uniquely positioned to become super brands, provided they cultivate genuine, durable advantages that competitors cannot easily erode. The discussion also delves into the paradox of scale in crypto markets, where rapid growth can both empower and imperil a brand, depending on how well a platform preserves entrepreneurial energy, trust, and regulatory resilience. In short, the path to super-brand status is as much about disciplined, user-centric design and governance as it is about technology or liquidity alone. This synthesis builds on the premise that the crypto community was global from day one, and the habit of choosing and sticking with a platform is the ultimate driver of brand captivity.
Starting Points: Crypto’s Global, Borderless Beginnings and What That Means for Branding
Crypto’s inception as a borderless currency built for the internet created a fundamentally different starting point from traditional fiat finance. The internet’s global reach meant there was no single geographic jurisdiction or centralized market gatekeeper to pin down user behavior or brand allegiance. In the early days, exchanges welcomed participants from anywhere with minimal regulatory friction relative to later periods, and there was no equivalent of a New York Stock Exchange or London Stock Exchange within the crypto sphere. This open structure seeded a unique brand challenge: how to become the default choice in a landscape where users could, and did, hop between platforms with relative ease should a better option appear.
From the outset, there was no preordained path to habit formation. Crypto traders did not settle into routine use of a single exchange; they chased the emergence of new listings, new coin offerings, and innovative product features. The market’s natural inclination toward rapid iteration favored diversity and experimentation over consolidation. Early competition often centered on which platform would list new assets the fastest or offer the most favorable access to those assets. This environment created a sort of seasonal brand fungibility, where loyalty was not yet entrenched and switching between exchanges could be done swiftly in pursuit of marginal gains.
As the market matured, the tectonic shifts in product offerings began to redefine what “habit” meant in crypto trading. Margin trading and then perpetual swaps became the primary leverage instruments, reshaping user behavior and the habitual calculus of where to trade. Perpetual contracts, paired with the emergence of stablecoins and the wider settlement ecosystem, anchored trading routines more deeply in the choice of platform. Habit, once a nascent concept in crypto markets, gradually became a durable moat for exchanges that could deliver consistent, reliable performance and a predictable user experience. The progression from simple spot trading to advanced derivatives and perpetuals cemented a core habit: traders would default to the platform that consistently supported their preferred instruments and settlement methods.
Regulation soon entered the frame as a powerful driver of market dynamics. Onboarding friction rose with the introduction of Know Your Customer protocols and more rigorous compliance controls. These regulatory measures increased switching costs by making it harder to move funds across platforms quickly and securely. At the same time, marketing restrictions and the cost of acquiring new users surged, translating into higher search costs for challengers that sought to gain traction. This regulatory backdrop contributed to a concentration of top-of-mind awareness among a select group of exchanges that could absorb, and navigate, the cost of compliance while delivering reliable services. In a sense, regulation did not merely constrain what exchanges could do; it reshaped the competitive landscape by elevating the value of trust, reliability, and proven performance.
The tobacco-advertising analogy provides a useful lens here. When curbs on advertising were introduced in the tobacco industry, the major brands recalibrated their marketing investments and, in many cases, retained substantial share while improving profitability. A similar dynamic plays out in crypto. When new exchanges face regulatory and onboarding hurdles, most traders stay with what they know unless a rival offers a compelling, easily verifiable improvement. This reality underscores the necessity of both a pull and a push: a new entrant must offer something genuinely superior, while incumbent leaders must avoid complacency and maintain a strong, trust-based relationship with their users.
In this context, brand-building in crypto requires a dual lens: a platform must be both attractive enough to draw users in (pull) and resilient enough to keep them from departing (push). The push comes from friction-laden switching costs—the hassle, time, and risk involved in moving funds, accounts, and strategies to a rival. The pull comes from compelling capabilities, performance, and community alignment that make the incumbent brand feel indispensable. The interplay of pull and push becomes the engine that can transform a good exchange into a super brand, provided that the brand maintains a relentless focus on user value, reliability, and governance.
The Exchange Paradox: Growth, Innovation, and the Fragility of Top-Tier Position
There is a notable paradox at the heart of top exchanges: their rapid growth, achieved primarily through customer captivity and massive economies of scale, can simultaneously sap the very entrepreneurial energy that might sustain a super-brand trajectory. By expanding, exchanges often accumulate organizational complexity, which can dampen the nimbleness and risk-taking that originally differentiates a platform. In other words, scale can dilute the characteristics that once fueled innovation, leaving the brand more susceptible to disruption by sharper, smaller competitors that move quickly and pivot with minimal friction.
This paradox is not unique to crypto. Yet, in a field where regulation is increasingly pervasive and excitements around new use cases continually shift, the risk of becoming a complacent market leader is particularly acute. When a platform grows too large, it can attract regulatory scrutiny that becomes a reputational risk, a factor that may prompt risk-averse leadership to reduce visibility or downplay experimentation. Regulators are particularly drawn to prominent brands because their actions set examples for the sector. The result is a dynamic tension: the brand is powerful on the one hand, but the very scale and visibility can become a magnet for scrutiny and a target for enforcement.
Relatedly, the structural complexity that accompanies rapid growth can erode the entrepreneurial spark that once enabled differentiation. The same governance and product teams responsible for sustaining scale might begin to coalesce around standardized, conservative playbooks. While this ensures reliability and security, it can erode the crisp, innovative instincts that once gave the platform its edge. In this climate, top exchanges risk losing their edge to more agile entrants that value speed, novelty, and customer-centric experimentation over broad institutional appeal. This is the existential risk embedded in the “exchange paradox”: you can scale to become a household name, but that very scale can prevent you from becoming the kind of super brand that retains a persistent, industry-leading advantage.
Another facet of the paradox lies in the market’s tendency to reallocate attention and share. As the incumbent’s aura grows, competitors can refine and refine again, learning from the top player’s missteps and rapidly iterating, sometimes in a narrow niche that the leader has neglected. A big brand, despite its reach, can become a sitting duck if it ignores evolving user needs or if it underinvests in new products that unlock new use cases. The risk is not only losing share to a direct competitor but also to a whole ecosystem of specialized platforms that unlock capabilities that the mainstream exchange failed to anticipate. In short, the exchange paradox describes a cycle: growth fuels resilience and market dominance, which can then erode the brand’s vitality as competitors disrupt and as regulatory attention intensifies.
What can smaller, newer players do to overcome this paradox? They can exploit their inherent agility to pivot quickly toward new products and markets that incumbents cannot easily replicate. When a larger exchange experiences outages or performance issues that undermine trust, nimble entrants can leverage those pain points to prove superior reliability, speed, or product design. The Deribit narrative illustrates this dynamic in microcosm. After years of attempting to nurture a crypto-options market, Deribit achieved notable success by iterating on the perpetual contract concept and reimagining the design that BitMEX initially popularized. When BitMEX faced recurring system outages that led to customer liquidations, the resulting dissatisfaction created a fertile ground for Deribit and others to attract those disgruntled traders who needed reliable, consistent performance and who could bear the switching costs to migrate.
The Deribit example demonstrates how a smaller exchange can crack the code on what drives user behavior away from leading platforms and toward alternative options. It is not merely about offering a marginally better product; it is about reconfiguring the user journey so that the new platform presents a clearly superior risk-reward calculus that justifies the costs and effort of change. Once a smaller operator identifies a compelling value proposition that meaningfully reduces friction in the decision to switch, it can scale rapidly and start to consolidate a new segment of market demand. In this sense, the cycle of habit disruption, switching and search cost, and accelerated growth can be reinvigorated by a talent for rapid product experimentation and a willingness to challenge the status quo.
However, breaking the cycle is not sufficient by itself to guarantee super-brand status. The model requires a platform to construct a genuine network effect that leverages habit, switching costs, and search costs in concert. A successful super-brand strategy hinges on building a platform where users feel the pull of entrenched routines, the friction of leaving is high, and the ease of finding information and resources is optimized. This triad—habit, switch costs, and search costs—forms a robust, durable moat that can withstand competitive pressure and regulatory scrutiny. The entrepreneur in this setting must maintain a proactive stance toward regulatory developments, ensuring that the brand remains legitimate, trustworthy, and compliant rather than risking punitive attention that can derail growth or erode trust. In other words, building a true super brand requires more than clever marketing or superior liquidity; it calls for a sustainable governance model and a commitment to maintaining user trust as the brand’s most valuable asset.
No brand is invincible, and the lessons from crypto branding reinforce a sobering truth: trust and habit are built incrementally, a millimeter at a time. Exchanges must internalize this reality and pursue a strategy of continuous, user-centric improvement—delivering consistent performance, transparent risk management, and reliable customer support—while also cultivating a forward-looking regulatory posture. The brands that endure will be the ones that combine relentless focus on user value with disciplined governance, turning habit, switching costs, and search costs into a cohesive, mutually reinforcing advantage. The outcome will be a brand that is not just a name in a crowded market but a trusted institution that users turn to as their primary resource for navigating the evolving world of decentralized finance and digital assets.
How a Brand Becomes a True Super Brand: Turning Habit, Switching Costs, and Search Costs into a Network Effect
Turning the triad of habit, switching costs, and search costs into a powerful network effect is the central strategic objective for any crypto exchange seeking super-brand status. The network effect emerges when the value of the platform increases as more users participate, creating a self-reinforcing loop that compounds user retention and attraction. Achieving this requires deliberate, multi-layered action across product design, community engagement, governance, and regulatory strategy.
First, habit formation must be actively cultivated through consistent performance and a reliable, intuitive user experience. An exchange that earns users’ routine engagement—be it daily or weekly trading activity, recurring risk-management workflows, or habitual portfolio rebalancing—builds a life cycle of use that becomes second nature. The design challenge is to reduce cognitive load while expanding capability. This means delivering a product that supports both simple, straightforward trades for newcomers and sophisticated, modular tools for professional traders. It also means ensuring that users can access their preferred instruments and charts quickly, with minimal friction, across devices and time zones. The habit is reinforced by the platform’s commitment to uptime, speed, and dependable execution, which reduces the mental burden of choosing a platform and makes switching less appealing.
Second, the platform must ensure that switching costs are genuine and meaningful. Onboarding friction should be engineered to reward long-term participation while not alienating new users. Factors such as identity and wallet linkage, account verification durability, and cross-platform liquidity synchronization contribute to higher switching costs. The goal is to make the act of leaving expensive or risky in ways that are clear to users. This calls for thoughtful design around portability of assets, seamless transfers, and robust security practices that provide peace of mind. A brand that sustains these friction points over time is more likely to retain users, even as competitors offer attractive promotions or new product concepts. It is crucial, however, that these costs do not become so prohibitive that they drive users toward distrust or noncompliance; the balance between protection and friction must be carefully managed.
Third, search costs must be managed by reinforcing the exchange’s position as the most reliable and informative hub for users navigating the crypto landscape. A leading platform should offer comprehensive knowledge content, accessible tools, and transparent disclosures that make it easy for users to locate answers, compare offerings, and execute trades confidently. When a user arrives on a platform, they should encounter clear information about products, risks, and costs, enabling them to conduct efficient due diligence without having to search across multiple sources. This reduces the cognitive and practical burden on users who are evaluating different options, which in turn makes the incumbent brand more attractive than a prospective challenger.
To operationalize network effects, the exchange must blend these three components into a cohesive value proposition that scales with the user base. This entails investing in ecosystem-building initiatives, such as developer-friendly APIs, open libraries, and interoperable tools that align with the platform’s core mission. It also means prioritizing governance that fosters trust, with transparent risk controls, clear regulatory commitments, and active engagement with the user community. A brand that demonstrates accountability and proactive risk management will be perceived as a stable, long-term partner rather than a short-term platform, further strengthening user loyalty and reducing the likelihood of churn.
One practical implication is the need for a disciplined approach to product innovation. When a platform remains relentlessly focused on solving real user pains—even in the face of competition—innovation becomes a differentiator rather than a distraction. A super-brand strategy requires prioritizing product ideas that deliver meaningful improvements in execution speed, asset coverage, risk management, and user education. This means balancing the desire for novelty with the necessity of reliability. Innovation should be guided by user feedback, observed pain points, and measurable outcomes such as reduced latency, improved order book depth, and clearer risk disclosures. In this framework, growth is sustainable because it is anchored in user trust and consistent performance rather than episodic, marketing-driven hype.
The regulatory dimension cannot be overlooked in the recipe for super-brand status. A brand that remains proactive in understanding and shaping its regulatory environment—anticipating changes, engaging with policymakers, and communicating transparently with users—reduces the risk of sudden, disruptive enforcement actions. This steadies the platform’s trajectory, allowing the network to expand without cyclical disruptions in trust. It also signals to users that the brand is committed to operating within a stable, predictable framework, reinforcing the habit and trust that underpin the network effect.
In the end, a crypto exchange becomes a super brand not by claiming to be the best across every metric, but by delivering durable, user-centric advantages that compound over time. The brand that wins is the one that creates a powerful, self-reinforcing cycle of habit, high switching costs, and accessible, reliable search capabilities—an ecosystem where more users directly translate into greater value for all participants. This is the essence of a networked brand in the crypto space: a platform whose value is amplified by the very community it serves, ensuring continued relevance, resilience, and growth.
Practical Pathways: Building and Sustaining a Super Brand in Crypto
The theoretical framework for turning crypto exchanges into super brands gains practical traction when translated into concrete steps. Below is a synthesis of actionable strategies derived from the core concepts of habit, switching costs, and search costs, illustrated with the dynamic realities of the crypto market.
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Prioritize reliability and performance as the foundation of habit. Users develop routines around execution quality, uptime, and latency. A platform should invest in robust infrastructure, incident response capabilities, and transparent post-incident communication. Consistency in performance creates trust, which in turn strengthens habit. The longer users experience dependable performance, the deeper the habit becomes, making them less susceptible to switching costs being overcome by rivals offering short-term incentives.
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Engineer meaningful switching costs without sacrificing user trust or accessibility. To raise switching costs, exchanges should focus on creating cross-platform benefits that are not easily replicable elsewhere. This can include advanced risk-management tooling, integrated analytics, and rewards or loyalty constructs that tie users to the platform over time. At the same time, the process of migrating assets, adjusting portfolios, and reestablishing on-chain relationships must be secure, intuitive, and well-documented to avoid driving users away with fear or confusion.
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Invest in search-cost reduction through education, transparency, and discoverability. The platform should be the primary, trusted source of information about products, risks, and pricing. This means offering clear, accessible tutorials, robust risk disclosures, and an ecosystem of developer resources that accelerates the adoption of new features. When users can quickly find reliable answers within the platform itself, they are less likely to wander to competing sites, thereby strengthening the brand’s position.
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Build a broad, compatible ecosystem that increases the value of staying. A super-brand strategy benefits from an expansive ecosystem: interoperable tools, APIs for developers, and partnerships that create multi-stage value—richer data, more liquid markets, and diversified use cases. When the network becomes a platform for a wider set of activities, the incentive to switch grows stronger only if the alternative cannot provide equivalent breadth. Therefore, the goal is to design partnerships and tools that enlarge the platform’s value proposition rather than fragment it across several competing channels.
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Maintain a forward-leaning regulatory stance. The brand’s legitimacy is reinforced when it demonstrates proactive engagement with regulators and a commitment to user protection. Communicating what the platform is doing to intuitively align with evolving regulatory requirements can reassure users and reduce perceived risk. A reputation for responsible governance is itself a compelling part of habit formation and helps suppress the appeal of switching to less regulated or opaque competitors.
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Nurture an entrepreneurial culture that remains attuned to user needs. The exchange paradox warns that scale can dull the instinct for risk-taking. Leaders must preserve an entrepreneurial mindset by embedding experimentation into governance, rewarding bold product exploration, and ensuring that leadership remains accessible and responsive to the user community. This cultural continuity is essential for sustaining innovation and for preventing stagnation that could invite disruption by smaller rivals.
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Focus on risk management, transparency, and trust. Risk controls, clear incident reporting, and honest communications when problems arise reinforce trust. A brand that is perceived as forthright about its strengths and weaknesses is more likely to retain users through turbulent periods than one that hides vulnerabilities. Trust, not marketing bravado, is the currency of durable brand captivation in the crypto space.
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Emphasize customer advocacy and community engagement. A super-brand exchange embraces its user base as a source of ongoing feedback and co-creation. Forums, community moderation that protects user interests, and participatory design processes help align product development with user expectations. When users see their voices reflected in product evolution, habit strengthens, and the platform’s authority as a trusted resource grows.
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Demonstrate resilience during market downturns and stress events. When markets swing wildly or liquidity dries up, a brand’s ability to manage risk and communicate clearly becomes a key differentiator. Users remember how a platform behaves under pressure; that memory contributes to long-term loyalty and a stable habit, even when external conditions are challenging.
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Align marketing with substance rather than hype. Even as the brand grows, it should avoid overpromising and underdelivering. Clear messaging about how the platform reduces risk, improves user experience, and supports legitimate use cases will strengthen trust and reduce the allure of alternative platforms that rely on aggressive promotions rather than real value.
Regulation, Governance, and Community Trust: Navigating the Landscape While Seeking Super-Brand Status
A robust super-brand strategy in crypto cannot ignore the regulatory and governance context. Proactive regulation, accessible governance frameworks, and a visible commitment to customer protection are essential for sustaining the habit and trust required to maintain a leading position. The platform should adopt a governance model that balances innovation with accountability, creating formal processes for risk assessment, user feedback, and incident response. Transparent governance helps to reassure users that the brand is not only capable of delivering value but also responsible in its actions and timing.
Community trust serves as a critical amplifier for habit and brand loyalty. An open, responsive, and inclusive community that feels heard by the platform can extend the brand’s reach beyond formal channels. It can generate user-generated content, tutorials, and support ecosystems, further reducing search costs and reinforcing the platform’s position as the central hub for crypto activities. A brand that actively fosters a healthy, constructive community will benefit from the self-reinforcing loops of participation and advocacy that underpin long-term vitality.
In practice, this means transparent risk disclosures, clear accessibility of terms and conditions, and straightforward explanations of how the platform ensures user safety. It also means a willingness to address concerns publicly and constructively. When governance decisions are made with user input and explained in plain language, the brand earns credibility that translates into habit formation and reduced susceptibility to switching.
No brand is immune to external pressures. Yet a commitment to proactive governance can shrink the targets placed on market leaders by regulators and increase the perceived legitimacy of the brand in the eyes of users. The combination of high habitual engagement, meaningful switching costs, and reduced search costs creates a fortified position that can withstand varied regulatory climates and competitive challenges.
Conclusion
In a world where crypto exchanges can claim the mantle of “super brands” by virtue of habit, switching costs, and search costs, the path to enduring leadership is a disciplined, multi-dimensional journey. The brand that endures will be defined not merely by the scale of its user base or the breadth of its asset catalog, but by the strength and coherence of its network effects. Habit must be cultivated through reliable performance and a seamless, intuitive user experience; switching costs must be meaningful but fair, preserving user trust rather than provoking frustration; and search costs must be minimized by providing comprehensive, accessible resources that empower users to make informed decisions. The exchange paradox teaches us that growth, if not carefully managed, can erode the very entrepreneurial edge that sustains a brand’s prominence. Yet the same paradox also presents an opportunity: nimble, thoughtful players can exploit gaps in the incumbent’s strategy to reconfigure user behavior and capture new value. By aligning product innovation with robust risk management, proactive governance, and a clear commitment to user protection, a crypto exchange can evolve from a prominent player into a true super brand—trusted, indispensable, and resilient in the face of change. The ultimate test will be whether the platform can keep its users engaged, informed, and protected as the ecosystem grows in complexity, while maintaining the spirit of innovation that first attracted users to the technology. In this sense, the journey toward super-brand status is ongoing, requiring vigilance, adaptability, and an unrelenting focus on user value. Hendrik Ghys, co-founder and CEO of Thalex, grounds the discussion in experience drawn from the crypto sector and offers a roadmap for those who aspire to elevate their exchange into a durable, widely recognized brand.