Most crypto media, ChainBrief included, spends its attention on prices, protocols, and policy. What gets covered far less is the layer underneath all three: the actual work of getting a wallet, an exchange, or a protocol from "technically works" to "people trust it enough to use it." That's the territory Stefan Furcoi's podcast, Trust to Traction, has staked out — and it's the first entry in a recurring feature we're calling Voices to Know: people doing the less-visible work that shapes whether crypto products actually reach anyone.

Who's behind it

Furcoi is a senior Web3 and crypto growth marketer whose work centers on wallets, exchanges, protocols, and crypto-adjacent fintech products — go-to-market strategy, user acquisition, lifecycle marketing, SEO, content strategy, activation and retention, and compliance-aware education tied to measurable business outcomes rather than vanity metrics. It's the kind of resume that rarely gets a profile written about it, precisely because none of it is speculative or headline-friendly — it's the operational work that determines whether a protocol with real utility actually finds the users who'd benefit from it.

What the show actually is

Trust to Traction bills itself explicitly as not a hype-driven crypto podcast or a trading show. Instead, it works through what the show describes as the "growth problems behind wallets, exchanges, protocols, stablecoins, fintech products, blockchain infrastructure, onboarding, compliant education, lifecycle marketing, and Web3 go-to-market strategy" — with guests drawn from founders, operators, marketers, builders, ecosystem leads, and investors talking through practical growth challenges rather than price predictions. The intended audience is Web3 founders, crypto marketers, fintech operators, and growth leads at wallet and exchange teams — practitioners, not spectators.

Episode guide

The show has moved fast since it debuted — 16 episodes recorded or scheduled as of this writing, with more already on the calendar. We'll keep this list current as new episodes publish.

Ep. 1 — How Web3 Earns Trust in Emerging Markets — Nelson Lopez, CEO of XFounders Accelerator and founder of DeWe Partners. Founder readiness, capital formation, and what has to exist before Web3 infrastructure becomes real adoption in emerging markets. Premiered July 4, 2026.

“Trust is a product, not a virtue. Trust is something that people feel about you depending on a set of values that you show.” — Nelson Lopez, Episode 1

Ep. 2 — How AI Converts Financial News into Trading Signals — Daniel Kovach, founder of Kovach Technologies. AI-driven financial-news sentiment analysis, and a second-half detour into VirtuaSeal, a blockchain approach to document signing and verification. Premiered July 19, 2026.

Ep. 3 — Web3's Communication Problem: UX Writing, Documentation & Trust — Luis Davila, a documentation and UX writer (TransUnion; previously Amazon). Why Web3 products fail to earn trust when users can't understand what they do. Premiered August 3, 2026.

Ep. 4 — How CFOs Scale Companies Without Breaking Them — Ryan Moeller, a global CFO with 20-plus years scaling $100M-plus companies. Sustainable growth economics versus "growth theatre." Premiered August 13, 2026.

Ep. 5 — What Web3 Can Learn From AI SaaS & Meme Marketing — Cory Johnson of Synthesia. When incentives shorten the distance to product value versus when they replace it. Premiered August 20, 2026.

Ep. 6 — Web3 Access Is Not Adoption: What Builds Real Financial Agency? — Leslie Motta, founder of UNSCRIPTED Global. Why access to a wallet or stablecoin isn't the same as trust, usability, or financial agency. Premiered August 27, 2026.

Ep. 7 — Why Crypto Adoption Stalls in The Bahamas — and What Builds Trust — Nelson Recardo Strachan Jr. of CryptoNoobz. The Sand Dollar CBDC, FTX's lingering trust damage, and what local adoption actually requires. Premiered September 3, 2026.

Ep. 8 — Tokenized IP: Can Patents Become a Real Asset Class? — Sam Drissi, CEO of Human IP. What has to exist under a tokenized patent before it's a credible, tradable asset. Premiered September 7, 2026.

Ep. 9 — Web3 Community Management: From Engagement to Business Infrastructure — Cynthia Nwani. Whether community management can move product decisions, user trust, and crisis response — not just keep a Discord active. Premiered September 12, 2026.

Ep. 10 — Web3 Adoption: What Crypto Teams Get Wrong About Trust, UX & Utility — our own Scott Touchton, on trust, onboarding friction, and real-world utility as the actual path to adoption, drawing on experience across crypto marketing, go-to-market strategy, and real-world assets. Premiered September 13, 2026.

Ep. 11 (Part 1) — Web3 Growth Beyond Hype: Cardano Governance & Real Value — Ben O'Hanlon. What "winning" actually means in Web3, and how to tell whether ecosystem growth is real. Premiered September 17, 2026.

Ep. 12 — Self-Custody Is Not Enough: Crypto Wallet Security, UX & Adoption — Jerry Qian, founder of OPTN Labs. Why control over a wallet isn't the same as usable financial agency. Premieres September 19, 2026.

Ep. 13 — Why Crypto Adoption Still Stalls in The Bahamas — Lamont Astwood. A follow-up to Episode 7: why adoption stalls even once regulation, infrastructure, and education already exist. Premieres September 23, 2026.

Ep. 14 — Reactive IT Is a Growth Tax: Turn Technology Into Operational Advantage — John Galambos. How reactive IT becomes a measurable drag on growth long before systems actually fail. Premiered September 7, 2026.

Ep. 15 — Blockchain Voting: Can It Earn Public Trust? — Cooper Squirrell of UrVote. Whether blockchain voting can be verifiable without sacrificing usability or voter privacy. Premiered September 15, 2026.

Ep. 16 — B2B Marketing: Why Revenue Can Mislead You — Johnathan Thornton. Premieres September 25, 2026.

Episode numbers run by recording order, not always by release date, so a couple publish slightly out of sequence — that's the show's system, not an error on our part. The channel has more episodes already scheduled past Episode 16; we'll extend this guide as they go up.

Why this beat is worth covering

We've written before about how the seed-phrase era of crypto wallets is slowly ending because onboarding friction, not blockchain technology, has historically been the industry's biggest adoption barrier. That's exactly the territory Trust to Traction spends its time in — not whether a protocol's cryptography is sound, but whether the humans it's built for can actually find it, trust it, and keep using it. That layer rarely trends on crypto Twitter, and it's arguably where more crypto products actually die than in any smart-contract exploit.

Where to find it

Trust to Traction is available on Furcoi's YouTube channel, @stefanfurcoi. Furcoi himself is on LinkedIn. This feature reflects our own independent editorial judgment about who's worth watching in this part of the industry; it isn't sponsored, and it isn't an endorsement of any specific business claim made on the show.