Meet the Contributors - Matz

Weekly, Cryptex will interview one of the core contributors involved in building the world's first Total Crypto Market Cap Token (TCAP). This week, co-founder Thomas Matzner, a leader in planning, branding, and marketing initiatives at world-class companies shares his vision of building the Cryptex brand. Read on to learn about how the Cryptex team came together, Matz's favorite community meme, and more.

"What did you do before Cryptex?"

• Mostly business planning at startups and publicly traded companies. These organizations were in the consumer category, specifically fashion and beauty. What was so interesting to me about the business planning role is that it's a very strategic and collaborative position. It guides the sales and marketing departments with how we should be growing, different types of activations, new distribution channels, budgeting, and how it all impacts the business. It's a position that really opens you up to how an entire company/organization functions and how it relies on you to be a guiding light, a strategist for growth.

"When did you first get into crypto?"

• The first time that I got into crypto was 2013/2014. A friend of a friend mentioned Bitcoin and it intrigued me. I signed up for a Coinbase account and also a Gemini account and bought a little bit. It was something I checked out, and kind of forgot about it until 2017/2018. At that time ETH was really having its moment and I knew it was something to definitely get involved with more.

"What is your role at Cryptex?"

• At Cryptex I'm co-founder and brand lead.

  It all started out from really just nurturing the community. That was the focus when we first started Cryptex. We were building the community one by one on Reddit, getting people interested and excited about Cryptex and TCAP.

  It's evolved so much since then! Today, we have an ecosystem of thousands of people involved in our community and interacting with us on social media. We work on a partnership level with organizations like Gemini, Chainlink, Zapper and many others. We're also focusing on PR and advertising to expand how we're being perceived and spoken about in the media. It's been pretty wild to see where we started, where we are today and where we are headed.

"How did you join?"

• I received a phone call from Joe in 2018/2019. I've known Joe for quite some time. He's one of my best friends and also on a business level we did a couple of different things in the startup world together. He told me about the idea that he had and explained the tokenization of things by creating Matzcoin for me lol. I was definitely interested as I had started to spend more time researching Ethereum a year or two prior and was able to see the power of the decentralized future.

"How has growing a brand in crypto been different from other industries?"

• The brands I had worked on in the past are in extremely competitive industries. Most brands have been around for a long time, like a fashion house, like Hermes, has been around for almost two hundred years. It's very much a red sea, they're all basically fighting for that same customer and taking market share from one another. For brands like this, you really have to tell a compelling story, have differentiated products, and spend heavily on your marketing and distribution.

  On the contrary, in crypto, and Cryptex specifically, we have this blue ocean opportunity where there aren't many competitors. There are so many things that need to be built! We do our weekly "stack-ups" where we share TCAP against the other index products that are out there. There are a few others, really not that many from a competitive perspective. For brands like this, you can be authentic, offer novel products and grow by nurturing the community.

"What's a fun fact that people don't know about you?"

• I am a big fan of art and people's creative sides. I've been to Monet's home in France, I've been to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. To me, it's not just about checking out people's artwork, but going deeper and seeing who they were. It's remarkable to see the progression of an artist's life and how that comes out in their artwork at different stages in their life.

"What's the best Cryptex meme you've seen?"

• The memes keep getting better and better. I'd have to say, the cowboy riding a whale gets me every time.

This concludes our interview with Matz. Stay tuned to catch our Core Team interview with Cris next week.

***CRYPTEX IS A FAIR LAUNCH PROTOCOL

1. NO ICO
2. NO VC FUNDING
3. NO PRE-SALE
4. CTX TOKENS ARE REWARDED AND ARE NEVER PURCHASED FROM CRYPTEX.****