Hall of Flame – Cointelegraph Magazine

Lea Thompson — aka Girl Gone Crypto — declares that she will not put her 225,000 Twitter followers to sleep with the same old boring “breaking” news tweets about crypto.

She explains that using “breaking” to share news that everyone knows is pretty lame.

“It is kind of generic. It is easy engagement, and there is not any personality or anything interesting about it.”

“By the time I’d have posted the news, five other accounts would have probably posted about it,” Thompson says. 

Instead, Thompson likes to put a spin on the latest news, dish out some interesting commentary, or crack jokes to give her followers something different from the rest of the pack.

It’s this quirky mindset that has made her a crypto sensation on Twitter, and it all began with her ukulele playing. 

Back in 2017, Thompson hopped on the Steemit bandwagon, a popular blogging platform at the time. She started posting videos of her playing ukulele covers and getting paid in Steemit’s crypto token, STEEM, whenever her stuff got upvoted. 

Although Thompson was raking in crypto for strumming out ukulele covers, she admits she wasn’t “even that good.” 

Oddly, her ukulele crypto side hustle brought about unexpected invitations to speak at various crypto events.

“‘We think your story about earning crypto playing ukulele is really cool; we want you to come share it at our conference,’ so I ended traveling all over the world and meeting so many cool people working in the industry. It was such a fun experience.”

Thompson admits she was quite surprised considering she wasn’t even making crypto content. However, it was a turning point for her as she realized that the corporate life in marketing and sales wasn’t her true calling. 

Thompson ditched her job and made a bullish career move by going all-in on crypto: “In 2019, I decided to launch a crypto channel. At that point, I’d been using crypto, learning about crypto, launching some social channels, and what I’ve been doing ever since.”

Thompson says her family is proud of her but is totally clueless about what she does and what it’s all about. Her mom believes she works directly for Bitcoin, the company, which Thompson finds “pretty cute.”

What led to Twitter fame?

Thompson’s way of getting almost half a million followers is kind of funny because she didn’t even try to go viral.

“People get caught up on the idea of going viral, and, yes, of course, that is really exciting when that happens and absolutely helps your account grow — it’s not a necessary ingredient,” she says.

As the old saying goes, Thompson believes that just showing up every day is the way to success.

“I would attribute my growth on Twitter not to random viral moments: I have had a few, but not that many. I just showed up consistently every day for a long time, which is a much more sustainable way to grow.”

“People try too hard on trying to put out that viral tweet, versus playing the long, consistent game,” she says.

Her approach seems to have paid off as she counts MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, Gemini’s Tyler Winklevoss, and Bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack among her 225,000 followers.

What type of Twitter content?

Thompson says that her content is “short, snappy, funny and entertaining.” She takes this approach because when she entered the space in 2019, all the content was super serious and filled with complicated stuff.

“When I first came into the crypto space, the content was very technical, very heavy and long form. If you wanted to find information you had to watch a 45-minute livestream.”

While many crypto influencers try to jump the news cycle with their tweets by writing “breaking,” Thompson prefers to take a moment and find an original angle in the recent events.