The Marks of a Healthy Crypto Community Part 3
Discord or Telegram? Choose Carefully
I was never a very good artist. I don’t have a good eye for color, and my hand isn’t steady enough to draw a straight line. But I enjoyed making art when I was a kid.
One day I sat down to draw a squirrel with a pencil. Halfway through, the lead broke. I didn’t have another pencil or a sharpener.
Oh well. I’ll finish the drawing with a pen.
But the second drawing looked nothing like the first.
The pen forced me to make different choices. The thin lines required more precision. The pencil had allowed me to shade and erase, but the pen took those options away.
Just by choosing a different tool, I ended up making completely different art.
Discord Vs Telegram
One of the most important early choices a crypto project makes is between Discord and Telegram.
Discord and Telegram are both chat apps, but they operate with different philosophies. Telegram is like a group text message on steroids. Information moves fast and the platform feels alive. But it’s messy and overwhelming.
Discord is built around channels and roles, so everything is organized. Long-time users can join a new group and quickly find the conversations that matter. But visible roles make impersonation easier by showing scammers exactly who to copy.
Discord feels like a clubhouse, while Telegram feels like main street. Both provide space for their communities, but in ways that shape them differently.
A crypto project choosing between Discord and Telegram is not making a small choice. They are choosing who will show up first and what kind of community they will have. Discord tends to attract a younger crowd, while Telegram draws more of the OG cypherpunks.
Why New Projects Must Choose
Some projects try to launch both Discord and Telegram so they can be all things to all people. But this approach won’t work.
Projects have limited manpower. They need to focus on one chat group instead of splitting attention between two.
When a project is small, new users will naturally choose the group that gets the most attention. Nobody wants to sit in a dead chat.
The two chat groups will cannibalize each other and make both weaker in the process.
Of course, if the community grows large enough, a project can eventually support both.
Which Do I Like Best?
I like both in theory, but prefer Telegram in practice because no one expects it to handle customer support.
Don’t get me wrong, Discord has better UX and organization. It makes it easy to organize conversations into separate channels. But that is also part of its problem. Discord gives the impression it can handle customer support with ticket systems and help channels. Maybe that works for video games, but in crypto it is a disaster. Discord and Telegram are full of scammers, and impersonators often target people asking for help. 1 Customer support should NEVER happen in Discord or Telegram. It should happen on a website with something like Zendesk.
When founders choose Telegram, they usually understand what it is for: a clubhouse for the community and a way to learn what users are thinking.
Discord just organizes the clubhouse better. But the extra structure tricks founders into thinking it’s sophisticated enough to run customer support, even though it lacks the security to keep users safe.
Conclusion
When evaluating a new crypto project, look at the chat platform they choose.
If they choose Discord, the project wants to be forward thinking but may take the easy route when it comes to customer support. If they choose Telegram, they tend to prefer a more old-school approach.
Both tools can draw the same squirrel. But one of them is a big ugly pencil with a giant eraser, while the other is a fancy pen that spills ink all over the page.
Personally, I would rather look silly than make a mess.
Final Word
Remember: the tool shapes the community in its image.
"We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us." — Marshall McLuhan
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Disclaimer:
The information in this publication is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Always do your own research before making any financial decisions. Cryptocurrency investments carry risk, and past performance is not indicative of future results. I actively invest and trade in the crypto markets, and my personal portfolio and holdings change frequently. Nothing I share should be interpreted as a guarantee of performance or a recommendation to buy or sell any asset.
https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/discord-scams/?
I agree with this wholeheartedly.
The tool shapes behavior. You switch from pencil to pen… You don’t just change tools, you change outcomes.
Fanboy preferences shouldn’t be driving those decisions.
Most people aren’t fanboys anyway… they use what they have. That’s why it makes sense to meet people where they are on things like iOS and Android.
But community is different.
I’d take it one step further…
If you are building a new project and considering running both Discord and Telegram early on, splitting attention will only weaken your presence.
And presence is what a community actually seeks.
Not multiple channels.
Something solid and consistent.
I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with scammers across both platforms… Discord and Telegram. Different tools, same reality. Both environments get exploited, just in different ways.
What matters isn’t which platform is “better.”
It’s whether the project understands what the platform is… and what it is not.
Where I strongly agree:
Customer support has no business living in either one.
That’s where people get picked off. Every time.
Zendesk/Helpdesk offers free and paid plans, and there are open-source, self-hosted options.
When your project spreads across Discord, Telegram, Reddit, forums, and Slack, it may feel like growth, but it’s all the beginning of fragmentation.
Early on, there’s energy. Then burnout.
Then it settles into the same pattern… a small core doing everything while everyone else fades out.
And this is the part that gets missed most:
Consistency.
If you’re steady… people will come to you.
Whatever you do, please dont keep shifting around. When you do, people stop trusting the ground they’re standing on.
So yeah, choose your tool and commit!
Just understand that once you do, you’re not just choosing a platform.
You’re shaping the kind of community that shows up… and whether they stay.