FOMO Co-founder Se Yong: About 40,000 New Crypto Users Added Daily
Se Yong Park, co-founder of FOMO, stated that the app store adds about 40,000 users daily, most of whom are net new entrants to the crypto market rather than existing users switching platforms. When asked if the figures were exaggerated, he mentioned that on-chain statistics span six to seven chains and include perpetual contracts, suggesting that the actual numbers could be 20% to 40% higher due to incomplete data collection.
He cited customer service data as supporting evidence: out of approximately 1,500 daily tickets, 1,400 to 1,450 are typically from people who "do not understand what is happening at all." The product goal is to enable users to trade on-chain without feeling like they are on-chain; it still feels like crypto only because the assets are still referred to as coins. He aims to expand the market rather than just capture existing users from the crypto social circle.
The company plans to launch a social trading application in May 2025, with co-founders Paul Erlanger and Prashan Dharmasena, all coming from a perpetual contract platform. Benchmark led a $17 million Series A round, with subsequent valuations reported at around $550 million. In mid-August, he mentioned a total user count of about 1.3 million, with a daily increase of about 30,000; the recent figure of 40,000 is an upward revision from the app store perspective. Initially, there were 140 angel investors, but for several months, the user count remained below 140. Growth inflection points include integrating Apple Pay and making fiat deposits seamless.
The people who do not understand in customer service are both proof of growth and a product liability. Hiding mnemonic phrases and cross-chain details can lead to downloads; the ticket structure indicates they have not yet completed the "seamless on-chain" experience. If the daily increase of 40,000 continues, it represents a download funnel, but does not equate to daily active traders or net deposits after retention.
In market mechanics, sellers package on-chain transactions as consumer-grade mobile social applications, while buyers are retail users encountering crypto for the first time through short videos and word-of-mouth. Event-driven factors include founder interviews. Funds flow with copy trading and transaction fees, with a disclosed rate of about 0.5%. Beneficiaries are those who can access the app store rankings; those under pressure are bots serving the crypto Twitter professional terminal and those who directly equate download numbers with converted traders in their valuation models.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Se Yong Park frames growth as a demographic event: it is not old players rebranding, but newcomers who have never been on-chain being brought in by the app store. Over 90% of the 1,500 tickets are asking basic operational questions, which illustrates user composition better than any dashboard. FOMO's bet is to eliminate the presence of the chain in the interface, leaving only the asset names; once the names are changed to stocks and prediction markets, the crypto shell can shed another layer. Benchmark's willingness to invest is due to Apple Pay transforming deposits from mnemonic phrases to clicks.
The capital pathway is consumer distribution to professional terminals. The inability to convert 140 angels into 140 users indicates that financing within the circle does not equate to demand outside it; short videos and word-of-mouth are what opened the funnel. Daily revenue was once reported to exceed $200,000 in a week, with cumulative fees in the tens of millions, indicating trading density; a daily increase of 40,000 reflects funnel width. When these two metrics are not synchronized, valuations are based on width expectations. After the launch of perpetual contracts, it becomes harder for external parties to aggregate the charts, and the founder uses "underestimated by 20% to 40%" to write the invisible parts as upside.
Comparatively, Robinhood democratizes stocks with zero commissions and mobile access, Cash App integrates Bitcoin into payment applications, and early Binance captured small country retail with minimal onboarding. The industry phase is shifting on-chain trading from Twitter terminals to app store financial rankings. Whoever makes users forget they are on-chain can convert the next batch of people who have never heard of blockchain explorers into transaction fees.
Structural judgments belong to technological substitution. The mechanism is: the infrastructure remains multi-chain and perpetual, while the distribution layer changes to social graphs and fiat deposits. Professional terminals are competing for shares of the same old addresses; consumer applications are targeting those who have never had an address. Customer service tickets serve as reverse proof of the conversion funnel—people are coming, but their understanding still lingers in the app store.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
People asking "What is this?" in tickets illustrate user identity better than dashboards.
Making users feel they are not on-chain is essential to turning the app store into an account opening counter.
Daily download increases reflect funnel width, while daily revenue reflects funnel depth.