“Creativity is intelligence having fun”
Albert Einstein
Last month, for the first time ever, we took a chance to run a competition that required our community members to submit creative work about CEX.IO. It was our big fear that we could end up with nothing by the end of the contest. It’s like when you perform on stage, and no one claps. Or make a call and no one answers. We indeed were afraid to hear nothing from our community. Boy, we were wrong! 😅
What we received in the course of the month was the celebration of resourcefulness, a sense of humor, and, of course, the intelligence of our community!
Not only did we prove our doubts irrational, but, by the end of the contest, we felt a bit closer to our users. It almost seems like we understand you a little better now. And the content that’s been created is something that connects us to our community on a very human level.
Some of the hand-made submissions 😍
When a new submission would pop into our inbox, we felt like a kid who just got a surprise and about to unpack it! The idea that someone would actually spend their valuable time thinking about CEX.IO and making something creative blew our minds.
Submissions made us laugh, think, smile, cheer, and dream. For that, we are very thankful to all who participated.
Creativity (Loosely Defined)
It takes a special state of mind to be creative. You need to have the curiosity to explore and the energy to pursue an idea. More so, as our competition implied voting for submissions, getting the work out there for others’ to assess required some tolerance to the fear of judgment. And we are happy that our creatives did not confine themselves within “what’s expected”!
What we’ve seen ranged from gifs, hand drawings, 3D animations, art installations, memes, poems, articles, videos!
Some forms of art surprised and humbled us. Some pieces we’d be honored to hang on the wall in one of our offices and proudly tell our visitors “Oh, our user made that for us!”
While the variety of forms and shapes the creativity took surprised us, what was really interesting is how a lot of submissions gravitated around a few common themes. The best thing, these themes were the ones the most important for us.
The Main Themes
We did not only learn about our community through creative submissions. Even more, we learned about ourselves: what transpires to users, what they associate us with, what they think we think is important (yes, a bit meta!🤓)
1️⃣ Trust and reliability of CEX.IO:
A lot of submissions emphasized trust in CEX.IO products. Earning and maintaining our clients’ trust is something that spills into every activity we do. From support to product development to legal and marketing – we think every step of the way how we can be a reliable partner for our users.
2️⃣ User-friendliness:
Many submissions pointed out how straightforward it is to start with CEX.IO. For the longest time, we’ve been the very initial introduction to the cryptocurrency economy for numerous people. How quickly and easily we enable users to buy their first BTC or ETH with a credit card or a debit card sets us apart from a lot of other market participants.
3️⃣ Multiple payment options:
Almost every other submission mentioned multiple payment options on CEX.IO. We indeed spend a lot of time and effort to sustain and improve uninterrupted, fast and secure money transfers. So it’s not only about buying Bitcoin with a credit card, but also with fast international and domestic bank transfers. Not to mention selling crypto and instantly withdrawing funds to the card has proven to be very valuable.
4️⃣ Worldwide coverage:
This year has been a year of expansion. We’ve put our flag in many new geographies (and it took the whole very serious licensing process to do that for different states in the US!). In geographies we were already present, we’ve received the licenses to provide more services and to operate in a clearly defined legal environment. Heck, some of our users are convinced that CEX.IO works everywhere, even on the moon (we are on track to prove that!).
Going Forward
It’s been a fun month fostering a creative environment in our community! We are still processing the gratitude that the submissions filled us with!
Looking ahead, we are definitely planning to come up with more ideas and to engage our users in interesting ways.
It is when we build something together we understand how connected we are to one another while still living in the different parts of the world. And we are just getting started!
And here are some more submissions:
