Finfluencers: Financial Advisors to Gen Z (2024)

Influencers. Love or hate them, follow them or cancel them, there’s no denying that influencers in social media are the driving force moving the economic needle in this digital generation. Fine-tuning our compass further, Finfluencers — the Millenial’s answer to financial advisors — have taken the crypto world by storm on the path to passive income and financial freedom.

Today’s younger generation is learning about finance using social media channels as their go-to source, and it’s clear to see why: banks and financial planners are not delivering services that Millenials and Gen Z want.

Just take a look at the demographic of Gen X’ers; some are on the tail end of the spectrum approaching retirement still with half a mortgage to pay off, while the more recent group is trying to raise a family, pay off student debt, and take care of aging ‘Boomer’ parents. These demands put a high strain on their resources, leading to stress, burn-out and all sorts of ailments that don’t exactly epitomise living on Boardwalk (or Mayfair for the Brits) in the game of life that we’ve been ‘advised’ on by Mr Monopoly.

The old/current system is not appealing to Millennials or Zoomers — the current generation who are more accustomed to Zoom calls (thanks to COVID) and online banking, than speaking to a bank manager or financial planner. They are powering the workforce, but with huge amounts of debt, which leads to delayed major purchases like buying a home, paying for a fancy wedding (and even having kids).

Because of this financial instability, Zoomers choose access over ownership, speed and volatility over slow and steady, and immediacy over sluggishness — which can be seen through their preference for on-demand services like Netflix or Spotify. They shop for features first, product second, and have little patience for inefficient or poor service. Because of this, Zoomers place their trust in brands with superior product histories like Apple, Google and Amazon. And in the finance game, they seek digital tools to help manage their debt and view banks as merely transactional institutions rather than relational ones.

Wrapping this all up, we’ve got a generation of people:

• spoilt for choice, but lacking trust in prescribed systems.
• looking to reduce their debt while building a stable saving plan for the future.
• paying attention to credible personalities online that will help guide them to their big purchases.

Through Finfluencers, we see a whole network of people educating others about Decentralized Finance (otherwise referred to as “DeFi”), saving on fees that people normally pay to advisors for advice.

On TikTok, the hashtag #FinTok has received more than 500 million views and #Cryptocurrency has garnered over 2 billion views. Contrast that with the hashtag #FinancialPlanning at only around 12 million views. FinTok is the TikTok subcommunity, featuring users who create financial content, with advice on investing, savings, and cryptocurrency.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Finfluencers active on TikTok as well as Twitter and Instagram.

Of course, users need to be careful in who they listen to, especially if they are making financial decisions based on the content they receive which is largely unregulated. Financial planners do offer trust in working with a certified professional, which Finfluencers do not provide in most cases, but there is a gap in the service that financial planners provide in terms of the demand for engaging and informative content online. Consumers still need to do their own research and understand where they are getting their information from to make sure they are making wise financial choices.

According to a recent Bloomberg article, investment firms like Betterment and Wealthfront have hired some of the most famous Finfluencers, including Austin Hankwitz, who has over 500,000 TikTok followers. Hankwitz creates content and refers business to both traditional finance and cryptocurrency firms alike. Hankwitz makes finances fun — something traditional financial planners have struggled to do. And his engaging style coupled with his audience’s trust has translated into tens of thousands of referred accounts to financial institutions.

This trend with Finfluencers is continuing to grow, and so we’ve designed SyncDAO to be easily shared by anyone who wants to be a Finfluencer within their own community, regardless of the size of their audience.

At SyncDAO, we are launching a new platform to build a social community around building wealth for the next generation of financial consumers, who get their financial advice from Finfluencers. Building a community that users can feel safe being a part of is something we spend a lot of time fostering: we want people to feel comfortable trying DeFi for the first time through SyncDAO.

Finfluencers can earn anywhere from $100 to upwards of $20,000 per social media post depending on their follower count and the specific promotion. SyncDAO brings an opportunity for Finfluencers, regardless of the size of their following, to earn recurring passive income through the power of DeFi.

SyncDAO users generate returns through Perpetual Vaults. The vaults let users deposit cryptocurrency and earn stable returns for as long as they wish. SyncDAO empowers Finfluencers to earn by educating new users how the Perpetual Vaults work. When users deposit using their link they will earn a commission for introducing the new user. So whether you are Austin Hankwitz with over 500,000 followers or someone with 5 followers, people are empowered to help others make positive changes in their financial lives.

Through Finfluencers, we see a whole network of people educating others about DeFi, saving fees that people normally pay to advisors for advice. We are giving people the tools to positively influence not only themselves but their communities.

SyncDAO is a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) founded by Rossco Paddison and Paul Holland. SyncDAO aims to bring DeFi to the mass market by incentivising referrals to its easy to use platform that offers the best of DeFi yield generating protocols via its Perpetual Vaults. SyncDAO is launching the first Perpetual Vault in November.

The process of working with the Perpetual Vaults is easy. Users mint Perpetual Vault Tokens and deposit these into the high-interest vaults. They can choose to earn interest in Stablecoins or may instead choose to be paid in a volatile currency like Ethereum, giving them the ability to continually dollar cost average into a blue-chip asset that may appreciate over time.

Through the SyncDAO affiliate smart contract layer, anyone can be rewarded for referring new users to the Perpetual Vaults. These rewards will be a percentage of the interest earned on the deposits made by their referees. This is all managed in a permissionless manner through fully audited smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.