Welcome to Proof of Thought, a human-centric ideas index pulling Web3 thought leaders out of the hype cycle and into honest dialogue.

Through the exploration of cultural competency, unique mental models and breakthrough thinking, Proof of Thought is a space for ideas worth verifying.

In this installment, we speak to Natasha Hoskins, Co-founder of Boys Club, a media business and creative studio bringing an unapologetically femme perspective to Web3. With thousands of women in their community worldwide, Boys Club has carved out a space for authentic dialogue in an industry often disconnected from real people's needs.

In a rapid-fire interview, Natasha questions the effectiveness of day-one decentralization, calls for retiring "community" as an overused buzzword, and shares why the busiest people get the most done.

Let's get into it.

So how did you get into Web3?

My Co-founder Dina Burke has been in crypto since 2017, when she launched a Bitcoin wallet for teenage girls. Then the bear market hit in 2018 and it couldn’t get traction. For literally three or four years, she was trying to “crypto-pill” me, saying there's this whole new infrastructure for the internet being built, all this new capital being created. At the time, I was working in consumer tech working on early stage go-to-market, brand identity, and community for a travel startup. I thought crypto sounded so lame. 

What was the moment you actually took the “crypto pill”?

When the market took off again in 2021, it started rubbing up against my life in New York in a way it hadn't before. NFTs and social tokens made me see that crypto was more than just a financial asset, so I asked Dina to give me the rundown on it. We spent three hours looking through Twitter and Discord, where Dina onboarded me into crypto. That was a real “aha” moment. I saw it as an enabling technology, a mirror to your interests. There are all these new ways of ownership and decentralization still in a very nascent phase, creating a lot of opportunity for input into what this next phase of the internet looks like.

And that's when Boys Club started?

Exactly. So many of my friends and women in my life were sitting on the sidelines of everything happening in crypto. We started with a dinner and invited friends who were interested and warm to the idea, but didn't know where to start. The idea was that Dina could do what she did for me with all these women. It just took off from there.

Did you face resistance to the gender-focused positioning?

No, we were always careful about it. We like to joke that it's not about women or men—we're post-women. We just want a space that feels like it can speak to our interests and is unapologetically femme. The way we show up in the world, the jokes we make, the context we give to this technology is from our perspective, which is a femme perspective. That might feel very different from other things on the timeline, but it's just what feels natural to us. We use the language we speak everyday instead of trying to conform to another language that doesn't resonate as deeply. The name “Boys Club” is tongue in cheek, and we don't take ourselves that seriously. We have a real sense of humor about everything, which gives us room to have fun. We were mostly met with people — both men and women — saying, "This is really refreshing. I want to see this perspective."

Do you see Boys Club as a business or a community group?

It's fully a business. There's a community of thousands of women around the world, but Boys Club itself is one part media business, one part creative studio. There's four of us working on it full-time doing brand partnerships, brand strategy, and creative consulting.

So what's a belief you hold that most in Web3 don't?

Decentralization doesn't work—at least not from day one. We need to start with centralized entities, build businesses, and then they can decentralize from there. Any entity that starts from a decentralized place ends up having a lot of friction that can be avoided if there is a cohesive, central entity first.

What is your favorite tipping point in tech history?

LiveJournal. It was the first time I over-shared on the internet. That was my first experience of self-publishing to the universe. That moment when you realize you're publishing to everyone was pivotal for a lot of people in our generation, I think.

When's the last time you changed your mind and why?

I was wrong about Lorde's new single. I was like, "This is a shit song" after hearing the first five seconds of it. Then I was on the subway with a friend and she forced her headphones into my ears and was like, "No, it's really good. Listen to it." And then I was like, "Oh, she's right."

What are you saying no to in 2025?

Getting paid in exposure.

People still do that? Is this 2009? 

Yes.

What's one buzzword we need to retire?

"Community." I fully believe in the actual definition of community. I've dedicated four years of my life to it with Boys Club. But it got over-popularized in crypto for being something it wasn’t. It’s like when you say a word over and over until you forget what it means. We need a new word.

What does community mean to you? 

It begins with genuine friendship. A lot of crypto projects want this network effect where they do things for people and then those people become evangelists. For that level of intimacy with a brand, there has to be personal relationships and friendship that make you willing to genuinely advocate for it. Many companies don't know how to build that in a real way.

Most obscure life hack?

This is maybe not that obscure, but I think the busier you are, the more you get done. Pack your schedule. That's my life hack. The busiest people in my life are the people that respond the fastest, that get things done the quickest. When you have too much empty space, it gets harder to do all the things you need to do.

What question should people be asking more?

When someone shares something and completes the thought, ask them to say more. Usually the most interesting things are a level deeper than what they've repeated lots of times. It forces them to think about what else they actually want to say.

Are you building for legacy or escape velocity?

I wish it was escape velocity, but it's more legacy. What I love about tech is the ability to reach millions of people from one day to the next. But for the most part, Boys Club is a media business. It doesn't have the scale of a technology business. It’s nice to be in the industry where that’s possible, but sometimes I do feel the restraints of being on the media side rather than the scalable tech side.

Who outside of crypto shaped your thinking most?

John O'Donohue. He was a poet, author, philosopher, and theologian. Before he passed away, he wrote about friendship, the need for your soul, mysticism, and the mystery of life. If you're interested, check out his interview with Krista Tippett on On Being called "The Inner Landscape of Beauty."

What do you love about Web3?

The idea that you can own parts of the internet. That's what drew me in initially and still gets me excited.

What do you hate about Web3?

When people are so deep into the technology that they’re disconnected from real people and what they care about day-to-day. That's the constant work of Boys Club: bringing that connection back into the conversation. Sometimes it's exhausting.

What is a narrative in crypto that's hurting the industry?

There's an outsized perception that a small group of bad actors represents the whole industry. My experience is sitting alongside well-intentioned builders every day who are genuinely excited about building a better world. We need to bring those builders to the front and show how well-intentioned most people in this industry are.

What will it take for mainstream adoption of crypto?

The experience has to be better than it is without crypto, and I don't think that's happened yet. But there are some standouts. Blackbird, for example, has a really great user experience that feels unique to crypto. Its loyalty and consumer stuff feels spot on.

Tell me something most people don't know about you?

I went to culinary school in Buenos Aires for four months between high school and college. Before I went, I wanted to pursue it as a career. After I went, I realized I didn't want to do it as a job—it's brutal.

Your Saturday soundtrack?

Right now, the new Haim album. I cannot recommend it highly enough.