Cryptonauts’ Nathan Leung on Making Crypto Education Clearer

Cryptonauts has built an audience by treating crypto education as a production challenge as much as a technical one. Since launching in 2016, the YouTube channel has drawn more than 100,000 subscribers and 3 million views. Co-founder and host Nathan Leung says its aim is to make subjects such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, decentralized finance and Web3 understandable through carefully made videos.

Leung brought experience from Hollywood film, television and commercial production to a subject he found poorly served by online explainers. His account points to a practical lesson for teams teaching fast-changing technologies: clear explanations take scripting, visual design and editing, while staying current requires ongoing research and careful choices about what to cover.

Production as part of the explanation

When Leung and his co-founders encountered crypto in 2016, they saw few polished educational videos on YouTube. Much of the material they found had been recorded with basic webcams or an iPhone 6. They decided to apply their filmmaking experience to a gap they thought mattered: technical ideas needed to be accurate, but also clear and engaging to people encountering them for the first time.

The team writes scripts, uses analogies and creates animations to explain how technologies work. Post-production is a substantial part of that process. Leung says creators can be drawn to filming and content creation while underestimating the time needed to edit and shape the finished video. For Cryptonauts, the visual choices are not decoration added after the explanation; they help carry it.

The channel tries to reach people with different levels of familiarity. Leung describes the target as content that his mother or aunt might enjoy, while still offering useful information to more experienced viewers. Animation can help hold a newcomer’s attention, and technical breakdowns give the video room to explain underlying mechanisms. He cites the animated explainer studio Kurzgesagt as an influence on the team’s visual approach.

That balance is difficult to achieve consistently. Simplifying a topic can make it more accessible, but it can also erase distinctions that matter to experienced users. Cryptonauts’ stated approach is to pair visual storytelling with explanations of how the technology works, rather than relying on animation alone to make a subject feel approachable.

Search brings viewers to foundational topics

Leung characterizes the channel’s audience as being near the start of the learning process. Its priority is to generate awareness and interest, rather than to measure success by whether viewers go on to build a business or work in crypto. Most views come through search: people looking for explanations of blockchain or comparisons between Proof of Work and Proof of Stake may find Cryptonauts among the results.

That discovery pattern makes foundational explainers central to the channel’s reach. Search can connect a video with someone who has a specific question, but it also means educational impact is hard to capture in a single subscriber or view count. Leung says the channel values the relationships and opportunities its platform creates, and expects that some viewers may progress further into the sector over time. He doesn’t offer specific examples or a way to track that progression.

The figures shared in the interview—more than 100,000 subscribers and 3 million channel views—show audience scale. They don’t, by themselves, establish how much viewers learn or retain. Cryptonauts’ focus on awareness reflects the role it has chosen: producing accessible introductions that can serve as an entry point to technical subjects.

Accuracy, pace and possible formats

Crypto changes quickly, creating a tension between timely coverage and material that remains useful. Leung says the team prioritizes making the best content it can over being first. It takes time with production while continually researching current developments and topics that interest the team. That choice may suit explanatory videos, where scripting and editing can improve clarity, though it also means the channel doesn’t define success as covering every new development immediately.

The team has not settled on interactive courses or learning tools, but Leung is open to exploring formats such as augmented or virtual reality. He also floated a possible course model: learners could access a course for free if they completed it, while someone who left it unfinished might pay around ten dollars. He presented this as an early idea, not a set plan. The proposal suggests an attempt to keep education accessible while giving participants an incentive to finish.

For people starting a crypto channel, Leung’s advice is grounded in production work: expect editing to take time, commit to the effort, publish consistently, learn from mistakes and begin. The emphasis on persistence fits a medium where an explanation’s quality depends on work that viewers may never see, from script revisions to the final cut.

From YouTube videos to documentary work

Over the next five years, Leung says Cryptonauts wants to keep making videos the team cares about while moving further into events and documentary-style education. He would like the company to become a go-to producer of professional Web3 content, potentially including television shows, feature-length documentaries and journalism. These are ambitions rather than confirmed projects.

Leung’s background includes work on films, television and commercials for brands such as Sprite, Pizza Hut and Foot Locker. After his introduction to crypto in 2016, he and his co-founders turned that production experience toward educational videos. The channel’s next stage will test whether its audience and filmmaking approach can extend beyond short explainers into longer formats. For now, its clearest contribution remains a searchable library that makes technical crypto topics easier to approach.