the problem with traders larping as users is that it's a botched signal for the founder/builder. 

you read the silicon valley product canon and learned that the most important thing is to listen to users. but traders will tell you that to make them happy, you have to spend all of your money and energy to create a short-term pump of your token (so that they can exit your token and your telegram). 

if you mistake traders of your coin for users of your product, you might actually listen to them and make such terrible decisions.

the incentive structure in coined projects pits the average "community member" against the ultimate success of the project. 

why? real investors will buy early and typically forget for months. but the loudest members in the first few weeks are incentivised to see the coin pump in the shortest time frame possible. thus, any new project will see the most vocal of the community members suggest: narrative, marketing, shilling, partnerships, paying DEX, getting on exchanges, and so on - anything other than building actual value into the product. 

it requires a lot of resolve not to lean into this as a founder. and most will lean in, even just to compromise with a substantial chunk of their early community. 

this is why we end up with a distinct brand of hollow "vaporware" in crypto - flashy websites, complex terminology, chapters of whitepapers, social media interns hiding barely functional, barely useful, barely interesting products.