Prominent YouTuber Nuseir (Nas) Yassin spoke with crypto.news about how social media is shaping real life, with a bias toward the controversial.
Summary
- Content creators are increasingly rewarded for controversial and extreme content
- Social media is shaping how we see the war in Gaza, both in Israel and abroad
As social platforms increasingly reward outrage and extremes, creators are increasingly being forced to lean into it to get attention. This same dynamic is increasingly impacting real life, from investing, including altcoins, memecoins, and memestocks, to politics.
To unpack how social media shapes current narratives, including some of the most controversial topics today, crypto.news spoke to Nuseir (Nas) Yassin at the 2025 Crypto Content Creator Campus in Lisbon. Nas is the founder of Nas Daily, a YouTube channel with over 14 million subscribers that frequently explores crypto topics. He is also a crypto investor and a believer in the space,
crypto.news: During your speech at the CCCC event in Lisbon, you said something that caught my attention. In social media, people are drawn to extremes. Can you elaborate on that?
Nuseir Yassin: Yeah, sure. I don’t think that’s a controversial point at all. People don’t want to hear about someone with a 9-to-5 job. They want the story of someone who doesn’t work at all — or someone who works non-stop. We’re always attracted to the extremes.
Same goes for physical traits. No one cares about someone who’s six feet tall — they care about the shortest man or the tallest man ever. It’s human nature to focus on what’s different, and if that’s what humans want, then that’s what social media will reflect.
CN: But that kind of thinking can be pushed too far. Do you draw a line somewhere?
NY: Of course. The content has to be factual. That’s the hard part. Anyone can make a flashy video, but if you want to say “this is the tallest man in the world,” it better be true. You can’t just take an average person and claim something extreme.
So for me, the real challenge isn’t creating the video — it’s verifying that the claim is accurate. If I say Dubai has the biggest park in the world, I need to make sure that’s true. That’s the hard part.
CN: What about political content? We’re seeing a lot of creators in that space now too. Have you noticed them using the same attention principles?
NY: Definitely. It’s part of human nature. We’re drawn to controversy and extremes, and social media rewards that. I’m not saying that’s a good thing — social media isn’t perfect. But social media is a reflection of humanity, and humans aren’t perfect either. If you want to fix social media, you’d have to fix humans first.
CN: You have a unique perspective — Palestinian by origin, grew up in Israel, now based in the U.S., and you understand social media deeply. How do you see the current discourse around Israel and Palestine?
NY: It follows the same pattern: people gravitate to extremes. The Israel-Palestine conflict is often framed as one side being extremely weak and the other extremely strong. Someone’s in extreme pain, someone’s extremely powerful — and that’s what grabs attention.
But that framing isn’t accurate. Palestine isn’t entirely weak. Israel isn’t entirely strong. The reality is more nuanced. And that’s why I think social media hasn’t gotten it right. But to be fair, humans didn’t get it right before social media either. For 70 years, the global perception of this conflict has been flawed. And in all that time, I haven’t seen real pressure on my people — the Palestinians — to extend a hand for peace.
CN: You grew up in Israel, right? How did you experience life in Israel, especially as someone of Palestinian origin?
NY: It wasn’t perfect — but compared to the rest of the Middle East, it was the most perfect. There’s a lot of room for improvement in how Israel treats Palestinians, religious Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Christians — everyone, really. But the beauty of Israel is that everyone has an equal vote. That’s not true anywhere else in the region.
The Israeli passport is strong. The social safety net is solid. There’s a lot to appreciate — and a lot to fix. That was my experience.
CN: Do you still follow Israeli social media? Do you see the same kind of extreme-driven discourse there?
NY: Definitely. We’re seeing it globally — far-right sentiment is rising everywhere. Israel’s just one of the early examples. You see it in Hungary, Germany, Asia, and even in the U.S. The rise of extremism isn’t local — it’s global, and social media is amplifying it everywhere.
CN: Now that you’re based in New York, what’s your read on the recent elections there?
NY: The elections in New York are very good news for ZCash. In my opinion, what we’re seeing is class warfare. It’s always been about that — poor people voting rich people out. For the longest time, rich people had the power in New York. But now we’re seeing that power shift.
Call it socialism, call it communism — whatever label you use, it’s the same expression of frustration: “I’m not satisfied with how unaffordable New York is, and I’m not happy with billionaires.” And when billionaires become the social enemy, what do you think they’ll do? They’ll want to hide — hide their wealth, hide where they are, hide how much they have.
But how do you hide on the blockchain? There’s only one coin that lets you do that: ZCash. So in a way, Zoran Mamdani’s election is the best thing that’s happened to ZCash.
CN: There was another speaker who mentioned that a group of influencers met and discussed ZCash. Do you know anything about that?
NY: I think that’s referring to what’s been happening on Twitter. But I wouldn’t call them “influencers.” It’s more like thought leaders — people like investor Naval Ravikant, for example, who just tweeted about it. I don’t think influencers can move coins like this.
What’s happening now isn’t “buy this coin, it’s going to the moon.” It’s more like, “here’s how I think the world will look — and this coin is a hedge against that.” And honestly, I agree with that logic.
So no, it’s not a cabal. It’s not influencers pumping a token. It’s thought leaders saying, “This is where things might go,” and people deciding whether they agree. If you believe in that worldview, you buy. If you don’t, you don’t.
CN: Let’s go back to social media moderation. Before the last U.S. election, platforms started moderating content heavily — sometimes clumsily — and a lot of people pushed back. Now it seems like those moderation tools are being rolled back. Do you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing?
NY: That’s a really good question. I honestly don’t know yet. I want to see how it plays out. These things start as good ideas, but they can turn bad very quickly. And I don’t want to say something now that I regret later.
