Founders

did some writing and ended up making myself pretty bullish that @zora is on the right track. 

haven’t posted on fc in a while so lmk if there is a better channel/format

Crypto is very close to its mainstream breakthrough and it’s clear to almost everyone that the
killer use case is tokens. 

The challenge is conveying to the average person what tokens are and
why they are valuable.
Currently there’s a narrative barbell of tokens.
On one end we have magic internet money.
On the other end we have internet capital markets.

creating 
metal.build
 | the easiest way to tokenize an app 

++++
writing | https://paragraph.xyz/@slow-tokens

Internet Capital Markets is conversely the thought that tokens need a very tangible value. Be it
cash flows, rev share or access to some underlying asset with “real value”
. These tokens are
viewed as financial assets where value can be mathematically deduced. While these tokens
may get swept up in market irrationality they do have some underlying fundamentals.
Defi summer was peak irrationality for these types of tokens and while many of these were held
up by pure speculation, APY/TVL and the like were real (unsustainable) fundamentals that gave
these tokens value.
Most tokens by total market value would sit in this bucket, each category has different
fundamentals and there is an argument that many of these fundamentals are as worthless as
the defi summer ones, but none the less people understand that L1, Infra, and RWA are
valuable because value will (maybe) flow to them in the future.

In terms of what “newness” crypto enables, internet capital markets give us very little. Yes
raising funds for a new project frictionlessly and potentially at micro scale is compelling, but
1. Most value accruing endeavors are already served by traditional rails.
2. Anything not served by traditional rails probably accrues negligible value.
3. Unless the activity is onchain, traditional rails are still needed to connect value to token.

Magic internet money is letting technology lead the way. Very much like creating content on the
early internet the value is almost inarticulable.
If I post something online who cares enough to read it?
If I put something onchain who cares enough to buy it?
It took almost a decade+ for us to put labels like “influencer” on some of the trends that
organically emerged. In highsight it's very obvious. I desire nothing more than for crypto to cross
the chasm into the mainstream. The pragmatists say we must shed memecoins and NFTs and
those inarticulable parts of our industry are holding us back. It is these elements that have
captured the attention and imagination of the regular people

Magic Internet Money is the idea that tokens have some inarticulable value. It’s usually
explained as some combination of attention/community/endowment effect. The main element of
this distills down to there is some base motivation to buying/owning tokens and those that can
suspend disbelief are able to participate.
The main proponent of this school of thought right now is @zora pushing people to “just coin”
their images posts whatever. This is a natural progression of what we have seen in memecoins
and NFTs. There is inherently something that gives these things value, and even though the nft
and memecoin frenzies have subsided that doesn’t mean that they didn’t/don’t have an intrinsic
value.
.

cracked mobile app developer | prev @rainbow | optimistic degen in general

Tokens are indeed the future of crypto. Simplifying their value proposition will be key to mass adoption. Exciting times ahead!