Creators, Communities, and Crypto — Fred Ehrsam

Imagine Yeezy drops being done this way. As we’ve seen with the Chinese versions of sneaker marketplace StockX like Poizon and DoNew, most of the activity comes from people trading the shoes synthetically. Roughly 80% of the sneaker trading volume comes from people who never even take delivery of the shoes or wear them. And it’s a big market: Poizo... See more

I think it’s almost all social. For most fans it's really about the flex: “I was the first person to be a fan” or “I’m the biggest fan”, and that can be shown in a bunch of different ways. Maybe you get a new badge or achievement when you donate more than $500 to that person. That’s a real flex. They’re clearly a super fan. The social side of it ex... See more

Outside of crypto there are other experiments that have been run. Like Mike Merrill, this guy who literally securitized himself so shareholders can vote on life decisions that he makes. Also Spencer Dinwiddie (a star player on the Brooklyn Nets), who is issuing a bond based on his future NBA earnings and sponsorships, kind of similar to [David] Bow... See more

I wonder if there are two angles to use crypto in “financing” for creators and communities. One is the traditional financing angle: people need money to create things. The second is that it’s actually all about distribution. Creators or communities often don’t need the money. For example, how much does it cost for Charli D’Amelio, the most popular ... See more

What's nice about Twitch and Stream Labs is they give creators easy templates to monetize their audience. I’ve met a few teams that pitched the idea of helping creators tokenize. And the question I always drill them on is: what are the templates that you're giving creators to make that can be useful across platforms? They probably need a template t... See more

My intuition is it’s more likely to start with distribution than crowdfunding. There are tools to fund future development or work available to most creators. If you're a musician, you go to a record label and I'm sure there's the equivalent in the influencer world. Competing head to head with existing services is not the way to go. The new cool thi... See more