Nifty Corporates

In 1999, during the frenzy of the dot com bubble, practically every company built a website, and any company that added “.com” to their name soared in value. One 2001 study in The Journal of Finance found that companies that added “.com,” “.net,” or “Internet” to their name saw their stock prices increase 74% in the days following the name change.

Similarly, web3 spent its first decade or so as a playground for researchers, coders, and degens. People bought drugs with crypto, too. Last year, corporates started dipping their toes by buying Bitcoin with their balance sheets. Over the past month or so, though, it really feels as if web2 companies are waking up to the fact that they need to figu... See more

As with everything in crypto, early participants are disproportionately rewarded. There will be diminishing returns -- the 100th company to buy a CryptoPunk or Bored Ape will get a fraction of the press and attention that the first does.

Commercially, if the internet changed how products are sold, web3 changes what products are sold.

He argued that VISA turned what’s historically been a cost center into an asset on the balance sheet. If marketing spend becomes a profit center, that could dramatically increase companies’ marketing budgets and alter how they spend them. VISA purchased CryptoPunk #7610 for 49.5 ETH. Already, the CryptoPunks floor, the lowest price you could pay to... See more

Over the next twenty years, NFTs will transition from novel to normal. I think we’ll look back and wonder how commerce happened at all without digital ownership, a liquid, always-on global marketplace, and items that come with experiences baked in. As with the internet, the companies that dismiss NFTs and web3 will be left behind.

New brands need ways to bootstrap early demand and build loyalty without spending all of their money on Facebook and Google ads. A new DTC sneaker brand might bundle NFTs with online sneaker purchases that are more rare the earlier you are, or even show off your customer number. The Allbirds #1 NFT would be a weird, cool status signifier among cert... See more

It’s still incredibly early for NFTs. If the target market is ultimately “anyone who buys anything online” (which it should be), and over 2 billion people have made an online purchase, then only 0.01% of the target market has purchased an NFT, using OpenSea’s 292k all-time traders as a proxy.

But I think there’s a key difference: manias like the one that gripped the Dutch in the 17th Century or Beanie Baby collectors in the 1990s were isolated and non-composable. Money thrown at Tulips or Beanie Babies didn’t spur innovation that others could build on.