What Happens When You’re the Investment

Even this generation’s superstars rethink old norms. The 19-year-old TikTok star Josh Richards had flirted with being a brand ambassador for Red Bull. When I asked him why he passed, he looked at me quizzically—why, he wondered, should he be the vessel for someone else’s wealth creation? That’s the playbook for celebrities of yesteryear. Instead, R... See more

We’ll have to answer two key questions. First, at what point does human agency give way to financial obligation? And second, at what point does a relationship become a transaction? There’s a fine line between investment and speculation, and between speculation and gambling. What happens when someone loses money on $ALEX or $SWIFT? Financializing li... See more

The promise of the internet was to erase the gatekeepers. Instead of waiting for a record label to sign you, you could share your music on Spotify. Instead of asking a publication to share your words, you could tweet. Instead of being tapped by a studio exec, you could become a YouTuber. But what happened is that these platforms became the new gate... See more

Rather than borrow money from investors, friends, or family, Masmej made himself the investment.

The Grammy-winning artist RAC launched $RAC last fall with the caveat that fans can’t buy $RAC—they can only earn it through their fandom. RAC distributed $RAC retroactively to fans based on their support: whether they’d been a Patreon subscriber, whether they’d bought merchandise in the past, and so on. Fans could then cash in the $RAC they’d earn... See more

We’re all evangelists for our favorite artists, and yet we capture little of the value we help create. Social tokens uniquely combine elements of patronage (support for the artist), fandom (closer connection to the artist), and investment (financial upside from the appreciation of the digital asset).

The web’s first era was about information flowing freely—think Google giving you access to the world’s knowledge. Most of us were passive consumers in this era. The second era was the social web—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. People began to create their own content, and that content became the lifeblood of the big platforms. We became active partic... See more

This may sound dystopian to some, the plotline of a Black Mirror episode. But social tokens are part of a broader and fundamentally positive phenomenon: everyone is becoming an investor. Over time, wealth has accumulated with a select few—the investing class—while the rest of America rents time as salaried and hourly workers. Only one in two Americ... See more

The third era of the web is about righting the ship. Social capital becomes economic capital. Value no longer accumulates to brokers and intermediaries.