Why the New York Times Should be Tokenized

Why don't we have more tokenized products?

There has been lots of talk about the current battle between “old” media platforms like The New York Times and upstart newsletters on Substack, and I believe tokenization could emerge as a key differentiator for forward-thinking media companies. Especially for new companies and products, allowing early subscribers to benefit from future upside can ... See more

-The tech isn’t there yet: If you’re building in web3, you’ll know this secret; behind the shiny exterior of the future is a tech world that is very, very early. Key products are yet to be built, documentation for existing tools is sparse, APIs are raw or nonexistent, and so much of the tech that does exist is narrowly focused on NFTs and tokenized... See more

In a non-tokenized subscription world, I have no real incentive to help the media brand grow. As such, I may be perfectly happy to share my subscription with other people, set an auto-forward on the newsletter I pay for, and so on.

-There are legal risks

For anyone who has worked in early-stage products and companies, you know how heavy the boulder is that rolls up the hill towards product market fit. Allowing early adopters a chance at future upside can make the other side of that hill just a bit lower.

-Cashflows and incentive structures: If early subscribers benefit from the future growth of the media business, where does that money come from? The answer is that it comes from your future cashflow, either in the form of extended subscriptions for the early adopter (as in the example above) or via access being sold on secondary markets (if that ea... See more

Any product where you’re spending a lot of time using it in incognito has a pretty big UX problem

Some might ask: “Why not just buy a normal subscription to the NYT and also get some stock?” It’s a fair point, and the short answer is that this model is even more powerful for smaller media companies that aren’t public yet and have no existing way to allow early subscribers to benefit from future growth. The long answer is that tokenization of th... See more

In a tokenized media model, I’m incentivized to drive more demand to the subscription. That means I’m more likely to encourage my friends to get their own subscription or to proactively share the content with others I think might benefit from it. This is especially true if we’re talking about newer media brands — the newsletter writer who just turn... See more