Words With Web 3’s King: An Interview With Chris Dixon

First I’d argue that the digital world and the physical world are already deeply interconnected and getting more so everyday. The internet is a global brain that increasingly orchestrates the global body. One of the myths around Jetsons-like robots is that automation happens visibly, with a 1:1 correspondence between the thing replaced and the thin... See more

First, I believe VR will be a major computing platform, as or more significant than the phone and PC were. Facebook should sell about 10 million Oculus Quests this year. The headset will continue to get smaller, lighter, higher res, more powerful, and with many more and better apps. This will drive exponential growth the same way it did with PCs an... See more

I have mixed feelings about Facebook being the likely winner here. On the one hand, it’s the last founder-run of the big 5 tech companies, and I admire Zuck’s vision and aggression. On the other hand, Facebook has a history of creating closed systems that don’t interoperate, charge high take rates, arbitrarily change rules on developers, and other ... See more

For example, Bloomberg is a company that makes the bulk of its revenue renting computer terminals to banks and hedge funds, and, unsurprisingly, is probably the most negative on crypto. It would be as if Exxon owned a news company that covered clean energy.

Advertising at its core is a market for attention. In any future version of the internet, I’d expect markets for attention to pop up. It’s a natural barter between one party with a surplus of attention and another party with a deficit. It particularly makes sense for direct response advertising. An auction for purchasing intent is a very good way t... See more

I also try to pay close attention to my media diet. I find it’s much easier to control the inputs vs how you process those inputs. I studiously avoid corporate media and other secondary sources and get almost all my news from primary sources: one-on-one conversations, Twitter and Substack, video interviews, financial reports, technical papers, prim... See more

A few numbers. Online advertising averages 1% of US GDP — roughly $200B out of a $20T economy— important, but not critical. For context the US video game business is about $65B, with about $20B coming from virtual goods. I think with new web3 business models we could easily 10x the virtual goods economy. So I don’t see why replacing advertising wit... See more

Historically, with really major tech breakthroughs, in the first few decades you get first-order effects. The first order effect of the automobile was getting you from one place to another faster. But the really profound things happened in the next phase from second-order effects: suburbs, commuting, highways, trucking, fast food and big box retail... See more

So to answer your question: it’s early. We are barely a decade into the modern era. The most popular applications are early and, I would argue, fundamentally flawed. Take Twitter, which is probably the most visible example of both the good and bad of the modern internet. On the good side: I can look down on my phone and see the most interesting tho... See more

The other big factor for me is, when I start to get interested in a topic, I try to go talk to the smartest enthusiasts and smartest critics. Sometimes as you do this you discover the critics are really well informed and have strong arguments. Other times you discover the opposite. I specifically decided to devote my career to crypto/web3 a few yea... See more