20,000 crypto bros at ETH Denver
At one of the largest crypto gatherings in the world, what I learnt about about the culture, the state of NFTs and DAOs, and why not to bet against this space.
This is an extension of a recent Twitter thread I wrote on the topic.
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1/ Everyone is loving life. This is not a typical "work event". It's a sheer joy to spend all day every day talking about crypto, and where it could affect all elements of society: finance, politics, culture, music, identity, science. 🤓
2/ Nobody talks about price. I cannot stress this enough. Prices fell 10% in one day and I didn't hear about it until the evening. Granted, most people who own crypto are financially speculating, but the builders are unphased by the volatility. Yes, everyone wants to make money, but most are mature enough to realise that fulfilment comes from creating change and not from quick financial wins. But this is far too nuanced a message for the press to report…
3/ Average intelligence is insanely high. The quality of people in this space is the best reason to bet on crypto long term: value propositions change and regulation / black swan events occur, but with the smartest, most ambitious people in the world jumping into crypto, it's foolish to bet against these people, and hence this space.
4/ That said, it's a fine line between creative experimentation and being an absolute chancer. The vast majority of people are doing the former, but a small minority are the latter, and these people are exclusively launching NFT projects... Make of that what you will. 🙃
5/ NFTs are now widely thought of as assets. But still 'cultural assets' with their value tied to human sentiment not revenue. In my opinion where we'll see NFTs prove their true value as assets this year is where they integrate with DeFi to unlock new avenues and hence generate cash-flow. Check out protocols like Upshot pioneering this.
6/ Real world assets in DeFi are maturing. It's taken longer than we hoped but the issues are being solved. There now seems a clear route to integrating DeFi liquidity with real world assets and real world use cases. The panel with Maker DAO, Centrifuge, ReSource Finance and Teller Finance was a particular highlight.
7/ DAOs, DAOs and DAOs. Everything is a DAO and everyone is in multiple DAOs. This is super exciting and the possibilities are endless. But unfortunately human beings have A) limited attention spans and B) a fixed number of hours in a day. Retention of DAO members will become increasingly hard.
8/ But as the DAO experimentation continues, we'll figure out where the best use cases are for DAOs: which industries, groups or causes flourish under decentralised structures. And where hybrid structures of partial decentralisation are more effective than full decentralisation.
9/ If DAOs can sustainably enable better human interaction then this is THE killer use case for crypto, above internet money. The last big innovation in human coordination was the Limited Company back in 1811. If DAOs live up to their promise, could they eventually flip the narrative around crypto as primarily a tool for coordination and secondarily as internet money?
10/ Culture, politics and identity: this was a BIG talking point, in light of recent 'cancellings' of high profile people. These discussions are healthy and are signs of an ecosystem maturing. But my worry from the many conversations I had is that many people feel uncomfortable voicing their true opinions online and will only do so in person. This is very very very bad. If we're going to live in a world where we undertake 95% of our professional interactions online, we MUST become comfortable expressing our true views / values online. Otherwise we're only being ourselves 5% of the time. I don’t know how to fix this, but it's a big problem bubbling under the surface.
11/ Macro take: America no longer provides opportunities the rest of the world can't. The US crypto ecosystem is awesome, but no more so than the European ecosystem. US has access to more VC money at higher valuations, but US citizens are also being frozen out of many crypto products by government regulation. So it’s horses for courses.
12/ But hey, Andrew Yang is a cool dude.
13/ What America has that the UK and Europe doesn't is a "can do anything" attitude. More people have side hustles and experiment with new ideas. Entrepreneurs are celebrated for trying, not ridiculed for failing. This psyche breeds innovation and entrepreneurship. We need more of this in the UK.