With Coinbase NFT launched today in beta, the marketplace will be like an Instagram for NFT Creators.
Check it out.
So Creators have a very prominent place.
A few things here, one of the main investors in Crypto and the Creator Economy is a16z, who are themselves behaving more like a media company as well. This basically following the Cathy Wood template. Social amplification works and it works very well in crypto onboarding as well, remember ICOs? Now it’s NFTs? Raining NFTs.
So the natural play here is then Web 3.0 being the intersection of crypto and the Creator Economy.
So what are we talking about here?
Basically Coinbase can become Instagram faster than Instagram could build an NFT marketplace. Coinbase’s real genius here is creating social traction to increase its app into a super-app that can encompass NFTs, among other things.
The crypto exchange is ambitiously building out a full-blown social network
I never realized Coinbase would create such a social-discovery product within its NFT marketplace. It could benefit various new kinds of Creators in the Crypto Creator Economy, that can be pretty lucrative at the intersection of art, gaming and video-streaming.
Everything from E-commerce to E-sports could be important here. The a16z rhetoric will come to pass because GenZ wants to earn crypto and money online in new ways, DeFi and Metaverse pilots will facilitate how this ecosystem is coming into being in the 2020s. Web 3.0 is fundamentally the 2020 to 2035 period. We are just entering it now.
As you may know, I’m very interested in the evolution of the Creator Economy.
That young people are creating their own job online or forming side gigs that can sustain themselves is very interesting. Crypto to some extent has facilitated this but Web 3.0 platforms will further normalize and mainstream it. Will Coinbase become a Web3 platform, there’s a reasonable chance it could.
As Facebook tries to clone Roblox, it will attempt to monetize and hop on the NFT bandwagon. The problem? Young people don’t necessarily use its dated apps. People typically use their favorite 5 or under apps, a lot. They aren’t going to use Instagram that much, if TikTok or Snap is where their friends and peer-groups are.
Coinbase is showing signs of real production innovation with the NFT marketplace beta.
https://nft.coinbase.com/
So April 20th, 2022 will be remembered as an important date for the intersection of the Creator Economy and Web 3.0 platforms.
As Coinbase rolls out beta testing for its NFT trading platform Wednesday, it joins a host of cryptocurrency exchanges that are reconfiguring themselves for tokenized collectibles.
But it’s also maybe building a future corner of social media for the crypto bullish.
Coinbase NFT clearly aspires to go beyond just a hub to buy and sell goods. In fact, its user interface looks a lot like—dare we say it?—a social media app. Fast company and many others weren’t shy to notice this either.
This means the Creator Economy narrative has now inclusive to Web 3.0 hype, and everyone is jumping on the bandwagon even platforms that have no idea what the Creator Economy even is like LinkedIn. LinkedIn for the record has no method outside of LinkedIn Courses, for users to monetize. Some sales professionals have hacked the algo and created products and like to show off of all things, their listicles and copywriting talents with “you can do it too” authentic messages. Unfortunately, this is not likely to attract young Creators.
However the lure of dollars with NFTs and crypto, just might do the trick!
For the record, while everyone are building NFT into their platforms, even Patreon has been thinking of how to embed crypto in its Creator Economy monetization system. So the two ends are converging rapidly.
Maybe one day you’ll be able to tip me in a cryptocurrency on Substack, who knows!
So how is a16z involved? The Media is the message. Andreessen Horowitz wants to invest in the future, so the venture capital firm has launched its own standalone media property, Future, to tell you exactly what that is. Check it out:
So VCs like this can guarantee that crypto and the Creator Economy hug really well and cozy. Andreessen Horowitz is one of the biggest profiteers of both Crypto platforms and the Creator Economy, so it will wed the two and it has already happened. Cathie Wood might eventually be outdone.
The Future? The initial leadership staff includes Margit Wennmachers, Operating Partner, Marketing and Future at Andreessen Horowitz, editor in chief Sonal Chokshi, executive editor Maggie Leung and managing editor Amelia Salyers. We can tell ourselves stories about the future by the people who are also the owners.
Everybody wins! Well kinda. The “democratization of finance” after all has a price.
Coinbase for its angle just just let NFT hype take its course. Coinbase first publicized the project back in October, when it released a waiting list for a forthcoming peer-to-peer marketplace that lets people trade, mint, showcase, and discover NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. “If you’ve tried to create or purchase an NFT, you’ve probably found the user experience lacking,” it wrote in a blog post. “We’ll have a vibrant, secure marketplace. But we believe we can do much more . . . We’re designing for social engagement.”
So media and social are converging in the Creator Economy, anyone with an understanding of GenZ and Web3 can brute force their place in it to some extent. Very decentralized, I guess?
A16z already has a strong reputation for producing content via its popular podcast and company blog posts that outlines the intricacies of a nascent technology, especially those related to deep tech or coalescing out of research. People like Chris Dixon understand the conditions for hype have little to do with research though.
It turns out the crypto overloads wear VC suits and talk with the cocky smell of VC-backing. That the CEO of Coinbase owns so much less of his own company than the CEO of Binance is not surprising.
So what do you suppose is going on here? Surprise, surprise - Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square are the two largest outside investors in Coinbase.
Patreon does not appear to have significant backing by this winning camp. It’s the enemy then I guess. Comparisons between Patreon and Substack are pretty interesting.
So a16z has absurd incentives to marry their bets in crypto with the Creator Economy. But who will follow? I think it will be everyone.
Just like the new “Creator Managers” of LinkedIn act as a swarm liking their own interests and shunning outsiders to their team, Web 3 hype is in mid 2022 correlating with bizarrely, hype around the Creator Economy. Not such a coincidence.
a16z’s Future media initiatives encapsulates this, when they clearly state: "If you're a venture capital firm, you want to advance the future. And that's what this media entity is designed to do," Wennmachers said. "If we help accelerate the advancement of the future, and by reputation we are viewed by entrepreneurs as like, 'These people get me, I'd like to take their money,' then I think the community will be happy, the world with more tech will be happy and our [limited partners] will be happy." So do platforms pick the winners?
Equality in the Creator Economy, might not be what it seems. Even what “no censorship” means may not indulge free speech or real freedom of expression. If you are tethered to a platform, even a “Creator” platform, are you really free?
The crypto community unofficially lives on forums like Discord and Telegram, and congregates in Twitter threads. But if Coinbase NFT’s launch takes off, it might just become the Instagram of Web3. That will have ramifications on how the Creator Economy scales in Web3 products and will be a role-model of how other platforms will try to replicate it. As Web3 legacy platforms fade in their popularity, new ones will simply take their place.
Monetization for Creators will improve, until they are paid their real world. How a16z, Coinbase, Substack and other platforms with NFT or crypto integrations navigate this will be fascinating to watch.
Web 3.0 will significantly accelerate the Creator Economy. The pyramid scheme of Bitcoin and so many crypto-ecosystems is already mirror in how the top earners on Patreon or Substack, take home most of the money. It is what it is, FOMO is the best marketing. Roblox that deals with the creativity of kids, is even worse - it takes home an even greater share of the profits.
Coinbase NFT Marketplace
The Beta is now live. But what is the message?
The beta iteration of the exchange’s marketplace is putting a social-media spin on NFT trading.
But what does social even mean in the alleys of Telegram and artistic ambitions of Discord chats?
And who are the winners? Is it the Creators or the Venture Capitalists or Silicon Valley companies aspiring to on-board new platforms? Can we truly call Coinbase, a Web 3.0 platform contender? If not, who else?
The Platform enters crowded field six months after announcement. How will consolidation occur? Can Walmart, OpenSea or Instagram for that matter do any better?
Do we really want Discover and “likes” all over again?
The platform will allow users to showcase their personal profile and follow accounts whose content will appear in a “For You” feed, which is visually similar to social-media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Users will also be able to “like” and comment on each other's posts.
So is Web 3.0 cloning Web 2.0 with a new coat of paint or what else is going on here?
Chris Dixon, please advise.
“This product is more than just buying and selling, it is about building your community,” Sanchan Saxena, Coinbase's vice president of product, told reporters in a press briefing on Tuesday. Maybe Microsoft should get into gaming NFTs, now that is has bought itself into contention as a top Gaming company. I’m sure that’s already stealth in the works.
If Meta is doomed in the conception of the Metaverse, in its own purgatory, will ByteDance (the owner of TikTok) find a way to build the Creator Economy in a new way? Or YouTube? Something has to give.
The marketplace will support “all sorts of self-custody wallets” besides the official Coinbase Wallet, a decision the exchange made to create “an open NFT environment for everyone,” according to the briefing. While Coinbase might be building a DeFi utopia, I just wonder where Creators actually go to hustle next. The crypto universe has not exactly been a stellar reliable ecosystem for real people to pursue, and I’m not exactly sure what that changes.
Anyways thanks for reading my random thoughts.
If you want to support me so I can keep writing, please don’t hesitate to give me tips, a paid subscription or some donation. With a conversion rate of less than two percent, this Newsletter exists mostly by the grace of my goodwill (passion for technology and Web 3 decentralization) & a relative state of poverty as I pivot into the Creator Economy myself.
Sorry I’m not only pumping crypto in this Newsletter, I must be neuro-divergent with a bias to critical thinking somehow. No wonder I’m getting so little traffic.
Anyways I hope you enjoyed the topic, that’s all for today.