Chris’ note: Last night, colleague and Silicon Valley insider Jeff Brown went live with his first-ever blockchain event. 17,849 of your fellow readers tuned in. And judging by their responses, it was a huge hit.
If you missed last night’s event, don’t worry. You can catch the free replay here to hear Jeff share his vision for how blockchains – the technology that powers crypto – will disrupt some of the biggest Big Tech companies.
Then read on below for my conversation with Jeff about why he’s so excited about blockchains. We cover why Jack Dorsey at Twitter and other Big Tech censors should be quaking in their boots. And Jeff shows why NFTs – one of the hottest areas in blockchain tech right now – are here to stay.
Chris Lowe: You just wrapped up your first crypto livestream event, Click for Crypto. Nearly 18,000 people showed up. And I know the response was hugely positive. What makes you so excited about blockchain tech right now?
Jeff: This is something I’ve been waiting to do for more than five years. Most people don’t know this, but I’ve been active as a private investor in blockchain tech since 2014.
I first recommended bitcoin (BTC) at an exclusive subscriber event colleague Bill Bonner organized back in 2015. Bitcoin was trading for just $235 at the time. As you know, it rocketed to more than $64,000 earlier this year.
But I’ve been waiting for the industry to mature enough for normal investors to safely invest in cryptocurrencies and digital assets and get exposure to this explosive new asset class.
Chris: Daily Cut readers can catch the free replay of your livestream event here. But let’s cover some of the basics now so folks can better understand what’s going on. A lot of people have heard of blockchain in the context of bitcoin. What else do blockchains do besides facilitate online currency transactions?
Jeff: The word you used – “blockchains,” plural – is key. There are many blockchains. It’s not just the bitcoin blockchain.
Bitcoin was just the first “app” on a blockchain. It’s a safe store of value and something you can transfer on a peer-to-peer basis.
And transactions are immutable. In other words, they can’t be changed. That’s revolutionary. But bitcoin was just the beginning of the blockchain revolution.
Another blockchain many people have heard of is the Ethereum blockchain. Its digital asset is ether (ETH).
The revolution the Ethereum blockchain brought to the industry was the ability to have “smart contracts.” These pieces of code run on the Ethereum blockchain in a decentralized, immutable way.
They allow you to, for example, lend some ETH to someone at a certain interest rate for a certain time. You can encapsulate all that in a smart contract. It all happens completely automatically. You don’t need to take any separate action. And when the contract’s specified term is up, your ETH comes back with the agreed-upon interest.
You can also use smart contracts for anything from insurance to gaming.
But Chris, here’s the thing I want your readers to understand… There are thousands of blockchains. Each one has features that make it good for specific applications. And almost all these blockchains have their own digital assets.
We’ve only just scratched the surface of the industry. We’ve seen only 10% of what’s going to happen in what I consider the next generation of the internet and the next generation of financial services.
We have more than 90% to look forward to over the next five to 10 years.
Chris: You talked about how blockchain will lead to Web 3.0, which you’ve described as an upgrade of the internet. What do you mean by Web 3.0? And why should people care about this new generation of apps for the internet, built on blockchains?
Jeff: Longtime readers know how excited I am for the rollout of 5G wireless technology. I’ve said that the transition from 4G to 5G will be a “revolution.”
But the transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 will be far more profound. If 5G is a revolution, Web 3.0 is an existential sea change.
Simply put, Web 3.0 is a new architecture for the internet that’s built on the principle of decentralization. That makes it resistant to the kind of censorship we see all the time on Web 2.0 – the current version of the internet. [Jeff broke down all three generations of internet last week.]
Chris: Internet censorship is something I write about a lot here at the Cut. But for folks who are new to the conversation, why is censorship resistance so important?
Jeff: The internet was meant to be free and open – to be free of censorship and free of centralized control.
What happened? Exactly the opposite. We have these massive gatekeepers that ban and censor what you can read online. The internet is becoming closed.
A lot of people, including me, have a philosophical problem with that. Big Tech companies can disallow us from accessing real information. They can even banish published scientific research from the internet.
Web 3.0, this next generation of the internet I’ve been talking about, is an effort to decentralize the web and break up the power of Big Tech monopolies such as Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB), and Twitter (TWTR).
Most people don’t know it yet. But decentralized platforms that aren’t controlled by a single company are in the process of replacing these monopolies.
Blockchains are built on tens of thousands of “nodes” – or links – all over the world. So there’s no single chokepoint. There’s no single executive, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, who’s able to shut down an entire network.
Chris: Is there another area of blockchain technology you’re particularly excited about?
Jeff: One area taking off right now is the market for NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. These are smart contracts on a blockchain that represent rights to digital art or a digital item, such as a sports trading card.
NFTs are great for fan clubs. People who are passionate about sports teams or individual players can buy an NFT of them. That NFT could be something as simple as a short video clip of a game-winning score. But it also can confer fan perks. For example, a special dinner with the athlete at some future date. Or access to a private party the athlete or the team is attending.
There’s another concept I’m very excited about, something some have referred to as “digiphizzy,” which is “digital to physical.” Digiphizzy NFTs give you the right to a physical object.
Let’s stick with the idea of fan clubs, say a football club. You could buy an NFT that gives you the rights to an autographed football.
The applications for NFTs in the gaming community, as well, are extraordinary. There’s an Ethereum-blockchain-based NFT gaming platform called Axie Infinity. That’s the first NFT game to smash through $1 billion in sales. About $750 million happened in just the last four weeks.
NFTs are going viral. And they’re not a fad. They’re the next generation of gaming. They’re the next generation of collectibles, of art. And they’re the next generation of fan clubs.
Chris: Thanks, Jeff. That’s a great introduction to how blockchains are changing the nature of the internet and of gaming. And I know we just scratched the surface here.
Jeff: Anytime, Chris. For folks who want to learn more about the profit opportunities here, they can catch the replay of last night’s livestream event.
I pulled back the curtain on a major development in crypto from the co-creator of ETH. Early investors in ETH are up a once-in-a-lifetime gain of 1,017,943%. So getting in early now is a huge opportunity for you to potentially make extraordinary profits when the big money rolls in.