Jarrod Dicker's sane person's guide to crypto

Something about the podcast highlights format wasn’t working for me, so I’m switching up the Monday version to feature highlights from the podcast as well as some thoughts on other matters in sustainable publishing. After all, formats matter. Let me know what you think. This week’s topics:

Going down the rabbit hole with TCG’s Jarrod Dicker

Censorship fights

Individual brands in publishing

Well-paid journalists

Company teardown pieces

The pivot to pragmatism, web3 edition

Crypto is polarizing. Talk to a web3 trust believer – I define web3 as encompassing crypto currencies, blockchain, decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens and decentralized autonomous organizations – and you’ll hear we are on the cusp of a blockchain utopia that sounds a lot like a kibbutz designed by Ayn Rand. And if you don’t see that, well, you’re ngmi. The doubters of this “pathetic tech future,”  scramble to dismiss the latest crypto craze as a “bust.” Most critiques at their heart are a version of this throwaway line in an otherwise quite interesting Time  profile of Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin:

“Ethereum has made a handful of white men unfathomably rich, pumped pollutants into the air, and emerged as a vehicle for tax evasion, money laundering, and mind-boggling scams.” 

Well, when you put it that way…

I’m too much of a realist for these extremes. I believe crypto is, in some ways, inevitable based on the sheer amount of capital – financial, people and cultural – going into it. Kevin Roose, who has taken a moderate approach to the Crypto Holy Wars, has a very good web3 primer for those with open minds. The trough of disillusionment is a critical part of any adoption cycle.

I’m most interested in web3 through the lens of publishing models. For that, Jarrod Dicker is my web3 shaman, since as a longtime publishing executive at places like The Huffington Post and The Washington Post, he’s got a foot in the Old World of Web 1 and Web 2.0 and now one firmly in the New World as a partner at investment firm TCG.

What I like about Jarrod is, despite his affinity for Phish and cryptic tweets, he’s a realist. He knows how early it is for this set of technologies having tangible impact.

Some key takeaways from my conversation with Jarrod:

NFTs matter. Look beyond the speculative frenzy over ape drawings. The importance of NFTs are when they’re tied to access and community. In media, imagine moving people from a passive audience to active participants to owners.

Web3 needs better marketing. Let’s face it, crypto boosters do themselves no favors by coming across as Crazy Eddie on bath salts. The challenge of movi