Crypto Critics' Corner

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Episode 145 – Read, Write, Own: Web3’s Broken Promises (feat. Molly White)

Read, Write, Owned: Broken Web3 Promises (Feat. Molly White) – Crypto Critics' Corner

Bennett Tomlin and Cas Piancey are joined by Molly White to discuss Andreessen Horowitz GP Chris Dixon's new book: Read, Write, Own. Read Molly's review of Dixon's book here and check out her archival cryptocurrency news site here. Read Protos' article about how a16z gamed the NYT Bestseller List here. Read Motherboard's article about how many copies of Read, Write, Own were bulk purchased here. This episode was recorded on February 10th, 2024.

Cas Piancey and Bennett Tomlin are joined by Molly White to discuss Chris Dixon’s new book: Read, Write, Own.

This podcast was recorded on February 10th, 2024.

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English Transcript:

00:00:05:08 - 00:00:12:10
Cas Piancey
Welcome back, everyone. I am Cas Piancey and I’m joined as usual by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett Tomlin. Bennett, how are you today?

00:00:12:10 - 00:00:13:20
Bennett Tomlin
I'm doing well. How are you, Cas?

00:00:13:20 - 00:00:23:07
Cas Piancey
I'm doing great. We're joined by one of our favorite guests of all time, Molly White. Thank you for coming back and joining us today. How are you?

00:00:23:07 - 00:00:25:16
Molly White
Doing well. Always happy to come back on the show.

00:00:25:16 - 00:00:49:07
Cas Piancey
it's always nice to have you. And today we're today we're talking about a topic near and dear to my heart. We are we're discussing a few things that I think are really fun. We're discussing a book. The book is Read, Write Own. The author is Chris Dixon, who, if you're unfamiliar with him, he has quite a presence on X, formerly Twitter.

00:00:49:08 - 00:01:12:06
Cas Piancey
I think he has something like 500,000 followers or something like that, maybe 400,000, something like that. He is a partner for Andreessen Horowitz, A16z. They are a venture capital firm that has made a lot of moves in the cryptocurrency and tech space in general. They really have pushed Web3 and this notion of

00:01:12:06 - 00:01:14:00
Cas Piancey
how it's saving the internet

00:01:14:00 - 00:01:21:01
Cas Piancey
and with that, with the just broad explanation of what we're jumping into here, I have not read that book.

00:01:21:03 - 00:01:41:12
Cas Piancey
And my co-host, Bennett has, and Molly has. And the reason we wanted to have Molly on today is because her review really encapsulated what I expected this book to be. So we're going to link to her review. It's a review. Chris Dixon's Read, Write, Own. Prominent crypto venture capitalist Chris Dixon provides an

00:01:41:12 - 00:01:44:07
Cas Piancey
unkind, wincing Bible for blockchain solution.

00:01:44:10 - 00:01:53:03
Cas Piancey
Molly, you took the time to to get into the weeds of this. This as you call it, biblical prophecy for blockchain.

00:01:53:03 - 00:01:54:10
Cas Piancey
Why didn't it convince you?

00:01:54:10 - 00:02:17:20
Molly White
Chris Dixon is doing what, as you mentioned, Andreessen Horowitz has done for a long time now, which is they really like to focus, or at least some of them really like to focus on the idea that blockchains are the solution to all the problems with the web, which has always been something that like really gets my interest because I'm also really interested in the web and things that are wrong with it and ways that it could become better.

00:02:17:22 - 00:02:40:21
Molly White
And so I was really interested in reading sort of a long form explanation of things that they've been really saying for a long time, like in their blog posts, which are prolific. You know, they go on podcasts and say all this stuff. And it's always been really unconvincing because these names do identify actual problems, you know, that, you know, big tech is taking over the web.

00:02:40:21 - 00:02:48:22
Molly White
And so much of what we see is filtered through the algorithms of Google and Twitter and Facebook and all this stuff, which like there are legitimate complaints there,

00:02:48:22 - 00:03:04:13
Molly White
but then they just sort of jump to this idea that blockchains will solve those problems with really poor explanations of how they might solve those problems or how they might not introduce a lot of new problems.

00:03:04:15 - 00:03:08:19
Molly White
And in this book in particular, you know, a lot of what they were talking about

00:03:08:19 - 00:03:21:22
Molly White
was in the sort of 2020-2021 era where things were still a little bit nascent as far as people building these Web products on a theory. But now Dixon has come out with a book in 2024

00:03:21:22 - 00:03:32:10
Molly White
after a lot of projects have tried to do the very things that he is saying blockchains will be well-suited for, and they've failed at it spectacularly.

00:03:32:16 - 00:03:50:11
Molly White
And he doesn't mention those in the book. You know, he just talks about like, someday someone will do these things. And so, you know, I was really disappointed in the book because I was hoping for maybe at least an honest reflection on what's happened. And what's gone wrong. And, you know, maybe there are these problems we didn't think about, but there was really none of that.

00:03:50:12 - 00:03:57:11
Molly White
It was a lot of the same stuff they've been saying, you know, as if it was published in 2020 with no sort of benefit of experience

00:03:57:11 - 00:04:18:05
Bennett Tomlin
You mention there that he doesn't address the failures. And one of the almost stranger dynamics to me was how in some sense failures were passed off as if they were not that right. Like he had a whole several paragraph section where he was talking about how helium and how helium was a good example of how tokens can help you get around the bootstrap problem.

00:04:18:05 - 00:04:21:05
Bennett Tomlin
But no one uses helium,

00:04:21:05 - 00:04:29:16
Molly White
except for all the poor rubes who bought the the routers or whatever they call them, the hot spots, like there was a market for that.

00:04:29:16 - 00:04:41:06
Bennett Tomlin
I guess his argument there is you can take advantage of sufficiently stupid people if you make vague promises in front of them and that can save you money on infrastructure, build.

00:04:41:06 - 00:04:42:04
Molly White
I guess.

00:04:42:04 - 00:04:55:10
Cas Piancey
actually brings me to an act like a pretty interesting thought that I'm having where it's just like, okay, we know A16z Bennett, I hope you link to Bennett wrote this article for Protos

00:04:55:10 - 00:04:58:20
Cas Piancey
He went over every a16z investment and

00:04:58:20 - 00:05:06:09
Cas Piancey
lot of them were very, very poor investments. And I think Bennett did they invest in Axie infinity

00:05:06:09 - 00:05:10:19
Bennett Tomlin
They invested in Sky Mavis When Sky Mavis launched Axie Infinity,

00:05:10:19 - 00:05:19:07
Cas Piancey
if we want to look at the failures of the companies that they invest in, and I understand this is a part of venture capital, right, Like venture capital. Most of it's going to be failures.

00:05:19:07 - 00:05:27:06
Cas Piancey
Most of it is going to be companies that don't succeed in one way or another. They might not be scams, but they don't do what they think they're going to do.

00:05:27:06 - 00:05:37:20
Cas Piancey
It seems like it would be quite valuable actually, to go into the depths of that. If you want if you want a book that people are going to read and actually learn from.

00:05:37:22 - 00:05:41:04
Cas Piancey
I guess it seems like as especially as a venture capitalist

00:05:41:04 - 00:05:42:08
Bennett Tomlin
who once their.

00:05:42:08 - 00:05:45:01
Cas Piancey
I don't you think that would be a more interesting book? Am I

00:05:45:17 - 00:05:52:23
Bennett Tomlin
Well know. I'm just jumping ahead to your conclusion that an interesting book that people are actually going to read was not the goal here

00:05:52:23 - 00:05:54:00
Molly White
right.

00:05:54:00 - 00:05:55:01
Cas Piancey
Molly, you called it

00:05:55:01 - 00:06:09:18
Cas Piancey
essentially biblical. And I think I get that I'm getting that understanding as well. Everyone that sort of described it has called it like almost like religious in a in a sense, even the positive ones are kind of like it doesn't sound like it

00:06:09:18 - 00:06:13:14
Cas Piancey
uses hard data to back up his claims or anything like that.

00:06:13:14 - 00:06:16:08
Cas Piancey
What do you think was the goal of this book ultimately?

00:06:16:08 - 00:06:38:19
Molly White
Well, I really found myself wondering that when I was reading it, because there are so many parts in it where it's pretty clear who it's not for, you know, who is not writing the book for it. He's not writing it for skeptics Very clearly. He insults them at several points throughout the book. You know, anyone who tries to fact check some of the claims will easily find errors.

00:06:38:21 - 00:06:41:14
Molly White
So it's really not meant for like an adversarial reader.

00:06:41:14 - 00:07:04:06
Molly White
I don't think it's really meant for even someone who has not made up their mind on crypto and is open to maybe there's some possible use cases here unless they're very sort of uncritical because he's, you know, he'll say things as though they're facts, as though they are just like, well accepted truth and not bother to back up the argument or cite any data or anything.

00:07:04:06 - 00:07:12:04
Molly White
He'll just say things and then move right on. And you're like, Wait a minute, I needed more there. I needed to know, you know, what you were saying and why I should believe that.

00:07:12:04 - 00:07:20:04
Molly White
So I ended up feeling like the book is really just written for people who either already agree with him and are just looking to sort of be like, yes, this is exactly right.

00:07:20:04 - 00:07:21:06
Molly White
yeah. Or for people who just,

00:07:21:06 - 00:07:31:17
Molly White
you know, looking to have someone tell them what to believe without really putting much thought into it. And then I think there's also, you know, as far as the goal of the book, I think there is a strong

00:07:31:17 - 00:07:35:20
Molly White
chance that he's really just hoping that he can say, look at my bestselling book.

00:07:35:22 - 00:07:42:16
Molly White
I'm clearly so authoritative on this topic because I, you know, topped The New York Times list or, you know, whatever it is that they're trying to do.

00:07:42:16 - 00:07:51:05
Molly White
So clearly, everything I said in this book must be true and must be well accepted. It must be well-reasoned, because it was, you know, topping the charts and all this kind of stuff.

00:07:51:05 - 00:07:53:15
Molly White
I think I think there's a lot of that. You know, it's more

00:07:53:15 - 00:08:03:13
Molly White
credible to be able to say, look, I published a book with Penguin Random House than to say, look at my blog posts. Although I think, you know, they do a fair amount of look at my blog posts as well.

00:08:03:13 - 00:08:09:15
Molly White
But, you know, I think it's really just to sort of lend credibility to this idea that blockchains are the future of the Web.

00:08:09:17 - 00:08:16:14
Molly White
And here is the you know, you don't even have to read it. But just like there's this book here and this this would explain it if you bothered to read it

00:08:16:14 - 00:08:29:23
Bennett Tomlin
it's a it's a document for crypto venture firms. General partners to send to their limited partners to convince them it's still worth sending the general partners more money. That's that's really kind of feels like what it is.

00:08:30:03 - 00:08:37:03
Bennett Tomlin
There are no cryptos still here. Crypto still good. Things are still going great. Just just, just look. The book says so.

00:08:37:03 - 00:08:48:03
Cas Piancey
we'll jump into the New York Times bestseller list aspect of this shortly. But I do I do want to propose that this because I similar to you, Molly, that was my kind of thought was that this was a

00:08:48:03 - 00:09:08:04
Cas Piancey
I mean, it is a marketing campaign and, and a way to make blockchain and web3 sound quite viable still, especially during this crazy run during like everyone's talking about AI and, you know, large language models.

00:09:08:04 - 00:09:20:21
Cas Piancey
Like what? Like everyone has other things they're thinking about right now that aren't cryptocurrency. So reminding everyone that all these companies exist and have billions of dollars poured into them. Sure. I think that's a huge part of it. But then

00:09:20:21 - 00:09:25:13
Cas Piancey
Wall Street Journal wrote an article in October of 2022

00:09:25:13 - 00:09:35:23
Cas Piancey
titled Andreessen Horowitz went all in on crypto at the worst possible time. Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a very long term horizon.

00:09:35:23 - 00:09:40:17
Cas Piancey
Basically, this is an article saying that Chris Dixon's investments suck

00:09:40:17 - 00:09:47:19
Cas Piancey
I am curious if A16z said, Listen buddy, your investments are tanking.

00:09:47:21 - 00:09:57:12
Cas Piancey
Write a book, get some marketing, push onto the onto the companies that you have invested in and try to claw back some of this cash that you have unwisely spent.

00:09:57:12 - 00:10:04:18
Cas Piancey
I think there could be truth to that. Obviously, I'm not going to say that's for sure. True, But like, it just feels like a possibility to me, I guess.

00:10:04:20 - 00:10:09:00
Cas Piancey
And from the way you guys are describing the book, I, I still feel that way. It

00:10:09:00 - 00:10:22:19
Cas Piancey
and also like a morale booster to all these companies that they've invested in, that they're handing this book out to them and saying, like, see, we still care, we still believe in you or whatever. But yeah, Bennett you also read the book, so I'd like to hear some of your thoughts as well

00:10:22:19 - 00:10:41:22
Bennett Tomlin
my thoughts echo many of Molly in that. I think that this was primarily an exercise in narrative shaping in the way that Andreessen Horowitz loves to do. They are not the most technical investors. They don't emphasize due diligence as much as some other firms.

00:10:42:00 - 00:11:11:22
Bennett Tomlin
What their focus has been for much of their existence has been in trying to invest in and shape narratives to their own financial benefit. And as we've already established, they have existing large investments in various cryptocurrency projects and firms and well, a significant portion of their crypto portfolio is is now ostensibly AI companies after a series of pivots that some of them are still at least claiming to be focused on crypto.

00:11:12:04 - 00:11:23:19
Bennett Tomlin
And so yes, helping to shape a narrative return the focus, especially if you time it with like: Sam Bankman-Fried is somewhat out of the news cycle right now.

00:11:23:19 - 00:11:39:00
Bennett Tomlin
ETFs have been approved. There are certain positive indicators and there's an election coming up, which means, one, it is unlikely to get any substantial crypto legislation passing before January of 2025.

00:11:39:00 - 00:12:03:15
Bennett Tomlin
Second, it means that you may feel it is advantageous to force various candidates to come up with stances about your MacGuffin, especially if you're worried the current administration doesn't have very positive feelings towards your MacGuffin. And so I think primarily the book and the marketing campaign around it is all about trying to keep crypto in the narrative

00:12:03:15 - 00:12:09:20
Bennett Tomlin
because there was this kind of we talked about this before in kind of the context of FDX and SBF.

00:12:09:22 - 00:12:36:22
Bennett Tomlin
Following that, there's been an increasing resolve among certain regulators to push crypto away from like some of the financial centers, right? The banks started doing it even before FDX, but S.E.C. and CFTC both kind of indicated they were pushing crypto further away following FDX. And so I think the book exists to help A16z is crypto investments first and foremost

00:12:36:22 - 00:12:47:01
Molly White
I would also add actually, one thing about timing that I think is interesting, I think because we're coming up into an election year, Trump is going to be a candidate.

00:12:47:07 - 00:13:17:10
Molly White
There's going to be a lot of conversations about the Web is broken misinformation, especially AI deepfake. It's things like that that are going to be used to try to influence the election. And I think that a big narrative that we're going to be seeing is that blockchains will fix everything that's wrong with the web that we are seeing so starkly, you know, just demonstrated by the absolute nonsense that happens on the Web around election years.

00:13:17:12 - 00:13:32:03
Molly White
So I think the timing is not entirely coincidental because there's about to be I think, a lot of conversations about, you know, trust worthiness on the web, social media, big tech, etc.. And this will be a good opportunity for

00:13:32:03 - 00:13:43:16
Molly White
Andreessen Horowitz to continue the arguments that Dixon makes in the book, which is that blockchains will fix social media, it will fix disinformation, it will fix even A.I..

00:13:43:16 - 00:14:11:14
Molly White
He he really didn't go into this in my review because my review is already getting pretty long. But he talks about AI a lot in the book and in yeah, it's in sort of it's in its in the same sort of way that he talks about a lot of things where he states as fact that like AI is the next big thing and you know, it's going to totally change how our you know, an artists do business and all this stuff.

00:14:11:16 - 00:14:31:12
Molly White
But he talks about blockchains as a solution to all the problems that I will introduce. So he's you know he's really, I think, looking for the timely conversations to sort of reinforce the argument that blockchains will solve this, even though, you know, history is not that friendly towards that narrative.

00:14:31:12 - 00:14:49:21
Cas Piancey
Before we get into the other couple aspects of this book, I do. I just wanted to question, like, I know when I said I made a point, I tweeted out something about, like, how funny it was to me. Like, in an ironic sense that they had taken out a full page ad in The Washington Post

00:14:49:21 - 00:14:52:06
Cas Piancey
Okay. And then also that he's publishing a book,

00:14:52:06 - 00:14:58:07
Cas Piancey
on paper, on physical paper like that. This is funny to me in some sense, regardless.

00:14:58:07 - 00:15:10:14
Cas Piancey
And a reporter from the BLOCK, I believe Colin. I believe Colin. William. I don't know if I'm saying his name right, but he he said this doesn't surprise me that they're doing this.

00:15:10:14 - 00:15:23:03
Cas Piancey
Think about who they're trying to reach with this advertising. It is politicians and lobbyists in Washington, D.C. And I was like, yeah, I mean, like that. It's a good point, even though I still think it's ironic and funny.

00:15:23:03 - 00:15:33:12
Cas Piancey
And I wonder if did this book have like, did it feel like politics was being breached or was it just vaguely like in the background?

00:15:33:12 - 00:16:06:09
Molly White
he does talk about legislation and the ways that he thinks legislation could, you know, hurt the crypto industry and the future of blockchains that he's, you know, talking about. I think more than anything, he is I think he's hoping that the existence of the book will influence regulators, politicians, etc.. I don't think he's actually hoping that politicians and lobby or that regulators will read the book because there's not actually that much in there about regulation and stuff.

00:16:06:09 - 00:16:25:12
Molly White
So, you know, maybe he would hope that they would buy into his idea that, you know, in order to do all these wonderful things, we need to have, you know, light touch regulation, which is sort of briefly what he says, although he doesn't actually really illustrate what he thinks regulation should look like. He says it should exist, but it shouldn't be securities regulations.

00:16:25:15 - 00:16:46:21
Molly White
And that's kind of as far as he goes. But yeah, I think I think it's really just he wants to be able to point at the book and say this, you know, again, if you were to read this, you would be so convinced about everything I have to say, and I know you don't have the time, you know, don't worry about it, but it's there if you are to to, you know, take care to look at is I think I think that the goal really.

00:16:46:21 - 00:17:11:02
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah, I think that's actually a really excellent point. It almost feels at times like apolitical, like divorced from certain like political things and like trying to avoid making certain political stances so that it serves as kind of everything for anyone who reads it right. And A16z talking about their blog post does have relatively detailed blog posts on how they feel about certain specific pieces of legislation.

00:17:11:02 - 00:17:36:21
Bennett Tomlin
And you can look up and none of that kind of substance makes it into the book. It is like Molly mentioned all just like, don't regulate this out of existence, you'll regret it. Can't use laws from the 1930s on are tokens and are tokens aren't currencies they're tokens we insist. And so it felt almost like kind of trying to avoid being political and acting just as a legitimizing exercise.

00:17:37:02 - 00:17:40:21
Bennett Tomlin
We're not all Sam Bankman-fried. Some of us are bestselling authors,

00:17:40:21 - 00:17:47:21
Molly White
And some of us don't even like Sam Bankman-fried actually, you know and we don't like the casinos and all the stuff that we can sort of say is bad crypto

00:17:47:21 - 00:17:59:13
Bennett Tomlin
but also don't try to regulate the casino out of existence because the casino needs to exist for our very serious things. Like, Well, let me check my list. Your investments in NFT cockfighting to pay off.

00:17:59:13 - 00:18:04:09
Molly White
that is one of my favorite ones. Mecha cockfighting actually,

00:18:04:09 - 00:18:07:20
Bennett Tomlin
Sure, sure. The chickens are robots. That makes it okay.

00:18:07:20 - 00:18:19:01
Molly White
No, I think that's super true. I think also it's very clear throughout the book that he's it's like there are points where you can see him really carefully, not pissing people off.

00:18:19:03 - 00:18:29:09
Molly White
Like there are so many points where he's being so careful to not make Bitcoiners mad, even though it's pretty clear that he doesn't love Bitcoin all that much. And he's he's he's very clearly an Ethereum guy.

00:18:29:09 - 00:18:45:02
Bennett Tomlin
And he still trips up in a couple of times by like crossing the Bitcoin mythos by like saying that miners are the ones responsible for validating instead of pointing to nodes, which is a thing that any bitcoiners who actually bother to read the book, which won't be many of them, would immediately be upset at him with.

00:18:45:02 - 00:18:54:19
Molly White
Yeah. There are a couple of things that I think would piss off Bitcoiners, but like, you can see him very carefully trying to like, tread the line to make the book as acceptable to like the widest audience possible.

00:18:54:19 - 00:19:19:00
Bennett Tomlin
And we're talking about in a lot of this how much of the book is light and abstract. And that is true even when he's talking about like the book's primary topic, like when he's talking about blockchains and what they are and what they're supposed to do. He's like, wrong in weird ways. Like when he talks about things like he he assumes blockchains are always forward compatible, which is not true.

00:19:19:04 - 00:19:38:18
Bennett Tomlin
Bitcoin has removed a bunch of OP codes, so if you built something relying on those OP codes, your program breaks. Etherium has done a variety of breaking changes over its time that have caused smart contracts to stop functioning. There are further future breaking changes planned for Ethererum like state rent and things like that that will invalidate how a bunch of smart contracts work.

00:19:38:20 - 00:19:46:19
Bennett Tomlin
But he just says you can build something now confident it will continue to run that way into the future. And it's just objectively not true.

00:19:47:00 - 00:20:14:01
Molly White
Right. And that he argues that, that like blockchains can't be changed basically that the code of a blockchain can't be changed in like it's again just that's just not true. And it's not clear necessarily if he's saying that it can't be changed like hard stop or if it can't be changed without community consensus. And he's just making these really broad assumptions about what that consensus would be.

00:20:14:01 - 00:20:33:20
Molly White
And that would it would always favor his particular interests, which are not necessarily aligned with every person's interests. I would argue that Andreessen Horowitz, his interest, are often very opposed to the interests of other people in the crypto world, and that there is a very strong possibility that, you know, a blockchain could change in a way that would disadvantage their interests.

00:20:33:20 - 00:20:38:23
Molly White
But, you know, there's just no discussion of that. He just makes these like bold statements that, like blockchains can't change and then

00:20:38:23 - 00:21:06:16
Bennett Tomlin
And there's like a similar thing with other fundamental things for blockchains like security, like just hand waves the way the issue of like all of blockchain security and is like, you may sometimes hear about things being attacked, but that's ethereum classic and Bitcoin SB and never the top chains ignoring like Binance, proposing a rollback on bitcoin or the infinite minting bug on Binance (Bitcoin) or the fucking Dao hack and the resulting hard fought a massive irregular state transition.

00:21:06:16 - 00:21:09:04
Cas Piancey
infinite minting bug on. On Bitcoin. Just so

00:21:09:04 - 00:21:10:00
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah.

00:21:10:00 - 00:21:11:23
Cas Piancey
Yeah. Yeah. We've and I think we've talked about that before,

00:21:11:23 - 00:21:13:11
Cas Piancey
Sorry. I just wanted to clarify that

00:21:13:11 - 00:21:37:00
Bennett Tomlin
We're like. There was a point in Bitcoin's history where like one third of the miners upgraded to like one version, but the rest didn't. And there was like a chain split for a while with because there was some minor incompatibility in the way the two versions work, which caused like one of the miner who was running like a quarter to a third of the hashrate have to roll back to an older version to rejoin the majority chain, which was on the older client.

00:21:37:05 - 00:21:41:04
Bennett Tomlin
And like, none of that counts. I guess none of that happened.

00:21:41:04 - 00:21:44:17
Cas Piancey
it's funny because there's been so many books that we've looked into

00:21:44:17 - 00:21:56:05
Cas Piancey
I still think Nathaniel Popper's digital gold is a great resource. I we've talked about David Gerard's attack of the 50 foot blockchain, which I think is a fun read and provides a lot of great resources.

00:21:56:05 - 00:21:56:22
Cas Piancey
Actually, if you're

00:21:56:22 - 00:22:01:07
Molly White
and holds up really well. Given that it was written in like 2017,

00:22:01:07 - 00:22:08:14
Cas Piancey
yeah. And just the idea of like actually going on Bitcoin talk forums and stuff like that and like actually listing these,

00:22:08:14 - 00:22:20:11
Cas Piancey
websites and these forum pages where people could actually go back and look at the history of this stuff as it's happening. If they were so inclined to. I think stuff like that is great.

00:22:20:13 - 00:22:37:15
Cas Piancey
I and obviously Zeke Faux with his recent book, I think that was also excellent as well. so I think there's plenty of examples out there and there's a Laura Shin’s book about the ethereans (Cryptopians) was good too. There's a lot of it's a lot of good books out there

00:22:37:15 - 00:22:40:05
Bennett Tomlin
there's also going infinite.

00:22:40:05 - 00:22:43:02
Cas Piancey
and then there's going infinite and then there's going infinite.

00:22:43:02 - 00:22:46:11
Cas Piancey
And yes, me as well. Yes. Molly and I both reviewed that

00:22:46:11 - 00:22:48:11
Bennett Tomlin
I'm on chapter five.

00:22:48:11 - 00:22:50:17
Cas Piancey
Yeah, you're stuck there still.

00:22:50:17 - 00:23:14:00
Bennett Tomlin
there's a couple of things I kind of want to interject, and there's this very strange dynamic for me reading this book, Molly And I think and I think you might have experienced the same Chris Dixon is older than the two of us, but like the way he talks about the Internet feels strange to me because he talks about like things being dead that I remember experience and still experience.

00:23:14:00 - 00:23:40:23
Bennett Tomlin
Like RSS is dead and blogs are dead and websites are dead. And all these many, many things are dead. And like I can see the shadow of what his argument could be like. He's trying to point to the centralization in these gatekeepers, in these things. But then, like I go and I listen to Chris Dixon on a podcast distributed on RSS, and I'm like, this feels like someone building on a protocol network.

00:23:40:23 - 00:23:52:04
Bennett Tomlin
But what would I know? I'm not a venture capitalist. Did you have any of that kind of tension where, like Chris Dixon's perspective on the Web feels like it's coming from some very strange place,

00:23:52:04 - 00:24:19:05
Molly White
Yeah, I actually wrote like basically a full length blog post that I ended up cutting from the review just about how sort of ahistorical his view of the web and the Internet and other sort of protocols is. There's a lot in there. He spends the first one or two parts of the book reviewing the early Internet, some of the technology that's involved in the Internet stock.

00:24:19:05 - 00:24:25:07
Molly White
He actually gets kind of technical in there, like more than I expected him to given me what I thought the audience would be,

00:24:25:07 - 00:24:43:21
Molly White
you know, talking about what things were like in the early Internet. And, you know, he was presumably there. You know, he's older than I was. I was not really in the early Internet per se, but it's incredibly like warped, his sort of view of the early Internet.

00:24:43:21 - 00:24:52:15
Molly White
And I think I was actually having a conversation on Mastodon, ironically, which he says is dead. Yeah.

00:24:52:17 - 00:24:53:21
Molly White
Yeah.

00:24:53:23 - 00:25:19:04
Molly White
With someone about this, someone who is also, you know, is closer to Chris Dixon's age and was saying that, you know, they were around dude in that time period and saw things very differently. And I think honestly what happened is that Chris Dixon remembers a version of the early Internet and didn't really because of that, he just sort of assumes that's how it was for everyone and doesn't really go into researching more than that.

00:25:19:06 - 00:25:31:21
Molly White
And so he describes this very rose colored glasses view of the early Internet where anyone could just dial up and, you know, search whatever they wanted, which no, first of all, it was hard to find things back then,

00:25:31:21 - 00:25:40:15
Molly White
you know, And they could write, you know, in the later days of the Internet, they could just like buy a URL and, you know, spin up a web server and write whatever they wanted.

00:25:40:15 - 00:26:02:12
Molly White
And Google wasn't the intermediary where search was making it so that you were getting deranked and Facebook's algorithm wasn't there. And like all this stuff about how is this beautiful early days of the Internet, which like and I know a lot of people who have these rose colored sort of views on the early days of the Internet and there is some truth there, Like there were some really cool things about the early days of the Internet and this sort of hacker ethos.

00:26:02:12 - 00:26:27:01
Molly White
And it was this sort of adversarial time with some regulators and all this stuff, but also, like a lot of people, didn't have access to that. Like, so many people couldn't get on the Internet back then. It wasn't that anyone could log on and make a search and do whatever I was looking up the numbers on this. HE So he defines Web one as ending in 2005, which is kind of arbitrary, but like that's a fairly acceptable statement to make.

00:26:27:03 - 00:26:56:02
Molly White
He's like 1992, 2005 is Web one. In 2005, 15% of people were online. That's it. He's saying anyone could log on. Even today, two thirds of people are online. There's a whole third of the globe that does not have Internet access. So stating that, you know that in 2005, anyone had access to the Web and didn't have to deal with all this stuff, that big tech is dating and all that stuff is just completely ahistorical.

00:26:56:02 - 00:27:08:11
Molly White
And even today, like there's so many people who just don't have access to that. But I would argue that it's actually a good thing that today many more people have access to the Web than they did in 2005. And so we've actually made some strides since. And it's not all bad.

00:27:08:11 - 00:27:18:07
Bennett Tomlin
and I'll even argue that like self hosting a reasonably full featured Web site is easier in 2024 than 2005.

00:27:18:09 - 00:27:19:17
Bennett Tomlin
Like

00:27:19:17 - 00:27:24:07
Molly White
like two years ago where I was saying that, like, actually the Web's pretty cool.

00:27:24:12 - 00:27:48:04
Molly White
Like people I actually have a blog post in the works on this. It's like, yes, the web is broken. I think most people agree with that. Also, the web is better than it's ever been. Right. Like, those two things are both true and, you know, there are ways that I think we could clearly improve the Web. I don't think that the Web will ever be fixed because fixed means something totally different to every person.

00:27:48:04 - 00:28:08:11
Molly White
And what I think is fixed is very different from what Andreessen Horowitz thinks is fixed. But, you know, there are actually really cool things that you can do today that allow you to have total ownership over what you are doing on the Web. That's another blog post I have in the works. But the idea of like ownership is very different.

00:28:08:11 - 00:28:09:18
Molly White
And we I don't know if you

00:28:10:13 - 00:28:34:19
Cas Piancey
I mean, we might. We might as well just jump right into that, because I think that one of the things I was talking about, I tweeted something out about, like, I love these property rights on the blockchain people because they talk about it like there wasn't property rights before. It's like you guys understand we've managed property rights and ownership for thousands and thousands of years like this.

00:28:34:19 - 00:29:02:05
Cas Piancey
The concept isn't new and being able to deal with it. We don't need a block, we don't need a blockchain to do it. And I think Chris Dixon would hard argue that I'm wrong in that sense, because the title of his book is Read Write Own. For anyone who's unfamiliar, I think like Read Write, is it's like a common, like common parlance in tech where it's like about, you know, read, read and write capabilities for when you're

00:29:02:05 - 00:29:15:11
Bennett Tomlin
yeah And specifically in the context of the book, he divides like web one into your reading. In Web two, you're writing and interacting. And in web three, you get to own the assets, the property,

00:29:15:11 - 00:29:35:14
Molly White
Yeah, but one note that I made when I was reading was that I realized at some point that Chris Dixon's view of ownership is like, really different than mine. Like, I own a lot of things in theory. Chris Dixon It seems like only really believes you own something if you can resell that thing.

00:29:35:16 - 00:29:53:21
Molly White
And so, like, like I own my dog, right? Technically, I don't love that like that term, but it's, you know, it's how people talk about it. I'm not going to resell my dog, right? I own the milk in my fridge. I'm not going to resell the milk in my fridge. You know, I own the content that I publish on Wikipedia.

00:29:53:23 - 00:30:12:11
Molly White
I'm not going to sell that. Right. Like, there's a lot of stuff that I think I own that Chris Dixon would be like, no, you don't own your dog. You know, you don't own your fridge. Which is like he very much believes that until you can like wrap something that you have created into a token, you don't truly own it.

00:30:12:13 - 00:30:34:05
Molly White
This is also something that comes up with his top talk of like ownership in terms of content creation, which I think is really interesting, where he talks about how you don't own the stuff that you post on Twitter and he talks about how Twitter takes like it Facebook, Twitter, a couple of different platforms, he says takes like a 99% take rate, which is just completely fiction.

00:30:34:06 - 00:30:52:08
Molly White
Like he this is actually something that they make Andriessen Horowitz makes the same claim in the state of crypto report. So I had already addressed this a long time ago. But like when he talks about take rates, he's talking about several different things and you just calls them all take rates. One of them is like the take rate of, you know, you publish something on Substack.

00:30:52:11 - 00:31:22:08
Molly White
Substack takes 10% of your subscription revenue. That's like a normal way to look at a take rate. But then he talks about like 99% take rates on Twitter or maybe bad example now that Twitter is like monetizing some things, but he's really just talking about like platforms where people publish stuff with no expectation of return. And then he says that the advertising money that the company is making is like the take rate and it allows him to really juice the numbers to like make it sound like current web platforms have this like astronomical take rate.

00:31:22:08 - 00:31:34:04
Molly White
But when he's talking about ownership, he's really only saying that. Like if you can't make money off of it, you don't own it. Which I think is just like kind of an offensive way to talk about creation because it's so financialized

00:31:34:04 - 00:32:00:22
Bennett Tomlin
And even in that same vein, he seems okay with not really owning it. As long as you can profit from it. Like in the section about NFT is when he's talking about like the rights and like the individual prints themselves, he has some understanding that the NFT itself is like just the NFT and doesn't necessarily represent ownership of some other thing, but he still seems to think it's valuable purely because it can be like bought and resold and valued in that way.

00:32:01:01 - 00:32:09:09
Bennett Tomlin
And so even when the thing you own isn't actually like a thing you own, he thinks you own it. If you can potentially profit from it in the future.

00:32:09:09 - 00:32:32:15
Molly White
Right. And he he also makes a lot of assumptions, I think, that are really interesting around how blockchains would enable ownership somehow, like out of the box are not really true and it conversely about how you can't do those things today I was I was literally just talking to someone about this about the idea of like owning your audience, which I also think is a really weird term, like owning your relationship with your readers or whatever.

00:32:32:15 - 00:32:56:12
Molly White
It's like weird to call that ownership, but that's kind of a side point. But like, I recently just moved my blog from Substack on to my own self-hosted thing, and I was able to do that without having to get every single person who subscribe to my writing to Resubscribe because the payments are made to me. And then like Substack takes a cut of that.

00:32:56:14 - 00:33:20:18
Molly White
But it's still a relationship that is sort of with me directly. And so I was able to like move to a different platform because that's how that set up and that's a really good way of setting things up. I have a lot of complaints about, but like that is really good that they do that and I think lots of places should do that so that if you want to start writing somewhere else, you can just switch out the platform and nothing really changes for your readers, for your payment relationships, anything like that.

00:33:20:20 - 00:33:48:05
Molly White
That's awesome. And that's what Chris Dixon is really envisioning when he's talking about these creator audience relationships. And he talks about how blockchains will enable this somehow as though there's not like, as though it's impossible to set up a relationship that is more traditional big tech where it's the platform that owns those relationships and they don't come with you because it is possible to have that kind of platform built on a blockchain.

00:33:48:07 - 00:33:59:05
Molly White
Like there's nothing about blockchains that stops you from doing that. He just sort of makes these assumptions that all blockchain platforms will be set up in a way where there is a more advantageous just relationship between subscribers and creators.

00:33:59:05 - 00:34:12:19
Bennett Tomlin
think there's like existing counterexamples. Like, I don't think bitclout DeSo so you can like easily and automatically bought your following from Bitclout over to some other platform just because it's recorded on the blockchain.

00:34:12:19 - 00:34:23:21
Molly White
Yeah, exactly. Like it's it's super. There's nothing about this like sort of network level technology that prevents platforms, as he says, that prevents platforms from building on it in a way that is sort of a walled garden.

00:34:23:21 - 00:34:50:03
Molly White
And there's nothing about current, you know, non blockchain technologies that prevent people from not doing that. And so I just find that really disingenuous because I like I totally agree with him that the model should be improved in a lot of ways so that, you know, so that people are not so dependent on these platforms and so that there isn't this sort of control there that keeps people locked in to using some of these platforms.

00:34:50:05 - 00:34:56:19
Molly White
But the blockchain question is, is sort of a side thing. Like that's not really an important part of it in my opinion.

00:34:56:19 - 00:35:07:22
Bennett Tomlin
In that vein as a Wikipedians, how did you feel about the way he handled, addressed and almost dismissed the Wikipedia model,

00:35:07:22 - 00:35:25:23
Molly White
So Chris Dixon actually likes Wikipedia more than a lot of these types of folks do. A lot of them just hate Wikipedia and he's not one of them, which I credit to him on that one. But he does talk about Wikipedia in really weird ways where he like he talks about it as though it is this completely

00:35:25:23 - 00:35:30:20
Molly White
unique edge case that like, could never be replicated, which is I mean, I understand where he's coming from.

00:35:30:20 - 00:35:37:00
Molly White
It is pretty unique and people really haven't replicated in ways that they've certainly tried to.

00:35:37:00 - 00:36:02:11
Molly White
But he attributes the success of Wikipedia to like, but it's because it's an encyclopedia. And, you know, because of that, it didn't have to have big, I don't know, infrastructure costs or platform cost. He like, totally glosses over the fact that well, also because people volunteer to write the content that's big, you know like there's stuff like that where he just sort of he talks about Wikipedia's success in a very strange way,

00:36:02:11 - 00:36:08:21
Molly White
you know, as though it's just because for some reason, encyclopedias are different from things that people are trying to do on the web, which, like I

00:36:08:21 - 00:36:13:17
Molly White
would argue, it's not that different from like journalism or, you know, other types of things.

00:36:13:17 - 00:36:25:16
Molly White
so yeah, it was, it was strange to see Wikipedia come up. It only came up in sort of side mentions, I think, but it was, it was always treated as sort of like that. but this could never work type of thing.

00:36:25:20 - 00:36:43:11
Molly White
And the same thing actually was true of nonprofit models around web services where he just like he's like, you could hypothetically fix a lot of problems that we see with big tech by having a more like, nonprofit type of model or, you know, other types of models where the incentives different, but that could never work. And he just like keeps going.

00:36:43:11 - 00:37:00:16
Cas Piancey
I was reminded of the the remember, I don't know if you guys remember. There was a thing called sent that allowed people to purchase tweets as, like. As like nfts. Yeah. And it got. I think they shut it down, but, like,

00:37:00:16 - 00:37:06:03
Molly White
And they shut it down with like a pretty brutal condemnation of, of crypto and Web three,

00:37:06:05 - 00:37:17:20
Cas Piancey
Right. And but I don't know if you guys remember the reason that was such a big deal is because it like the first tweet got sold for like $2 million or something like that.

00:37:17:20 - 00:37:28:12
Cas Piancey
I just looked up the guy who bought the first tweet ever, and I found out that he fled Iran on embezzlement charges of $20 million.

00:37:28:12 - 00:37:37:06
Cas Piancey
an Interpol red notice now. I don't know. I am just, like, shocked by, like, how everything I think of when it comes to how nfts were presented initially,

00:37:37:06 - 00:37:42:17
Cas Piancey
it's mostly just bad news and then to yet to just hear all of this from you guys about this book.

00:37:42:19 - 00:37:57:14
Cas Piancey
I think even the nicest review I read about it was David Z. Morris’ who is a friend of the show and he he called it an optimistic like take on the future of Web3. Which like.

00:37:57:14 - 00:38:08:01
Cas Piancey
But yeah to like ignore all of the bad things all the bad investments that Andreessen Horowitz has made that Chris Dixon has made and pretend like they didn't happen.

00:38:08:02 - 00:38:16:02
Cas Piancey
Instead of saying like, here's what I learned from these experiences actually is pretty compelling reason to not read this book for as far as I'm concerned.

00:38:16:02 - 00:38:52:00
Molly White
Yeah. There was also a pretty positive review in I think it was fortune by Geoff John Roberts who he was pretty positive about it, but he also very much called out the fact that like throughout the whole book, Andresen or Chris Dixon is talking up Andreessen Horowitz investments without disclosing that they had invested in the companies. Like they talk about helium, they talk about opensea, they talk about all these different companies that Andreessen Horowitz had like major investments in, as though they are sort of not related, you know, as though it's just like, I'm just picking an example, but it just so happens to be one that they invest then and there is

00:38:52:00 - 00:38:56:09
Molly White
like at the very end of the book, if you go to the like about the author section, it says,

00:38:56:09 - 00:39:08:01
Molly White
you know, Chris Dixon is a general partner for Andreessen Horowitz. Some of the companies this book may have been, you know, investments and that's it. There's no list. There's nothing like there's no disclosure.

00:39:08:01 - 00:39:10:05
Cas Piancey
I'm not saying that's illegal, but it kind of sounds

00:39:10:05 - 00:39:13:20
Bennett Tomlin
Probably not, but

00:39:13:20 - 00:39:33:20
Cas Piancey
probably can just. Yeah, well, there you go. That's the perfect segue way. There we go. That's the Segway I needed. We're talking about unethical. So let's let's bring up how Andreessen, Horowitz and Chris Dixon got this book onto the New York Times bestseller list, which has been kind of the talk of the town for a couple of days now,

00:39:33:20 - 00:39:36:10
Cas Piancey
if anyone is unfamiliar, The New York Times best seller list

00:39:36:10 - 00:39:44:07
Cas Piancey
it's the stalwarts of like everyone turns to that to see what's popping off in fiction and nonfiction

00:39:44:07 - 00:39:44:23
Cas Piancey
and

00:39:45:01 - 00:39:53:04
Cas Piancey
known as being this this great source of knowing what is the most popular stuff right now in bookselling.

00:39:53:04 - 00:40:10:09
Cas Piancey
know this because my mom was a bookseller and I think the store that she worked for at the time was part of this. But they do a pretty thorough auditing. They they reach out to I don't know if it's hundreds or thousands but tons of bookstores across the nation and say like, hey, we got to talk to you.

00:40:10:09 - 00:40:32:03
Cas Piancey
What what are the numbers you're getting? Anything weird going on? And if the booksellers say, yes, something weird is going on. Actually, we got, say, a thousand requests for this book and we don't usually get anything like that. They tell The New York Times in The New York Times kind of jots that down and says, well, that's weird.

00:40:32:05 - 00:41:14:05
Cas Piancey
And when they publish their their bestseller list, if they think that something weird happened and that book did something strange and suspicious to get on the list, they put a little dagger underneath the title and lo and behold, read, write, Own had a little dagger underneath it and it seems to, at least according to a motherboard article, it seems to look like thousands of these books were bulk purchased and essentially Andreessen Horowitz and Chris Dixon manipulated markets so that they could get their book to the top of a best seller list as a marketing scheme, I would imagine.

00:41:14:05 - 00:41:37:18
Cas Piancey
But also because I think these a lot of these guys are really obsessed with putting New York Times bestseller into their their name. It's almost like a knighthood or something. So I assume that Chris Dixon's ego played a role in that as well. I think what's really funny to me about this kind of blowing up, there's two things that I think are funny.

00:41:37:20 - 00:42:06:07
Cas Piancey
Everyone in finance already knows that A16z does weird things when they invest in companies. I'm not going to call it anything else. I'll just say weird. Take from that what you will and that the time that the public actually goes, that's crazy is when it's just book sales like there's no way they lost that much money. Maybe, you know, $100,000 or whatever it cost, right, to buy these books.

00:42:06:09 - 00:42:20:06
Cas Piancey
I think, Chris, ultimately Chris Dixon's time is probably quite valuable, at least to him. And so that has probably been quite expensive to put him on the book. The book tour circuit and the podcast circuit.

00:42:20:06 - 00:42:30:14
Cas Piancey
But yeah, the public I think is kind of loving to see venture capitalists make such an obvious mistake and think that no one would care.

00:42:30:14 - 00:42:44:23
Cas Piancey
it just makes me reflect on like, how they operate in general. I don't know. Do either of you have have thoughts on on that like this book as a metaphor and how it was published as a metaphor for A16z.

00:42:44:23 - 00:43:09:12
Molly White
I think it's really instructive quite how much. Andreessen Horowitz, the company is putting behind a book ostensibly just written by an individual general partner, like they it's like they view it as sort of their book and they have been putting enormous resources behind it, including, you know, full page print ads in the Washington Post, which are not cheap.

00:43:09:14 - 00:43:24:01
Molly White
You know, they were able to get a op ed written by Dixon, published in the Financial Times. You know, he was appearing on some of these very, you know, some of the most popular tech podcasts, at least in the U.S.

00:43:24:01 - 00:43:32:02
Molly White
they were clearly going, you know, pedal to the metal on the marketing for this book. And of course, what they did, you know, as far as trying to game the book sales.

00:43:32:05 - 00:43:59:05
Molly White
And I think that's really instructive that like, okay, this is really important not just to Chris Dixon and to his perhaps genuinely held beliefs about the future of the Web, but also to Andreessen Horowitz, the company, you know, they stand to benefit not just because name recognition of one of their general partners, but because the book is itself sort of in furtherance of the goals of Andreessen Horowitz.

00:43:59:07 - 00:44:18:10
Molly White
But yeah, I mean, I think there is some irony that they were sort of doing this manipulation to do with a book that is about a, you know, an industry that is known for manipulation like this, you know, this type of thing, you know, that type of behavior, like buying all of something that you've really used to try to make it look like there's so much demand.

00:44:18:10 - 00:44:26:20
Molly White
It's like, yeah, crypto watch trading. Like that's they do that all the time. It's not even unusual. Sometimes they forget is illegal because it's so common in the crypto world.

00:44:26:22 - 00:44:28:04
Cas Piancey
So do they.

00:44:28:12 - 00:44:30:04
Molly White
That's true.

00:44:30:04 - 00:44:33:09
Bennett Tomlin
confessed to it way too often for how illegal it is

00:44:33:09 - 00:45:01:01
Molly White
know, I think I think there's a lot of irony there. I also thought there was a lot of irony around Chris Dixon's own description of crypto marketing in the book, where he talks about how crypto tokens and sort of the economics behind them incentivized this like organic marketing that people find really genuine. And you know, it brings in all this interest which like first of all, genuine Organic is not something I associate with crypto marketing at all.

00:45:01:01 - 00:45:28:14
Molly White
Like, I just I was like, Shilling Yeah, and people love that. But also he's talking, he's sort of in the book condemning the, you know, big marketing teams doing all this spending on something. And it's so organic and authentic. And then like here they are buying crates of his own book or whatever it is. So, you know, I think there is a lot of irony there, too, where it's like, maybe he should have put the book on the blockchain, and then you would have had people just shilling it for you.

00:45:28:14 - 00:45:56:13
Cas Piancey
I also find it a little ironic that they, like, these guys are always talking about needing freedom and all of this in, in tech and on the internet. And then when you look at who's getting these books on, when you look at who's like publicly posting about how much they love the book and how like several executives have posted on Twitter and been like, Yeah, I'm making this required reading for my employees.

00:45:56:13 - 00:46:21:01
Cas Piancey
And I'm like, Well, so that's cool. Great. And like Jeremy Allaire at circle, like, yeah, I'm giving this to all my and like, okay, so they gifted their, their investor, their investments like 500 copies and the executives were like, yes, we have to make our make our employees read this, make them write a book report about it, which is just not freedom at all.

00:46:21:01 - 00:46:22:01
Cas Piancey
It's horrible.

00:46:22:01 - 00:46:34:09
Molly White
yeah. I mean, I will say it's not like super unusual for companies to like, encourage people to buy the book that, this executive just published this book, you should write it or you should go read it, you know, go buy it expensive even, you

00:46:34:09 - 00:46:38:03
Bennett Tomlin
write a review and Amazon.

00:46:38:03 - 00:46:44:09
Molly White
because there's nothing that employees love to do other than go spend their free time reading a book about whatever it is they do for work.

00:46:44:09 - 00:47:03:09
Molly White
do sort of wonder, like how many people who are like, if you were to survey every person who read this book, how many of them were reading it? Kind of like under duress, because it seems like a lot of the target market is like your company that Andreessen Horowitz invested in and your boss just told you you have to read this book, which is like, great.

00:47:03:10 - 00:47:05:08
Molly White
Changing hearts and minds out Chris Dixon.

00:47:05:08 - 00:47:05:19
Molly White
Them.

00:47:05:19 - 00:47:17:01
Bennett Tomlin
to me. The book in its marketing reminds me of the long American tradition of politicians writing books, and politicians don't generally actually write books.

00:47:17:01 - 00:47:39:12
Bennett Tomlin
They hire someone to write a book for them, and then they put their name on it, and then they have their foundation, like the National Party and a few other people do a bunch of book purchases, and then it ends up on the new York Times list and they get to take advantage of the book. Tour of the book tour is basically a extra earned media appearances that are campaign but not campaign to help get your name out there.

00:47:39:14 - 00:47:45:16
Bennett Tomlin
I don't think Chris Dixon is running for office, to be very clear. I think because Dixon and A16z

00:47:45:16 - 00:48:08:14
Bennett Tomlin
is taking of the the fact that they've realized book publishers have longstanding relationships with publicists and bookers that make it easy. If you have a book to get a bunch of earned media and if that book is going to be a bestseller, people feel a lot more comfortable having you on because you immediately have a credibility marker on it.

00:48:08:16 - 00:48:32:02
Bennett Tomlin
You're not just author of new book, you are New York Times bestselling author of Whatever You know. And so having you on your immediately more legitimate, it makes everything look more legitimate. And so I think what we're seeing, as we mentioned before, this is a legitimizing effort. It's making sure crypto is still seen as a thing serious people can take seriously.

00:48:32:02 - 00:48:48:19
Molly White
think that's a really good point. Like, it would be really hard for kara swisher to Swisher to be like, here's Chris Dixon in 2024, he's going to tell you all about how blockchains are the future. Like, just to say that, you'd be like, Why? Like, who cares? But now she can be like, he's got a book coming out.

00:48:48:19 - 00:49:00:17
Molly White
We're going to have him talk about this book that he has published, you know, And then it's like, yeah, okay, I got it. You know, he's he's got something to talk about. And so, you know, he has this sort of excuse to show up on these podcasts and talk literally talk his book.

00:49:00:17 - 00:49:06:13
Bennett Tomlin
this is a digression, but some of those podcast appearances have been illuminating for me.

00:49:06:13 - 00:49:10:03
Bennett Tomlin
The hard fought

00:49:10:03 - 00:49:20:02
Bennett Tomlin
the hard fork one especially took me back because I've had criticisms for the hosts and some of the things that have been said on that podcast

00:49:20:05 - 00:49:22:16
Cas Piancey
All of us have. For what it's worth, I believe.

00:49:22:16 - 00:49:32:11
Bennett Tomlin
before Chris Dixon was even introduced, both hosts were basically like, Man, we said some things regret during that crypto boom.

00:49:32:13 - 00:49:56:03
Bennett Tomlin
Shouldn't it have been, you know, just taking things straight from people's mouths? And then one of them was like, Yeah, it was really listening a lot to Chris Dixon when I was saying some of those things I regret. Anyways, here's Chris Dixon. And it was this like hard pivot that and it was a relatively adversarial interview more than I imagine Chris Dixon was expecting from Hard fought.

00:49:56:05 - 00:50:05:02
Bennett Tomlin
So that was just a striking moment for me in like how even as a legitimizing effort, this is not succeeding as well as I think he hoped.

00:50:05:02 - 00:50:24:16
Molly White
Yeah. I have to give those guys a lot of credit for that. Like when I first saw like, Chris Dixon won on Hard Fork, I was like, my God, you've got to be kidding me. Like, these guys. Like, no way. Like, I have had some very strong criticisms of some work by one of the hosts of that podcast, which I think we've talked about in this in this podcast before.

00:50:24:16 - 00:50:43:17
Molly White
It's Kevin Roose, the guy who wrote The New York Times Late Comers Guide to Crypto. But I actually have to give him a lot of credit for his handling of that interview because he was very frank about, you know, he feels burned about some of what he you know, he he regrets writing some of the stuff that he wrote.

00:50:43:17 - 00:51:06:15
Molly White
He wrote a piece about helium that he talks about, like he's still gets calls from people who bought those helium hotspots. And they're pretty mad because there is a nice New York Times piece about it. You know, and I think they you know, they didn't completely flog Chris Dixon. I don't think they could have. It's you know, that's I think a little bit and uncouth to do that on your podcast.

00:51:06:15 - 00:51:16:07
Molly White
But they held his feet to the fire on some stuff. You know, they tried to get him to explain how helium was not a total disaster and he really couldn't. They ended up just being like, okay, let's move on.

00:51:16:07 - 00:51:21:15
Bennett Tomlin
Well, it's uncouth. There's a whole podcast episode dedicated to yelling about Chris Dixon.

00:51:22:23 - 00:51:26:15
Cas Piancey
Him here? Yeah. It would be different if he was here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:51:26:15 - 00:51:28:09
Bennett Tomlin
good. Glad to see,

00:51:28:09 - 00:51:41:03
Cas Piancey
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not an invite for Chris Dixon. For what it's worth, I think we're okay without. Without having him on and berating him. Yeah, For what it's worth, I think he has all three of us blocked on Twitter.

00:51:41:05 - 00:51:49:04
Cas Piancey
I like. Yeah, this is not someone who is a big fan of ours. I think this is a two way street when it comes to our feelings about Chris Dixon and his feelings

00:51:49:04 - 00:51:54:01
Bennett Tomlin
I might get blocked the same day that he said he wished crypto had better critics.

00:51:54:01 - 00:51:54:17
Molly White
critics.

00:51:54:17 - 00:52:02:14
Cas Piancey
I remember that. I remember that. And I remember just I yeah, he, he just really doesn't like critics

00:52:02:14 - 00:52:08:02
Cas Piancey
I think the last thing before we go that we should talk about is the NFT collection.

00:52:08:02 - 00:52:34:22
Cas Piancey
So this book came with an NFT collection. It in physical copies, there was a bookmark that was given to you and they had a QR code or whatever that you could scan. And then you would get a in an NFT that you could get on OPENSEA, which you mentioned, is one of their investments. I think that's very funny.

00:52:34:22 - 00:53:19:12
Cas Piancey
So it's basically just a way to get them onboard people to Opensea and then yeah, they would get this. It's basically the cover of the book and then it changes colors when you redeem it. And so far this New York Times bestseller out of 5000, NFT is has sold 281. And I think everyone should just think about what that means for for Chris Dixon's thesis of his bestseller which is that this is the future that everyone should, you know, get into this.

00:53:19:12 - 00:54:01:23
Cas Piancey
It's still very important. And there's two ways to look at this. Either he really did organically sell thousands and thousands and thousands of physical copies of this book, which I doubt that. But okay, if he did organically sell those physical copies, you would expect that there would be more nfts that have been redeemed by now. I think you would also you would also expect that to mean that the public seriously cares about the topic of cryptocurrency and blockchain and web3 still, but we've seen none of that in in accordance to these nfts themselves or yeah, none of these sales were organic.

00:54:01:23 - 00:54:28:05
Cas Piancey
And why would anyone redeem them? They're all in an, in a a16z warehouse somewhere. But either way, that tells me that there isn't actually a lot of organic interest in what Chris Dixon is writing. And I think largely outside of like Michael Lewis writing Going Infinite, which is more so about a character in cryptocurrency than about cryptocurrency, People don't really care.

00:54:28:07 - 00:54:46:06
Cas Piancey
And I think the really cool thing is the only way I can say that without feeling weird about it is because he put it on the blockchain and everyone can check and see how many of his nfts have moved. And there are, there are very, very, very few of them.

00:54:46:06 - 00:54:48:19
Molly White
Yeah. It's a win for blockchain transparency, I.

00:54:48:19 - 00:54:49:12
Molly White
Guess.

00:54:49:12 - 00:55:15:05
Bennett Tomlin
in Chris Dixon's defense, it's possible that even the people most excited about cryptocurrency and his optimistic view of the future still look at getting a picture of a sunset that changes colors. That's the same as everyone else, basically, and think this isn't worth the 12 minutes it would take me to figure out how to get my metamask set up and log into opensea and redeem it.

00:55:15:09 - 00:55:21:05
Bennett Tomlin
But even the biggest fans of crypto might be like, You know what? That's too much of a hurdle for this specific prize.

00:55:21:05 - 00:55:35:14
Molly White
it's just kind of like a gimmick. I think there's no secondary market for them. So I don't think people I don't think people are like, there's this whole thing with Jeremy's book a long time ago. He tried to sell a book and he was like, If you buy 12 copies, I'll give you an NFT.

00:55:35:19 - 00:55:59:19
Molly White
And people started like mass buying the book because they wanted to speculate on the price of the NFT. I don't think that's a dynamic in play here because I don't think anyone's like, if I buy this book and get this NFT, then I can sell it for $100,000 in three years or something like that. So I wonder if it's maybe just not that compelling or maybe all of the sales were e-books because you don't get one with the e-book, as I discovered,

00:55:59:19 - 00:56:09:02
Cas Piancey
Well, I know that you are. So you have to sell a certain amount of physical copies to get onto the New York Times bestseller list. Basically, as far as as far as I understand it, I might be wrong. And if someone knows more about that

00:56:09:02 - 00:56:20:19
Bennett Tomlin
yeah, but like at least the vice article quoted saying, like, you sometimes need as little as 2000 copies to make the list and what electric cap? yeah, books don't sell. No one reads books

00:56:20:19 - 00:56:24:03
Bennett Tomlin
Well, Electric Capital One, but 1401.

00:56:24:03 - 00:56:30:14
Bennett Tomlin
Copies of the book and that gets you a big chunk of the way they're adding a couple of hundred Circle employees.

00:56:30:14 - 00:56:41:11
Bennett Tomlin
I think all of these things illustrate this. Not a lot of people who are interested in reading 150 or 200 pages about an optimistic view about what blockchains may be possibly could might maybe do

00:56:41:11 - 00:57:04:02
Cas Piancey
I do want to add that this, this NFT took five companies to come up with These are like and these are like relatively large. So we're talking a16z which is massive in and of itself. Like this is a multibillion dollar fund then we're talking like a manifold dynamic and optimism. And these for anyone who's not in crypto that they don't, they don't matter.

00:57:04:05 - 00:57:19:23
Cas Piancey
They don't matter. But for anyone who is involved in this space, these are like, these are the big companies. And what they came up with was a color changing picture. And I think that just it speaks volumes to the actual usefulness of this,

00:57:19:23 - 00:57:34:17
Molly White
with you that I do think it is very funny that somehow this took five companies to do although I do think that it was maybe some overselling on Dixon's part where like they listed optimism, which is just the chain that they used and I doubt like

00:57:34:17 - 00:57:49:05
Bennett Tomlin
no. They probably did. But optimism has a tendency to send out lots of like their technical team members, or at least money to anyone who wants to build on optimism or do anything on optimism.

00:57:49:05 - 00:57:55:15
Molly White
Well, but Andreessen Horowitz also, in fact, invests in optimism. So I assume that they were just like shilling one of their companies

00:57:55:15 - 00:58:02:09
Cas Piancey
absolutely shills to, to, to, to name the companies that they specifically had. And I'm 100% you're right Molly. Yeah,

00:58:02:09 - 00:58:13:13
Cas Piancey
regardless, this whole thing has been hilarious to watch. It's like watching the richest guy you've ever seen just slipping and falling in the mud in his new white press suit.

00:58:13:13 - 00:58:32:14
Cas Piancey
And it's just lovely and I love it. And I'm happy it's happening. And I'm happy. You reviewed the book and gave it a wonderful review. Everyone read her very kind to Chris Dixon Review and lovely towards A16z. I just want all the venture capitalists like

00:58:32:14 - 00:58:37:05
Bennett Tomlin
yeah. All the venture capitalists who made it to mini minute 62, this interview,

00:58:38:12 - 00:58:41:13
Molly White
You're adoring fans in the venture capital world.

00:58:41:13 - 00:58:55:13
Cas Piancey
A man can dream. All right. Yeah. Molly, is there anything that you, before we, you know, let you go, Is there anything that you, I don't know that you want to talk about in terms of your blog or anything that you're working on or anything like that?

00:58:55:13 - 00:59:10:10
Molly White
So if you want to read my rating citation needed dot news, you can sign for a subscription free or pay as you want. And then I also ran the website web3 is going just great dot com which is you can just go look at that it's you know it.

00:59:10:10 - 00:59:26:14
Cas Piancey
Yeah, that's going to do it. I guess. Everyone I'm writing the new read, right? Cass Coin is coming out very soon, and I'm going to be doing a book tour for it, and you're going to see it at number one on The New York Times. It's I'm not going for number nine through that.

00:59:26:14 - 00:59:29:10
Molly White
Next podcast it's just going to be like crates and crates of books.

00:59:29:10 - 00:59:31:16
Molly White
behind you.

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3 responses to “Episode 145 – Read, Write, Own: Web3’s Broken Promises (feat. Molly White)”

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