This issue is brought to you by:

“Blockchain networks are a new construction material for building a better internet.”

- Chris Dixon

Read Write Own: Newsletter Book Review (Part One)

A page-turning novel remains the highest possible form of art, in my opinion — still better than movies, TV, TikTok, music and even sports (unless your team always wins). 

Non-fiction is good too, of course, and also occasionally page turning. 

But non-fiction is for learning and as a way to learn things, books have been surpassed by several more efficient mediums: blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, Twitter threads and maybe even newsletters.

Chris Dixon’s Read Write Own is an exception that proves this rule.

Read Write Own feels like the world’s longest blog post, and I mean that as high praise — it's packed with knowledge and the learnings are delivered with efficiency.

The book is only 230 pages long, but to give it the thorough review it deserves, this would need to be the world’s longest newsletter (which, unlike Dixon’s world’s longest blog post, no one would want to read).

I’m planning therefore to make literary history by writing the first-ever multi-part book review — my thoughts on Read Write Own will be serialized, like a Dickens novel (DM me for information on acquiring the movie rights).

The book itself won’t take long to get through, however. 

As densely packed with information as it is, Read Write Own is a quick read, largely because the writing feels effortless (which must have required a lot of effort).

Dixon has been thinking and writing about tech for so long that he’s able to distill every issue in crypto down to its essence, using easy-to-follow language and impossible-to-argue-with reasoning.  

That refreshingly excludes the hyperbole that’s seemingly ubiquitous in crypto — there is no swarm-of-cyber-hornets boosterism here, just a thorough explanation of where blockchain tech comes from and where it might be going.

Unlike Michael “cyber-hornet” Saylor, Dixon is not preaching to the choir, he’s preaching to the skeptics — the many, many people who don’t see why blockchain tech matters or don’t think it can work even if it does. 

Dixon makes a compelling case for both why it matters and why it will likely work.

But those in the choir should listen up too, because even if you know and agree with everything Dixon writes, the way he writes it will be useful to you. 

Read Write Own will help you frame your pro-crypto arguments in ways that might win you an argument (for a change). There is no leap of faith involved in his reasoning, just history and logic.

Perhaps, more importantly, it will help you keep the faith in those inevitable moments when you’ve forgotten why you were so pro-crypto in the first place.

Dixon achieves this by doing what he is perhaps uniquely positioned to do: placing crypto in its rightful historical context.

Blockchain networks, Dixon explains, are “a new class of computer,” the latest iteration of the technology that began with Alan Turing — and they’re here to rescue the internet.

Can we have our internet back, please?

Dixon’s belief in blockchain tech is a product of his waning belief in the internet.

The advent of open protocols like email and the web in the 1980s led to a “golden period of creativity and innovation” where immense network effects accrued to a decentralized community of builders and users. 

But what started as decentralized and neutral has become centralized and “adversarial,” with network effects accruing almost exclusively to the handful of corporations that have managed to “rewrite the rules of the entire game for their sole benefit.”

“The internet got intermediated,” he explains, transforming from “permissionless to permissioned.” 

This is a problem because “dominant tech businesses leverage the power of permission to thwart competition, desolate markets and extract rents.”

“In business,” Dixon warns, “permission becomes a pretense for tyranny.” 

But all is not yet lost!

Like email and the web before it, blockchain networks are “open protocols,” with all of the same attendant benefits (composability, low take rates, fairness).

Unlike email and the web, however, blockchains have tokens, which give them an economic viability that no open protocols have ever enjoyed.

So here’s one of Dixon’s big takeaways: Blockchain networks can have the societal benefits of the early internet and the competitive advantages of the corporate internet.

That unique combination offers an opportunity to “reinvent the internet” in a manner that would preclude it from ever being hijacked again. 

It needs reinventing: “Centralizing forces are […] making the internet less interesting, less dynamic, less fair.”

Dixon’s book makes a compelling case for why blockchain networks are our best chance to reverse that trend.

Why now?

Crypto people typically make blockchain sound like the tech equivalent of an alien invasion — crypto is depicted as a radical departure from everything that went before it, a big bang moment for both technology and finance.

This tends to leave non-crypto listeners feeling a little, well, alienated.

Dixon helpfully does the opposite, explaining simply that blockchains are a new kind of computer and therefore a natural next evolution of the internet.

This, I think, makes crypto far easier to believe in.

Dixon also makes clear, however, that there’s nothing foreordained about blockchain taking its place alongside Turing machines, PCs, the internet and mobile phones in the pantheon of world-changing digital technologies.

He believes, though, that blockchain tech may be approaching its iPhone moment: “The industry is likely now nearing the end of its incubation phase and entering its growth phase.”

Dixon is excited about this prospect not for what it might mean for token prices (he doesn’t have anything to say about prices other than to bemoan crypto’s casino culture), but what it might mean for everything else.

By “enabling the internet’s third act,” blockchain networks have the potential to “bring back the early spirit of the internet, secure property rights […] and break the stranglehold Big Tech has on our lives.”

If so, it means we’ll soon be living through the next great chapter in the history of digital technology: the read-write-own era of the internet.

Reading Dixon’s book will be the best, most informative, most efficient way to get ready for it.

― Byron Gilliam

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In today's episode, Jason and Santi are joined by Logan Jastremski of Frictionless Capital. He shares his thesis on why high-throughput blockchains are essential for crypto to reach mainstream adoption.

Watch or listen to Empire on Youtube, Spotify or Apple.

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Bitcoin’s Next Frontier: Institutional Demand in the World of Options and Futures Trading

This webinar will explore the evolving landscape of Bitcoin with a focus on institutional demand and products from traditional finance. Discussion will include an analysis of market dynamics, the intricacies of options pricing, the significance of a spot ETF for Bitcoin and its implications on the broader cryptocurrency market.

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