How blockchain-based tokens will transform the financing of technology
Tokens are early today, but will transform technology tomorrow. — In 2014, we wrote that “Bitcoin is more than money, and more than a protocol. It's a model and platform for true crowdfunding—open, distributed, and liquid all the way.”
Context & Ripple Effects
Srinivasan's argument extends a thesis he and Naval Ravikant staked out in 2014 — Bitcoin as 'a model and platform for true crowdfunding' — and lands two years after AVC's case that crypto-tokens let open-protocol creators finance development by retaining tokens at launch. Written in May 2017, it sits at the front edge of the ICO wave that Bloomberg would soon frame as a 1999-like bubble destined to crash but still mint its Googles and Facebooks.
What makes the piece worth rereading now is how much of its roadmap the later coverage confirms: Kickstarter committed to moving its crowdfunding site onto a blockchain-based protocol, Multicoin Capital codified the open-finance and Web3 agenda, and by the mid-2020s US regulators had accepted tokenized assets outright — the Wall Street embrace of the blockchain Srinivasan predicted — while tokenized stocks opened private markets at companies like SpaceX, Stripe, and OpenAI to public buyers.
First-order effects
- Protocol teams gain a funding route that bypasses venture equity entirely: launch a token, retain a portion, and finance development from the retained float while backers get liquid exposure from day one.
- Early token buyers hold an asset class that trades immediately rather than locking capital for a decade, changing who can underwrite early-stage technology.
Second-order effects
- Established consumer platforms are forced to respond to the model rather than ignore it — Kickstarter's planned migration to a blockchain-based protocol shows incumbents adopting the rails to keep their creator base.
- As regulators accept tokenized assets, Wall Street institutions and private-market companies gain a new distribution channel, pulling pricing and access for late-stage tech equity away from traditional IPO gatekeepers.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, technology financing bifurcates into programmable-token structures for open protocols and tokenized equity for long-private companies, shrinking the role of the conventional venture-and-IPO sequence.
- The 1999 analogy implies the same boom-crash-consolidation cycle as the early web: most tokens fail, but the surviving issuance models become core financial infrastructure — with regulatory acceptance, not technology, setting the pace.
The trend: Technology financing is migrating from venture equity toward programmable tokens and tokenized assets, with each regulatory accommodation converting what was once fringe crowdfunding into mainstream market structure.