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As much as I enjoy @MikeIppolito_, he “triggered me” on @ExpansionPod_by saying Crypto’s endgame is new SEC rules around equity. WRONG. “It’s regenerative public goods.” — @owocki CLICK FOR RANT

TL;DR

There’s a growing sense of capitulation in crypto. Nothing’s working and the memecoin debacle is the last straw. Forgive me but it just feels like the idea that the endgame of this whole thing will be new SEC guidance for tokens as equity for centralized companies is too much to abide by. Sure, programmable stocks are interesting, but that’s just NOT the game. We are reimagining the economy around regenerative public goods.

This isn’t about replacing capitalism — it’s about expanding it to include more open-source, more equitable distribution of the inevitable abundance and increasingly powerful digitally manageable infrastructure made possible by permissionless coordination. We’re losing that narrative. Memecoins dominate the zeitgeist, revealing the industry’s worst instincts. DeFi is under siege, ETFs are capturing liquidity, and TradFi is partitioning off crypto’s value while DAO governance remains ineffective. While I think crypto is inevitable, we’re at risk of losing decades.

Better regulations are welcome. And centralization is temporarily necessary. But we need to keep our eyes on the castle on the hill. We need to keep the faith. An open economic system is coming — one where memecoins evolve into tools for coordination, project tokens fairly fund innovation, data sovereignty underpins a new AI-driven landscape, and so much more. That’s the endgame.

Crypto’s Endgame Is Regenerative Public Goods — Not Equity

There’s been a creeping narrative shift in crypto, and it needs to be challenged head-on.

I was recently listening to a favourite podcast where the outstanding host, Michael Ippolito, suggested that the endgame for crypto is the SEC evolving its equity rules so that tokens can function as a new kind of security. And look, if you drill into that idea, there are some fascinating implications. A world where company shares exist as smart contracts means:

• Shares could be programmed to respond to internal business operations, payments, and governance.

• New levers and controls could be deployed to further optimize tools like convertible debt instruments, partner and project financing, loyalty programs, HR, etc.

There’s immense value here, but let’s be clear: it’s also a trap.

Why build a better stock market when you can evolve beyond stock markets?

Memecoins, Prime Token, and the Future of Funding

Let me digress for a moment to address a big reason for broader disillusionment: memecoins. First, they aren’t going away. People want to gamble. They want to have fun. Crypto gaming isn’t only a separate category — crypto is one of the games. The meme coin. A new casino. And like all emerging games, it will need some “tweaks”, but it will always be a vicious PvP. Learned to avoid timed rugs? This time it starts as a rug.

Jeff Dorman recently pointed out how absurd it is for people to take their ball and go home over Melania and Libra when memecoins account for something like less than 5% of total TVL. Meanwhile, incredible projects are being built, the SEC and government have come around, and crypto is more legitimized than ever. This should be a moment of opportunity.

For new entrants, though, Bitcoin isn’t going to 1,000x anytime soon. The broader macroeconomic environment doesn’t feel like it’s offering young people the same opportunities their parents had. And then amidst this financial nihilism, the President of the United States drops a memecoin. And just when we contort ourselves into accepting it, Melania and Argentina (via the Libra scam) start shamelessly rugging. So, it makes sense why, despite being a tiny slice of total TVL, memecoins dominate the conversation.

Remember 10,000 PFP NFT projects — they were fun, but ultimately they became tools for wash trading and speculative frenzies. That shouldn’t have taken away from broader work on leveraging the NFT standard. Similarly, memecoins aren’t destined to only be rigged casino games — there’s more to this Titanic iceberg. But we are taking on water.

So, what can we do? We can find out what good celebrity tokens can be, maybe explore loyalty programs, or maybe look into new models for funding and engagement. Memecoins have exposed the power of liquid, viral, lightweight assets, and their next phase could involve linking their energy to more useful causes. (As well as tightening up the existing game).

A last thought here. An idea I have become obsessed with is that all projects could a priori begin as memes. I’m imagining a eureka-coin subcategory of meme tokens. Say you have your “million-dollar-idea” — without breaking ground on an MVP or seeking angel investment that sends you down the institutional/insider path. Use a launchpad like Pump.Fun to post a memecoin claiming your stake in the concept. If value rallies around it, real projects can emerge. And here’s the key evolution: successful projects could then offer a chunk of the eventual project ICO to holders of the associated eureka-coin. Or there could be a staking mechanism or some other mechanic to get an airdrop allocation.

In this world, future ICOs could reserve some of their token allocation for associated meme communities — the people who believed in an idea before it had traction. That’s one vision: a seamless, community-driven funding model that channels speculative energy into meaningful, long-term projects.

It’s not just a memecoin supercycle, it’s a super memecoin.

Data Sovereignty: A Pillar of the Future

There’s so much happening today in crypto. I’m not Elon Musk, I can only focus on two or three areas at most. Crypto gaming, DePIN, DeFi, Infrastructure etc. etc. Web3 isn’t just about regulatory tweaks or expanded SEC rules around equity. Everything is changing.

An area of focus that I can discuss is enterprise data. I have been lurking around the Filecoin ecosystem, getting nerd-sniped into the paradigm shift of data sovereignty. For example, I go to the doctor and get an x-ray, and I own that data. Or, say I have been a researcher at a series of universities and businesses. Data sovereignty could unlock attribution that shares revenue back to me whenever my data’s value is captured. This is another example of how blockchain could unlock new paradigms that reshape not just finance but other parts of the economy.

Right now, enterprises rely on centralized gatekeepers to store and manage their data. The way data is handled today is deeply inefficient, extractive, and vulnerable — leading to security breaches, compliance headaches, and skyrocketing cloud costs. But with decentralized infrastructure like Filecoin we can expect the emergence of a new way to store, retrieve, and leverage data as a digital asset.

This isn’t just a minor improvement — it’s a foundational shift. AI, finance, governance, and even individual privacy all depend on who owns and controls data. If you don’t own your data, you don’t own your digital existence. The blockchain revolution isn’t just about money; it’s about information sovereignty, about creating public goods that are truly accessible, and about making economic coordination possible at a level we’ve never seen before.

Web3 is about building beyond artificial scarcity — not just for financial assets, but for knowledge, computation, and data itself.

A public good is only as powerful as the data that supports it. With data sovereignty, we can better leverage regenerative public goods.

The Tempting Religiosity of Regenerative Public Goods

In traditional capitalism, when something becomes abundant, companies introduce artificial scarcity to extract profit. I was red-pilled because I imagined blockchain could break that model. Instead of forcing inefficiencies into the system to maintain pricing power, blockchain’s secure and permissionless innovation could allow a decentralized group (HOA? government? network state?) to invest in providing a regenerative public good. Then when profit-motivated innovation attached itself to the regenerative public good, because of its monopoly power, the regenerative public good would retain control over the profit-seekers’ monopolist tendencies.

Governments pay for roads and safety. Why can’t energy grids, healthcare, labor transactions, marketing… every industry where middlemen extract rent eventually be rewritten by crypto’s incentive mechanics? When monopolists extract rent, governments step in to regulate. But a regenerative public good replaces that entire cycle. It doesn’t fear monopolists; it won’t chase artificial scarcity. Imagine massive open-source protocols that are democratically managed and deliver near-free services with minimally extractive intermediaries. Surely we can now imagine AI and robotics driving costs down until an entire service (food to fork so to speak) can be metered as a regenerative public good.

Imagine a future where healthcare is delivered as a regenerative public good. AI scans your voice, skin condition, etc., and identifies an illness. Or a robotic arm sets your broken bone automatically. The cost of care isn’t inflated by insurance, billing departments, or a maze of middlemen. The cost is pennies, paid into a decentralized system that coordinates logistics without bureaucratic inefficiencies.

But — and this is crucial — there’s still space for profit and innovation. If someone invents an apple-pear, or a faster delivery drone, or a superior diagnostic AI, they can upgrade the baseline regenerative service. The goal isn’t to eliminate innovation, it’s to eliminate artificial scarcity.

Water flows to every house. Electricity powers every home. Roads are maintained. What else can be turned into a regenerative public good? I believe blockchain incentive structures can create open, trustless, censorship-resistant networks that redefine not just finance, but the infrastructure itself.

Evangelizing Crypto’s True Purpose

I started in software, working through the mobile/social/cloud wave, learning the ropes, and getting a few modest exits. But crypto hit different. When Bitcoin was $70, I was sniffing around, trying to make sense of it. And what I saw — what still keeps me here today — is the fundamental shift it enables. I got religion.

Value is now programmable. Digital ownership is possible. This can unlock a digital layer that augments our economy until wealth and coordination don’t demand artificial scarcity. We’re not there yet, but I believe we can get there.

And look — I wrote a lot of this piece using ChatGPT to help edit, expand, and refine ideas. But these are still my thoughts (as derivative as they may be). One day AI will be so advanced that we won’t even need to write at all — and agents will handle all real transactions on our behalf. And when that day comes, maybe the AI will be so dominant there won’t even need to be a blockchain. If AI is doing the compute, handling the agreements, and optimizing outcomes, then what matters isn’t trust, but execution.

Until then, we’re in the middle ground — where Turing-test-failing AIs only might be coming for jobs and where technological deflation is only read about in the trades. Some are confident that, because automation didn’t replace all work when we moved from farming to industry, it never will. I land on the other side of that bet. Bottom line, while the future is uncertain, one thing is clear:

This isn’t just about new SEC rules allowing equity tokens for centralized organizations. It’s bigger than that.

Let me be careful to say — Michael Ippolito is way way on the right side of the revolution and I am only poking at his (possibly momentary) capitulation. I tried to scan through the pod again and find exactly what he said to no avail… It was a sidebar at best.

The point of all this is to say — that while it is objectively harder than ever to make money in crypto. And it sucks that Bitcoin isn’t going to 1000x again. And it is exhausting that there are endless projects that are mostly front-run by VCs. And now the one game that seemed fun — the libraly farting dog with a hat on named Melania coins — just showed its true colours… I am still red-pilled and you all should be too — more than ever.

We’re not there. But “there” exists.