Four years ago, I launched an experiment in media.
Like all good experiments, we had a hypothesis that was built on two parts:
1⃣) That the internet is changing money.
and 2⃣) That attention is money.
Bitcoin had already proved the first point a decade prior — but what would this look like for attention?
For whatever reason, people continue to think the answer to 2 is memecoins. (By now, I shouldn’t have to explain why they are not.) Even so, I launched the largest creator coin on Coinbase’s blockchain last year to disprove that idea once and for all myself.
Instead, my thesis was that if attention is as valuable as money, independent creators are being categorically under-appreciated and under-priced. This should not come as a surprise — their true value is being captured by intermediaries.
YouTube.
Meta.
TikTok.
All of these platforms taking in billions from the work of creators while paying them pennies on the dollar. As an intermediary sitting between a creator and their fans, their algos ultimately king-make who has value and who doesn’t. They are the ultimate arbiters of attention. They are the ultimate arbiters of money.
But there’s a funny thing about the relationship between a content creator and their fans. It’s one of the rare types of network businesses that grow on both sides of the equation:
More eyeballs, means more attention 🔼
And a creator can charge advertisers higher prices 🔼
It’s the perfect two-sided network 🔁
So, we set out to ask: What if a creator could offer fans a way to co-own the upside in themselves and their content. If fans are already watching, why not grow alongside a creator?
I pitched the co-founder of Netlfix
@marcrandolph on the idea. (As far as revolutionizing media and attention goes, probably no one more qualified.) The thesis of dis-intermediating the relationship between a creator and fans clicked, and he jumped in as one of our first backers at
@coinage_media
I set out to offer anyone the chance to join us as an equal-part member in co-owning my show for $169.
Launch day came, and after we had dropped a pretty big exclusive interview I was feeling pretty confident — and we had just grown our YouTube channel from 0 to 3,000 in a month.
We launched our site, expecting a deluge of buyers. I held my breath as the sale officially opened AND! ... we sold 7 memberships.
The office fell silent.
I sat still in the silence, refreshing my screen.
My ears started ringing. And my hands went numb.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go lol.
But then… it started to work. One member introduced me to a guest that became our best performing video. Another proposed an idea with a sponsor that became our biggest revenue driver that year. Subscribers surged past 100,000.
And as we grew, more people joined the experiment. The value of the membership to co-own my show grew as well. Even though anyone could trade their ticket into membership at anytime, the price went up from $169 to $383. And we own that value together.
As we’ve grown our community, we’ve been able to charge advertisers a premium. Why? Because in a sea of AI slop and bot followers, we have the community to back up what we are building.
And as the show has grown, we’ve paid back distributions to those fans who took a bet on me. We've done so using stablecoins — all powered by attention.
So, what have we learned?
1⃣The creator economy is ripe for disruption.
2⃣Creators are the new startup — no one is better at generating attention than them.
3⃣Fans want to own the upside in their favorite creators.
4⃣The ability to pay out stabelcoin distributions from creators and their content makes them a valuable asset.
And most importantly,
5⃣There is a better, more sustainable way to tokenize creators — and we have pioneered it at
@trustless_media
No self respecting creator will want to re-live the sins of
$TRUMP, or sell out their followers like Hawk Tuah Girl.
There is down 99%, and there is up more than 100%.
There is speculation, and there is ownership.
There is OnlyFans. And there is community.
The age of tokenizing creators and fans, sustainably, is finally here. The era of the tokenized creator offering is upon us.