By yielding a generational wealth creation opportunity that was a strange hybrid of a lottery jackpot and self-made fortune, crypto created an ideological hold on its early entrepreneurs and workers. It had all the euphoria of a gold rush and all the self esteem of high tech meritocracy.

Some might ask: “Why not just buy a normal subscription to the NYT and also get some stock?” It’s a fair point, and the short answer is that this model is even more powerful for smaller media companies that aren’t public yet and have no existing way to allow early subscribers to benefit from future growth. The long answer is that tokenization of th... See more