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“The key component [in the metaverse] is ownership, and that’s so fundamental… The concept of property laws, is a core part of what makes us human, and this is finally able to live with us in our digital lives”, former Reddit executive chairman and tech venture capitalist Alexis Ohanian said about the development of Web3.
Discussing the intersection of culture and finance at the core of Web 3.0, Ohanian highlighted fair ownership that the new era of the internet is bringing to creators, early adopters and community supporters. Ohanian also underlined the potential for Web 3.0 to liberalise the value of digital assets or content
“What is wild is that there’s going to be an amazing change, and what that does is that it challenges every understanding of how value is created on these platforms”, Ohanian said in a conversation last week at Credit Suisse’s Asian investment Conference 2022.
New opportunities
The US entrepreneur co-founded social news website Reddit. In 2016, he left Reddit to run the venture capital firm he co-founded, Initialized Capital, and built it to US$100 billion in market value through early investments in companies like Coinbase, Opendoor, Instacart, Patreon, and Ro. In 2020, he founded venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, which now has over US$750 million of assets under management.
Ohanian said he was eyeing business that are helping the wider adoption of crypto among the public. “We know the technology is real. And right now we’re bring over best-in-class user experiences and interfaces that will get people building things that will be a better on-ramp for people”, he said/
“Where the next big opportunity is, is mainstream adoption, which I think will come faster than you and I realise”, Ohanian said.
Women play a key role
“Community matters a ton”, Ohanian also said about the value of community building for successful online platforms, touching on his experiences building Reddit into one of the world’s biggest news aggregators, but conceded that women are under-represented in Web 3.0.
“As impressed as I have been with what online communities and Web 3 have done, they’re all only operating at a fraction of their potential, because women have by and large been left out of the equation… [they] will help us bring about a more valuable and viable Web3”, he said.
