Variant co-founder Li Jin talks with Emily Chang about the excitement around the value of the crypto universe quadrupling from its 2020 year-end value and around the overall growth of decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens.
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You recently launched a one hundred and ten million dollar new
fund for crypto startups. What will you back and how do you make

sure you’re buying into the reality and not the hype.
Yeah. So first of all we’re backing the thesis of the ownership

economy variant is very much focused on this particular thesis
that all next generation Internet platforms are going to be

built operated and owned by their users. And we think that
destroying ownership widely among one’s user base creates really

powerful incentive alignment that is going to allow networks to
grow much bigger faster than they could have under the

centralized model building platforms. And we think that crypto
tokens uniquely and powerfully enables that by allowing value

and ownership to be distributed much much more widely among a
larger base of participants. This already exists in small scale

and Silicon Valley in the form of stock option grants to
employees. But if we think of all of the large platforms that

have been built over the last decade in the creator economy or
the gig economy a lot of users have obviously been left out of

that ownership equation. And so our thesis as a firm is really
to invest in those next generation platforms that are going to

distribute ownership over to their participants and create much
larger networks than what were previously possible. So take us

three or five or I don’t know maybe it’s 10 years out. How do
how is this creator economy different than the creator economy

today that is owned by let’s say the Instagram’s and tech stocks
and YouTube’s of the world.

Yeah. So I think we’re at a really interesting moment in the
evolution of the creator economy. The creator economy has

existed for a really long time really ever since the birth of
user generated content platforms. There have been creators on

the Internet. I think what’s really new and different right now
is that a lot of those creators are seeing themselves as

entrepreneurs and small business owners and trying to carve out
a space for themselves online and monetize the attention that

they have from their audience in different ways by offering
different types of products. But today that really is existing

on the terms of a few very centralized dominant social media
platforms. Creators are not really in control of their content

their data their end user relationships how they actually
monetize. And so my hope is going forward and I think what is

enabled by crypto is a creator economy in which creators are
really able to be in control of their own destinies where

they’re able to set the terms of how they monetize how they own
their content. They’re going to be able to hopefully be able to

take their data with them and not be beholden to any one
centralized platform. And I think that’s really exist. That’s

really exciting and unlocks so many new possibilities for
creators. And furthermore I think in that world it’s not just

about the creator economy. It’s actually about the community
economy where creators can allow their fans to participate in

the upside of their careers and in that world. The lines between
who is a creator versus who’s a fan starts to blur and everyone

is able to share in their success and be very aligned towards
the success of the community. You’ve been really vocal about the

rise of FTSE topping 13 billion dollars in just the first three
quarters of this year. How do you expect that to shake out. Like

what does it look like next year. Yeah. In general we think that
f are really broad new type of digital content and I think

they’re going to encompass a lot of different types of assets on
the Internet.

Essentially everything around us in the physical world is like a
non fungible asset. And I think we’re going to see that play out

in the digital world as well right now. And FTSE and all of the
transaction balling around them is really around and FTSE as

still digital art and collectibles and people purchasing high
valued collectibles.

But I think in the future you’ll see a lot more use cases for
adoptees potentially in gaming or as access to special

experiences.
And so we’re really excited to see all those new use cases play

out in the future.
What’s your take on the recent rally. Does it keep going up.

Does it matter.
Yeah so it’s definitely really exciting to see as just a

participant in the ecosystem. But at the end of the day we are
running a long term venture firm and we take a very long view on

all of our investments. We’re not day traders. We really are
investing at the very earliest stages of these companies

existences. And we are really therefore kind of immune to the
ups and downs in the market and don’t pay all that much

attention to it. I think the most exciting projects are going to
take multiple years or decades to play out and we really aim to

be the long term partners to those builders.