Internet Capital Markets: The Next Big Thing?

Key Insights

• Internet capital markets are emerging as a new onchain narrative, enabling creators, founders, and builders to tokenize products, concepts, or communities. This shift is accelerating capital formation across crypto and non-crypto sectors.
• Believe’s breakout success has been the key driver behind this new narrative. With over $2 billion in volume and 15,000 tokens launched, the platform exemplifies how accessible asset issuance is powering a new wave of onchain experimentation.
• Products launched on Believe span a surprising range of real-world applications, from social media tools to gaming and e-commerce. While many tokens remain speculative, a subset of projects are attempting to integrate tokens into functional user experiences.
• The narrative remains highly polarizing, while proponents view internet capital markets as a breakthrough in permissionless capital formation, critics argue they primarily enable extractive speculation with little lasting value.
• Internet capital markets will be successful if tokenized projects can deliver sustained utility, real revenue, and meaningful value accrual to holders. A single breakout product that ties token performance to genuine usage could catalyze broader validation.

Primer