Crypto token sales and distributions have long been thought of as scammy and unnecessary by most traditional investors. VCs are now starting to wake up the fact that crypto tokens enable entrepreneurs to build decentralized protocols though and Albert Wenger nailed why in his post today "Crypto Tokens and the Coming Age of Protocol Innovation." It's always been difficult for entrepreneurs to monetize at the protocol level, but not anymore. BTC, ETH, and STEEM have led the way but there will be many others.

Not only do crypto tokens incentivize entrepreneurs at the protocol level, they also give users more ownership over the technology products they're using than ever before. For example, STEEM gives users the ability to both benefit financially from the networks success and impact the quality of the network (by having voting power on what content gets surfaced to the top). REP in Augur will give Augur users an important role in how prediction markets get made and strong incentives to participate in the network. The ownership + participation aspects enable these decentralized protocols to form more powerful network effects than have ever been seen before on the Internet.

I expect to see many VCs and institutional investors gravitate towards crypto tokens in the coming months.

Read Albert's full post here