Exploring Web3 - E-book - ePub

Dot-com firms occupied roughly 12 of the 61 prime-time ad spots during the Superbowl in January 2000. Many companies went public before turning a profit. The Nasdaq Composite Index's price to earnings ratio surpassed 200. It was the height of the internet boom. Venture capitalists were pouring money into anything that had the internet attached to it, hoping to own a piece of the future. The boom broke in 2001.
On public markets, internet firms were savaged, corporations fell into insolvency, and expensive dot-com office chairs were sold in droves. The stock price of Amazon plummeted, while Cisco Systems alone lost 86 percent of its worth. In the aftermath, investors were hesitant to invest in software businesses, and many believed that even Amazon was going to fail. However, the internet more than lived up to the dot-com hype; it just took a few cycles.
Many parallels exist between crypto in the 2020s and the dot-com period, including firms going 'public' (initial coin offering) before turning a profit, stadium renaming, and even greater price-to- profits ratios. Web3 may be reaching the end of its hype cycle, and while no one can foretell the future, additional corrections are sure to follow. However, at Web3 Vision Fund, we think that the underlying blockchain technology has the potential to alter the world by ushering in the next generation of the internet (Web3)...