Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

The breakdown is sponsored by nexo.io, Abra, and FtX, and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

What's going on, guys? It is Sunday, January 23rd, and that means it's time for Long

Reads Sunday. And today, the theme is the corporate versus open metaverse. Before we get

into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, go subscribe to it,

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Now, one of the big themes from this week that we've been discussing, especially in light of

Microsoft's big acquisition of Vactivision Blizzard, is that there are very competing

visions for a Metaverse coming to market.

One is an open, permissionless, interoperable kind of crypto-powered system.

The other is a new type of owned-walled garden that sure maybe has NFTs, but ultimately is

still controlled by the same people who control all the social networks and internet experiences

now.

We should remember, right, that the term Metaverse has an inauspicious origin. It was coined

by Neil Stephenson in the book Snow Crash and referred to a corporate dystopia. Even the oasis of

Ready Player 1 was a corporate affair ruled by a benevolent dictator, and the whole battle was trying

to keep control in the hands of a nude benevolent dictator. And I think this is relevant

because when Facebook announced their shift to meta, there was sort of shockingly all positives

in the crypto industry. And on the one hand, it's understandable, right? It was validation.

...