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In today’s newsletter, tokenization is giving fans the power to greenlight films, writes Republic’s Marc Iserlis.
Then, CoinFund’s David Pakman says that the success of stablecoins isn’t about speculation but about efficient utility — they are quietly becoming the most-used form of digital currency around the world.
Hollywood has hit a breaking point. Audiences are fatigued by franchise sequels and reboots. YouTube has overtaken Disney as the world’s largest distributor. And Gen AI tools like Sora 2 can soon turn anyone into a filmmaker. Yet one thing hasn’t changed: how films get financed. And that’s why we keep getting fewer original films.
Decline of original screenplays at the US box office (1984-2023)
For decades, filmmakers have had only two ways to raise capital: courting wealthy “patrons of the arts” or signing away IP in restrictive studio deals. These small circles still control who the next David Lynch will be, or which film becomes the next Napoleon Dynamite, while everyday fans — the people who live and breathe these films — have never had a seat at the table. (Fewer than 1% of Americans meet SEC “accreditation” standards to invest in most private ventures, including film.)
That’s finally changing, thanks to tokenization. The promise of "decentralization in film” has arrived, quietly and legally this time. A few years ago, “Web3 Film” had the right dream but the wrong tools: people were slicing films into NFT frames, touting complex tokenomics and skirting securities laws. None of it worked. Projects like Stoner Cats, Ashton Kutcher’s NFT cartoon, became cautionary tales after the SEC cracked down for selling unregistered securities to unaccredited investors.
Today, the difference is compliance. Through licensed platforms operating under SEC exemptions such as Reg CF, production companies can take on thousands of unaccredited investors (even in the U.S.) to back real film projects and share in the upside. Security tokens issued on blockchain rails make it possible to distribute dividends transparently and cost-effectively — and, eventually, trade investors’ stakes on secondary markets.
And it’s already working. Tens of thousands of investors have contributed more than $30 million to premium productions from some of Hollywood’s most respected names. This year, Robert Rodriguez(Sin City, Spy Kids) raised $2 million from 2,000 fans to invest in new action films — and every investor got to pitch him a film as part of the slate. Pressman Film — the company behind American Psycho, Wall Street and The Crow —raised $2 million for a slate of bold, original films, and is already starting to return capital within six months. And Eli Roth (Hostel, Inglorious Basterds) launched a fan-owned horror studio that maxed out its $5 million Reg CF campaign in July. He was tired of studios deeming his ideas too gory, even though the most profitable film of 2024 was the unrated slasher, Terrifier 3.
Tokenized fan investing is opening up new paths for capital and creativity. Filmmakers can now tap their audiences for capital instead of taking the studio deal, allowing them to retain more ownership of their IP and take creative risks without interference from the suits or the algorithm. For fans, tokenization opens up access to a previously inaccessible opportunity: investing in film as an alternative asset class. Ultimately, these projects tend to perform better — not just creatively but financially — as audiences with skin in the game drive buzz and box-office returns.
The timing couldn’t be better. With IPOs slowing and private markets swelling, tokenization is unlocking billions in household capital and opening doors to previously gatekept opportunities across private credit, venture capital and now, film. The GENIUS Act has brought long-awaited regulatory clarity to digital assets, while institutions from BlackRock to Visa are embedding blockchain infrastructure into the mainstream economy. Tokenization has quietly graduated from crypto casino to financial plumbing, and entertainment is proving to be one of its most relatable (and needed) use cases.
There may be no better Trojan horse for mainstream adoption of tokenization than culture real-world assets (RWAs). Few industries are as ripe for disruption as film, and none as universally relatable, considering nearly all of us end our day watching Netflix (and then complain about the content). But when the audience can invest in the projects they want to see, whether from established filmmakers or up-and-coming creators, we won’t just get new financing models. We’ll get better movies.
Bitcoin may dominate the crypto headlines, but the real growth story of the next five years will be stablecoins, the digital dollars that are modernizing the way money moves around the globe.
Yes, the original cryptocurrency is rapidly becoming an ideal non-sovereign global store of value, with a market capitalization of $2.3 trillion, but stablecoins serve a transactional purpose and thus have already vastly surpassed bitcoin in daily transactions. On October 6, bitcoin’s 24-hour volume was $63.8 billion, compared to stablecoins’ $146 billion — more than double the transaction volume.
There’s a simple reason for this. Stablecoins aren’t just an investible asset to hold, they have real-world utility. Stablecoins are powering a lot more than just DeFi. They are increasingly being used as a global currency powering payments and cross-border money flows. Moreover, with artificial intelligence integrating into everyday life and soon into commerce, stablecoins are likely to be the currency of machine-to-machine transactions by AI agents.
Bitcoin’s uses are growing as wrapped BTC and emerging Bitcoin Layer 2 networks seek to integrate it into DeFi and enable dApps to be built on top of it — but fundamentally, bitcoin will remain a store of value. Other blockchains do a much better job of providing a decentralized, smart-contract-programmable platform on which to build the future of finance. Stablecoins are purpose-built to offer a better solution for global payments than the traditional, centralized status quo (SWIFT, ACH and credit card payments). As mainstream adoption grows, stablecoins will then capture the bulk of day-to-day payment use.
Look at Venezuela, where USDT has become the backbone of daily economic activity. With rampant inflation — the IMF puts it at 180% — and a short supply of physical dollars, this certainly is an extreme example, but it provides a direct use case showing how easy it is to pay for groceries or a haircut in stablecoins.
Stablecoins are rapidly gaining traction because they do what bitcoin never could at scale — facilitate instant, peer‐to‐peer payments. Bitcoin’s ten‐minute block times, network fees and volatility make it ill-suited for everyday transactions, while stablecoins settle in seconds, cost pennies (in some cases under a cent), and preserve value stability.
It’s all about utility
The success of stablecoins isn’t about speculation but about efficient utility — they are quietly becoming the most-used form of digital currency around the world. Stablecoins are quickly disrupting the global remittance market, a sector worth around $780 billion annually, by offering faster, lower-cost cross-border transfers.
They are also starting to disrupt the payments market, as giants like Stripe, Visa, PayPal and other fintechs incorporate stablecoin payments that are faster, cheaper, usable 24/7 and globally accessible. And as stablecoins are incorporated by fintechs and payments processors, most people will have no idea that behind the scenes, they are using blockchain rails.
The current U.S. administration has made very clear that it sees stablecoins as a financial innovation, vital to keeping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It has put its weight behind them, evidenced by the passage of the GENIUS Act as the first step in this process.
While agencies draft the regulatory ‘rules of the road’ for stablecoins under the GENIUS Act, the devil will be in the details; how reserve assets are defined, which entities are permitted to issue dollar-backed tokens, what redemption rights users are guaranteed and whether these digital dollars can move freely across public and private blockchains. These choices will determine whether U.S.-regulated stablecoins can compete globally or be buried under conflicting oversight. This administration must ensure it enables dollar-backed stablecoins to dominate on the world stage, or risk losing control of the future of money.
I think that in the short-term, for all the reasons listed above, the total minted value of stablecoins could exceed the market cap of bitcoin.
- David Pakman,managing partner and head of venture investments, CoinFund
