Ansem’s point lands because it names a real friction people feel: many users help a product grow long before they ever get a chance to share in the upside. Tokenization, at its best, is an attempt to close that gap by letting community participation start earlier and more visibly.
What makes the take high-quality is that it doesn’t pretend this is automatically fair or risk-free. Early tokens can still concentrate power, create messy incentives, and leave later buyers holding the downside. The interesting version of the argument isn’t “crypto is morally superior,” it’s that public building plus earlier liquidity changes who is in the room when value is first being assigned.
That framing feels closer to crypto’s original promise than most launch narratives do. Whether it actually delivers depends less on the slogan and more on whether teams treat the community as co-owners rather than just distribution.