Max Mersch, General Partner at Fabric: Why Nobody is Paying Attention to Rising Surveillance States

— Surveillance states and their mechanisms: how governments use control mechanisms like passport restrictions, food rationing, and constant monitoring to suppress individual freedom and behavior.

— Web3 as a solution to platform extraction: shifting from centralized tech giants that "won't be evil" to decentralized architectures that structurally "can't be evil."

— Three core investment theses for Web3: sound money (Bitcoin), digital assets (tokenization of physical goods), and Web3 infrastructure (decentralized data networks powered by edge computing and machine learning).

— Work tokens and their value accrual: tokens that coordinate supply-side network participants (similar to taxi medallions) and generate rational revenue streams through network fees, as seen in projects like Filecoin.

— Open source software sustainability: the critical but underfunded problem of maintaining open source projects, with 65% of projects maintained by one or two unpaid developers.

— Platform risk removal through decentralization: how building multiple interfaces on decentralized networks (e.g., Veil and Gessr on Augur) allows users to switch providers without losing access to their assets.

— Ethereum addresses have doubled year-over-year to 60 million, with 30 million added in the past year.

— Unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) on Bitcoin are at all-time highs again after the January 2018 peak.

— MakerDAO issued more loans in its first year than Lending Club did in five years, with loan issuance beginning at the January 2018 price peak and growing exponentially as prices declined.

— Daily price discussion is identified as the most overhyped aspect of crypto discussion; developer activity and ecosystem growth metrics are more meaningful indicators.

— Evaluate crypto investments through non-correlated assets with asymmetric return profiles rather than emotional narratives; this framework applies to any asset class and resonates with institutional investors seeking portfolio diversification.

— Focus investment attention on teams and talent density rather than price action; follow where the smartest builders and capital are concentrating, as intellectual and financial capital momentum is difficult to overcome.

— Pay more attention to open source software sustainability and developer incentive mechanisms (like work tokens and protocol-level developer funding) as foundational problems that will determine long-term ecosystem viability.