Monetization of Digital Assets

Yesterday, the open internet got its first toll booth. Not from courts or Congress, but from Cloudflare. The company, whose infrastructure touches roughly 20% of all global internet traffic, announced a significant shift: All new customer domains will now block AI bots by default. That means crawlers like OpenAI's GPTBot, Anthropic's ClaudeBot, and Google's Extended bot can no longer freely help themselves to your content. Unless you, the website owner, explicitly allow it, they’re cut off. Cloudflare also announced a Pay‑Per‑Crawl marketplace, where publishers can set terms for access - turning content into a licensed input, not a free good. With one product update, Cloudflare rewrote the default terms of engagement between AI and the web. From open to closed. From assumed permission to enforced consent. From passive scraping to active negotiation. Cloudflare has forced the question that’s been dodged for years: If AI systems are built on the backs of human expression, who owns the value they create? ▪️ For 20+ years, the internet operated on a basic exchange: Publish freely → Get discovered via search → Monetize attention. But AI broke that contract. Users now ask Claude or ChatGPT for answers. The models reply using human-created content - with no credit, no clickthrough, and no compensation. When publishing stops being a path to discovery - and starts being a donation to model training - incentives collapse. What Cloudflare did was reintroduce friction. Not to break the web. But to rebalance it. ▪️ What makes this moment so interesting is that the solution isn’t coming from regulators. It’s not the result of a moral awakening or a philosophical reckoning. It’s a default setting in a SaaS dashboard. But because of Cloudflare’s scale, it might as well be policy. This is capitalism at its best. You don’t always need top-down regulation to enforce guardrails. Sometimes market incentives create their own form of governance. In a world where governments often lag behind technology, infrastructure becomes policy. ▪️ Cloudflare may not have intended to reshape digital economics, but they’ve done exactly that. By forcing AI firms to ask, license, or walk away, Cloudflare has built the bones of a content licensing infrastructure, without ever saying the word “copyright”. ▪️ Let’s be clear: Cloudflare didn’t do this because it’s noble. They did it because it’s profitable. Their customers - TIME, Condé Nast, Reddit, News Corp - are tired of being strip-mined for training data without so much as a backlink. And Cloudflare is in the perfect position to intervene. I won’t be surprised if Fastly, Akamai, maybe even AWS follow. For 30 years, we assumed the internet had no gatekeepers. But it did. We just didn’t notice them until they started saying no. The principle is planted: Scraping without consent is not neutral. It’s extraction. We could see a more cohesive consent layer for the web emerge - driven not by altruism, but by incentive alignment.

The PayPal, Mastercard and Visa announcements are not about agentic AI. They are about ownership of the next chapter of commerce and payments. Here is how they compare. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱: -   PayPal : APIs that let any AI agent pay, track shipping, issue invoices and resolve disputes without leaving the chat. -   Mastercard : Network tokens + passkeys so agents become “trusted purchasers,” with programmable rules and biometric SCA baked in. -   Visa:  Five modular APIs for discovery → checkout, including user‑set spend caps, MCC filters and real‑time approvals. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲? -   The payments race has always been about shaving seconds off checkout. In the agentic era, the winning time is 0 seconds, 0 clicks. Checkout disappears entirely as search, recommendation, and payment collapse into a single LLM-driven conversation. -   Whoever owns the payment credential becomes the default wallet in the loop, capturing not just the transaction, but data, interchange, and value-added services that follow. -   The players that get this right won’t just win conversions. They’ll own the customer relationship. The ones that don’t will find themselves disintermediated by someone else’s agent. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹: Imagine: • A travel bot books flights, hotels, insurance and pays - no forms. • An SME sourcing agent negotiates fabric in Guangzhou and settles with a virtual card - no emails. • A grocery assistant notices the fridge is low and re‑orders - no conscious decision. Multiply that by every vertical and every consumer. That’s always‑on demand capture - and potentially trillions in incremental volumes routed through whoever provides the agent‑native rails. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁: 1.     Industry standards: Common schemas for trusted-agent registration, permissions, and dispute handling. 2.     Granular consumer controls: Per-transaction biometrics, spend limits, time-of-day and merchant-category restrictions. 3.     Merchant enablement: SDKs and APIs to expose real-time inventory, pricing, and loyalty programs to agents. 4.     Regulatory attention: How frameworks like PSD3, CFPB guidelines, or MAS oversight will apply to autonomous payers. 5.     New revenue models: Pay-per-call risk scoring, agent onboarding fees, premium fraud protection layers. 6.     Advanced risk infrastructure: Real-time monitoring of agent behaviour, intent detection, and adaptive risk scoring to flag anomalies. 7.     Liability frameworks: Clear rules for who’s accountable when an agent transacts incorrectly: the user, the platform, or the agent provider. The race to build the payment infrastructure for autonomous agents is underway. Expect a wave of partnerships, acquisitions, and early execution challenges as the industry adapts to a new model of always-on, agent-driven commerce. Opinions: my own 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫: https://lnkd.in/dkqhnxdg

We're moving away from charging for *access* to software and toward a model of charging for the *work delivered* by a combination of software and AI agents. Let’s dive into what’s happening and what it means for you ⤵️ 1. The rise of disruptive AI pricing models Tech companies are realizing they can't solely rely on seat-based subscriptions in an age of AI, automation and APIs where value is disconnected with how many people are logging in. Perhaps Salesforce going all-in on Agentforce (and charging $2 per conversation) was the push the industry needed. Each product category has its own flavor of disruptive pricing. - Legal AI products might charge for a demand package generated by AI or an AI-generated summary. - Creator AI products might charge for the content that gets produced such as a video generation or amount of video created. - GTM products might charge for specific tasks completed or workflows executed by the AI. 2. Selling work, not necessarily success As a customer, I wish I only had to pay for software when it delivered results. But the reality is that true success-based billing won’t work for the vast majority of today’s products. Most products should charge for work output instead. The issue is attribution. You want the customer to get a fantastic outcome — and you want them to recognize that your product powered that outcome. As soon as you start charging for success, the customer begins to rethink the results. 3. Goodbye ARR as we know it? Shifting to these newer value-based pricing models isn't a simple pricing change you can just announce in a press release. It's a business model evolution that looks a lot like the shift from on-prem to SaaS in the first place. These new AI pricing models might mean greater volatility in both usage and spend. Variable margin profiles across products and customers. Seasonal revenue fluctuations. The potential for project-based, non-recurring use cases. Put simply, annual recurring revenue (ARR) continues to get dethroned. — Full post in today’s Growth Unhinged newsletter: https://lnkd.in/ea5eTrVD Things are about to get interesting 🍿 #ai #pricing #saas

Loyalty is failing. Gen Z & long-term commitment. 22% of Gen Z consumers consider themselves loyal to one brand is a clear warning for legacy loyalty strategies. Unlike previous generations, Gen Z doesn’t see brand loyalty as a long-term commitment, they’re loyal to moments, not just names. +43% increase in engagement and sales conversions among Gen Z Beauty brands offering "limited-edition drops" and collaborative experiences. +71% Gen Z say they would rather spend money on an experience than a product. >>Loyalty is FAILING, but why<< +Transactional systems feel outdated: Point-based rewards for repeat purchases don’t excite this audience. They expect more than discounts or free samples. +They’re brand-agnostic but experience-driven: Gen Z freely switches between brands if the experience, aesthetic, or values feel fresher or more aligned with their identity. +They buy into stories, not just products: They want to align with brands that represent something, social causes, cultural movements, or communities they relate to. >>DYNAMIC LOYALTY<< What’s this? as it name indicates its a system that rewards interaction, aligns with their values, and constantly evolves. And that is what your brand needs. → Create experience-driven loyalty programs: Offer early access to limited drops, invite-only events, or backstage content. Think like a fan club, not a punch card. +Example: A loyalty tier that unlocks tickets to a pop-up experience or an exclusive AR filter. →Let them co-create: Invite Gen Z customers to co-develop product ideas, designs, or campaign themes. Give them ownership in your brand’s creative journey. +Example: Voting on packaging designs or joining beta tester groups. →Align with their values: Sustainability, inclusivity, and social good aren’t nice-to-haves. they’re expectations. Use loyalty programs to reward actions too, like recycling, sharing causes, or supporting small creators. +Example: “Earn loyalty points by returning empties or attending a sustainability workshop.” →Deliver constant novelty: Rotate limited editions regularly. Use scarcity and surprise to create FOMO and buzz. +Gen Z doesn’t commit to a single brand, but they’ll keep returning if each visit feels fresh and share-worthy. →Go omnichannel but social-first. Should live across TikTok, Instagram, pop-ups, and web. Let them earn or unlock rewards through social engagement, not just purchases. +Example: A user gets exclusive content or perks for creating UGC with your brand. Bottom Line. Loyalty must be earned over and over through experience, relevance, and emotional connection. Think dynamic loyalty: a system that rewards interaction and go for it. Find my curated search of examples and get ready for your next HIT. Featured Brands: Balmain Benefit Chanel Charlotte tilbury Cerave Fennty L’Oreal OGX YSL #beautypackaging #beautybusiness #beautyprofessionals #experienceretail #luxuryexperiences #genz

HEIRS TECHNOLOGIES AFRICA DIGITAL REPORT Africa is home to nearly 20% of the world’s population, yet we account for less than 1% of global data centre capacity. This imbalance underscores both our greatest challenge and our greatest opportunity. By 2030, Africa’s digital economy could add up to $2.9 trillion to GDP. The question is no longer if digital transformation will occur, but how we can unlock its full potential. The findings in Heirs Technologies Africa’s Digital Leap Report highlight the urgency of massive and sustained investment in digital infrastructure. Such investment is not optional; it is foundational to enabling economic growth, competitiveness, and resilience. Africa’s youthful population is already reshaping industries, from agriculture to manufacturing to technology. The rise of African AI startups, which have attracted $1.25 billion in funding to date, signals growing investor confidence in our markets. But to sustain momentum, Africa must strengthen its business environment, create investor-friendly policies, and build the infrastructure needed to support scale. This is a pivotal moment. We must act not as passive participants in the global digital economy, but as strategic architects of Africa’s digital future. I commend our team at Heirs Technologies and CEO Obong Idiong, for producing this timely report, which provides actionable insights and strategies for advancing Africa’s digital journey — anchored on cloud, connectivity, and AI. I encourage policymakers, private sector leaders, and international partners to study this report carefully: https://lnkd.in/dnXT6tG8 #TOEWay

Digital isn’t transforming business. It’s redefining what a business is. We spent decades thinking in clean categories: product vs. service, direct vs. indirect revenue, ownership vs. subscription. That framework worked when value was tangible and static. But when intelligence is embedded in the offering, those lines blur... • A machine isn’t just a machine if it continuously learns. • A service isn’t just a service if it’s powered by live operational data. • And the production data you used to archive for compliance? It can now be packaged, analyzed, and sold as insights that customers will actually pay for. The real shift isn’t adding technology. It’s re-architecting value. This revolution is captured brilliantly in the book: 𝐷𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝐵𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑀𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑦 4.0: 𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝐼𝑛𝑛𝑜𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑇𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑛𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑦 𝑆ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑢𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑒𝑠. 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐏𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐬: • 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐄𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Value driven by tech, not just supported by it. Think smart thermostats optimizing energy, not just controlling it. • 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐭𝐲: New offerings or ways of doing business—like predictive maintenance or on-demand manufacturing. • 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐨𝐮𝐜𝐡𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐬: Customer relationships built through apps, IoT, and connected services. • 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐃𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐔𝐒𝐏: Unique selling points rooted in data and digital capabilities. But how do we map the revenue streams emerging from these shifting dynamics? I’ve come to see it through three essential components: • 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 (What is being offered?) • 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐦𝐬 (How is value created?) • 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 (How is value captured?) 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞: https://lnkd.in/ewhRUM28 ******************************************* • Visit www.jeffwinterinsights.com for access to all my content and to stay current on Industry 4.0 and other cool tech trends • Ring the 🔔 for notifications!

She started invoicing her company for data requests. $200 per PowerPoint. $500 per dashboard. What happened next: It began as a joke during her performance review. "You say I'm not strategic enough," she told her manager. "But I spend 60% of my time on executive data requests." "That's part of the job," he replied. That night, she built a simple system. Every data request generated an internal invoice: - Time required - Hourly rate - Opportunity cost - Total "charge" She didn't send them. Just tracked them. Month 1 total: $18,400 Month 2 total: $22,100 Month 3 total: $19,750 During her next one-on-one, she presented the receipts. "I've generated $60,250 in data services this quarter. My actual job contributed $0. Which one should I prioritize?" Her manager went pale. She continued: "If we outsourced this to a data analyst at $50/hour, it would cost the company 75% less. And I could do my actual job." Word spread. Other employees started tracking their "invoices." The numbers were staggering: Engineering: $147,000/month in data services Product: $89,000/month in reporting Design: $34,000/month in presentations Someone built a company-wide dashboard: "Internal Data Services Inc." Running total: $4.2M annually The CFO called an emergency meeting. "This is ridiculous. You don't actually invoice internally." Someone responded: "Why not? Every external agency does. We're just the agency that also tries to do our real jobs." That's when it clicked. They were running two companies: 1. The actual business 2. An internal data agency with no billing department The CFO did what CFOs do. Ran an ROI analysis. Option A: Keep status quo ($4.2M hidden cost) Option B: Hire 3 dedicated analysts ($350K) Option C: Buy proper tools and train execs ($100K) The decision took five minutes. Within 30 days: - Executives learned self-service dashboards - Three analysts hired for complex requests - "Invoice system" retired The woman who started it all? Got promoted to Chief of Staff. First initiative: "Time is Money" visibility program. Now every team tracks the true cost of interruptions. Not to invoice. To inform. Because when you make invisible costs visible, behavior changes instantly. The company motto became: "Would you pay $500 for that PowerPoint? Then don't ask someone else to." Revenue grew 40% the next year. Not from new features. From people actually building them. Try it at your company. Track the invoice you'll never send. Watch how fast things change. Because nothing shifts behavior like a price tag.

🤓FINALLY it is published 📖(11 Nov) Tokenization of Financial Assets International Organization of Securities Commissions - IOSCO ⏳ In recent years, the financial sector has been experimenting with #DLT to deliver financial services. Proponents argue that features such as fractionalization, programmability, composability, and atomicity may create efficiencies, expand access to products, and reduce frictions. However, the adoption of new technologies can also introduce or amplify risks that regulators must understand and address to safeguard investors’ interests. 📑The Report notes that #IOSCO’s existing principles—being technology-neutral—remain applicable to tokenization. 🕵️♀️The Fintech Task Force #FTF gathered evidence through literature review, regulatory surveys, and stakeholder outreach. 📊 It found varying levels of commercial adoption, depending on use-case objectives and challenges. 👶Overall, tokenization remains nascent: 📈Growth is uneven and uncertain across asset classes, with fixed-income products and money-market funds #MMFs leading adoption. ⛓️💥Lack of cross-blockchain interoperability and credible settlement assets limits scalability. 🔄Lifecycle impact findings: 🖨️ Issuance and distribution: Tokenization has evolved, but distribution and secondary trading still rely on traditional infrastructure due to liquidity and accessibility concerns. 📩Clearing and settlement: DLT-based systems can offer faster settlement, but participants often prefer traditional infrastructure due to familiarity, operational resilience, and network effects. 🗃️Asset servicing: Some digital custody and collateral mobility improvements have been observed (e.g., intraday repo). ⚠️Risk observations: ‼️Risks vary by use case, technology, and architecture. Most risks map to existing taxonomies, but some vulnerabilities are unique to DLT—for instance, cyber-attacks, data leakage, network congestion, smart contract bugs, or private-key loss. 📝Legal uncertainty remains significant—especially regarding ownership and transfer rights of tokenized financial assets, particularly for non-native tokens. ⚖️As tokenization scales, regulators should anticipate potential market structure changes, increased dependencies, and interconnectedness that could amplify systemic risks and link tokenized finance with crypto-asset markets (e.g., tokenized MMFs used as “stablecoin” reserve assets or crypto collateral) 📚Regulatory responses by IOSCO members include: 📄 Applying existing frameworks 📄 Issuing guidance clarifying regulatory applicability 📄 Establishing sandbox regimes 📄 Enacting amended laws and regulations 📘 The Report concludes that members should consider applying IOSCO’s technology-neutral, principles-based, and outcomes-focused standards, including: 1️⃣ Objectives and Principles of Securities Regulation (IOSCO 2017) 2️⃣ Recommendations for Crypto and Digital Asset Markets (IOSCO 2023) 3️⃣ Recommendations for Decentralized Finance (IOSCO 2024)

When you’re a content creator on the internet with an audience, you could monetize with a course, membership products that send people audio or video content, ebooks, or other types of information. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with those things, and I think there are plenty of people that have built incredibly valuable courses and information based on their expertise. I think it’s amazing if you built a business you love that you’re passionate about that’s built on the back of that.. But a business model that I really love – that I think is incredibly valuable – is the concept of putting out free content and monetizing with paid “access.” I think ebooks and online courses are stunningly commoditized, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate from people that are putting out more and more of that information for free. There’s a value in curation for sure – there’s value packaging information and advice so that people don’t have to spend time searching on Google or YouTube. But at the end of the day, what others can’t replicate is you the human. You could sell a $19 ebook or a $19 / month membership on – say – How to train your sales reps, and that could bring people a lot of value. But getting an hour of your time once a week or once a month is less scalable, less replicable, and thus far more valuable. When you’re talking to a closed group of people doing Q&A, somebody might ask you a question that leads to you telling a funny story about a sales team you once led, or a crazy sales call that one guy had. And that story and unique experience could lead to a breakthrough for a lot of people that otherwise wouldn’t have had that same breakthrough reading the story in an ebook. For example, I’m doing Q&A often now on Tea With GaryVee. A lot of what I’m saying on the show and a lot of the answers I’m giving are the same as what I’ve given in the past, but because I’m giving so much access to the person on the other end, it’s hitting them differently than before. The more contextual the advice, the more valuable it is. 

Wall Street firms are doubling down on digital assets. Last week's Q2 2025 earnings season exposed a clear divide: while some major banks and firms were relatively silent on digital assets, others positioned themselves as crypto pioneers. Recent legislative developments created more regulatory clarity and running room for financial institutions to explore institutionalizing digital assets, and the market leaders have been front running investments and partnerships and are wasting no time staking leadership claims in the space. Which firms are positioning, partnering, and investing to establish a lead? BlackRock has positioned itself as a leader in shaping the future of finance, with increasing involvement in digital assets, tokenization, and managing stablecoin reserves. Beyond the earnings rhetoric, what is BlackRock doing to drive this innovation? BlackRock's business relationships reveal the depth of their digital asset strategy. Their partnerships span cryptocurrency custody (Coinbase, Anchorage Digital), stablecoin backing (Ethena), and blockchain infrastructure (Injective). They've also invested in digital asset trading platforms like Flowdesk and fintech innovators including Upvest, Texas Stock Exchange, and Sokin; creating a comprehensive ecosystem for digital asset integration across trading, custody, and tokenization. Insights on other major players' digital assets strategies from CB Insights' Earnings Analyst agent insights on their Q2 earnings calls: → Citigroup emerged as another aggressive adopter, with CEO Jane Fraser expressing "high confidence and enthusiasm" about Citi Token Services' ability to provide "multi-asset, multi-bank, cross-border, always-on solutions without needing to partner with other banks." → BNY Mellon and State Street focused heavily on stablecoin infrastructure, with BNY serving as "reserve custodian for Société Générale's first USD stablecoin in Europe" and "primary custodian for Ripple's US stablecoin reserves." State Street's CEO highlighted how "tokenization of money market funds enables uses of these assets in a different way than originally anticipated." CB Insights' Earnings Analyst agent help identify these strategic pivots immediately after calls. Want insights analysis on the major tech firms announcing earnings this week? Comment "Mag7" below for free access to CB Insights' Earnings Analyst breakdown of each Mag7 Q2 2025 quarter and where they are headed.