Interesting perspective, I liked the observation about tokens capturing value before it is created. I have a problem with this line of thinking, though. Let's say I'm the founder and I use tokens to explore what investors are interested in. I throw a few narratives at the wall and see what sticks. It can help me understand what investors are interested in. But it can't help me what users are interested in. So it's as if I prepared my pitch to match the current hottest VC hype. Does it help me to raise money? Yes. Does it help me to build a successful product? Probably not. And that's because most investors have no idea what people are going to use. If they were great at that, they'd have an amazing investing track record. Also, many successful products do not follow the narrative, they create it. Who talked about DEXes when Uniswap was built? Who talked about NFT marketplaces when OpenSea was built? Who talked about smart contracts when Ethereum was built? So I think this essay is interesting but it's good to be aware of limitations of this line of thinking :)