Web 3: Continued Expansion Of Wealthy Individuals

Technology has an interesting impact upon the wealth people have. Over time, the expansion is enormous. Of course, most seem to miss it since they do not look back upon history. Instead, they focus upon what is in front of them, rarely realizing the advancement that occurred.

It seems to be worse with the short-term, instant gratification thinking that is so prevalent.

Nevertheless, when we look back over time, we see how things did change. This can provide us with a template of how the situation could unfold going forward.

For this reason, we will take a look at the number of wealthy individuals and correlate to the potential of Web 3.0. This could provide us insight into how things are going to change.

Robber Barons

For this who understand this term, it was a wild time in American history. This was really the boom due to the industrial revolution.

The Robber Barons were the industrialists of the 1800s who made a fortune through some of the best known companies in the world. People like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller were in this class. They amassed enormous wealth, especially in contrast to the time.

It was the first time we saw something like this occur. Prior to this time, there were wealthy but that was mostly due to family wealth. Monarchies were still fairly common with a large sum in the hands of those people. Some of the early families that owned banks and engaged in global trade still had their fortunes.

These industrialists were known for their ruthlessness, especially when it came to business. Laws were lax which allowed for monopolies to exist. Labor conditions were poor with few-to-no protections.

From the time of Carnegie through Ford, there were only a handful of people who fit into this category. They are now well known names in the United States.

The Information Age

The last 40 years can be summed up as the information age. It is an era that includes computing, the Internet, and digitization.

Few can doubt the massive explosion that took place. The table above shows the wealthiest people according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. The numbers are staggering and shows how much bigger everything is compared to 140 years ago.

When we look at the other end of this list, we see how large the "bottom" is.

Notice how it now takes over $5 billion to be in the top 500.

Continued Expansion

It is easy to see how there a lot more people in this category. If we extend this out to billionaires, this number grows to an estimate 2,640. These are people with generational money around the world.

The numbers get larger as we go down the scale.

Consider all the people who have $100 million. According to this article, in 2022 there were over 52,000 people who had a net worth at this level.

Let us think back to the days of Rockefeller and Carnegie. Do you think there were an equal number (as a percentage of the population) of super high wealth people in the world?

The answer is no.

Of course, the numbers get even larger. If we drop to the $10 million level, we can surmise it will grow again.

Here is a breakdown of the United States, of people with more than a net worth of $1 million.

This is likely duplicated by the rest of the world combined. As we can see the numbers keep getting bigger.

Web 3.0 And The Impact Upon Wealth

What is Web 3.0 going to do with this equation?

We know the Internet spawned great fortunes. Not only do we see the eye-popping numbers listed in the categories but the lower levels really seeing a difference.

Online, there are millions of people making $100K per year. For much of the world, this is a healthy income. Couple that with the number of businesses we see and the trend becomes clear.

Of course, to say the system is inclusive is a stretch. It is evidence that it is far from that. The digital world is heavily siloed. At the same time, many of the best investment opportunities are only available to accredited investors.

Web 3.0 changes all of that. This is going to be the greatest wealth generator in the history of humanity, surpassing the last 40 years. The only question is by how much.

My view is simple: this is going to be orders of magnitude larger than the impact of the Internet.

In other words, the last 40 years will be minor in comparison.

We are going to see many projects worth $100 million. Due to tokenization, there are going to be hundreds of millions of people sharing in this. They will have tokens that do a 50x or 100x. It is going to be rather common.

Digital assets are going to explode. They will be digital representations of real world assets along with new creations. Some of these are going to have tremendous value.

The key point is not the amount of wealth as the number of people involved. We can see, over time, how technology keeps creating more. Each level grows yet the mainstream only wants to focus upon the top. What is important is the number of millionaires around the world exploded.

This is something that is going to happen once again.

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