Last Saturday, I attended my first open jam in over a decade. It was held in the basement of an Artichoke Pizza, which was coincidentally my favorite slice when I first lived in New York (today, it’s L’Industrie). I showed up in Bushwick not knowing what to expect, other than the guarantee of good talent. This city never disappoints.

For the uninitiated, an open jam is when musicians gather to make music together. No setlist. No scoresheet. Just vibes. Someone hops on drums, someone takes keys, throw in a guitarist and a bassist, and voilà: music. I’ve always found open jams especially challenging for vocalists. Unlike instrumentalists, we don’t think in chords. We wait for the sound to take shape, then try to find a melody that threads it all together. This happens with or without lyrics, depending on whether we’re lucky enough to catch a phrase in the moment.

When it came to my turn, I was excited, but terrified. The jam had already gone on for over an hour. Five songs deep. It's been a long time since I've performed in public, and I didn’t know if I still had it in me to catch the harmonic cues, or if I’d completely flail in front of a room of forty people. I thought about recording the moment, fueled by a couple of beers and a newly discovered vice via a nicotine pouch, but decided against it. 

However this would go down, it was going to be a moment just for me. No clips, no proof. Just acoustics and adrenaline. Just cheers from a group of music-loving strangers who decided to spend their Saturday night in the basement of a pizza shop.

Much to my relief, I did great. 

Thing is, no one outside that room will know. You just have to take me at my word that it mattered. That a five-minute expression of improvisation, crafted by people who had never met until that night, was something worth listening to. Something worth remembering. Something that brought real, human joy. 

And that’s the thing:
Not every creation has to be documented.
Not every moment needs a market.
Not everything needs to be coined, or collected.
…or do they?

Over the past few months, a new debate has taken hold across crypto: should all content be tokenized?

First came Zora. What began as a minting platform for NFTs (1/1s and editions) shifted toward something different. Now, every post becomes a tradable, fungible token. A coin. The reasoning made sense, both in protocol logic and profit terms: coins are more liquid than NFTs. More buyers, more trades, more fees. In theory, a broader market for content.

The discourse arrived fast and flamed out just as quickly. Some creators leaned in. Others stood back, skeptical that these “new internet capital markets” were truly doing what they claimed to do: creating better paths for creators to get paid than the Instagrams and TikToks of the world.

Then came the new Base app. Formerly known as Coinbase Wallet, it now allows anyone to coin a post, right from their timeline. Built on Zora’s protocol, the mechanics were the same, as was the philosophy. The rhetoric? Everything you create has value. Let's normalize that by giving it a price.

Then yesterday on Farcaster, collectible casts entered the conversation.

Instead of every post becoming a coin, each cast is a one-of-one. This means only a single person can ever collect it. Anyone can kick off the auction by bidding a dollar, and over the next 24 hours, the highest bidder becomes the proud owner of a moment in time. A true collector’s experience, if you will.

That is… until I realized the exact same piece of content can also be coined on the Base app and simultaneously collected as a 1/1 on Farcaster.

Some say this represents two layers of value for one piece of content. I'm still unconvinced. How can something be both infinitely and uniquely ownable at the same time? If a single person collects the 1/1, are they truly the “owner”? Or are they just one of many stakeholders in a moment that now lives on multiple markets?

To me, it feels a bit like saying everyone can own the Mona Lisa... as long as we all agree the Louvre still does.

Which brings me back to my own relationship with all this.

Despite leaning heavily into my creativity over the past year, I’ve never really considered myself a creator. Or maybe more accurately, I’ve never considered myself a full-time creator, where my livelihood depends on my craft. Whether it’s writing, music, photography, or that brief but delightful collage era, I’ve never made things to make ends meet.

I create because I want to. Because it helps me express what I can’t always say. Because it fills my cup. And when something I make resonates, my cup overflows. My heartstrings tug like a violin, grateful and slightly stunned. That someone else felt what I felt too. Whatever the medium, I don’t create to make money. And honestly, I know that if I did, it might ruin the joy of creating altogether.

Even then, when there’s money on the table, how could I say no? How could I not at least explore what it might mean?

So I did.

I coined recordings of my singing on Zora. I’ve coined half a dozen posts on the Base app in the past week alone. And yes, I may or may not have jokingly asked people to bid on my casts in the last 24 hours, with one post currently sitting at a high of $9 (thanks, Charlie).

And last, but not least, I launched my very own $DEBBIE token on Rainbow a few months ago (the CA is 0x3c8e14fe1bf820053979aed1c0f2e480e4cfa44c). Unironically, it’s up 83% year to date, outperforming both Bitcoin and the S&P 500, with a market cap hovering around $70,000.

And this is where the experiment starts to get cloudy. I have made a grand total of zero dollars from Instagram, despite being a relatively early adopter. And while building a following on X has opened doors professionally, I’ve never earned directly from the platform itself. So whether I make a single dollar or a couple hundred in this new onchain economy, I suppose I should consider it a net positive.

But positive doesn’t mean perfect.

While coining my content might be worth something on paper (or in my wallet), liquidity is so low that realizing any actual gains is nearly impossible. And in the rare case that liquidity does exist, it often comes from people looking to trade quickly, flipping in and out before the moment even settles.

In that world, the only way I, as a creator, could profit… would be to dump my own holdings. To cash out. To rug the very people who believed in, or perhaps more accurately, placed a bet on me in the first place.

Farcaster’s 1/1 collectible model feels a little more differentiated. It doesn’t carry quite the same dynamic. But even then, at what point does the novelty wear off? Is auctioning off someone’s content to the highest bidder just a roundabout form of tipping?

I won’t pretend to have all the answers. But I do have a few personal beliefs.

That yes, the blockchain opens up new paths for creators. Especially smaller ones. It offers more ways to monetize, more chances to be seen, and more direct relationships with the people who care.

That I believe in patronage. In people supporting the creators they love, not just with likes, but with dollars. Whether it's a livestream tip on TikTok, a monthly pledge on Patreon, or a quick Noice or TipN inside Farcaster or the Base app, these gestures matter. They’re votes of belief. Signals of care.

That I believe in experimentation. That without trial and error, and without testing not just what works, but feels right, we’ll never get to establish a new paradigm. One that’s not only better, but also sustainable. Not just for ourselves, but for every single person who contributes to this wild, ever-shifting space we call the Internet.

So, if you consider yourself a creative, I urge you to do what you’ve likely always done: embrace the tension. The same tension that’s always pulled you toward making something in the first place.

Be open to new ways of valuing your work. Explore the models. Test the edges.
But also, have the courage to question what feels unnatural, extractive, or even overly transactional.

Experiment freely, but don’t mistake someone else’s rules for your own.
Participate with intent, but never surrender your compass.

And just like my memory of Saturday night’s open jam is mine and mine alone, so too is your craft.

Let no one tell you otherwise.

P.S. If you enjoyed this piece, please consider ordering my first book - Digital Mavericks: A Guide to Web3, NFTs, and Becoming the Main Character of the Next Internet Revolution. It is a beginner-friendly guide to entering and navigating the crypto industry, filled with heartwarming stories of real-life builders and creators that I hope will inspire you as much as they inspired me.