If you’re paying attention to the news at all, you’ll hear terms like ICO, Airdrop and Metaverse thrown around with great frequency. Even beyond the business and tech pages, shows like “The Good Wife” have plotlines involving Bitcoin. Clearly, digital currencies are becoming more mainstream, but what exactly is this new economy that is being built on the blockchain?

In my previous articles, I have discussed how web 3.0 works and the benefits of this new decentralized internet. We have also talked about the fair and democratic economics of this new system. But how does the web 3.0 economy actually work?

Note that this is not an entry-level discussion on ICOs and blockchain. Rather, we will talk about how this new economy is fundamentally different and more advantageous compared to the current economy that runs on centralized systems like banks, governments and big tech companies.

Global economics and hierarchies of power

To understand how the web 3.0 economy works, we must first understand our current global economic system and the hierarchies of power that exist within it.