Upfront disclosure: I am long both Bitcoin and Ethereum (personally and also indirectly via USV). In preparation for the annual meeting at USV, we have been putting together some slides on the cryptocurrency market. Looking back at the last year I was most surprised by the run-up in Ethereum as part of the ICO craze. I did not see that coming to nearly the extent that it did. While the ICO is an important innovation, there has definitely been an excess both in the amount of money raised for s...

In my book World After Capital, I have a chapter on Universal Basic Income, which I see as essential to getting from the Industrial Age into the Knowledge Age. Basic income gives people economic freedom, which is essential if we want them to freely allocate their attention. I am about to rewrite the part on how to finance a Basic Income. Much of the writing on that to date, including my own, has taken the approach of looking at existing budgets and figuring out how to rearrange them. That, ho...

One of my favorite questions to ask business students is why companies require external financial capital (equity or debt). Answers tend to turn quickly towards some need to invest, e.g. in developing software or building a plant. But that doesn’t fully answer the question. Why? Because what if the investment in development can be paid for by customers ahead of time? Well in that case there is no need for external investment. This is of course something we now see in the real world via Kickst...