01
What backs value, and who is allowed to create it.
From sovereign currency to programmable assets to compute-denominated credits the substrate of value is becoming plural.
Research
One question, studied properly.
Our own research into where money, value, and technology are going. Experiments and writing we pursue on the ground. Not client work.
01
What this is.
Money is being rebuilt right now, at almost every level, at once. We study that shift directly: publishing first, selling services second.
Most people in this space pick one thread and stay there. We follow the whole picture because the threads are already tangled together. None of this is positioned for a client brief. It is what we find interesting enough to pursue ourselves.
02
Threads we follow.
- 01What backs value.
- 02Who is allowed to create it.
- 03How it settles and moves.
- 04Who or what is allowed to hold and spend it.
- 05How it reaches people without being earned in the traditional sense.
- 06Who counts as an economic actor in the first place.
0
Research threads
0
Papers published
0
Founders
0
Flagship project
Value, trust, exchange, actors, incentives, systems.
03
Three lenses we keep returning to.
02
How money settles, moves, and who is allowed to hold it.
Rails, wallets, ledgers, custody. Settlement infrastructure is fragmenting across banks, platforms, and protocol layers at once.
03
Where trust actually lives in a transaction.
Issuers, networks, regulators, counterparties. Every payment still runs through something someone has to believe in.
04 / Experiment
Karma Protocol.
Our flagship experiment. How AI systems could be governed and incentivized using something money-like, because a large amount of human behavior is shaped by incentives, and AI systems making real decisions will likely need an equivalent.
Two research papers published so far. Ongoing work released as open source. Not a product. Not a service. Just how we think on the record.
The long arc
Scroll to explore
c. 3000 BC
Barter
Grain, cattle, cloth. Value anchored in physical things anyone could touch.
c. 600 BC
First Coins
Lydian electrum coins. Portable, durable, divisible. The first abstraction from the thing itself.
c. 700 AD
Paper Money
Tang Dynasty China. A promise written on paper, backed by state authority.
1668
Central Banking
Bank of Sweden. Collective management of money supply. Governments step fully into the picture.
1816
Gold Standard
Britain formalizes gold backing. Value pegged to a scarce physical element dug from the ground.
1944
Bretton Woods
USD anchors global finance. One currency to rule them all. A post-war bet that held for 27 years.
1971
Nixon Shock
The US breaks the gold peg. Pure fiat begins. Value is now entirely institutional.
1994
Online Payments
A Sting CD sold on NetMarket. Money goes digital. Geography stops mattering.
2008–09
Bitcoin
Trust in institutions fractures. Programmable scarcity is born. The code is the bank.
2015
Ethereum
Programmable value layer. Money gets logic. Anyone can write the rules of exchange.
2023+
AI Agents
Code that earns. Machines that spend. The boundary of economic personhood is moving.
05
Who writes it.
Our backgrounds span autonomous robotics, shipped financial products, go-to-market strategy across multiple companies, and management consulting for some of the largest technology companies in the world.
We publish Hybrid Economies on Substack, a publication on emerging technology strategy and where humanity fits inside the systems being built around it.