Tezos Universal Basic Income (TBI)

Image Source: bitcom

Staking stranded capital in a global network (not just in Tezos, but many other chains) and earning dividends from it may be what the “job” of the future looks like. It presents a passive but participative activity that combines logical, mechanistic labor with functional (utility) capital. The robots are out there “doing their thing,” so to speak, and you own a piece of “it” that produces an indefinite cash flow. Your future “job” description may likely be a curriculum vitae of the robots you own, what they are capable of, and the fraction you own.

Aside from individuals participating in this global crypto-mecha, institutions such as insurance companies, retirement funds, fixed income funds, annuities, trusts, and many others that must actuarially guarantee a future cash flow, are likely to dive in early and deeply into this “scary new thing” because delaying plants a time bomb that blows up in the future after some point of “no return.”

When these “institutions” look at the projections for inflation, labor and demand collapse, they have to chase the next big thing and get in early. That next big thing is crypto, which guarantees a fixed return. The returns are calculated in tokens, not fiat, so there is a deep downside if the token price crashes. But, the upside is tremendous, as a fixed percentage crypto yield can effectively blow up when converted to fiat if the token value surges. The development of stable coins and smart contracts may temper both the downside and upside, but overall offer a tremendous return that the old economy could never match.

And this is where “institutional custody” is important because these institutions don’t have the competence in handling cryptographic keys or securing nodes and compiling source code. With the tokenization of property and securities (real estate, stocks, bonds), “everything” may eventually go crypto. As they say, “software” eventually ate the world. Crypto may eventually completely eat “software.

It is possible that in the future everything runs on a universal “pancryptocon”, comprised of governance, labor, and capital. In such a future perfected, it is imperative that everyone secure a piece of the cryptocon as the future of what work (labor) and ownership (capital) look like.

Today’s young people are looking at a future where traditional income-producing opportunity (formerly called a “job”) may disappear, and they may have to stake what wealth they accumulate to generate an indefinite, dependable cash flow. Were this not sufficient, sovereign governments may have to eventually supplement with a Universal Basic Income, and UBI may as well be implemented on a cryptographic distributed ledger.

“Old money” faces just as bleak a future of low returns as the young, matched with increasing longevity that can wreck the actuarial charts. For such people, taking extra risk later in life, contrary to what they have been told, to make up for the needed extra income may become de rigueur. Whether that extra income comes from a mule fetching logs or from cryptographic LEGO blocks, they may care very little, as long as the flow is infinite.