Tonight at Curiosity Club: WTF Is Money?

Tonight at the Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club we welcome Marcus Estes to make heads and tails of money. His presentation will begin with the historical origins of money as a representation of value, then take us on a jaunty walk through a modern theory of credit, debt, and... fractional reserve banking! Finally, we'll conclude with a look at the potential utopias and dystopias that may be arrive with the coming of a new age of crypto-currency.

6pm PST at Hand-Eye Supply and streaming on the Curiosity Club homepage.

Just after the financial crash of 2008, I gave a talk to a small audience about the true function of money in our modern capitalist economy. It's been 6 years, and we seem to be living in an entirely different world. The stock market has reached new heights and traditional economic indicators are relatively bright. But how different is our current environment to the conditions in 2007?

C. Marcus Estes is the co-founder and CEO of Chroma.fund, a Portland-based startup using the Bitcoin blockchain to build a local stock market. Previously he released the world's first podcast music license, helped launch the Free Music Archive, collaborated with nonprofits to build open source software systems for fundraising and volunteer management, and toured with Kanye West as a technical consultant.