Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Memecoin Venture Capital

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A genuine, important and irritating innovation of crypto is that it created a new way to finance companies, or even two new ways to finance companies. Traditionally, if you wanted to launch a business and needed money for it, you would go out to investors, ask them for money, and promise them something in return. There were some standard things you would promise them: a share of the profits (“equity”), or their money back with interest (“debt”), or some blend or variation on those ideas.

And then crypto came along, and now you can launch a business and ...