by Peter Knight | Sep 23, 2026 | News
Bitcoin and Basic Income come from different traditions, but share important ideas about individual freedom, economic autonomy and a more open financial system.
Bitcoin enables people to hold and transfer value without relying on traditional financial intermediaries. Basic Income asks a different question: what if everyone had a basic level of economic security, paid directly to them?
One open conversation.
A new way of thinking about how income can reach people directly.
This event brings together people from the Bitcoin and Basic Income communities to explore where these ideas meet, and how they can strengthen each other.
We will discuss:
Introduction to Bitcoin
Doing Basic Income the bitcoin way – individual permissionless financial freedom with a floor to stand on.
• Bitcoin as infrastructure for direct income
• Basic Income and individual financial autonomy
• The “last mile” of delivering income directly to people
• What Bitcoin can learn from Basic Income
• What Basic Income can learn from Bitcoin
• Practical experiments combining the two approaches
The discussion will also introduce our upcoming 6-month pre-pilot, which will explore whether the Bitcoin ecosystem is ready to support a community-based Basic Income scheme — with the longer-term goal of an 18-month pilot.
Speakers:
– Håkon Sandbakken, Chair of the Bitcoin Policy Institute Norway (BPI). He works as a senior advisor at Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi.
– Hilde Latour, Co-founder of Mission Possible 2030. She is former Deputy Chair of BIEN
– Anja Askeland will chair the meeting
The event will be held in English
Free entrance
To register, click here.
by Peter Knight | Sep 17, 2026 | News
Abstract
“We use Bayesian meta-analysis methods to estimate the impact of unconditional cash transfers (UCTs). Aggregating evidence from 115 studies of 72 UCT programs in low- and middle-income countries, we find strong and positive average treatment effects on ten of thirteen outcomes: monthly household total and food consumption, monthly income, labor supply, school enrollment, food security, psychological well-being, total assets, financial assets, and children’s height-for-age. We examine seven theoretical and policy hypotheses, namely the presence of savings frictions, dynamic effects, the curvature of marginal returns, targeting effects, “nudge” effects, labor supply elasticity and related “dependency” theories, and contextual heterogeneity.”
To read the full study, click here.
by Peter Knight | Sep 14, 2026 | News
The report covers updates & impact of the project in 2025-26.
To view the report, click here.
by Scott Santens | Sep 2, 2026 | News
Photo by William Warby on Unsplash
- South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism named an basic income for artists among six key tasks in its second-half business report, delivered at a briefing hosted by President Lee Jae-myung, and plans to have a model established by the end of this year.
- Inspired by Ireland’s successful trial and implementation, the stated purpose is to support a stable creative environment for artists as the foundation of a culturally powerful nation.
- The move lands as AI takes over graphic design, advertising, and other arts-adjacent work that has historically paid artists’ bills — the same pressure the Creatives Rebuild New York evaluation flagged earlier this year.
by Peter Knight | Sep 2, 2026 | News
- GiveDirectly’s $198 million program is paying as many as 230,000 adults across two districts of Malawi roughly $700 each, with no conditions on how it is spent. In the world’s poorest country not affected by conflict, that sum is roughly a full year of per-capita economic output.
- Since the money reached the village of Kamala in February, residents have bought the area’s first refrigerator and started selling chilled water, bought electric sewing machines, goats, and corrugated iron roofing, and opened a food stall, a rest house for travelers, and a makeshift cinema charging 12 cents a ticket.
- Oxford economist Dennis Egger, who has studied GiveDirectly’s programs, finds that every dollar distributed generates about $2.50 in local economic activity over the following 30 months with only marginal price increases, alongside falling child mortality. On the old worry that cash creates dependency or gets spent on alcohol, he notes there are now hundreds of papers showing otherwise.
by Peter Knight | Sep 1, 2026 | News
Photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash
- Talarico laid out a plan he calls “the New American Dream” to a crowd of about 1,300 in Arlington, built around an AI dividend that would give ordinary people a share of the profits of the companies developing the technology.
- “If they are going to use our human ingenuity, if they’re going to use our collective intellectual property, then we want our royalty checks,” he said, arguing that under his plan every American citizen owns a piece of the AI companies.
- The rest of the platform includes raising the federal minimum wage, universal child care and paid family leave, a permanent expanded Child Tax Credit, medical debt forgiveness, and down payment help for first-time homebuyers. Recent polls show Talarico narrowly ahead of Ken Paxton going into the November 3 election.
