Their history isn’t all bad, something never mentioned now, is what happened when the first US stimulus was issued, $4TN amounting to about $10K per head for the 300M souls there.

Of course most of it went to those already flush, but enough spilled out to do some things nobody understood at the time.

Robinhood traders suddenly multiplied and began to buy strange things, not the best investments by traditional investors.

They bought shares in bankrupt companies, and ignored oil.

The oil price went negative, shares in bankrupt companies offering well known, much loved products soared. The courts in US changed the law to allow it to continue, and well known conventional investors quit the markets crying foul.

The new traders using Robinhood went there with free money.

They weren’t trading for profit, they didn’t care if they lost their money, they got it for free.

They were donating.

Donating as a kind of vote, towards the things they saw as valuable.

There, we saw a glimpse of real, fine-grained democracy.

They got a chance to vote that was never there before, enabled by free money, and Robinhood.

Obviously that has gone again now, but it did give us a glimpse of a different world, with a different kind of economy.

How could free money like that be sustained?

By monetising sunlight, large scale, solar powered proof of work tokens for all.