Friends With Benefits started in 2020 as an experiment in experimental money, an exploration into the dark corners of creativity, culture, and digital currency, with aims at rewarding the people who instigate and grow scenes from the ground up. Inspired by Other Internet’s Squad Wealth essay, we sought answers to the questions that had been whispered by culture producers in the 2010s— What would it look like to be financially rewarded for being early to viral trends and chart-toppers? How could the relationship between cultural capital and financial capital be drawn together? What did it mean to have a group chat with a shared bank account?

In the 3+ years since, FWB has seen many iterations of that experiment. We started an industry-defining FEST. We built a blockchain-enabled ticketing app. We supported 200+ cultural events online and around the globe. We almost bought a restaurant. At the heart of each of these projects, we stood by the notion that paying attention to culture and crypto pays off. Mythmaking creates and bestows value, and value valorizes and validates creative communities.

Crypto is not just an “up only” financial reward, but a mechanism to ensure the people who build our tools and scenes have a say in how they grow.

But how is that value captured on the new internet? How is it bought and sold? How is it earned, transacted and stored?

Late last year, our extended squad assembled the FWB Holiday Bazaar, a winter marketplace powered by PYUSD. Transacting in stablecoin ameliorated payment processing fees and allowed our vendors to be paid out in real time. We’re forever exploring what’s next in digital payments, and how our creative friends can benefit from emerging technologies.

Today, we announce a new editorial series investigating the path toward a blockchain-dominant future, where financial tools are intertwined with cultural narratives. Stewarding our efforts as Editor-In-Chief is economist Kyla Scanlon. In her work online, and in her recently published book In This Economy? How Money & Markets Really Work, Scanlon interrogates the ways in which we are dually entrapped and empowered by financial systems, and delivers no-nonsense reports of her findings.

Kyla is joined by a storied cast of eminent culture and finance experts Anna Gát, Austin Robey,  Gaby Goldberg, and Jose Fernandez da Ponte.

The editorial series will begin publishing in mid-June, with a limited edition print zine available later this summer. Stay tuned.

Deep thanks to KD, Greg Bresnitz, and Steph Alinsug for bringing the editorial to life, and Leith Benkhedda for creative.