I’ve made it my mission to make clearing accessible to all. Cycles is motivated by the realization (after years of study of the history and nature of monetary systems) that clearing is a great super power from which everyone is systematically excluded. I plan to change that, and this fundraising is the first major step.
For years I’ve been frustrated by the state of thinking about money in our industry, and beyond. Austrian economics is not a sufficient basis on which to build the next generation of money. Neither is MMT, or virtually any other monetary theory. What’s missing is a vision of money firmly rooted in the network of balance sheets that constitute the economy. The graph of obligations that makes the world go round. Respect the Graph.
It’s no secret that the current monetary order is incoherent, that the Bretton Woods agreement was fundamentally flawed, and that something new must lie on the horizon. But what? We need only turn back to the Bretton Woods conference itself, to the other proposal on the table, to build a multilateral clearing union to balance the international trade graph grounded in a new unit of account, the bancor.
Cycles mission is to go bottom up where the bancor failed to go top down. Clearing is about doing more with less, about reducing how much money is actually needed to make settlements, about unlocking hidden sources of liquidity and opening new opportunities for growth. That honours the network of obligations in the world. And most importantly, that Respects the Graph!
I’m pumped to be building Cycles with a great team and backed by great investors. We’ve got a long road ahead to bring clearing to everyone and reformulate the global monetary order. Stay tuned
We’ve raised $8.7M to bring clearing to the masses. Our new round was led by Blockchange to work on the most powerful idea in finance.
It’s not just about moving money faster & cheaper; it’s about moving less while doing more.