JAMES P FLYNN LLC
WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA

Way back in the early days of the Internet (circa 1996), I launched a software company in New York City. At the same time, I did some moonlighting as a journalist. One of my first assignments involved attending back-to-back developer conferences in San Francisco. Upon returning, I proceeded to disappoint everyone (including myself) by predicting there would be no “Internet war” between Microsoft and Netscape. I said that Microsoft was going to crush them. I’m only bringing that up because: (1) I was right; and (2) I want you to think that I’m really smart. Well, the truth is that I don’t get everything right, but I try. I like to think that I often have useful insights and that I’ll adjust when the evidence says that I’m wrong. I started, built and sold a few technology businesses. I made a decent amount of money for other people and sometimes a little for myself, too. Once when I was nearly broke, I almost closed a deal that would have made me filthy rich, only to see it go “poof” at the last minute. I also had the soul-crushing task of winding down a business that didn’t work out, cost me a lot of money, and took away years of my life. Sometimes you can learn more valuable things from debacles than you can from successes. I’ve dealt with venture capitalists and angel investors involving multi-million dollar deals. I can tell you true stories that you wouldn’t believe a word of. I’ve worked (roughly in chronological order) as a software developer, computer hardware engineer, salesperson, bizdev guy, CEO, COO (of a public company), CEO, CTO, and as a software developer/president. I also co-authored a 666-page book on the Java programming language. Writing a book was actually an incredibly stupid thing to do while struggling to build a start-up with no funding. But the book looks great on my coffee table now, or at least when I can find the darn thing. I suspect the book is under the couch at the moment, probably covered in dust bunnies. I can do a broad range of things. Not many people can both write software and sell it. Sometimes I even sold companies. That involved doing a lot of negotiating, contractual, audit and due diligence thingies for which I’ve always risen to the challenge. After a devastating earthquake in 2010, the world collectively pledged about $13B in aid to Haiti. That’s enough to give every Haitian a 50% pay increase for three years (on average). For far less than $13B, we could implement a basic income in Haiti that would lift millions of people out of poverty. This post is concerned with exploring ways to fund a UBI that we could distribute via a cryptocurrency. I compare inflation funding to transaction fees. I also provide basic projections for an inflation-funded crypto UBI in the US and Haiti. Even though inflation may also impose a “cost” on holders of the currency (through a loss in purchasing power), my analysis led me to conclude that it would be better to fund a crypto UBI through inflation. …