On the Kardashev scale a Type I civilisation commands the energy of its entire planet. We stand at roughly 0.7. Every question I find interesting, in finance, in AI, in blockchain, comes back to one: how does a civilisation reach more energy, and what does it do with it?

The internet was the first technology built at the scale of the planet rather than the nation. Blockchains are the second: shared ledgers nobody owns, running on every continent at once. I read them as the first Type I technologies, early infrastructure for a civilisation that thinks and settles as one.

Bitcoin is the clearest case. It is a global state machine whose security is bought with energy, so it pays for power wherever power is cheapest: the stranded dam, the flare stack, the grid that needs a flexible load at three in the morning. A buyer that shows up for every stranded kilowatt makes building more generation worth it. Proof of work is the right incentive, and the right direction. We should want to tap into more power, rather than ration what we have.

Agents are the other half. Software that decides and acts is what a civilisation does with energy once it has it, and the mandate, the custody and the identity behind an agent are how it stays ours. More energy, and a hand on the mandate. That is what I believe.

In 2026 I was lead author of the Agentic Finance Report, co-published with TensorX, AMINA Bank, the Solana Foundation, APEX:E3 and the Cardano Foundation, with a foreword by Tim Grant and guest contributions from Blindsight and CV VC. I wrote the executive summary, the definition and framework in chapter 02 and the conclusions in chapter 08; the other chapters were written by the organisations that run each layer, in their own names.