[lupire]

Incorrect. Crowdfunding's first use case was financing production of an invention.

The speculative investment stuff was the scam Kickstarter cultivated in the chase for infinite growth and VC returns. Crowdfunding from the general public for investment is generally illegal for exactly this rest.

[michaelt]

What counts as "first" depends on what you consider "crowdfunding"

Charities and political campaigns have been collecting $x per person from y million people to pay for z since time immemorial. The term 'crowdfunding' didn't exist when construction of the Sagrada Família started.

And if you define 'crowdfunding' as 'the thing that kickstarter does' then looking at their 2010 homepage [1] it seems to be mostly short films, art, and a baking contest. There's a one listing seeking $500 to make an open source synthesizer you can fit to your bicycle to create music from your speed and acceleration, but that's pretty much an art project IMHO.

Kickstarter certainly seems much more important and consequential if you ignore the $300 student films and focus on the multi-million-dollar campaigns.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20100623023917/https://www.kicks...

[jprete]

Thanks for the correction. I wasn't trying to imply an ordering, but I can easily see how my text indicated one.