Use it, own it: from Rochdale to airdrops to KABU&

KABU& pays you in shares for paying your bills. Sign up for its electricity, gas or mobile service and every bill earns “share vouchers”: 1% of the bill for electricity and gas, 5% for mobile, and more for paying members.⁵ Each voucher counts as ¥1. During an offering window you can swap them for newly issued shares in the company behind it, Kabu & Peace, led by Yusaku Maezawa. The fourth offering is priced at ¥8 a share and takes applications from 6 to 26 November 2026.⁶

Whether this counts as a basic income is a separate question, and mostly it does not. This essay asks a different one. The idea that using something should make you one of its owners has a long history, and KABU& is its newest form. What does it keep from its ancestors, and what does it change?

1844: a dividend on what you buy

On 21 December 1844 the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society opened a small shop at 31 Toad Lane in Rochdale, in the north of England. Members’ purchases were written in a book, and several times a year the profits were worked out and shared among the members according to how much each had bought.¹ This was the co-op “divi”: a dividend on purchases, not on capital. It lives on in the cooperative principles, where one agreed use of a surplus is “benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the cooperative”.²

Japan has the same mechanism in law. Under the Consumer Co-operative Act, a co-op may hand back its surplus only in proportion to how much members used its business or how much capital they paid in, and a return on capital may not exceed 10% a year.³ The divi had one more feature worth remembering: it was a share of profits the shop had already made.

2020: the airdrop

On 16 September 2020 Uniswap, a decentralised exchange on Ethereum, launched its governance token, UNI. 15% of the supply, 150 million UNI, went to past users, liquidity providers and SOCKS holders. Every address that had ever called the Uniswap v1 or v2 contracts before a snapshot on 1 September could claim 400 UNI: 251,534 addresses in all.⁴ Nobody had been promised anything. Having used the app was enough.

According to Uniswap’s announcement, UNI holders got “immediate ownership” of Uniswap governance, and the tokens were claimable at once.⁴ Like any token, they could be sent or sold as soon as they were claimed.

OpinionThe airdrop turned “use = ownership” into a growth tactic. Rochdale paid members out of profit. An airdrop pays users out of newly created tokens, before there is necessarily any profit at all. Many crypto projects have copied the move since, and people now try new apps partly in the hope of a future drop.

Now: an airdrop on a share register

KABU& carries the airdrop’s logic over to a company’s share register. Customers do not buy shares with money. Vouchers earned from bills are exchanged for newly issued “KABU& class shares”. The prospectus says the issue is not meant to raise funds: the payment for the shares corresponds to vouchers the company itself granted.⁶ After its first two offerings in 2025, the company counted 823,947 shareholders.⁶

A simple example. A ¥10,000 monthly electricity bill at 1% earns 100 vouchers a month, or 1,200 a year. At ¥8, that is 150 shares, worth ¥1,200 at the issue price. On 22 December 2026 every 10 shares become 1, so the same holding becomes 15 shares; the company says the consolidation does not change their value by itself.⁸ To prepare for it, the fourth offering rounds each allocation down to a multiple of 10 shares and returns up to 79 unused vouchers.⁶ Vouchers can also be turned into ¥1 discount coupons for the group’s services, but not turned back.⁶

To receive shares, applicants pass an identity check, then open a Daiwa Connect Securities account and link it to KABU& by 6 December; otherwise nothing is allotted.⁶

What the shares carry

Here the official documents are clear, and worth reading. According to the fourth-offering prospectus, KABU& class shares have no voting rights at shareholders’ meetings. They receive the same dividend per share as common shares, at the same rank, whenever the company pays one on common shares; but it has never paid a dividend, and says whether and when it will is undecided. They get nothing from the remaining assets if the company is wound up. A transfer needs the board’s approval. The class shares themselves will not be listed, but if the board approves applying for a listing, the company can convert them one-for-one into voting common shares. And it can buy them back at the original paid-in price if it expels you as a member, or if you do not answer its notices for six months.⁶

Listing is the hinge. On 29 October 2026 Maezawa wrote that the company is preparing to list, with spring 2027 as the earliest target, and noted that this does not guarantee a listing or its timing.⁸ The website says the same, and the prospectus adds that even after a listing, nothing guarantees a market price above the issue price.⁵⁶ There is one exit without a listing. If the company has not listed by 31 December 2028, holders of shares from the third and fourth offerings who want out can sell them back at an independent valuation, capped at 1.2 times what they paid in.⁷

What changes

OpinionA rebate in equity, not cash. The real choice inside KABU& is between ¥1 off your next bill and ¥1 put into shares. A cash rebate or a point is small but certain. A share voucher trades that certainty for a share you cannot sell yet, with no vote, no claim on the assets and, so far, no dividend. In effect, customers fund the company with their rebates: value that a points programme would hand back stays inside the business, and the customer holds a promise instead.

Less than an airdrop, and less than the divi. A Uniswap user could sell UNI on day one, or vote with it. A KABU& shareholder can do neither until a listing. Rochdale paid out of a surplus already earned; KABU& pays in new shares of a company that has not yet paid a dividend. Of the three, it is the only one where you have to wait to find out what you got.

To be fair, some differences favour KABU&. These are real shares, sold under a securities registration statement filed with the Kanto Local Finance Bureau, not tokens with no legal claim on anything. The vouchers come on top of bills you would pay anyway. And the 2028 buyback gives a way out even if the listing never happens, though at a valuation, not at a guaranteed price.

Conclusion: a free lunch yet?

OpinionNot yet. A free lunch is one you can eat. Today a voucher is either ¥1 off a bill, a real but modest rebate, or a share you cannot sell. And vouchers only come if you pay for the service, so first check that KABU&’s tariff is no higher than what you pay now. Otherwise you are buying shares through your power bill.

What would make it one? A listing, so the shares can be sold. A dividend, so they pay while you wait. Failing both, the 2028 buyback. Any of these would give the share a value you can actually collect. Until then, “use = ownership” here means ownership on credit.

In our essay on universal high income, we argued that the interesting part is the pipe that carries value to people. Rochdale’s pipe was the shop’s surplus. Uniswap’s was a token you could sell. KABU&’s pipe runs through your utility bills and ends in a share that is still waiting for its market. It is an old idea, and a good one. Just check what the ownership is worth on the day you want to use it.