Shareholder Registry
The shareholder registry is the record of who owns shares in KmikeyM. Since the project launched in 2008, more than 1,128 shareholders have acquired shares, and the registry is open to the shareholder community: the live, up-to-date list is published as a leaderboard at kmikeym.com/users/leaderboard, which you have to be a shareholder to view. The transparency runs inward rather than outward. Unlike a conventional company, where even a holder rarely sees the full cap table, any KmikeyM shareholder can see the complete registry. But you have to buy in to see it.
The live registry
Because holdings change as shares trade, this article does not reproduce a snapshot that would go stale. The authoritative source is the leaderboard:
kmikeym.com/users/leaderboard (shareholder access required)
It ranks shareholders by holdings and reflects current ownership in real time. A shareholder evaluating the concentration of ownership, the size of the largest positions, or the length of the long tail should read it directly.
Ownership concentration
Mike Merrill retains the large majority of shares outstanding, but his holdings are non-voting. All voting power belongs to outside shareholders, so a relatively small group of public holders controls every decision. The shape of that group, how much is held by the top holders versus spread across the long tail, can be read off the leaderboard.
This is the structural feature that makes the project work: concentration of economic ownership in Mike’s hands, combined with concentration of voting power in the hands of everyone else.
Shareholders of note
KmikeyM’s shareholders include people independently notable in their own fields. Among them:
- Claire Evans and Jona Bechtolt of the band YACHT, both shareholders since 2008 and alumni of Urban Honking. Evans is also the author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet.
- Greg Borenstein, who built the original KmikeyM trading platform, later at the MIT Media Lab and Riot Games.
- Aaron Parecki, author of the OAuth 2.0 standard and a founding figure in the IndieWeb movement, who maintains the platform today.
- Chris Higgins, the journalist and documentary filmmaker (Mental Floss, The Atlantic, This American Life).
- Adrian Chen, the investigative journalist and former New Yorker staff writer, also an Urban Honking alum.
- Patrick Campbell, founder of ProfitWell, whose 2022 attempt to accumulate a controlling stake tested the platform’s governance (see KmikeyM).
That a project like this drew people of this caliber as early backers is part of its broader cultural footprint.
Transferability
Shares can change hands, but there is no built-in mechanism for one shareholder to sell or transfer directly to another. Peer-to-peer transfer is not against the rules; it simply is not a feature the platform automates. In practice, most movement happens through the platform’s own buy and sell offers (see Share Price History).
One share is permanently non-transferable: the Membership share, the very first share, which cannot be sold or transferred under any circumstances.
Dividends and economic return
KmikeyM pays no dividend and operates no profit-sharing scheme. There is currently no implemented mechanism for shareholders to receive cash distributions. The value of a share is the combination of its market price and the voting and participation rights it carries, not a claim on a stream of earnings. A buyer is acquiring a seat in the experiment, not an income-producing security (see Governance and Legal Structure).