And if people accept that as payment, what does it mean? Too many tech grads? Too few tech jobs?

I spent the weekend with some employees of a company that did an ICO earlier this year, and YES they are paid in the ICO coins.

Dividends do not matter.

A companies assets belong the shareholder - so if the money is in Google's bank account or transferred to the investors bank account, it the same thing, technically.

Imagine a corp with $10B in the bank, valued at $25B, implying 'future returns in present dollars' are worth $15B. Add that to $10B in the bank you get $25B.

Now - if they company paid out $10B in a massive dividend - what is the company now worth? --> $15B.

When money comes out of the company, the value of the company goes down by that amount.

Technically.

Obviously it's more complicated, and it relates a lot to whether or not a company can re-invest the company better than an investor could otherwise.

But in the end, it's all baked into the value of the stock.

So it really doesn't matter that much.

Most startups don't pay dividends because cash is much more valuable, and they have places to spend it.

A company sitting on a hoard of cash, probably should pay dividends, otherwise, it's operating ratios aren't going to be that great.

Ex: MSFT bank account was so big at one point, analysts had to treat MS as 1/2 a 'software company' and 1/2 a 'hedge fund' - because the performance of MS was only about 1/2 'how their business was doing' - the rest of their stock performance was just 'how their fund managers were doing'. 5% returns on MS's investments, are maybe worse than the bigger returns they get by investing in their business.

Only companies with big cash piles - or - really predictable set of earnings pay dividends. If you are a massive company that sells 'crackers' and have been around for 120 years, and your business doesn't change much and are healthy - you probably pay dividends. Startups - not so much.