MoneyWeek’s 20th anniversary is coming – help us celebrate!

The first issue of MoneyWeek came out on 4 November 2000. Back then, the iPhone didn’t exist. No one had heard of shale oil – the biggest energy story looming on the horizon was the threat of “peak oil”. As for bitcoin, we were all still struggling to wrap our heads around the idea of paying for purely digital goods, let alone using a purely digital currency.

Britain was thinking of joining the euro, which wasn’t yet in circulation. The Bank of England interest rate was 6% – imagine trying to pay your mortgage at that rate today. Chancellor Gordon Brown was in the process of selling off half of Britain’s gold reserves at an average price of about $275 an ounce – a bargain (for the buyers). Amazon’s market capitalisation was £10bn or so and falling in the midst of the dotcom crash (it’s now about £1.2trn and rising, in what some argue is a tech bubble). The US was about to vote in a tightly contested presidential election (at least some things don’t change).

Let’s just say – a fair bit has happened over the last 20 years. In our 20th anniversary issue (out on 6 November), we will be asking: "What might change in the next 20 years?" And we want to hear from you. We're asking our readers and contributors five ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions on investment, technology and politics to find out just how radically they think life might have changed by 2040. 

We’ll be releasing the five questions over the course of the next two weeks. We’d like you to email your answers to any or all of these questions – and the reasoning behind your answers – to 2040@moneyweek.com. The best answers will be published in our anniversary issue.

So here are the questions so far:

By 2040…

1. Will gold have hit $10,000 an ounce?

2. Will a human being have set foot on the Moon as a tourist?

3. Will any country in the world have banned physical cash altogether?

4. Will Amazon still be one of the ten most valuable companies in the world?

5. Will any government have introduced and administered a universal basic income scheme for more than a year?

Email us your answer, and your rationale, to 2040@moneyweek.com by 30 October. We’ll print the best answers in our 20th anniversary issue, out 6 November.

And if you’re not already a subscriber to MoneyWeek magazine, sign up before 28 October to be sure to get your copy of our 20th anniversary issue. Here’s just a selection of what we’ll be looking at:

• The future for bitcoin and independent cryptocurrencies: will they ever represent a real challenge government-backed fiat currencies?
• Is a future without fossil fuels realistic? And what will it mean for transport, the national grid, and geopolitics?
• Max King tells us his five funds to buy today and forget until 2040
• Longevity and demographics: how long will the average lifespan be by 2040, and what might it mean for your investments?
• Matthew Lynn gives his five big contrarian calls for 2040
• Geopolitics in 2040 - how might the political power balance shift over the coming two decades