A friend from high school asked me several years ago if I was ever going to invest in Bitcoin. I honestly thought he meant to say, “bits of coin,” but it all ran together because he’s a mush mouth. When I heard the term again on the radio, I immediately had a panic attack because I’d told my friend that brought it up originally that, “I already have a jar of that shit.” Normally I wouldn’t care about sounding dumb in front of a friend, but he has a hot sister.
Realizing Bitcoin was an actual thing, I began to research it. The problem with researching Bitcoin, other than being the most boring activity on earth second only to listening to your kids talk about their day, is that you need to research researching Bitcoin. I was convinced within two minutes of reading my first article on Bitcoin that these were hunks of coin in a mine somewhere. For reals. I understood every fifth or sixth word of the article, and by the end I knew less about Bitcoin than when I started, and I could no longer remember my phone passcode.
Bitcoin may or may not be actual coins, but they’re definitely not Non-Fungible Tokens, and they exist somewhere in the Blockchain. This I am absolutely not certain of. I eavesdropped on a conversation at Starbucks the other day where five adults in their late twenties were discussing cryptocurrency and NFT’s and the only takeaway I left with was that there may also be coins made from dogs and that I very likely ate paint chips as a child. None of this makes any sense, and I think everyone else knows it makes no sense, but they just keep talking because it sounds interesting, and everyone is terrified, and too dumb, to challenge it.
“See, Bitcoin is essentially the vizzivie, as they say, of the cryptocurrency world. Its function, as a nanoparticle in the blockchain, is crucial. It’s almost sentient, it’s so alive with possibility, right?”
That sentence made no fucking sense, and you know it, but I bet you read it and even looked up the made-up word, “vizzivie” because you didn’t want to look like an idiot. Dudes with beards that are still on their parent’s health insurance say shit like this every day and ten people stare at them nodding their heads in agreement while sipping Chai teas. I’m almost tempted to look up that word because it all sounds important, cohesive, and plausible.
It’s taken me almost fifty years to not understand the stock market, and now, apparently, I need to ascertain the fundamentals of cryptocurrency if I want to remain relevant to people I don’t like. Having spent some years in the insurance and annuity world, I’ve been asked several times, “What are stock options,” and I’m almost at a point where I’ve made up a good answer. Now this shit. Can we all agree that nobody, honestly and completely, knows what the hell any of it is? These are concepts created by nerds, long angry at the jocks and country club yuppies that hung them from lockers by their skivvies as kids and have no true meaning in reality. A recent study done by some website confirmed that ninety-four percent of those that own Bitcoin also play Fortnite and own a virtual reality headset. So, yeah.
Until we’re ready to admit that we’ve been duped, and accept that, no, we can’t mine coins from inside our iPad, we need to play the game. To nod and grin at Duncan when he says he just went long on Dogecoin, and that decentralized finance is the future. Give a thumbs up to Zoe when she tells you she finally got her DLT in proper order. Offer a resounding, “Right,” as you point at Bryce following his declaration that a segregated witness is a good value add for blockchains. You don’t need to know shit, and they don’t need to know you don’t know. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are the future, at least until our democracy is abolished and we go back to trading livestock for loaves of bread and shoes in the street. If you don’t want to be caught sleeping during the revolution, find some kid playing Magic the Gathering in a hobby store and ask him to explain everything to you. It doesn’t matter if you understand it, it’s all made up anyway. Godspeed.
-CaptainSoggy
The Soggy Blanket 