In The Lost Symbol, human beings have forgotten the mystical symbols of power from the ancients.
However , we might be poised to actually forget, en masse, a powerful symbol. A mathematical protocol unlike any other.
‘Bitcoin’.
[Word Fades. Never to be spoken for decades].
NB:
This article is Entertainment FUD. Because you were hungry.
Pecunia Vix
Every digital money on the internet, except Bitcoin, can be made more of.
But poor people never see any of it.
À la Cantilon, poor people will keep seeing less money than they need (even as the zeros increase. Ref: Zimbabwean Dollar).
To the rich, this is good news.
As long as there is a wealth asymmetry, there is great fuel to drive the economy.
More debt slaves = More cheap labour to train Rich People AGI Complexes.
Scale AI, OpenAI, name_it AI.
It loves scale.
More cheap Data. More cheap labour.
And Bitcoin?
In the dustbin of history.
Hodling is too much work, give Saylor all the money.
Human memory on money is short, and human cognition has a short memory cache. Now all sorts of digital monies will keep pretending to be scarce and valuable.
Unless the poor understand it, they won't see it. It has to be understood to be seen.
There is no Morpheus.
There is no magical pill.
There is no magical Zion.
You, like I, have to dare to ask the question yourself, and accept the truth we find.
ETH, Solana. USD as USDT or USDC. Yen and Yuan…
Fiat currencies are many and in plenty, but they lie to our minds that they are scarce.
It's a pretty strong illusion. Because the printers are invisible.
(Only Elon has seen them).
Bitcoin Scams Incoming
All money is scarce! is the scam of this century. Because you hardly have any of it.
However, Bitcoin will soon be the most scarce. At some point BTC will be so scarce, that people will fall for BCH, BTG, BTC1, etc.
Some will outright claim to be BTC. But it will be a scam.
‘This is the age of scambling’, says Cory Klippsten of Swan Bitcoin.
That’s how we shall forget that Satoshi solved money.
“Why didn't he stop big debasing-King institutions as well?”
Well, that was society's problem.
Bitcoin will get so scarce it will become folklore.
No more BTC graph. Or if it is there, good luck getting any real bitcoin.
People will then give up and forget all about it.
As people / human societies learn slowly, Bitcoin is a lesson they need decades of whispers and more stolen conversations to finally learn.
People learn Slowly
Mourn BTC, it won't stick around for long.
Because it will become secret knowledge.
Secret Memes.
A lost symbol of what could've been.
Once the supply shock hits, the internet will be flooded by Bitcoin scams.
Bitcoin will disappear from the mainstream internet. And most people will not know this.
Maybe someone will tell them. But they'll also say its impossible to get any.
Bitcoin will be Bombed by a lot of Institutional Fiat.
Sorry for an allegory to current wars.
***
Newbie no-coiners in a few corners of the internet.
They'll see news of how a Bitcoin is worth $21 million as Saylor told them it would go.
‘Wow!’.
‘How do I get one?’
‘You have $21m lying around?’ (starts reaching for a $5 wrench).
‘Nah. I just want a few sats. I can atleast afford a sat worth $0.21, right?’
‘Ooh. Ok. Click this link’.
They click the link.
Their phone is hijacked.
Their identity hacked.
They cry. Nobody cares. B1tcoin was always a scam.
The Bitcoin Supply Shock / Bitcoin Demand Shock will be painful.
It will especially hurt measly coiners like me.
Because the FOMO will be so strong.
Like falling in love with entirely the wrong person. Who you can access, but don't you dare.
Lest you start a new currency based on blood feuds currency based on blood feuds.
Hope I'll still write HackerNoon posts.
A call for you, Robert Langdon
Of course, after the supply shock, Saylor will go underground (not entirely of his own free will) and his presence on YouTube will be limited.
Why, because he has more Bitcoin than the US of A plus China and they want some to pay their debts but they don't want to rob him.
Can't rob him, too many people might get pissed.
He won't be lonely though. He'll go Rockerfeller with other notable stackers.
Perhaps the US Fed will be racking its brain cells and AI neurons at 2x speed. Coz this will look like its only chance at a nice corporate exit.
Leave all this hustle to Saylor et. al.
Let him ratchet it all he wants with his own machine.
Meanwhile, there you are. Silly you. Following the trail like a dumb blood hound that doesn't know when it should quit.
You've been beaten 10x in Polymarket bets and lost 100x trading crypto. But you're still going strong.
You are Robert Langdon. So you are chosen to play the game.
You get a phone call.
Professor Langdon?
“Yes?”
I am Satoshi Nakamoto.
And I need your help saving Bitcoin.
The real Bitcoin.
It's been hijacked by powerful institutions. But I know where they'll trade it.
We need to hurry…
If you don't hang up that crank call, you're going to lose some more money. A lot more.
There's yet time to save the world.
***
Return of The Prankster
Perhaps you can take consolation in the fact that Apple.inc was started by a guy who was a genius crank caller, and a collector of prank-call-lines.
Steve Wozniak.
So that will be a Wozniak-prank-call right there.
Take heart. You just may find something interesting out.
Like what?
At the end his 1998 WIRED story The World According to Woz, Gary Wolf writes [paraphrasing];
The proof that people are not completely slaves to our machines [and Debt-Rich Bitcoin Treasuries] is that when the system fails, its failures are not necessarily random.
The phone system [now Bitcoin and “Crypto”], with its complexity, vulnerability, and illusion of privacy, is the natural home of the technological trickster. In Shakespeare, the prankster's domain is an enchanted forest.Today, it is the mysterious convolutions of the [Bitcoin] communications network.
Among his other activities, Woz collects phone numbers, and his longtime goal has been to acquire a number with seven matching digits. But for most of Woz's life there were no Silicon Valley exchanges with three matching digits, so Woz had to be satisfied with numbers like 221-1111.
Then, one day, while eavesdropping on cell phone calls, Woz begin hearing a new exchange: 888. And then, after more months of scheming and waiting, he had it: 888-8888 [Soon to be any website credibly claiming to hold a full Bitcoin for person xyz]. This was his new cell-phone number, and his greatest philonumerical triumph.
The number proved unusable. It received more than a hundred wrong numbers a day. Given that the number is virtually impossible to misdial, this traffic was baffling. More strange still, there was never anybody talking on the other end of the line. Just silence. Or, not silence really, but dead air, sometimes with the sound of a television in the background, or somebody talking softly in English or Spanish, or bizarre gurgling noises. Woz listened intently.
Then, one day, with the phone pressed to his ear, Woz heard a woman say, at a distance, "Hey, what are you doing with that?" The receiver was snatched up and slammed down.
Suddenly, it all made sense: the hundreds of calls, the dead air, the gurgling sounds. Babies. They were picking up the receiver and pressing a button at the bottom of the handset. Again and again. It made a noise: "Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep."
The children of America were making their first prank call.
And the person who answered the phone was Woz.
That was all fun and games. This will be serious business.