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Heading to Zero
Before I launch into this, I was wondering, Dear Reader, if you would be interested in transferring, say, a thousand bucks to my account.
In exchange, I will create five digital “coins,” which I like to call Cryptic Currency, and will send you a PDF file with five tokens. You can store them on a jump drive which I will call your “Cryptic Wallet.”
They will look like digital coins when you view them, but instead of being minted at the U.S. mint and being backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Treasury, you will be able to exchange them in the future for some amount of what we regular folks call money. But money in the sense of U.S. currency.
I may exchange your five Cryptic Currency tokens for the thousand dollars that you originally send me. Should it become popular enough that millions of people mine them via computer algorithms “solving complex math problems,” I may send you two grand of U.S. currency in exchange. Perhaps ten grand.
More likely zero.
My fascination with cryptocurrency began two summers ago as I read some publication, most likely a newspaper article, in my back yard on a lovely summer day.
It was one of those rare days that I get a few times per year when I could lounge about, do some reading, drink a cold…
