Cryptocurrency

[Steve]

In a world where an AI being like Mechanon exists, I’m wondering if currency like Bitcoin even exists in the CU. AI beings could easily use it for transactions, since they would have their own wallets built in, so to speak. I could see it being used by supervillains or maybe villainous groups to quietly move money around.

 

A group the size of VIPER might even have their own blockchain banking system using their own cryptocurrency to do transactions between Nests and associated organizations. VCoins might be a thing in the CU.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I suspect that cryto is primarily used for money laundering, so criminals will always have a use for that, depending on how granular you want your campaign to be.  I could easily see Mechanon using crypto to power himself, tapping into all those farms for processor power.  In fact I suspect several villains would be likely to create their own coin.

[unclevlad]

It wasn't written up because it *just* came out when 6E was published.  First printing date on my 6E1 is August, 2009.  There were digital cash technologies before this, but bitcoin's methodology dates to 2008...and that, primarily as academic-level papers.  First use as a currency was 2009...the "most expensive pizzas of all time" whereby someone bought 2 large pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin.  That set a value, where none had existed before.

 

So, sure, if you want it to exist, it can exist.

 

Its degree of acceptance is up to you.  Computer hacking in general is likely to be far, far more sophisticated and stronger, which means the security of the financial network has to be much stronger.  Crypto could, in theory, provide additional layers of security...or, if you prefer, if the crypto generation algorithm isn't secure, impossibly insecure.  

 

Another issue would be what the status of world governance might be.  The more generally connected/allied the First World countries are, the stronger the chance of a unified currency, like the Euro...and that creates a good baseline for it to be digital, at least, if not necessarily crypto.

 

Note that acceptance doesn't necessarily deny use in extralegal transactions...altho it would increase regulation that might make those transactions more readily monitored, which would be an issue.

 

I like to allow it, with its history largely as per our world...why not?  Plus, it's one of the best justifications for a *large* wealth perk.  (The person who bought those pizzas?  That wasn't the only time he did it.  Comment was, he stopped doing it when producing bitcoins started becoming harder.  Yes...in the first days, mining was extremely rare, and mining rewards were far, far higher.)  In the early days, too, we're talking anywhere from 10 cents to a buck for a bitcoin.  There's also this story:

 

https://news.mit.edu/2017/bitcoin-study-period-exclusivity-encourages-early-adopters-0713

 

A different story I've seen on this was, some students were adept at creating the wallets...so they charged, in bitcoin, to help set up others' wallets.  By 2014, Bitcoin was already in the several hundred dollar range, but that still translates to about a 50-fold increase.  In 10 years, that's insanely good.

[Stanley Teriaca]

I can see ARGENT have there own Cryptocurrency. Heck, one of my ideas is a power blaster which requires valid credit card to fire, which each pull of the trigger costing $10. Now imagine how many ARGENT Points that would be ($1 = 100 ARGENT Points, so the above gun would be 1000 ARGENT Points per trigger pull).

[unclevlad]

3 minutes ago, Stanley Teriaca said:

I can see ARGENT have there own Cryptocurrency. Heck, one of my ideas is a power blaster which requires valid credit card to fire, which each pull of the trigger costing $10. Now imagine how many ARGENT Points that would be ($1 = 100 ARGENT Points, so the above gun would be 1000 ARGENT Points per trigger pull).

 

In a closed environment like that, yes, I can see it.  Technically, tho, this isn't a currency, it's a scrip, if it can only be used within that tightly constrained ecosystem.  Scrip has a fundamental problem:  its value is arbitrary, and controlled completely by the issuing organization, and compels its recipients to remain within the organization's economic sphere.  The scrip can only be used in The Company Store...not Wal Mart.  Therefore, price fixing, in the store, is another issue.  

[Stanley Teriaca]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

 

In a closed environment like that, yes, I can see it.  Technically, tho, this isn't a currency, it's a scrip, if it can only be used within that tightly constrained ecosystem.  Scrip has a fundamental problem:  its value is arbitrary, and controlled completely by the issuing organization, and compels its recipients to remain within the organization's economic sphere.  The scrip can only be used in The Company Store...not Wal Mart.  Therefore, price fixing, in the store, is another issue.  

It's ARGENT. You think they would actually want true Crypto? No...just an electronic script they can give an illusion of true Crypto.

 

And ARGENT wouldn't be alone. You can't use Vcoin anywhere but a VIPER base after all.

[DShomshak]

Since I'm told that IRL organized crime sometimes uses Bitcoin for transactions, I expect it would be the same in the CU. (In fact, I'm told they're just about the only people who use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as an actual medium of exchange. For everyone else it's an investment, on the same "greater fool" theory as Tulipmania, or used to buy NFTs as investments on the same theory.)

 

VIPER thus could use crypto in transactions with other criminals, and also have its own "Vcoin" as a digital scrip but not a true cryptocurrency as it would gain its value from an issuing authority.

 

ARGENT creating its own digital scrip has amusing potential. Maybe debit cards? "Insert card for 16 more shots from this blaster" as a version of Clips of Charges? But at least some of the engineers and technicians would be into crypto just because it's a tech-bro thing. The financial department would invest in crypto along with stocks, bonds, land, and other assets, just as any other large corporation might do.

 

Dean Shomshak

[unclevlad]

There is some use of crypto as a medium of exchange, but no, it's not widespread IRL.  How you want to work it in-game is of course up to you.