#LearningTheABCofCryptocurrencyThroughFantasyStory
#imagesource:Google but edited
#ABeginnerGuideToCryptocurrency
Chapter 1
“Where do you think the money spent on buying data for your phone ended up in?”
It was Nick that asked his girlfriend, Bella Lorraineman that question. She had wanted to get laid that early Las Vegas morning, but the question caught her unprepared as well as jostled her to the present. The tingling sensation of sex, coupled with the un-usual showers of attention and gifts from her new boyfriend had all helped to numb the throes of her recent misfortune. Not the sex really but the booze and the weed that come with it. Nick will take her out after each session and they will enjoy smoking a roll of “brainbae” as they call it. The term was Nick’s. He is a tech guy she met at Huntingtong beach in Los Angeles where she had gone with friends to “hibernate” as she believed. She never knew the United State of America is still so conservative sex scandal could rock her that much.
Anyway, that is all behind her now. She has accepted her past and move on with life. And this Nick of a guy promise to be something worth living for. He had brought a new ray of hope into her life and she is going to give it a try. Besides, apart from her beauty, she considers herself the most unfortunate when it comes to love and job. She had left nine jobs; five after the scandal. The fourth one could have been something to keep for long if not for the unfortunate incidence. Now she has no job. Nick provides everything, including the brainbae. According to him, the word came to him during his days at Lyft as tech assistance fresh from University of California. That was his first and only job. Lyft is an on-demand transportation company based in San-Francisco founded by Logan Green and John Zimmer. He and his friends will go to Smoke-Screen; a rendezvous for smokers and which became popular after California legalised, or to use a better word, decriminalised marijuana use. The state had legalised marijuana for recreational use, whatever that means.
On Fridays Nick and his smoker friends will meet at Smoke-Screen to ‘roll the bae.’ Those who have girlfriends that smoke among them do come with their girls. It was there that somebody inadvertently asked who is the bae of the brain. Nick had replied that it is the roll on their hands. He would roll the smoke into a circle at the roar of laughter that followed. That act was also the origin of “rolling the bae.”
Bella pouted her mouth in admission of her ignorance about the world of the technology behind the digital life we live presently. Nick had told her if this period of the earth were to be named, it should be called the Technocene in realisation of the cutting edge technology of nowadays. Human technology will live its mark on the planet earth long into the future even if the earth is destroyed by man induced catastrophe like atomic or hydrogen bomb. Even if everything on the surface of the earth is pulverised into their atoms, it is not unlikely that somewhere in the underwater crevices some polythene materials could be waiting for some being of conscious and rational mind to discover five million years from now.
Nick had called her to meet him at South Pavilion. That is the coffee shop where they do serious talks and plan for their life together. To tell the truth, she is afraid because Nick is her only source of her finance and happiness for now. She is afraid of losing him, but somewhere in the recess of her mind she knew it is a matter of time; Nick will go the way of men that have been in her life. He had said that they should meet for an important issue. “An issue more pleasurable to bonk and booze and ganja” he had teased her curiosity on phone. But what on earth could that be? She searched her mind. Right now what gives her lifeline is the mesmerism of weed and the tingling sensations of multiple orgasm. Apart from the binge, Nick could pass for a “religuy.” That is her term for young men that profess to religion. That term was used in her presence by Prof. Neilsen in one of his books “The Permafrost of Human Mind” where he explores the reason why religion still holds even in the millenians. Could it be that her nice guy has finally found religion? She cursed the thought instantly as she hurried along somewhere close to E. Bonanza road.
South Pavilion lies to the east of McCarran Airport. As she was settling down on a chair her phone beeps Nick will be 15 minutes late. She wouldn’t mind.
#imagesource:Google but edited
Nick came with the usual excuse “cryptocurrecy went up, and I couldn’t but stay to take a look.” Ask by what margin and he will tell you 0.001 from yesterday’s price. In all honesty, her mind had tried to see the significance of such a change in value but she couldn’t. She stopped bothering her mind.
“I want to tell you about making money through mining bitcoins.” Nick said after his lovely touch and hug. “I had better become a pornstar if this is the line,” Bella thought in her mind. “I will embrace my past and become queen of the damned.”
Nick could sense the trouble. A cool, tech savvy guy from New Orleans that he is. He had gone in search of Bella to correct one terrible mistake he had made while he was working at Lyft. And he had come to fall in love with the girl who bore the consequence of his costly mistake. Ever since he met Bella and fell in love he had wanted to do more for her to settle his conscience. He knows Bella is but a bimbo to the outside world where competition for survival is based on intelligence. Everybody wants a share of her body and dump her. But somehow he believes he could still fan the embers of intelligence in her. everybody is intelligent when the right side of their brain is twiddled. And two years of Nicks time had gone into finding the right place to twiddle in Bella. Yes, Bella wants to make money! Everybody does. But how do you make money in a world where you have no skills or qualification other than college certificate? She could only manage to finish her college before she ran away from her abusive father at the age of 18. Her father did not bother to find her and so their two worlds remain apart. These are the layer of trauma-ridden life Nick had to unfold layer by layer to get down to the girl in her.
“Do you want to make money?” he asks again, trying not to let go of her interest and at the same time blocking her mind from a slippery slope into self pity.
“Yes, I do. And everybody does.” She replies with a stern look.
“Ok.” Nick beckons the waitress to bring two cup of coffees for them. “And, do you want to make money in this technocene epoch? Huge money I mean. The one that can sets you up for life.” Bella nodded. A little sense of shame crawling up to her mouth tying her lips and preventing her to speak. She knows she wants money badly and she is too lazy to afraid to go out now and search for job. She might meet somebody who recognises her from the video. The second part of the shame is coming from the realisation that Nick, this smart guy knows her hidden secret – to hit it big and run away. She hid her shame behind her coffee cup.
“I know you also love history. You did well in it in college.”
“Yes.” Her response was too immediate even for her. she suddenly has interest in what Nick has to say.
“Well then, let me start from the history of money. I don’t know if you have ever wondered when people started using money?”
Bella searched her brain if she had ever thought of that before. She couldn’t find one, that does not mean she hadn’t. Nick holds her gaze and continues.
“ Let me tell you about the Origin of Money and Moneyed Economy.” Bella leans forward with keen interest.
“Though the origin of the word ‘money’ to designate legal tender has a mythological foundation in ancient Rome, there is a unanimous opinion that money is a human invention. In Rome coins were minted in the temple of the goddess, Juno Moneta and from the name of this goddess came the word ‘money’ or ‘monnaie.’ Also, cowrie which I will regard here as the first true money for a number of reasons is said to have been originally called ‘concha veneer,’ that is, the shell of Venus by the ancients. It is also established that cowries, like other shells from the ocean were first objects of admiration, considered and collected as exotic.”
“Wow! I never thought of that.” She replies, seeping her coffee. She is beginning to enjoy two things; the aroma of the steaming coffee and Nick’s history lesson.
“Therefore, it is safe to say that traditionally, currencies have been physical tangible items. In China and Africa, people used cowries and in Europe, people used other objects of admiration such as paper or gold, for they all have sentimental values. In this contemporary period, we have paper bill and coins as money.” He puts a ten dollar bill on the table for the waitress.
“You seem to be right there” was her reply.
“Money in this form serves three basic functions: a medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account. However, the advent of computer technology brought a new phase to money and its usage. Money becomes a measure of “authority” of a kind. You know you could order for pizza at home once you make payment online. If I may ask you, where does the money you paid for the pizza came from?”
“from my earnings of course. I worked for Johson’s as secretary and they paid my salary into my bank account. Then I buy things I need from the account. That is no brainer” Bella responded.
“Of course, yes.” Nick smiles
“I just want this to be as elementary as possible. Even if a grade 4 should read this our conversation in the future, he will understand.”
“Are you recording this conversation?” Bella queries
“No. Not at all.”
“Ok.”
“A Ph.D. graduate in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley by the name David Chaum published the earliest known research suggesting the possibility of using cryptography as a basis for cash transfer electronically in 1982. Since banks nowadays use encrypted format for almost their online transactions and other financial activities, the research became the bedrock of cryptocurrency.”
Bella tilts her head sideway to make sure she hears Nick better. Nick misreads her action to mean she doubts the information he just passed to her.
“If you doubt this, I will give you a material to read or you can find it online, it is free. Just search for ‘Beginners Guide to Cryptocurrencies’ by Joey Conway published May 19th 2014.” Bella responds that she does not doubt him.
“The idea behind this is very simple. Just as you take your money to the bank or your employer pays your salary to the bank, the bank virtually issues you an authority to buy whatever you want through you credit card and they will pay whoever you authorised to take certain amount of money from your account for what you have bought.”
Bella nods.
“In other words, the five of you may not deal with cash directly but transactions continue to flow among you: first, your employer orders his bank to give you certain amount of money for the service you rendered to him as secretary; second, your bank notifies you that certain amount of money has been paid into your account by your employer’s bank; third, you bought your needs at a nearby grocery store meaning you ordered your bank to pay certain amount of money to the grocery owner’s bank for what you bought.”
“And so the chain of transactions continues among the inhabitants of the technocene epoch of the earth.” Bella forwarded with a laugh. Nick is humbled by the lady’s now rising intelligence.
“Yes, only that you can remove all my mentioning of money in the statement and replace it with authority and it will still make sense. Also, there is limit to what you can buy as specified buy the amount your employer gives you as salary, that is the amount of authority given to you to buy anything you want.”
Bella’s face brightens as she realises this.
“Yes oh yes!” is her response.
“Note also that, for every transaction made by the three of you, certain amount of money drops into the account of the three banks involved as their charges for services rendered to your employer, you and the grocery store owner.”
“Yes.”
“Ok. As time goes by, people naturally regards this “authority” as the real money itself not the dollar bill. Remember we said that one of the functions of money is being used as the store of value. Little by little, the value is leaving the concrete world of dollar bills into the virtual world of this “authority” traded and transacted by banks and other financial institutions.”
“Yes.”
“This is exactly the idea behind DigiCash, the company in 1990 by David Chaum but the comapny originally sold smart cards for use in closed systems, such as highway tolls. However, in 1994, the company sent the first electronic “cash” called “ecash” payment over public computer networks. The money is not cash per se but virtual authority I spoke of above. By ‘virtual’ I mean something not tangible but could have a computer representation either in number or art design.”
“Ok.”
“Soon other companies sprang up trading in this form of “authority”, other companies would immediately sprang up to trade in similar online payments such as InternetCash, Dexit, Flooz, Mondex and NetCheque.”
“So, money became quantified virtual authority that could effect transaction in real world?”
“Oh, God, you are so correct Bella. Whoever thought you are just a dumb bimbo to be used and dump is the most foolish of all time. I love you, I love you, I so much love you.” Nick coos like a laughing dove. As much as Nick is the money making machine of the two because of his tech brain, both knows what key open the other. Bella knows all what Nick wants is a listening ear when he starts pouring down about his new, crazy tech ideas.”
Bella smiles. Nick sits down after appreciating his girlfriend and attracting attention.
“Then came the age of computer games where you are given a some virtual reward for completing a task or a stage.”
“Mavy!” Exclaims Bella. “I get enough coins when I play such games as Temple Run, Zuma, Candi Crush Saga, Surbway Surfers and Angry Birds.”
Nick saw that he just must do something bring his girlfriend back from her childish behaviour.
“But Super Mario is their ancestor.” Nick cuts in.
“Oh, that is true.” Bella calms down.
“Listen very carefully to what I have to say next.”
“Ok. I am all ears.” Retorts Bella.
“Cryptocurrencies are like those coins you collect for performing and completing those tasks. Only that the task is different and more brain demanding. Such task is called “mining” and cryptocurrency has real life value if you convert them, huge money at that!”
#imagesource:Google but edited
“What?!”
What Nick said hits Bella like a heavy sledge hammer. Her mind racing through all what she could do with huge money as such! Her life will definitely be transformed. She could buy whatever she wants and travel the world over and over. She could start her broken life all over again!
But wait! Is this not a wishful thinking? A fictional tale told to a depressed mind to discourage her from committing suicide? Nick is good in that area, she knows. He alone has been her rehabilitation ever since her life hit rock bottom and he would not stop coming up with different ways to make her happy. Could this be true? If it is true, why hasn’t everybody become a millionaire or even a billionaire, not by working their ass off but by sitting at their computer and creating enough cryptocurrency? No, you cannot create but you can mine it. What does he mean by mining cryptocurrency? How difficult is the task? Is it only geniuses like him that could mine it? Where does one go to mine?
Bella was still dazed when the waitress came to pack the cups and took the ten dollar bill. It was the hand taking the ten dollar bill that brought her back. She straightens up and was about to attack the waitress for taking what does not belong to her that she realises the money is meant for their coffee. Nick is nowhere to be found. The waitress flashes a reassuring smile and points to the table with her mouth. Bella could not hear her very well but she thinks she hears something like “cocoon.” She followed the waitress gaze to the table and sees a note.
“I am off to my Cocoon. Cooking something for you. Stay with me baby.”
Cocoon is Nick’s computer room. A studio room with many interconnecting computers, with monitors blipping like eyes of extra-terrestrial animal’s young in nest. It is the dream of every hacker to have one. Bella knows Nick is not a hacker, but what could he be up to this time. And she realised from “Cooking something for you,” she could not fathom what a computer wizard madly in love could do. The extent they go in movies frightens her. At the same time a new form of happiness seems to be released into her heart. Selfish? Pervert? She could not say. She just knows she is deriving a kind of pleasure from being the centre of a geek’s love life and his two years labour. Indeed, the thought of it is more pleasurable than the tingling sensation of sex.
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