Bitcoin
Textbook: "Bitcoin: A Game-theoretic analysis"
Notes On mining and ASICS markets
Clark Honors College course
My story is a podcast format dated in the future, and the host is telling the story of Bitcoin`s demise. The first part is on the rise of bitcoin and the appointing of the Crypto General of the US. The Crypto General`s initial intentions are to prevent the US from centralizing. However the US wants power, and centralizes leading to a 51% attack, the Crypto General sees that the end of bitcoin is near, and decides to speed of the process by helping the US centralize, and revealing the US` actions to the public.
To help the world meet its carbon emissions and global warming targets midway through the 21st century, Bitcoin mining operations worldwide have been forced to direct their renewable energy sources towards powering other necessities that are in more pressing need of renewable electricity. This leaves the Bitcoin community scrambling to find another way to power the global mining network, and two brilliant minds successfully develop a fully hamster-powered Bitcoin mining setup. However, miners ignore the pair when they hint at cracks that appear in this new system due to unethical mining practices, which gives the two an opportunity to profit from shorting related derivatives and witnessing the eventual downfall of the system, and bitcoin for good.
In my story , Venezuela follows other countries in the Global South (like El Salvador) to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender and implement custodial wallets and channels. After much inequality and environmental degradation caused by the corrupt government’s implementation of Bitcoin, the network is attacked. The government shuts down the citizen’s custodied wallets and apparently steals citizens’ funds, leaving them with nothing.
My story is an allegory for Bitcoin using farm animals (basically Bitcoin animal farm). There are these three pigs who are tired of an oppressive farmer forcing bad food onto them, representing the US forcing the dollar onto people. Instead, they decide to follow a system from a distant farm that figured out how to grow their own corn in a decentralized way. The inventor of this Cornchain is named Pigtoshi Pigamoto, and he developed a consensus protocol that was then manipulated by the three pigs when they replicated it on their farm. They conducted a selfish mining attack to take over the replicated Cornchain to eat all the corn and become fat "whales," while all the other animals ended up just becoming slaves to the pigs for the hope of corn.
Satoshi returns to run for president in 2040, gets elected using his wealth, and begins forcing the early stages of worldwide Bitcoin adoption a la El Salvador while centralizing large amounts of Bitcoin within government accounts. Meanwhile, he also uses his status in the Bitcoin community to implement a hard-fork and convince people to be okay with some centralization. Upon losing reelection, Satoshi triggers a mass sell-off/burn of government Bitcoin and his own, tanking the US (and thus world) economy and essentially rugpulling the US.
In the future, Satoshi used his bitcoin, and some well-worded internet posts, to convince most of the world`s governments to switch to bitcoin. To keep the value of bitcoin from going down, a big-brother bitcoin police used big-data analysis of the ledger to find and punish anyone who isn`t doing enough transactions with bitcoin, since that might mean they are using some other underground monetary system. The story focuses on an early adopter of bitcoin who died in our time, was frozen and revived, now fabulously wealthy, and must contend with the problems of this new system when his neighbor gets in trouble with the bitcoin police.
A pirate in Black Bart`s crew stumbles upon a seemingly simple but developed new form of currency, called EightBit Coin. He joins in this new network, which is mostly commoners and other vagrants who are trying to distance themselves from the rule of the Crown. A battle breaks out between the oppressive Crown, who are trying to take over this network.
Outline: A young collage graduate joins the largest crypto exchange company in the world and then discovers a complex fraud involving embezzlement of wallet funds. The protagonist then reports this to the press, however no crypto users seem to believe or care about the issue. This causes him to join the fraud while killing the original leader of the company in order to distribute the stolen funds to impoverished people around the globe.