dumbmatter.com

Online home of Jeremy Scheff

Bitcoin and crypto-anarchist sloths

When I first heard of BitCoin, a decentralized (i.e. not controlled by a government or corporation) digital currency, I immediately thought of Neal Stephenson. Why? Well, I have a total mancrush on Neal Stephenson, so he is never far from my thoughts. But a central theme of several of his novels (and a peripheral theme in others) is currency. For instance, in Cryptonomicon, the protagonists are developing a digital currency which is "anonymous, untraceable, and untaxable", but ultimately there is still some gold sitting in a vault somewhere centralized.

But Stephenson's short story "The Great Simoleon Caper" is even more prescient:

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Chaos: There should be more of it

Before I (finally) got around to putting something up on this domain name, I had some placeholder text. I'm going to repeat it here, because I like it and I don't want to just delete such a great quote from my website:

I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it.

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