The Token Scene

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My prediction from March 2023:

"There may soon be demand from State governments 
for R&D, prototyping and development of gold-backed 
digital currencies"

There is currently an avalanche of crypto-related bills in State legislatures. So I'm calling this a successful prediction even though it's a bit off. Most promoters of Bitcoin reserves don't realize how close Bitcoin came to systemic failure in 2023 or how wonky it still is. For instance, even at $105k, the Bitcoin miners are still losing money. No miners equals no Bitcoin:

income: $105k x 165k coins = $17.3 billion
expense: 180 terawatts x 10.5 cents per kwatt = $18.9 billion
net loss: $1.6 billion

average energy consumption is growing 25% per year.

That being said, a State token platform backed by a Bitcoin Reserve is a miner (yuk yuk) detail to me. Bitcoin would have seized up in 2023 except for several billion $$ from Blackrock to keep the miners running. I correctly predicted the 2023 miner crash in 2021 and Bitcoin's subsequent functional problems but I underestimated Blackrock's determination to ETF the fuck out of Bitcoin.

So I stand by my 2021 prediction that Bitcoin's coin limit will be abandoned. And now I predict Blackrock will also discard the mining mechanism once Bitcoin has enough institutional adoption, effectively converting Bitcoin into a CBDC. The annual savings of $300+ billion in energy cost will just be too tempting.

The Wyoming Stablecoin act showed me a better approach for a State token platform. Stablecoins are less controversial than gold but the platform only needed a slight design change to handle multiple despositories of value; a generic depository interface with specific adapters.

So I changed it. (reference from the "Loopers" movie. )

If Bitcoin fails later, the platform survives. A State can add a gold depository or a stablecoin depository, etc. The key is establishing the platform first.

My original mailing in 2023 was too much about "how" and not enough about "why" because the "why" seemed obvious to me. Version 7 is hitting the mark much better based on Google trends data. And even blue States see the danger of centralized, identity-bound money now that it's controlled by Trump.

Most economic transactions are local and a monetary system should mirror that but prior to cheap CPUs and networks, it wasn't cost effective.