The world seems pretty confused about the crypto currency craze. The impulse to create currency is not new. People do not always want to scrape and save to build reserves of someone else's unit of value. A big part of a token's worth is its exchangeability, meaning merchants accept it for their own reserves.
In Critical Path, the Bucky Fuller opus, we have coinage backed not by gold, but by cattle. This crescent shaped coin was likely wearable, like a bracelet. Every bracelet might represent so many head. If I'm able to redeem my bracelets for cattle, then I might exchange them for something else, worth as much as that cattle.
I've been looking at crypto in connection with arcade games, the winning of which relates to control over allocation. The hero has a profile, of championing causes. Win a game, donate the tokens. How do these tokens translate to "real" currency? How does "real" currency translate into milk, butter and burritos?
If I'm able to exchange token X for a burrito, and if a burrito is worth $10, then by the transitive law, a token is worth about $10.
Do food truck merchants have a way to accept crypto? I'll gladly pay $12 to get a fresh new crypto wallet on my phone, and then use $10 of that to buy a burrito with it, using transaction infrastructure.
Over on FSI, I pointed out to our resident tetrahelix expert, that a so-called blockchain, such as what Bitcoin uses, could easily be graphically represented as a growing tetrahelix.
Each block in the blockchain is a regular tetrahedron. Successive blocks, each containing records of transactions, bond face-wise to continue the blockchain spiral.
That image might be a part of some wicked cool marketing, for some "beyond the cube" blockchainers. We're watching the space.
