Cryptocurrency Drama (Part 2)

This post will make little sense if you have not already read “Cryptocurrency Drama”. Read that first before continuing here.

ACT 2 – The Present

Scene 1

Bit Brain is seen entering the same store as before. The store is very busy inside, though the town outside seems almost like a wasteland. Tumble-weeds blow across the main road
and many buildings stand abandoned.

ERNIE the OPPORTUNISTIC SALESMAN
Welcome back sir! It’s been quite a few months since we last saw you!

BIT BRAIN
Thanks Ernie. I’m afraid that I don’t come into town often these days, most of the time I just stay on the other side of the river with my tribe, the Timmites. There doesn’t seem to be any freely available BTC around at the moment, and that which I have, I am struggling to use. Last year I bought three horses for 1 BTC, this year just one horse costs 1 BTC!

EOS
Sadly that is true. You see, while you were away, a large pack of bears marauded their way through our town! They trashed all of our stores and wrecked a lot of the valuables inside. Our store is worth but a fraction of what it once was. Some of the smaller buildings around here were completely flattened, their owners packed up and left, everything inside them was lost.

BB
That’s terrible to hear! I suppose that the reality of being part of a dangerous frontier adventure is that we stand to gain high potential rewards, but at the cost of high potential risk.

EOS
Agreed. Is there anything specific I might help you with today sir?

BB
Well actually Ernie, I was rather hoping that you might. You see I took my CPU to one of your little franchises on the other side of the river last week, but they declined it. They said that it was unable to transact with the your network.

EOS
Oh dear sir, I‘m afraid that your CPU must have been negatively affected by the EIDOS!

BB
What’s an EIDOS?

EOS
The Entrepreneurial-Intentioned Destructive-Outcome Suggestions is the massive suggestion box located in the entrance foyer of our store. EIDOS causes so many suggestions to be submitted that our entire franchise has become completely dedicated to them. Basically, our network of stores has gone into “suggestion mode”.

That’s a good thing because now it shows how many suggestions we can handle!

Soon we will be completely revamping our store, we call it “Version 2.0”. It’s very exciting that we can handle so many suggestions already and we don’t even have our Version 2.0-optimised
store yet!

BB
But Ernie, my CPU doesn’t work. I can’t access your network of stores at all. Despite having deposited way more than the minimum, I’m locked out of the system!

EOS
Well you see, we’ve grown so much that our store is even catching up to Enormous Trade Holdings, the biggest name in the business, apart from Bank Toppling Currency of course! We have so many customers using the suggestion box that there is almost no capacity for anything else right now, but we see that level of activity as being a good thing.

BB
But what about the guaranteed access to your store that you promised me? That was the reason I got the CPU in the first place.
Wasn’t it?

EOS
Well yes, but we weren’t in suggestion mode then. Now that we are, you can see the true cost of using our network. That’s a good thing, because now we all have a more accurate idea of what it really costs to reserve access to our network of stores.

BB
But then you misled people with the whole “guaranteed access” story! You had enormous hidden costs waiting down the line! Ernie this is beginning to remind me of how the banks operate…

So you’re telling me that I’m locked out forever and that it’s just too bad?

EOS
Noooo sir! Of course not!

All you need to do is to increase the size of the deposit on your CPU.

BB
By how much? How big is this hidden cost to “guaranteed access” that you conveniently never mentioned before?

EOS
*mumbling*
Prices have risen roughly 100 000 times.

BB
*visibly shocked*
WHAT?!

EOS
*still mumbling*
But it doesn’t really matter anyway, since you can’t access the network to deposit more onto your CPU…
…because you don’t have enough CPU to get CPU.

BB
Are you kidding me? I can’t get CPU because I don’t have enough CPU? So I am locked out forever!

EOS
Noooo sir! Of course not!
You can use just borrow somebody else’s CPU for a while!

BB
*getting wary*
Okay…
But wouldn’t that be a lengthy and laborious process? How would I find someone? How would that even work in practical terms? How do I even do that? Please, help me here!

EOS
*visibly brightening up and going back into full “salesman mode”*
You can use Ridiculously Extended Xerographics!

BB
Dare I even ask what “Xerographics” means?

EOS
Xerographics, it’s a copying technique, so basically Ridiculously Extended Xerographics – or REX – allows you to lend the same CPU to different people over and over again, hence the copying analogy. You get paid interest for lending out your CPU.

BB
But that’s a ridiculously extended process just to be able to conduct a normal transaction on a shopping network!

EOS
Well, not really. We don’t see it that way, it’s a good thing.
*suddenly Ernie returns to his far more demure state*
Well, to be perfectly honest, there is a little snag with REX too. There still has to be CPU on REX that is available to be lent out.
*Ernie looks downright miserable*
Currently there isn’t any left…

BB
… because everybody is already borrowing all the CPU for EIDOS, right?

EOS
*Brightening up again*
Correct. Almost all the resources on REX and in this store are completely dedicated to EIDOS. But it shows the system works! You must see how many suggestions we process each day! It’s a good thing!

BB
Ernie, thanks for the explanation, but I’d very much like to speak to your manager.

EOS
Very well sir, let me see if the Director of Automated Networks is available.

About the author: Bit Brain
A walking crypto encyclopedia. Honest, Realistic, Opinionated. Futurist, Autodidact, Polymath.

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