As promised, here is the whole play (previously published in four episodes) in one big part. It’s far more coherent this way, though obviously not a quick read.
Shakespeare wishes that he was this good! I’ll bet he’s never even heard of Bitcoin!
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ERNIE, an opportunistic salesman
BIT BRAIN, a customer
THE DIRECTOR OF AUTOMATED NETWORKS, a director of a large franchise
NED, a director of a small franchise
ACT 1 – The Past
Scene 1
Bit Brain enters a large store on the main road of a frontier Western Town established by pioneers. There he is greeted by an opportunistic salesman named Ernie.
ERNIE the OPPORTUNISTIC SALESMAN
Welcome sir! And a very good day to you!
BIT BRAIN
Thank you kind fellow, and a very good day to you too!
ERNIE the OPPORTUNISTIC SALESMAN
Is there anything that I can assist you with?
BIT BRAIN
Perhaps a little later. I’ve heard a lot of good things about this store, it seems to be very popular. I wanted to see for myself what all the hype was about.
ERNIE the OPPORTUNISTIC SALESMAN
No problem, just let me know if you need me.
BB wanders around the store and surveys the merchandise.
BIT BRAIN
Ernie! Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?
ERNIE the OPPORTUNISTIC SALESMAN
No problem sir! Ask away!
BIT BRAIN
I see a lot of new businesses have opened up around here recently. What’s happening?
ERNIE the OPPORTUNISTIC SALESMAN
Oh yes sir! You see, this is a frontier town. We have fled the mismanaged areas of the central government and have moved to this free and previously unsettled area. We didn’t feel safe living and working in the big towns anymore. I used to work in a bank in a large town, do you know what the building was made of?
BIT BRAIN
No, do tell.
ERNIE the OPPORTUNISTIC SALESMAN
It was made of cards! It has become common practice for them to construct financial institutions out of playing cards! I would never have believed it if I had not seen it with my own two eyes, I know that many others do not believe it when I tell them!
BIT BRAIN
I believe you Ernie, I too have witnessed the houses of cards with my own eyes. That’s why my people and I have now moved out here to the frontier. What I’m trying to do now is to make a few good investments to set me up for the future. That’s why I’m here today, to see if I’m interested in buying what you guys are selling.
ERNIE the OPPORTUNISTIC SALESMAN
I assume that sir has already been to the largest building in our town, the one with an enormous sign that says “Bank Toppling Currency”? They create most of the money that we use around here – we just abbreviate it as “BTC”. They actually have a mine beneath the building. Anyone with a pickaxe is free to go and mine their own money; wonderful system isn’t it?
BIT BRAIN
Yes indeed! I have been into the mine myself. Unfortunately my mining tools are rather crude compared to some of the advanced mining equipment that people are using down there, so I just bought some of their BTC off them with my dollars.
Speaking of BTC; I’ve taken a little walk around your store, and I like what I see. I would be interested in spending some of my BTC here, does this store accept it?
ERNIE the OPPORTUNISTIC SALESMAN
Oh I’m delighted to hear that sir! Yes of course we take BTC, but we have our own little account system that you will have be to registered on before we can process any transactions.
BIT BRAIN
Okay, how do I do that?
ERNIE the OPPORTUNISTIC SALESMAN
We operate on a system whereby you buy everything on a store loyalty card. We call it the “Customer Purchasing Unit” or “CPU”. I’m afraid that it’s not a quick and easy process to get an account going, but it’s worth it in the long run. What you then do is you deposit a small amount of BTC onto your CPU, and that guarantees that you will always be able to use our store! Great system, isn’t it?
BIT BRAIN
Weeeeelll, it does sound a tad over-complicated, but for guaranteed access to this obviously expanding store, it seems like a fair trade-off.
ERNIE the OPPORTUNISTIC SALESMAN
Yes, I’m afraid that one of the directors here is known for developing very complex in-store economic systems, but he is very popular and there is no lack of customers queueing up to use them! Once you have a CPU, you can transact with any of the stores in our growing franchise!
BIT BRAIN
Sign me up Ernie!
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 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.
Scene 2
The is a knock on the door. The Director of Automated Networks opens it to reveal Bit Brain standing in the doorway.
DIRECTOR of AUTOMATED NETWORKS
Please, step inside and have a seat Mr Brain!
BB enters and shakes the extended hand of the DAN. They both take a seat.
DIRECTOR of AUTOMATED NETWORKS
Ernie tells me that you wish to discuss something with me?
BB
Thank you Mr Director. Yes, I would.
DAN
I’m guessing that this has to do with your insufficient CPU preventing you from carrying out transactions on our shopping network?
You do realise that this is just temporary right? A month from now the REX lending contracts will expire and things will probably return to normal. Probably. Until then we get to demonstrate how much traffic
our network can handle from the EIDOS box; it’s a good thing. Also our franchise will soon upgrade to our optimised “Version 2.0”, that will make us even more efficient!
BB
Well, I suppose that the CPU issue inspired me to be here, but that’s not really why I asked to see you.
DAN
Then I am curious Mr Brain, why are you here?
BB
I am here because I’m concerned Mr Director. I’m concerned because your store is experiencing a rather severe issue, and all anybody
says about it is that “it’s a good thing”. Mr Director, I am concerned because you and your supporters are in denial! I haven’t seen this much denial since that German guy said he was going to open a bar that specialises in selling carrot juice; I still can’t believe that so many of the Carrot Bar’s investors were
in denial about that scam!
Mr Director, thousands of shoppers can’t shop here at the moment, and you just don’t seem to care because the richest ones still can! Don’t you see how bad that looks?
DAN
Mr Brain, I think you’re blowing this out of proportion. Anyone who puts enough money into our CPU can still use the system, I don’t see the problem.
BB
I can appreciate that. Can you appreciate that many users can’t afford that? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be in their shoes? My memory is a little fuzzy on this point, remind me again just how much investment capital you attracted when you started up this business?
DAN
Yes, yes, we broke records when we started this business, but that’s not my money, that money belongs to the business.
BB
Yet the board of directors controls it. You get to say how and when it is used. You would never know what it is like to be stuck with only a single unit of credit on your CPU card, because that isn’t a reality that any of you have ever had to experience. But that is a reality that thousands of us customers experience right now, and Mr Director, we can not use your shopping network!
DAN
But can’t you see? The system is working as it should. That is what decentralisation is all about! He who puts the most into the scheme, gets the most benefit from the scheme.
BB
That’s fine, I think we can all accept that. But many of us were led to believe that we had already put sufficient money into the scheme, only to now be told that we will have to invest far more if we want to enjoy predictable, regular access to it! That’s not fair Mr Director! You need to address the problem of EIDOS denying resources to the majority of the network. You need to address the exploitation of your system!
DAN
We don’t see it that way. This is a good thing. There is no problem here.
BB
Damn it Mr Director! Can’t you see that I’m trying to help you guys? Can’t you see that having a whole lot of people who can’t access your network, despite having CPUs, is a big problem? Don’t you appreciate that people don’t want to wait a month to be able to make a transaction? Can’t you understand that nobody wants to create a start-up business as part of your franchise if their customers won’t be able to access their services?
Yesterday I ran into a new guy in town, he says he is the newly appointed District Apothecary. He wants to move into one of the abandoned buildings and start his own District Apothecary service – his DApp,
but he is afraid of the start-up costs. In the past I may have sent him here, to you guys, but now I would never do that to him. Instead I am going to suggest that he joins Ned from across the road and becomes part of his
franchise.
You see Mr Director, your mentality is becoming dangerously elitist, your store no longer cares about serving the man on the street, as long as it can serve a rich happy few or those who are willing to exploit the system. That’s not right Mr Director, that’s not why we moved out here to the frontier! We are supposed to be moving away from systems like that, we are supposed to be creating fair systems for all! Sure the rich can enjoy benefits, but don’t shut the poor out of the network altogether!
DAN
That’s not our objective Mr Brain, we are neither anti-poor, nor pro-rich, we’re just decentralised.
BB
Don’t you worry about your franchisees? Don’t you worry that they will lose business after having placed their faith in you?
DAN
Our franchisees can create systems whereby they loan their own CPU to their customers, allowing them to continue to use our network of services.
BB
But surely some customers will exploit that to the detriment of others? That sounds like quite a complex undertaking for a start-up business to have to deal with; one which will require a potentially complex solution.
DAN
That’s true. But give it time.
BB
That could be more time and money than what people trying to create a DApp or something similar can afford…
Mr Director, as long as you can’t even admit that there is a problem, you can’t begin to address the problem. You know as well as I do that your franchise is hardly decentralised, the majority of resources and control sits right up at the top here with you! That’s fine, but then use it wisely! You need to address this issue! If you do not, then it will have repercussions for your business! Please just admit that there is a problem so that the problem can be tackled! The frontier is a new place, people accept that mistakes are being made, but in order to retain their confidence and respect, you need to be honest with the people! Being realistic, open and honest attracts community support, that’s much better than sitting with disillusioned customers!
DAN
I’m sorry you see it that way Mr Brain. We see no issue. I tell you again, this is a good thing.
BB
Well I’m sorry too Mr Director. I tried to show you an impartial reality, but there are none so blind as those who will not see.
Exit Bit Brain
ACT 3
Scene 1
Bit Brain waves a defeated goodbye to Ernie as he leaves the store. He walks straight across the dusty road and into the building directly opposite.
Bit Brain opens the door and a little bell jingles to announce his arrival.
NED
Welcome to Ned’s Excellent Offers! My name is Ned, how may I help you today?
Bit Brain turns slowly to his left to face Ned behind the counter. He takes in his surroundings as he does so. The store has a fair amount of people in it, but nothing like the
one across the road. Most of the people here appear to be of Eastern descent.
BB
How do you do Ned! People call me Bit Brain. I’m looking for another place to shop, my CPU no longer works at the store across the road. Sorry that I don’t have much money to spend, I just want to pick up a few things, preferably cheap items that may gain value over time.
NED
Ah yes, I understand. You are not the first person to come in here with a story like that. I’m afraid that the CPU system of the store across the road has caused similar problems for many people. I’m scared that they may already have gone too far, that they may already have blocked one too many people from their shopping network.
BB
Blocked ONE too many, they’ve blocked thousands!
NED
Ha ha ha! It sounds like you know the full story then! Yes, they have. For the last week we have seen many angry faces leave that store empty-handed, each one of them blocked from the system by the CPU requirements. My friend Erik and I have watched them through our store-front windows. Whenever we see such a person, we say “oh not again, they’ve blocked another one!” Amongst ourselves we’ve started calling their store “the Blocked One”.
BB
That must be good for you in terms of increased business?
NED
I suppose it is, in the long-term. But it’s still sad, not something we like to see. I don’t think that pioneering frontier businesses should be run that way. It’s certainly not how we run! They may be our competition, but that doesn’t mean that we enjoy watching them fail.
BB
How do you run things here?
NED
Why, our store is free to use of course! Unlike some others, there are no tall barriers to entry for our customers.
Obviously you still pay for the items you buy, but we don’t charge you any transaction fees for that. In fact, our credit system is practically unique in that there are no transaction fees on our main line of products.
BB
I don’t get it, why isn’t your store busier than theirs?
NED
For few reasons I guess. For one, we are not originally from around here.
BB
Well none of us are, we all came to the frontier from back East.
NED
True, but our tribe came from much further East, we came from very far East. My people are called “the Eastese”. We look a little different to the locals and our traditional culture is not like the culture here.
BB
Please don’t play the racism card, that card is so tired and over-used!
NED
Don’t worry, that’s not what I was implying. We don’t have problems with racism here, we just have problems with people stuck in their comfort zones. You see Mr Brain, people like to stick to what is familiar to them. The locals here are attracted to people such as the Director of Automated Networks at “the Blocked One”, because they all originally came from the same place. When he makes mistakes, they choose to follow him blindly rather than to hold him accountable. Combined with a significant amount of denial, they are greatly hamstringing themselves by taking that approach.
BB
That’s just what I told them!
NED
There are a great many people around here who do not believe that I am capable of competing with the Blocked One, though their reasoning is largely grounded in some form of biased familiarity – a logical fallacy – but a powerful one nonetheless.
It’s ironic because, and please excuse me if this sounds boastful, back in my homeland, Ned’s Excellent Offers is the biggest name in frontier businesses!
Sadly our Eastern frontier was a very harsh place, even worse than here. We also fled into the wilderness, but government forces caught up to us and forced us to turn back and play by their rules.
BB
Oh no, that’s terrible!
NED
Well yes, and no.
They learnt that we were not going away, and we learnt how to get along with them. At first they were incredibly hostile towards our ideas, banning many of them outright, but since then they have made much progress, frustratingly slowly at first, but now the pace is finally picking up.
BB
Couldn’t you just have fled again and run even faster and further East to escape the clutches of your government?
NED
I suppose we could have kept on running, but I also realised that this was a battle we would one day have to fight. What I then did was to work with my government, advising them on frontier businesses so that they could establish policies which worked for all of us. My country is highly conservative, so it has had to implement those policies bit by bit so as not to upset the older conservatives, but things are changing fast now!
I built Ned’s Excellent Offers with government policies in mind, so that I would make it fully compliant. I could have run, but why run when you no longer need to? The government back in Eastenia is
now even becoming supportive of BTC, previously that would have been unheard of!
Best of all, and something the people over here tend to ignore, is that Eastese population back home outnumbers the locals here in the West by far! Our average wealth is considerably lower, but that is rapidly
changing as our economy develops. Us Eastese are a growing force of significant magnitude, something which often goes unnoticed, or also just gets denied.
BB
Your store, I can’t help notice that the variety of goods here is not nearly as great as at the Blocked One.
NED
There is no hiding that, you are correct. Our policy here is to stock high-quality goods. It means that we have had a slow start, but I believe that it is the correct approach and will pay future dividends. We charge our suppliers a substantial fee to place their goods on our shelves. This ensures that the fly-by-night merchants with low quality goods do not approach us to sell their wares.
BB
That could be a problem, I know a man who wants to start a District Apothecary service, I was hoping he could run his DApp as part of your store network.
NED
Give me his details. I have a growth fund which exists to help such businesses. We can help him create it and offer him substantial funding if necessary. We place great importance on growing our own little economy, that is the smart thing to do. Here at Ned’s Excellent Offers we like to act as the hub of a “smart economy”.
BB
That sounds great Ned, I’m very excited to have found you guys. Looking at the facts – free of emotion and bias – it seems to me as if you guys are indeed where the smart money is.
NED
I can not say for sure, but we would like to think so. It pains me to see people blindly follow something which isn’t working properly. Follow it, sure, but then don’t be shy to complain about it if it is failing you!
You know, we all make mistakes, even us “smart economy guys”! Back in October we tried to start a small zoo. We arranged for a few different types of Eastenian animals to be transported here.
The one consignment was a large group of yaks. They were shipped in big wooden crates marked “YEZ” – Yaks of the Eastenian Zoo. Unfortunately there was a problem with our delivery process. The crates were much
bigger than we anticipated and they started blocking up all our storage space and transport pathways. We lacked the transport capability to deal with all of them and they were coming in faster than we could carry them away.
We had rigged a system of large cranes designed to swing the YEZ crates over our buildings and to drop them gently out of the air onto the waiting transport carts. Unfortunately we forgot that we can only
process so many “air drops” at a time, after that our network gets too busy, much like the people in “suggestion mode” over at the Blocked One.
But unlike them we admitted that we had a problem. Our distribution network did behave as expected, it did what it was designed to do, but we still saw it as a problem. We have looked at how we might prevent this in the future, because we don’t want such problems again!
This may mean that we have to charge a very small amount for future transactions, but we are not going to a CPU system, we will keep it very cheap. We already have a logistics system which is Greater than Archaic Systems –
we call it “GAS”. GAS can be used to create cheap priority transactions without bottle-necking our distribution channels, especially once we revamp our own store into Ned’s Excellent Offers Version 3.0 next
year!
BB
Well Ned that does sound better than what the Blocked One is doing. I still find it hard to believe that so many supporters of that store fail to criticise it when it does wrong. I believe that creating sacred cows is very dangerous. It’s not as if the Blocked One even has a wealth of great products on their shelves, if you look closely, most of them are either fairly simple games or some type of casino equipment.
NED
That’s also true, remember what I told you about us having a policy of fewer but higher quality products?
By the way, did you ever visit Alan’s Document Archive on the far side of town?
BB
No, I don’t believe I did.
NED
Well you aren’t missing much, there is practically nothing there. His building remains “under construction” even though it’s been years since the foundations were first laid.
Alan’s Document Archive doesn’t have any documents archived in it!
Ned looks upwards, thinks for a few seconds, and then carries on speaking
NED
Well, that’s not entirely true. He does have one small document there. It’s yellowing with age now, but he still refers to it as his “whitepaper”, it’s kept under the otherwise empty front counter. Alan stands there each day, telling people how great his store will be – one day. Construction does take place, but he’s now way behind the rest of us!
BB
How does his business survive, where does he get the money from?
NED
That’s the sad thing, it’s the same sort of bias we spoke about earlier. You see, the nasty reality is that Alan’s Document Archives is valued at more than what Ned’s Excellent Offers is!
BB
You have got to be kidding me!
NED
No I swear to you! Look, we all pop in to say “hi” to Alan on a regular basis, he’s a genuinely nice guy and he tries hard. It’s not his fault that he has had issues with some of his business co-founders, that was just unfortunate. Alan also struggles to take charge of his construction team, they make him promises, he makes his investors promises, and then the construction team somehow gets behind. Over and over again. Alan gets terribly excited about his grand ideas, but we rarely see anything come to fruition.
One would think that at some stage his investors would start backing out, but they don’t. Some say that it’s because he once organised an event where he took all the investors down to the dam
just outside of town. They sat on the pier together and he read them his whitepaper. For reasons I can’t understand, the investors walked away very impressed by that “pier review” process. Basically all that
means is that a bunch of like-minded people agreed with Alan. To me that really doesn’t mean much.
At the moment everybody is just talking about how great Alan’s Document Archive will be once his wife Shelley finally arrives to help him. Shelley will no doubt make improvements,
but at the end of the day, Alan’s Document Archive remains Alan’s Document Archive.
We know that the whole town took a big knock during the bear rampage, but Alan’s Document Archive is still a lot better off in terms of public support than what I think it should be. The facts are simple:
his store has empty shelves and an incomplete building.
Yet it is worth more than mine, go figure! In fact, I’ve just heard that with all the EIDOS trouble at the Blocked One, some people are now suggesting that ADA may be the answer to their troubles! They
just don’t learn…
BB
I hear you. Supporting something you believe in is commendable, but how many times will you allow someone to drop you before you cease to enable them? How can you let people make you empty promises and then not even challenge them when they go down the wrong path?
If you are going to allow someone unrestricted free reign, then they will never develop respect for you as an investor. They are going to walk all over you. By doing so you encourage bad behaviour. That’s bad for them, bad for you, and bad for frontier developments as a whole!
NED
You are correct. No outsiders are ever going to take their projects seriously. Just imagine this scenario:
“Can I sign up for CPU?”,
“Sorry ma’am, not today, please come back in a month and bring a lot of cash.”
“What’s the problem?”
“There is no problem. Everything is working as it should.”
“But I can’t get my CPU today?”
“No ma’am. But don’t worry, this is good.”
That’s not how you do business! That much should be obvious, even to a child!
BB
Well thanks for the discussion Ned. It’s been a little depressing, but unexpectedly enlightening. I’ll be seeing you around for sure!
NED
Thanks for stopping by Mr Brain. Why not swing by my next-door neighbour on your way out? His store is called Virtual Entity Traders, it’s growth prospects are starting to look rather good now that the Eastenian government has become so friendly towards BTC and similar projects.
BB
Thanks, Ned, I think I’ll do that.
Final Curtain
Yours in crypto
Bit Brain
“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first”
~ Mark Twain
“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful”
~ Bit Brain
Bit Brain recommends:
Crypto Exchanges:
