Health & Fitness
Bitcoins NOT Accepted Here
DISCLAIMER: In this post I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.
For those of you who have not heard of Bitcoins,* congratulations. You probably have not removed the skin from your scalp by scratching your head and saying, "What the hell?"
Let me explain.
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How do you get Bitcoins? You get Bitcoins by mining them. Or, more accurately, you have a computer mining them for you. My daughter’s fiancée just bought one of these computers for something like $1500 and it can’t even play solitaire. As I understand it, all this computer does is solve mathematical puzzles all day long, and if it solves a puzzle before all the other mining computers in the world solve it, it wins Bitcoins, which is just like winning a Publisher’s Clearing House sweepstakes except no one comes to your door with an oversized check, and there’s no actual, you know, money.
What’s a Bitcoin worth? A Bitcoin may or may not be worth something and, if it is worth something, may be worth $766.70 or $76.67 or $7.67 or 76¢ on any given day. Evidently, it could have any of those values–or any other value–on consecutive days.
Bitcoins seem to be a tad volatile.
You may wonder what determines the value of Bitcoins. Again, as near as I can tell, the value of Bitcoins is determined completely at random, possibly via the use of dice. Or maybe some nut goes to a particular website every morning and says, "I think I’ll make them worth $1.98 today."
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Heck, for all anyone seems to know, my daughter’s fiancée’s computer may be determining the value.
What can you do with Bitcoins? Well, you may or may not be able to buy things with your Bitcoins. Some bars and restaurants in New York have started to accept them. One guy managed to purchase a $100,000 Tesla automobile with them. And they seem to be very useful in the procuring of drugs, since they are supposedly anonymous and untraceable, and you have to be high in order to accept them as payment.What do Bitcoins look like? Before I answer that, you need to know that you will not find Bitcoins in a cash register or a bank vault. No agency is minting Bitcoins with pictures of imaginary presidents on them. You can’t carry them in your pocket, or flip one to decide who’s kicking off. You can’t use one to scratch off a lottery ticket, or to make a wish at a fountain. You can’t even toss them into a drawer with those pesos you brought back from Mexico because you couldn’t get rid of them all at the airport gift shop.
That’s because Bitcoins don’t really exist. People pretend they exist, just like many of the same people pretend that Klingon is a real language. But Bitcoins are not only a digital currency, they are a fictional currency.
I’m guessing that whoever he or she or they are has long ago sold his or her or their Bitcoins to people further down the…well, I think I’ll call it a pyramid, if you get my drift.
(As an aside, to prove that Bitcoins are fake, I offer the fact that Satoshi Nakamoto is an anagram for "tomato knish"** which everyone knows is not a real thing.)
Significantly, Bitcoins are not backed by any government or by anything tangible like gold. However, they are endorsed mightily by the famous Winklevoss Twins, who you may know from the movie The Social Network as the hapless guys who got totally ripped off on the Facebook deal and only walked away with about 65 million dollars. I bet they’re hoping Mark Zuckerberg buys a whole bundle of Bitcoins before Satoshi Nakamoto (who, as far as anyone knows, could actually be the Winklevoss Twins) says, "Ha, ha. Got ya!"
Call me old fashioned, but I’m not sure I want to live in a world where anonymous people can just make up money. Who in their right mind would ever get involved in such an obvious scam?
Oh, right.
You might think I’d have reservations about any future son-in-law who spends $1500 on a computer that does nothing but solve math equations all day so he can accumulate virtual money. But I acknowledge that I am so far out of the loop on this Bitcoin thing that if the loop we were talking about was the train in Chicago, I’d be in San Diego trying to hail a cab.
On the other hand, I’m not holding out a lot of hope that he and my daughter will be supporting us in our old age.
*It is possible that there is no plural of Bitcoin and that you’re supposed to use it like you use the word "money." In this case, the correct sentence would be "For those of you who have not heard of Bitcoin, congratulations. However, my theory is that Bitcoins are not like actual money in any way, not even linguistically.
**If you don’t mind a few leftover letters.
