Regarding "All money is a scam" claim, it does not necessary to be so
If Alice works 8 hours and exchange her products with Bob's products, which also cost 8 hours to produce, there is no scam involved, just fair trade. Similarly, if the cost to produce certain amount of money is similar to the value of the product those money can purchase, then it is also fair trade. This means, if the amount of goods that need money to trade increases, the cost of producing money should also increase. Bitcoin is a perfect example of the fair trade principle
Topic: Pegasus Island: Thought experiments on the nature of money and economies. - page 2. (Read 2309 times)
July 29, 2015, 05:53:33 PM
July 29, 2015, 01:53:31 PM
So the island would be a libertarian 0% taxes paradise I guess? Because no one would bother with it when the blockchain is 100% obfuscated. And dont get me wrong I love privacy, but I think people that are serving public jobs should have their money movements 100% transparent. Does Monero allow for switching between complete anon to transparent? Because BTC will eventually allow for that.
Yes, Monero addresses have a viewkey that can be given out to allow someone to view the contents of an address without the ability to spend them. This is pretty much the final masterstroke in the system, because it allows for anonymous digital currency and tax/regulatory compliance as well.
Taxes would work fine on the island if the people voted them in. They would simply say that everyone had to reveal how many gems they had every year and then part with 5% of those to the village Wisemen.
But, with the gems system (Monero) if someone doesn't want to reveal all the gems he/she holds, you're going to have to conduct an investigation to prove they are withholding; you don't automatically know thanks to privacy.
This is how it should be.
If you demand that public officials and government workers get paid only in public money, that's what we have bitcoin for.
July 29, 2015, 12:04:46 PM
So the island would be a libertarian 0% taxes paradise I guess? Because no one would bother with it when the blockchain is 100% obfuscated. And dont get me wrong I love privacy, but I think people that are serving public jobs should have their money movements 100% transparent. Does Monero allow for switching between complete anon to transparent? Because BTC will eventually allow for that.
July 28, 2015, 10:18:15 PM
Here's further musings on our little island:
Let's first consider the elitist position some of us take of our fellow humans not being the "brightest tools in the toolbox". I've been around long enough to know there are a lot of different forms of intelligence, and each member of the species has different strengths. Also, different forms of intelligence tend to regard each other with disdain. There exists a practical form of 'smarts' that many of the computer-nerd/ADHD/creative types lack. These individuals own farms, auto-mechanic shops, and do payroll for large corporations. It is an organizational and detail oriented ability that is necessary to move along the gears of society. Hell, even the person willing to slap together cheeseburgers behind a counter has value in that they don't mind manual labor.
I find it important to realize that all members of the species are valuable as long as they are willing to expend effort to help/support others using their talents. It's also important to realize that these talents can take many different shapes, and for some, those talents won't include abstractions of important concepts (like money). Our 1000-person island would have many of the same dynamics. Some of the 100 would immediately start designing shelters and devices to capture rainwater. Someone would begin putting together weapons. And some would just want to get their bare hands busy doing *something* to help the situation.
Ingenuity, 'book-smarts', and creativity are important but don't exist without the manual labor to back it up. We will leave for another time the labor-apocalypse that is coming with the advent of robotics because that will soon replace/enslave all of us (yes, even the creative types).
The Island Economy
So containing our abstraction to just human interaction, and the 1000-person island, we extend the thought experiment to the following question: What makes a good economy on the island?
Well, we want people advancing "society" and infrastructure. This is going to include designing new tools and structures that will make life easier and more entertaining for our 1000. It's also going to include those that provide necessary labor that brings in raw materials such as wood, food, and water. And finally we will also have to consider those that provide social services: mothers who look after children, doctors who tend to the injured, and elders who arbitrate disputes between the residents.
Individually, most of these 1000 people probably wouldn't survive long on the island: few will have a robust enough skill-set to create a comfortable and lasting life for themselves. But together, the 1000 form a super-organism (like an ant colony) that has all the skills necessary to tackle the current challenges and prepare for future ones.
Things we want to encourage:
The more intensely we can provide for all of these needs, the better the "economy" of our 1000. What would a poor economy look like? Remember that all of this comes back to money, and we need to imagine how a poor form of money might discourage progress.
Life As a Pyramid
By thinking of things this way, we begin to understand the pyramid of society: in order for the super-organism of a civilization to advance, much work needs to happen at the bottom of the pyramid to enable the intellectuals at the top to continue to offer social/engineering/medical services to keep the entire super-organism working.
In nature, just as we have found with the phi constant, we see that natural selection has already discovered optimal ways of doing things. I firmly believe that the human body is an amazing example of a near-optimal system already and as we go on we are going to discover some important centralization/optimization lessons associated with it.
Think about how much work needs to be done by the organs of the body in order to enable the brain to function. The brain performs incredible miracles for the body in return for this energy, but it also soaks up a large part of the body's energy 'budget'. Inside our bodies, money can be thought of as cellular energy... calories... blood... ATP... a number of things. But essentially the parts of our organism need to transact with each other in order to enhance their harmony and increase their abilities. For example, if the heart, stomach, and legs could talk, they might bitch about how much work they have to do to support the brain... but none of them could deny that it was the brain that got the entire super-organism promoted to a better job which enabled a higher quality of life for all the organs of the body.
We can see the symptoms of a poor "economy" when the body loses the ability to run the brain at a high level (through injury or depression) and in turn the "economy" of the body turns its focus towards survival and not thriving. Each organ starts hording energy and attention turns towards protecting only those most crucial organs to sustain life.
We can scale up these concepts to our super-organism of the 1000-person island and imagine the same: a healthy economy is going to be made up of two principles: 1. an abundance of resources. 2. encouraging all the different members of the super-organism to interact with each other frequently, ensuring that everyone's needs are met and all members can perform their specialty at maximum efficiency.
Humanity as the super-organism
Takeaways: Money is blood. Money is energy. Money is a system to interact with our fellow members of the super-organism of Earth.
For a mechanical example, we are the parts of the machine, the raw resources of the planet are the power generators, and money is the hydraulic fluid that shifts pressure from one component to the next. Without any of these three essential parts, the "machine" falls apart.
Therefore money needs to act as a fluid that moves from one part to the other, and it follows that a healthy specimen will have an excess of energy (resources) that will allow money to flow frequently from one hand to the next. A good form of money should naturally *encourage* this spending. Hoarding of resources (represented by the fluid, money, or blood) should only occur during an emergency when the survival of the organism is threatened.
Population is important. Our super-organism has 7 billion members. There are titanic wonders that we can accomplish with 7 billion humans vs. a mere 1000. Every one of these 7 billion is important in some way.
On an island of 1000 people, the iPhone never would exist. It's just not possible because the super-organism isn't complex enough to sustain the intelligence necessary to create and manufacture such a thing.
So on a grander scale, it's important to note that population is a good thing, as long as that population can be offered the resources it needs to survive and also fulfill a specialty within the super-organism. A good money (blood/fluid) will allow us to transfer between all members of the super-organism easily and effectively. Just think how fucked up it would be if every organ in our body had to use a different type of blood and we had special organs to convert blood types that were crossing from one organ to another... but that's how the modern global economy works.
Cryptocurrency should allow all members of our super-organism to communicate and transact better than ever. The reason it will likely be a privacy based cryptocurrency and not bitcoin is because we are not a perfect super-organism yet. We don't all trust each other implicitly.
Bitcoin is a money for a perfect world (the body) where there is little to no chance of the constituent parts turning on each other. But our super-organism is still forming and so there is a danger of competition and bad-actors (cancers and such) to clog up the machine. Therefore a privacy based cryptocurency is the best form to act as the fluid that transacts between all the different parts of our 7 billion person island, as it allows all the advantages of digital transactions while also enabling a true trustless economy.
Let's first consider the elitist position some of us take of our fellow humans not being the "brightest tools in the toolbox". I've been around long enough to know there are a lot of different forms of intelligence, and each member of the species has different strengths. Also, different forms of intelligence tend to regard each other with disdain. There exists a practical form of 'smarts' that many of the computer-nerd/ADHD/creative types lack. These individuals own farms, auto-mechanic shops, and do payroll for large corporations. It is an organizational and detail oriented ability that is necessary to move along the gears of society. Hell, even the person willing to slap together cheeseburgers behind a counter has value in that they don't mind manual labor.
I find it important to realize that all members of the species are valuable as long as they are willing to expend effort to help/support others using their talents. It's also important to realize that these talents can take many different shapes, and for some, those talents won't include abstractions of important concepts (like money). Our 1000-person island would have many of the same dynamics. Some of the 100 would immediately start designing shelters and devices to capture rainwater. Someone would begin putting together weapons. And some would just want to get their bare hands busy doing *something* to help the situation.
Ingenuity, 'book-smarts', and creativity are important but don't exist without the manual labor to back it up. We will leave for another time the labor-apocalypse that is coming with the advent of robotics because that will soon replace/enslave all of us (yes, even the creative types).
The Island Economy
So containing our abstraction to just human interaction, and the 1000-person island, we extend the thought experiment to the following question: What makes a good economy on the island?
Well, we want people advancing "society" and infrastructure. This is going to include designing new tools and structures that will make life easier and more entertaining for our 1000. It's also going to include those that provide necessary labor that brings in raw materials such as wood, food, and water. And finally we will also have to consider those that provide social services: mothers who look after children, doctors who tend to the injured, and elders who arbitrate disputes between the residents.
Individually, most of these 1000 people probably wouldn't survive long on the island: few will have a robust enough skill-set to create a comfortable and lasting life for themselves. But together, the 1000 form a super-organism (like an ant colony) that has all the skills necessary to tackle the current challenges and prepare for future ones.
Things we want to encourage:
- Designing new technology
- Supporting colonists with sustenance, such as food and water
- Supporting existing infrastructure with repairs/maintenance
- Encouraging social bonds so that same genders feel amiable towards each other while opposite gender pairs mate to make new members.
The more intensely we can provide for all of these needs, the better the "economy" of our 1000. What would a poor economy look like? Remember that all of this comes back to money, and we need to imagine how a poor form of money might discourage progress.
- No new research is being done (because there is no financial incentive; no one is donating/paying for new tool/structure designs and engineers can't live off their designs... essentially, society is not rewarding creative behaviors by offering any compensation for them)
- No one is tending to the social/medical/spiritual needs of the tribe (if this occurs, once again, there is no incentive for anyone to take up the above tasks because they are not being rewarded with resources in a money-less society or they aren't being paid in the money-fluent society... this means that those qualified to do them will be too busy focusing on other survival needs)
- Mating is probably still happening because sexuality is a raw human instinct, but the young are not well looked after or cared for (to provide an optimal environment for the youth to discover their talents and become the best adults possible, all basic needs for sustenance need to be met and excess resources are needed)
- Supporting others with raw sustenance (this is a bad one... if the actual raw food chain or water supply of the island collapses then this will obviously collapse the higher levels and raw sustenance will begin to carry a premium price in a money-enabled society)
Life As a Pyramid
By thinking of things this way, we begin to understand the pyramid of society: in order for the super-organism of a civilization to advance, much work needs to happen at the bottom of the pyramid to enable the intellectuals at the top to continue to offer social/engineering/medical services to keep the entire super-organism working.
In nature, just as we have found with the phi constant, we see that natural selection has already discovered optimal ways of doing things. I firmly believe that the human body is an amazing example of a near-optimal system already and as we go on we are going to discover some important centralization/optimization lessons associated with it.
Think about how much work needs to be done by the organs of the body in order to enable the brain to function. The brain performs incredible miracles for the body in return for this energy, but it also soaks up a large part of the body's energy 'budget'. Inside our bodies, money can be thought of as cellular energy... calories... blood... ATP... a number of things. But essentially the parts of our organism need to transact with each other in order to enhance their harmony and increase their abilities. For example, if the heart, stomach, and legs could talk, they might bitch about how much work they have to do to support the brain... but none of them could deny that it was the brain that got the entire super-organism promoted to a better job which enabled a higher quality of life for all the organs of the body.
We can see the symptoms of a poor "economy" when the body loses the ability to run the brain at a high level (through injury or depression) and in turn the "economy" of the body turns its focus towards survival and not thriving. Each organ starts hording energy and attention turns towards protecting only those most crucial organs to sustain life.
We can scale up these concepts to our super-organism of the 1000-person island and imagine the same: a healthy economy is going to be made up of two principles: 1. an abundance of resources. 2. encouraging all the different members of the super-organism to interact with each other frequently, ensuring that everyone's needs are met and all members can perform their specialty at maximum efficiency.
Humanity as the super-organism
Takeaways: Money is blood. Money is energy. Money is a system to interact with our fellow members of the super-organism of Earth.
For a mechanical example, we are the parts of the machine, the raw resources of the planet are the power generators, and money is the hydraulic fluid that shifts pressure from one component to the next. Without any of these three essential parts, the "machine" falls apart.
Therefore money needs to act as a fluid that moves from one part to the other, and it follows that a healthy specimen will have an excess of energy (resources) that will allow money to flow frequently from one hand to the next. A good form of money should naturally *encourage* this spending. Hoarding of resources (represented by the fluid, money, or blood) should only occur during an emergency when the survival of the organism is threatened.
Population is important. Our super-organism has 7 billion members. There are titanic wonders that we can accomplish with 7 billion humans vs. a mere 1000. Every one of these 7 billion is important in some way.
On an island of 1000 people, the iPhone never would exist. It's just not possible because the super-organism isn't complex enough to sustain the intelligence necessary to create and manufacture such a thing.
So on a grander scale, it's important to note that population is a good thing, as long as that population can be offered the resources it needs to survive and also fulfill a specialty within the super-organism. A good money (blood/fluid) will allow us to transfer between all members of the super-organism easily and effectively. Just think how fucked up it would be if every organ in our body had to use a different type of blood and we had special organs to convert blood types that were crossing from one organ to another... but that's how the modern global economy works.
Cryptocurrency should allow all members of our super-organism to communicate and transact better than ever. The reason it will likely be a privacy based cryptocurrency and not bitcoin is because we are not a perfect super-organism yet. We don't all trust each other implicitly.
Bitcoin is a money for a perfect world (the body) where there is little to no chance of the constituent parts turning on each other. But our super-organism is still forming and so there is a danger of competition and bad-actors (cancers and such) to clog up the machine. Therefore a privacy based cryptocurency is the best form to act as the fluid that transacts between all the different parts of our 7 billion person island, as it allows all the advantages of digital transactions while also enabling a true trustless economy.
July 28, 2015, 10:08:30 PM
I am an unabashed supporter of bitcoin and Monero, so I apologize if their inclusion as metaphors offends you. Feel free to refute or provide your own examples of island economic principles.
It's worth noting that we are most assuredly in the top sliver of humanity by even challenging the notion of what money is. I asked my teenage nephew the other day what money was, and the answer he gave, "paper that the government prints", is indicative of the fog that the general population operates under.
If you were the last man on Earth, would money exist? No. Because money is an imaginary concept by humans to keep track of what other humans owe them.
If there were only three survivors on a deserted island, would money exist? Possibly, in a primitive form. Small notes could be used to keep track of IOUs and favors, but one would hardly expect a robust economy to emerge. For the most part, the three people are probably intimately connected in their day-to-day actions so each sees what the other is contributing towards civilization and feels compelled to interact appropriately. A complex separate ledger to keep track of each person's contribution is not necessary. (Consider this: in a marriage do you have a form of money? Probably not, you know what your significant other is contributing or not to your mini-'society')
The Thousand Man Island
Now let's say that there are 1000 people on the island. Now it's not completely possible to keep track of each member's contribution. A form of currency is needed.
One wise man stands up and says, "Guys, I got this. We will use special notes with my signature as currency. I will issue them to anyone who does me favors, and you can trade them among yourself."
Now initially, these notes carry little value, because who-da-fuck-is-this-guy amirite? And so the issuer finds himself giving out many notes for very little payback. These early "speculators" find themselves turning over real and hard resources for all-but-worthless notes. But they also tell their friends that this is a superior way of doing things vs. just trusting each member to do their part. In this way, the early speculators get quite rich, as they have been saving these notes for a while by the time the rest of the population catches on. Bitcoin is a superior form of this money because we don't need the first guy to issue the notes. There is no human point of failure.
What would the 'bitcoin' be in this example? Bitcoin would be a large sacred rock in the center of the island. There is only one, and people transact by making large signatures on the rock, each claiming a portion of it. They can then transfer a part of their claim to others as a form of payment. It is limited, independent, and the signatures on the different regions can be publicly verified. It is also nice that there is no central authority controlling the sacred rock. It exists all on its own. Of course, the 'notes' in our tale are the U.S. Dollar, which is the standard we are currently on.
Let's look at what happens next in our example:
The notes are the dominant form of currency on the island. They circulate wildly and among the 1000 survivors, there are eventually 10,000 notes that are being passed back and forth. The value of a note fluctuates slightly, but because the 'issuer' (who has become quite famous by now) has decreed that he won't issue more than X-new notes a year, the value holds fairly steady as people know they can rely on the power of that promise. Suddenly though, a new tribe is discovered across the island. And this tribe has many things that are desired... so a plan is formed. The 'issuer' sells the new tribe on the power of their note, and proceeds to create 50,000 new notes and trade them to the new tribe for their goodies.
The new tribe thinks they are getting a killer deal. The original tribe only has 10,000 notes circulating among it, and they now hold 50,000 of the same? Imagine the servitude that they can invoke by cashing in those notes! The first tribe basically owes the second a vast debt that can be called in at any time.
Meanwhile the "issuer" is attempting to soothe the concerns of the first tribe: "Listen, this is normal. It is healthy for other tribes to hold so many of our notes. We don't have to worry about them cashing them in. You can go ahead and continue valuing your notes as usual."
Now imagine that a third tribe is discovered, and an additional 50,000 notes are written and exchanged for resources.
Public Verifiable Currency
See where I'm going with this? This is exactly what is happening with the US Dollar right now.
And what is bitcoin? Bitcoin, again, is that sacred rock. A new character, the "scribe" declares to not just his tribe, but the entire island: "Guys I have a better idea! Instead of trusting this guy who clearly keeps drawing up new notes, let's just use the sacred rock! We can compete to see who gets to make the initial markings, and we will set up a fair game to distribute the initial claims of the sacred rock. There's clearly only a limited number of places to make markings, and if we run out we can just subdivide our markings into smaller parts."
Don't forget, money is only needed if there is more than one person on the island. Because that's what a "dollar" is, ultimately. It's a measure of what society owes you. You can take your dollar anywhere and exchange it at any time for something from another human. This miner wants to substitute these new markings on the sacred rock for debts.
Initially, the "scribe" is met with wide skepticism from those who liked the notes. "No one wants your stupid marks on a rock, you bum. And what's more, if it got popular, you would be rich because you have been playing the game the longest! It's just a scam! Guys, no one trust the scribe and his sacred rock. It's fucking dumb."
And this is the key: All money is a scam by that definition. The early adopter will always get rich if they successfully predict that something is a superior form of money that will grow popular. Getting rich speculating is a necessary evil for the rise of a new form of money. So when they say that cryptocurrency is going to be one of the greatest wealth transfers in history, they are right. The future is about to be a very strange place.
Private Verifiable Currency
Now, here's where Monero enters the equation. (or feel free to interject the privacy-based crypto of your choice)
A third wise man, the gem miner, enters. He says, "I have an even better idea! Instead of using marks on the sacred rock, lets use these shiny gems as money. They are limited, as there are only so many on the island, and they are also private! No one has to know how many gems you own unless you show them."
If the shiny gems truly are limited, it would be difficult to figure out a more effective basis of money for this island. It is clearly superior to both the paper notes and the markings on the sacred rock.
This is why I'm with Monero. It might not be the first blockchain, but it is the first blockchain that has all the necessary features of a true currency.
I really enjoy these thought experiments regarding the n-person island and how the n-persons will transact goods and services. Understanding these metaphors really helps simplify large scale economies for both you and anyone you are teaching about cryptocurrency.
It's worth noting that we are most assuredly in the top sliver of humanity by even challenging the notion of what money is. I asked my teenage nephew the other day what money was, and the answer he gave, "paper that the government prints", is indicative of the fog that the general population operates under.
If you were the last man on Earth, would money exist? No. Because money is an imaginary concept by humans to keep track of what other humans owe them.
If there were only three survivors on a deserted island, would money exist? Possibly, in a primitive form. Small notes could be used to keep track of IOUs and favors, but one would hardly expect a robust economy to emerge. For the most part, the three people are probably intimately connected in their day-to-day actions so each sees what the other is contributing towards civilization and feels compelled to interact appropriately. A complex separate ledger to keep track of each person's contribution is not necessary. (Consider this: in a marriage do you have a form of money? Probably not, you know what your significant other is contributing or not to your mini-'society')
The Thousand Man Island
Now let's say that there are 1000 people on the island. Now it's not completely possible to keep track of each member's contribution. A form of currency is needed.
One wise man stands up and says, "Guys, I got this. We will use special notes with my signature as currency. I will issue them to anyone who does me favors, and you can trade them among yourself."
Now initially, these notes carry little value, because who-da-fuck-is-this-guy amirite? And so the issuer finds himself giving out many notes for very little payback. These early "speculators" find themselves turning over real and hard resources for all-but-worthless notes. But they also tell their friends that this is a superior way of doing things vs. just trusting each member to do their part. In this way, the early speculators get quite rich, as they have been saving these notes for a while by the time the rest of the population catches on. Bitcoin is a superior form of this money because we don't need the first guy to issue the notes. There is no human point of failure.
What would the 'bitcoin' be in this example? Bitcoin would be a large sacred rock in the center of the island. There is only one, and people transact by making large signatures on the rock, each claiming a portion of it. They can then transfer a part of their claim to others as a form of payment. It is limited, independent, and the signatures on the different regions can be publicly verified. It is also nice that there is no central authority controlling the sacred rock. It exists all on its own. Of course, the 'notes' in our tale are the U.S. Dollar, which is the standard we are currently on.
Let's look at what happens next in our example:
The notes are the dominant form of currency on the island. They circulate wildly and among the 1000 survivors, there are eventually 10,000 notes that are being passed back and forth. The value of a note fluctuates slightly, but because the 'issuer' (who has become quite famous by now) has decreed that he won't issue more than X-new notes a year, the value holds fairly steady as people know they can rely on the power of that promise. Suddenly though, a new tribe is discovered across the island. And this tribe has many things that are desired... so a plan is formed. The 'issuer' sells the new tribe on the power of their note, and proceeds to create 50,000 new notes and trade them to the new tribe for their goodies.
The new tribe thinks they are getting a killer deal. The original tribe only has 10,000 notes circulating among it, and they now hold 50,000 of the same? Imagine the servitude that they can invoke by cashing in those notes! The first tribe basically owes the second a vast debt that can be called in at any time.
Meanwhile the "issuer" is attempting to soothe the concerns of the first tribe: "Listen, this is normal. It is healthy for other tribes to hold so many of our notes. We don't have to worry about them cashing them in. You can go ahead and continue valuing your notes as usual."
Now imagine that a third tribe is discovered, and an additional 50,000 notes are written and exchanged for resources.
Public Verifiable Currency
See where I'm going with this? This is exactly what is happening with the US Dollar right now.
And what is bitcoin? Bitcoin, again, is that sacred rock. A new character, the "scribe" declares to not just his tribe, but the entire island: "Guys I have a better idea! Instead of trusting this guy who clearly keeps drawing up new notes, let's just use the sacred rock! We can compete to see who gets to make the initial markings, and we will set up a fair game to distribute the initial claims of the sacred rock. There's clearly only a limited number of places to make markings, and if we run out we can just subdivide our markings into smaller parts."
Don't forget, money is only needed if there is more than one person on the island. Because that's what a "dollar" is, ultimately. It's a measure of what society owes you. You can take your dollar anywhere and exchange it at any time for something from another human. This miner wants to substitute these new markings on the sacred rock for debts.
Initially, the "scribe" is met with wide skepticism from those who liked the notes. "No one wants your stupid marks on a rock, you bum. And what's more, if it got popular, you would be rich because you have been playing the game the longest! It's just a scam! Guys, no one trust the scribe and his sacred rock. It's fucking dumb."
And this is the key: All money is a scam by that definition. The early adopter will always get rich if they successfully predict that something is a superior form of money that will grow popular. Getting rich speculating is a necessary evil for the rise of a new form of money. So when they say that cryptocurrency is going to be one of the greatest wealth transfers in history, they are right. The future is about to be a very strange place.
Private Verifiable Currency
Now, here's where Monero enters the equation. (or feel free to interject the privacy-based crypto of your choice)
A third wise man, the gem miner, enters. He says, "I have an even better idea! Instead of using marks on the sacred rock, lets use these shiny gems as money. They are limited, as there are only so many on the island, and they are also private! No one has to know how many gems you own unless you show them."
If the shiny gems truly are limited, it would be difficult to figure out a more effective basis of money for this island. It is clearly superior to both the paper notes and the markings on the sacred rock.
This is why I'm with Monero. It might not be the first blockchain, but it is the first blockchain that has all the necessary features of a true currency.
I really enjoy these thought experiments regarding the n-person island and how the n-persons will transact goods and services. Understanding these metaphors really helps simplify large scale economies for both you and anyone you are teaching about cryptocurrency.
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