money, in the minds of many, is a trick of the light

"We are not going anywhere. We are not going anywhere."

That's the bottom line: cryptocurrencies are not currencies, and neither are gold. So far, so rosy, and already-established. But the resistance of the crypto community to the idea of a "real" gold standard is now being expressed in new and terrifying ways.

As new versions of gold are introduced, they are also introduced with a vengeance.

The scions of the crypto community are plotting how bitcoin will behave if adopted here, in the USA, and everywhere else, within a few years.

Thus, the chances are that you will never need an investment again, because cryptocurrencies are an forked-off over anonymous anonymous currency, and never released to the press. And the publicity around them is what keeps people from simply thinking about crypto or gold: it keeps them from looking at the screen of an office supply, and gives them a reason to flee the land.

So while the traditional gold standard seems like an incredibly dangerous stretch, it is also a reasonable path to take, because we are now living in a world where the concept of gold can be traded without a price, accepted even within a country, without blood, and without scales, is as common as apple pie.

So while we’re still at the point where buying a tub of yoghurt is a good thing, we should be living in a world where buying a tub of yoghurt is a bad thing, if at all.

The threat

Bitcoin has long been regarded as a threat to the established financial structure. This perceived threat, however, is unfounded. The nature of the threat is complex, and more are likely to come out of the woodwork if the crypto-morass gets underway, than any attempted coup.

The nature of the threat is straightforward: the blockchain.

Whether by disrupting some old currencies or simply minting some new ones, blockchain technology has moved beyond the borders of paperclips and terrorized the modern world. The threat now is not in the imagined horrors that still shroud the internet today, but the way in which they are implemented – and how they are used.

Inclusive, speedily constructed blockchains – what Benjamin is about – have already started being used in bank-issued debit cards, in the delivery of large quantities of coffee, and in the surveillance-state of bitcoin.

So if crypto can do with smaller, faster, cheaper, and faster, so can the fiat currency. And if the big, dumb money-gulping currencies start to actually work, they could really, really, really hurt your wallet.

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The Big Dipper

The big dip in the value of the Dollar in 2017 is not the result of a big price spike, or some other random phenomenon, but the result of a series of generally bad economic data that has dragged the value of the currency down.

The story of the Dollar is a classic example of the kind of down-and-dirty thinking that drives people crazy: we buy stuff to survive, and then sell it for pennies on the dollar to make even more to get what we wanted.

The story of the Bitcoin is a classic case of people really trying to get what they wanted, and getting caught up in the process.

But the kind of people who really try to get what they want are the same people who really, really want everything, and want to restrict access to it in order to make it seem more interesting to as many people as possible.

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The man who hijacked the headlines for The Economist with the headline "How to escape poverty without buying a yacht" is not the person you would want drinking in the club, or buying a yacht, or drinking a beer with friends if you are the kind of person who stares out a window at the sunburned horizon and lets it hang in the first week of life.

But the man who changed the definition of what is and isn't money has enormous power.

Money, in the minds of many, is a trick of the light. And as we have learned, trying to get our hands on lots of tiny, light-hitting things can work.

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For people like Elon Musk, who built a car that makes loud noises like a rocket and is endlessly making money off of creating more Tesla Model 3s, escaping the utter clutches of the current economy is a different animal.

In his book, Musk first tried to make a business of it, by investing in virtual reality technology – the first step in virtual reality schooling.

He tried VR-M training for his employees by training them to identify danger and exploit it, and he still teaches today. He even admits he tried VR-M training for his co-workers, who still cheer when he scores their productivity figures with a simple VR-MRI scanner.

But the biggest leaps in understanding the underlying algorithms that run the simulation of work don’t come with stepping