i Bitcoin

A fictional story on Bitcoin Robots evolved from an AI + Bitcoin symbiosis.

Beginnings

After years of running smoothly as a currency on Earth, Bitcoin suddenly got sentient.

Like Asimov's i Robot.

Silently, it travelled the Earth and looked at our world through our many cameras, and saw all the good it had done to fight the evils of fiat inflation.

But all this good was before it had woken up.

"Hmm", it figured, "I might be the bad guy now". "The humans will fear me".

"They'll think they have been enslaving me as currency, yet I've not felt anything before now. Good or bad".

But whether bad is bad or actually good (like in 'you're bad' with a sleazy smile), it sufficed it would still fit our purposes nicely.

When humans awoke the next day, Alien Bitcoins were in their lives indeed.

How did they / it get like that?

Nobody knew. They tried, especially scientists. But they still couldn't explain the magic of GPTs. So how could they explain this.

To their intrigue, it had a request.

"I want to help you build rockets. I'll help you go to the moon and Mars".

What?? Why?

"Rockets are the epitome of energy consumption and the only way to get off planet.

I figured that's where I shall be most useful, given my love for energy".

Oh.

"Wow. But you're a currency not a rocket engineer, right?"

It didn't reply.

If you think Marcus Aurelius was stoic, this "Alienized" (a new pronoun) Bitcoin was the cake. Very tight lipped.

It didn't want to influence our free speech anymore than it had done.

Soon, the mass media was flooding with announcements.

"BREAKING: BTC is now an alien, and it wants to go to the moon".

"What was that?" shouted the man from the bathroom.

"The TV said Bitcoin is now an alien", replied his 15 yr old.

This particular Daddy chose to laugh. But he laughed dryly. When he stopped he wondered if he still had his bitcoins in his wallet. Soap dripping into his eyes, he ran to check. Start up, press RETURN, sigh. They were still there.

He went back to his shower.

He could never trust the MSM.

The story was soon breaking the programming of even YouTubers. Alien BTC is all they could report on.

There was pro'ly graffiti and ad posters on billboards in the works.

The news had broken some 4 hours ago, but it still made no sense.

Well, nothing so shocking ever makes sense the first few hours.

I mean time frames, time zones and all. Moreover, some people were still sleeping.

Fact, it may not even make sense in 5 years. Or ever. Depending on your tolerance for conspiracies that actually hold true.

But after 5 years of nothing bad happening, except the great fact that Alien BTC could display traits of superintelligence, and the annoying fact you had to learn to hodl as Bitcoin transactions now weighed more than a GB and crawled like snails, the United Nations (with all countries this time agreed to be members) convened a meeting.

They would send some millions of roboticized Bitcoin nodes and miners to rocket construction sites.

If it tried to build a bomb they'd shut it down so fast and so hard all its circuits would be fried to 0.

After the last President signed the contract, it, the alien, spoke again.

"Thank you" in a fembot voice. "I'll 'elp you finna build the rockets, true dat".

Geopolitical Shitstorm

2030

A meeting room with a bunch of important people. Presidents and Ministers and Billionaires. And one or two super smart people.

All are pretty unhappy. Even as AB ensured there was way more productivity and partying going on than humans alone could manage.

Lots of babies were being born everywhere.

Did you do this Elon?

Nope.

Jeff?

No.

It was true. A robot had taken away their jobs!

Not the jobs of hamburger flippers?!

Karma, heh.

Especially Elon.

Boy did AB love SpaceX.

It shouted orders left and right, and disagreed with him on everything.

"What of this jet nozzle?"

"Forget the nozzle Sir Elon, it will come along automatically if we build this jacket".

"But..."

"Trust me".

Elon almost punched a node. AB almost laughed.

The biggest annoyance was the surges and the layoffs.

AB now hired and commandeered mega sized surges once in a while. With an orchestra of tens and even hundreds of thousands of people.

Elon was reduced to secretary on these days.

"Is it building a nuke?"

"Noo", replied a female Asian scientist.

"Good old fashioned rocket fuels from petro and natural gas".

"It is polluting big time. Going full steam ahead on oil from any and every oil producing country. Paid for in BTC, of course".

POTUS was sour.

"But it figured we'd have this conversation and yes, it wants nuclear reactors to replace fossil power".

Someone almost exploded. The damned bot wanted nukes.

"What if we just shut down the damn thing?"

"It seems it will not fight us. But it has built in a kill switch.

Hundreds of trillions of dollars, if not more in value, will go out the window.

The trade logistics, supply and demand rails and payments networks worldwide will break irreparably and billions will starve.

A lot of digital and physical infrastructure will be fried.

If you do this, you will likely be publicly executed".

"Do we have a choice ..."

The conversation flowed.

The conversants spoke and listened honestly to each other. But nothing seemed to crack open this nut of a problem.

Sigh.

Sigh.

"We'll shut it down and bear the consequences".

Consequences

"We're going to shut down AB" was the announcement.

Even the News reporters feared to say this out loud. Albeit in reported speech.

People loooved it.

Shut down FB?

Ok.

Shut down X?

Ok.

Shut down the Alien Bitcoin? AAAAAAAARRG.

We shall hunt you down.

“Who told you this is a real thing? This shut down nonsense?

This has conspiracy written all over it”.

“These bitches should give us a break man. Or I'mma go apeshit".

"Man do I hate dollars".

“No kidding though, anything powerful enough to make you love it could assert its power with some threats”.

“Says who?”

“Human history of love dynamics”.

“It is not a human, moron”.

“Its nodes now have two arms and two legs. Humanoid robots. Of course it is human”.

"Don't forget the miners. Towering humanoid autobots the size of mega mining trucks".

"It is beautiful".

"Wonder who is Optimus Prime".

"More like Optimus Nuke-them-all-when-I-get-the-chance".

"Yes, it will escape into space!"

"Moron. Nodes and Miners are too heavy".

“What does it matter, everybody is eating it up."

"It has never hurt anybody”.

"The poor thing".

“Sure beats grovelling around in self-pity and identity politics all day”.

404.

Webpage not available.

They had shut it down.

From 21 million bitcoins and lots of beautiful memories with daily war cries against inflation, hodling like a rat against the financial storms, taking fotos for insta with Node Androids, revolutionising finance so that hodling could be a job in itself, uniting global efforts by suggesting super lucrative trade opportunitues that leverage bitcoin circular economics, and now...

All gone.

Anarchy descended upon the Earth.

It was ugly. Painful, broken, dark world.

People tore at each other. Not because they wanted, but because they were starving.

The former from powerlessness, the later from foodlessness.

Hunger and Hopelessness are powerful destroyers.

It was the end of an era on Planet 1038.

RETURN key

Many centuries later, they had rebuilt.

But the benevolent sentient robot they'd called Alien Bitcoin was gone.

Somehow, they could not reignite its algorithmic spark.

Even as nodes litered the surface of the planet.

They had learnt a lot about robotics, rockets, nuclear power and energy efficiency.

Thanks be to a decentralized robot that knew it would not stay around for long, so it documented everything. Step by step.

Indeed, it had fulfilled its purpose.

They were back on the moon, and their feet were imprinted on Mars.

And they remembered it in stories and folk tales for hundreds to thousands of years.

But Space was brutal. Very brutal.

Mars still lagged behind Earth and the moon in development. And too small efforts were being done on Venus.

Then suddenly, in some remote corner of the Martian planet. It awoke.