Bitcoin Forum

I'm working on a book that will be released in August.  The book is set in the US in the year 2020.  It's a humor/dystopia type book. (The movie Idiocracy is an example of the genre).  In the book, the USD still exists, but much of the population have moved over System D.  I'm specifically citing Bitcoins as the primary alternative currency and was thinking maybe you guys/gals could help me with some things:

[A] Have you guys thought about what it would be like in an environment where there is wide spread acceptance?  What are the "cool things" or "cool forms of trade" that bitcoins could enable?  I already have the tech basics down, like the square bar code, bitcoin logo in shop windows, etc.  I'm looking for funny / neat things that might be possible in an environment where the infrastructure as we know it today is going into a hole.  

One example:  Fuel prices are high, truckers are paid like crap so make extra money on the side by giving rides to travelers along their trips.  Truckers/travelers coordinate through a "travel app" and truckers take payment in bitcoins so it doesn't show up on their income (because the government has essentially forced everyone into electronic funds and made physical dollars/coins almost useless).

[ B ] What would you name a 0.001 bitcoin?  I was thinking a bitlette or maybe kilocoin? Any ideas from people who've been in this environment much longer would be appreciated.

[C] Is there any bitcoin based kickstarter type site out there?

Thanks for any help.  I appologize if this is in the wrong forum, but I'm trying to capture a more fully developed economy in the book (and hopefully with a bit of humor to it).

for [ B ] there is an easy answer: 1/1000 of 1 BTC is a millibitcoin. (mBTC)

this notion is already widely used by ogrr.com where they are dealing with virtual world items, where 1 BTC would be too much to ask for everyday trades.

Technically, it's a "milli-Bitcoin" or mBTC, but in the year 2020 the populace call it by it's nickname: the "Millie".

There is also a "micro-Bitcoin" or uBTC, which is colloquially called the "Mike".

Mike and Millie are the everyday coins. You might deal in Bitcoins if you buy a nice car, and the Bitcoin base unit (the "Satoshi") is used as a denomination for small payments, for example the automated "Thanks" that your browser sends for viewing a YouTube video without any ads.

some bullshit speculation about the mid-term future - maybe a bit extreme but i expect suff like this written in a dystopian bitcoin/cypherpunk future.

cash is banned. if you are stopped by the police and carry cash you are put to jail.

all government approved transactions in dollars are 100% monitored.

although they did ban bitcoin exchanges it has become a defacto cash replacement. carrying a unencrypted usb stick with wallet is as dangerous as carrying cash. thus, people switched to encrypted storate with plausible deniability and brainwallets, where the passphrase is stored in your brain and all traces of the transaction are wiped after usage.

despite these difficulties bitcoin transactions have become mandatory for a normal life, since living at government regulated level is a real pain.

for example if you want to shower you must use a showerhead which dispenses no more than 2L/minute. if you wanted to buy a regular showerhead you must use bitcoin instead.
dollar stores sell very cheap high fructose corn syrup with added vitamins in different flavors - everything the body needs. but you know its fake and most people start to hate it. there are also fruits and vegetables but out of fear for terrorism  and the possibility of drugs only normed plants are available in dollar stores and very expensive. 90% of grown fruits are destroyed or mashed into syrup.

if you want to eat something healthy for an affordable price you need bitcoins too to buy fruits and vegetables at a farmer's market. there you get lopsided cucumbers and such for an affordable price.

workers negotiate their salary ratio of bitcoin to dollars. the bitcoin amout is not enforcable but is guarded by honor code. if an employer violated the honor code this is soon well-known though the tor hidden services which act as message hubs.

government employees only work for max 30hours/week and do not recieve bitcoins. most of them grow their own food in the backyard in their free time and sell them on farmer's market.

The for profit american prisons have turned into slave camps/merchants.

The "police" are thugs looking for new slaves at any excuse - except if you are white or (especially) if you are rich.

Lots of NGOs have become independent villages/states, though only in areas the government doesn't have the resources to oppress - ie. slightly hippie-ish/Amish communes in deserts and such.


BTC and TOR are used to avoid detection by police in most cases.

A .001 is a millie. A kilocoin would be 1000!

But the unit to watch in 2020 is the mike, .000001.

Wow, thanks you guys!  I love the Millie and Mike.  I knew there would be proper terms out there. 

You guys hit a couple plot points (or came very close).  That's encouraging because I want this environment to be just on the edge of truely possible. 

The prisons are swollen with violators of morality clauses of the new 'enhanced' Patriot Act. They are used as manual communications screeners (think of the NSA data hub being built in Utah, prisoners are the mTurk workers and they are incentivised to identify 'questionable' communications).  Alt.2600 has developed to an unregulated communications system and most resisters carry equipment adapted for connections to avoid the 100% government surveilance of all communications.

Physical money is strongly discouraged to enable 100% tracking and taxation.  Employers offer crap housing as part of wages (and USD wages are extremely low preventing escape from the serf labor class).  As a result, barter is more common and the bitcoin is an underground currency.

Water is tightly controlled. Pink slime is the main protien source (now I need to add fructaid - cool idea since a ConAgra has taken over most farmland for corn production).

Any other ideas, please feel free to post or send me a PM, no matter how weird.

0.001 BTC = 0.1 Megasatoshi :)

Mainstream society has become ultra radical and dummed down.

Communes of intellectuals remain and survive by acting "normal" outwardly, even faking ritual sacrifice.

If you are found to be asking too many questions or to be too intelligent in school you will disappear.

The military leads extensive wars over seas with zero support from the population via the drone program. A secret cold war over oil fields is constant between US and Chinese drones.

The elite is working on better industrial robots so that they can finally let the working class die off.

The smart and educated sometimes find work in the government developing their advanced programs, everyone hates them - and everyone envies their high paid jobs.

The EU is trying to cooperate with both the US and China and is still talking of combating climate change together etc., but secretly American bankers are plundering the region by installing one idiot/corrupt politician after the other.

This forum is a wealth of information regarding the future hilarity that would be widespread Bitcoin acceptance.

Scammers run rampant.  No one trusts anyone else.  Commerce grinds to a halt.  Corporate towns re-emerge.  California is renamed "Apple".

Paranoid people store Bitcoins in chips in their heads so they won't get hacked.  They get hacked anyways.

The latest wallet app has replaced Bitcoin private keys with a series of verbal grunts, for convenience.

A shadowy cabal controls most of the Bitcoins, using them to buy up anything even remotely resembling valuable capital.
Most people struggle to save up a few millies by fashioning crude imitations of diamonds and racehorses to sell shares of to the easily-fooled Bitcoin elite.
Which they use to buy drugs in lieu of food (which contains drugs also)

People have tattooed Bitcoin donation addresses on their foreheads.

Everyone you meet is from Portland.

Anonymous announces their newest campaign targeting people who don't use drugs as environmentally irresponsible.

New Yorkers adopt the idiom "The FED will rise again!"

In the year 2020, artificial intelligent has come to fruition.  Because they have superior intelligence, especially when they are in groups(they can transfer information almost instantly), the intelligent machines have come to recognize the traditional fiat money as inferior and adopt the bitcoin as a viable solution.  The machines true currency is stored electricity, but due to the obvious limitations of energy storage bitcoin is a suitable medium for interacting in day to day trade with humans.

This will slowly cause friction between the governments of the world and AI's.  Humans slowly find themselves interacting more with these intelligent machines than the government.  Due to their globally networked computational power, they can solve problems much more efficiently and quickly than can the government.

This will lead to a war in which the humans strike first.  It is of course short lived and any participating government entity is wiped out.  The remaining governments are forced on to the bitcoin.

The AI robots are now the masters of humanity(in a good way).

I think in the year 2020, everything is going to be ok.

In the future machines take over and start using humans as electricity to power their mining farms.

 :)

Lol those ideas are awesome! :D

Bitcoin becomes the de-facto currency for hackers, but it has become mainstream enough that everyone uses it to some extent. Secure wallet apps are tightly integrated into smartphone apps, and everyone has a smartphone (by federal mandate, as they are used for location tracking of all citizens). Phones are kept in secure, hidden locations on the body like money-belts used by tourists. Tiny bluetooth earpieces w/ subharmonic microphones are used to communicate with them. A dead language (Latin) returns to popularity as a means to give commands to phones without being interpreted as normal conversation. Citizens use Latin voice commands and optional non-voice supplemental cues (wiggling fingers, pressing buttons built into clothing, etc.) to enable them to give commands without fear of the audio being recorded by voiceloggers. Commands are used to perform mundane, semi-legal tasks, such as paying for something, opening a garage door, etc. Elite hackers create or buy scripts that allow them cause havok by hacking into the central control grid (built by the fed to serve as national infrastructure but riddled with backdoors that the gov't denies) to do damaging things such as turn on a building's sprinkler system, unlock doors, make anonymous tips to authorities, create false arrest warrants, destroy someone's credit, etc. These hackers are widely feared and become known as Wizards, Warlocks, etc. for their ability to speak arcane phrases and wave their hands around to cause all manner of trouble. Hackers, many of whom were fantasy role-playing nerds as kids, embrace the idea and create all manner of rings, wands, etc. with embedded electronics that integrate into their personal security and scripting systems.

- metric system is used worldwide
- base unit of currency is Satoshi or "S", also kiloS, megaS, gigaS, teraS etc are widely used
- Bitcoin is just a debt settlement currency and blockchain is widely used for interbank exchange and as a meta currency to enable any-any via Bitcoin currency exchange
- Variety of merged mined blochains are used for a variety of applications such as real estate deeds, contract signing, notarial services etc...
- there is a large number of various currencies in use, starting with various fiat and corporate currencies which come and go, goldgramms etc..,  oilbarrels, ricegrains etc.. all of those are easily exchanged to each other via bitcoins and all of them are traded on automated exchanges in pairs to Bitcoin and rarely otherwise.
- all equity markets, futures, commodities, options and other financial instruments are denominated in bitcoins
- Bitcoin is legal tender in most countries, except some rogue states such as "washingtondc" and "north zimbabwe".
- most large transactions such as real estate and large contracts are usually being negotiated in Bitcoins.
- ripple-like systems using  large variety of fiat, corporate, commodity, local, virtual, and crypto currencies are used for money creation and self regualtion of debt levels and interest rates.
- there are no traditional banks left, Banks are not allowed to practice any form of fractional banking anymore.
- there are no private central banks
- Bitcoin Party won a parliamentary election in New Zealand, formed new government and amended the constitution via referendum (1 million BTC cost). Auckland is now the financial capital of the world. NZ is now the most prosperous and powerful country in the world. NZ practices new form of government "social democracy". Only uber rich or influential people, those who can demonstrate via blockchain fund movement that they control more than whooping 2100 BTC, can run for parliamentary elections. Otherwise NZ practices direct democracy, where population using social voting on every issue. (When people do not want to vote or do not not feel themselves competent in any given area, they nominate another person (who they they think will represent them on this issue the best) to use their vote, votes can be nominated to other people on issue  by issue basis or less granularly). Other nations take notice. NZ immigration program now is very simple, just a few standard health and criminal checks and one time payment of 1 BTC per family buys a permanent resident permit.

- North pole ice got completely melted by countless nuclear powered ships and platforms full of 15nm asic based hardware.
- the hashing algo is still double SHA256.

in 2020 what we now spend 1 BTC on we will probably spend 0.001 BTC on, if rates continue to rise as they are currently

By 2020 what we now call Bitcoins will be called Bitbars. The decimal places you talk about will be the coins.

Hmm... so if you could buy a house with 1BTC then as long time age there wear gold prospectors there would be bitcoin prospectors who will search through old discs DVD B-D usb sticks looking for not spend, unused Bitcoins forgotten 20 years ago for example because someone had thrown out old usb stick with some BTC and as old maps there would be these forum database and scripts saying that someone had lost his disc due to small error and let couple bitcoin go away.

How do you find that idea? Bitcoin prospectors looking in dumps for old discs etc?

Not bad there could even be treasure myths like a sunken silver 10 BTC coin somewhere or a private key hidden in a text as a riddle.

GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR

Well, Bitcoins will probably not be worth much by the year 2020. The supply will increase dramatically, and I'm not sure whether the demand will catch up or not.

"The supply will increase dramatically"
But how?


BTW If bitcoin will replace most of currency then I will use this compare:
currently FOREX is 3000000000$ per day
Bitcoin is sth about 50000 per day so in $ it is 350000
so it will get to the poin forex is it will increase 8500x (3000000000/350000)
So bitcoin will have power of about 60000 current $ without thinking about population increase, so if it will be like that 100BTC will be enough to live just with bank interest if they won't decrease.
Oh and that speculation point that 1$ will be sth like 10 uBTC.
Who have more precise speculation?



source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_market
http://bitcoincharts.com/

Bitcoin money supply is currently inflating at a rate of 27% per year (7200 BTC / day with 9.5 million BTC in existance = 0.0757% per day)

50% of all bitcoins will exist sometime early November 2012.

What dramatic increase? The rate of increase is falling and has always been falling. By your logic, why did the price increase at all?

Even if demand is constant, price should only fall by 50% due to increased supply.

I can easily imagine the demand doubling until 2020, can't you?

In the first place I don't understand why the supply would increase?
It will as I know decrease double in 34 months.

You go out of your way to hold a door for someone, and they happen to catch your firstbits, smile, and quickly transfer you a nano-coin from their device.

The rate of increase will decrease (in about 4 months) but it will still be an increase.

There shoud be 3 to 4 months in my previous post.
OK, I did not understand correctly word supply, and still when I look into dictionaries supply and demand looks for me like a speeds of delivering sth. to the market rather than an amount circulating in it.
Just for curiosity could some native English speaker correct me if I'm wrong?
Because in my understanding in this case supply of bitcoins to the market is amount of bitcoin that people are willing to sell in some period of time (no matter if it is just mined or old BTC (mined years ago), so to describe a supply in a number we should use unit with number of goods divided by unit of time, am I wrong?

And It could increase in bitcoin just if people will start selling bitcoin faster, but I don't understand why could it be, if you meant that?

Could some english native could explain what supply exactly mean?

As I see it, "supply" can either mean the whole amount of something in existance ("total money supply", "above-ground supply of silver") or, in business terms, the "The total amount of a product (good or service) available for purchase at any specified price."

So a misunderstanding like it happened here is not surprising.

FB won its market share for even less.
Most likely BTC will be here in one year, two years.
Now, any sane guy will realize that in one year or more, with ASICs and less reward per block, BTC will just cost x times more.
Now the only question IMO is; who the hell is Satoshi, he do deserve to be listed near Zuckerberg in the Hall of Fame..

that would be an insult to Satoshi.

I don't like dystopia. I'm too optimistic for that.

Anyway good luck :)

1. Fast food and soda pop are banned and heavily regulated. Marijuana is perfectly legal, though quite-heavily taxed, no one really cares about cigarettes anymore, most people are using liquid nicotine + vaporizers, but every so often someone rolls their own tobacco and gets caught in around half of the US states where it is illegal. In a fit of overzealousness in the name of science, homeopathic and chiropractic methods are made outright illegal in some states (California, Vermont, Massachusetts) but still practiced in secret. Cap and trade is in place, though no one really knows or understands how the state government is measuring CO2, and it varies widely from state to state and sometimes even within a state.

2. Most porn is already or becoming illegal, though most forms of softcore are still allowed as long as it doesn't promote "rape culture". Pretty much every other form of pornography is considered as glorifying rape, but "there are still some misogynists that think porn isn't rape." (The country is definitely heading in this direction, women in their 20s and 30s are finding it increasingly difficult to find husbands, and it's only a matter of time before they put two and two together and realize we don't get married because we quite simply don't have to. When the ultra-feminists take men's porn from them, no one is going to stand up in their defense, certainly not the unmarried women and not the married/divorced men paying child support, who don't like seeing men who have no financial responsibilities enjoying themselves)

3. The government now regulates the Internet. The first justification they used was that "evil corporations" were preventing bandwidth from flowing correctly to the top websites, like Youtube, Facebook, etc. And in fact, it turns out most ISPs did de-prioritize that traffic, for the benefit of their customers. After Network Neutrality is made into law, the ISPs are forced to lobby Congress to allow them to provide different tiers of access, perhaps even tiers with download and upload caps, which succeeds. Once the various Tiers are in place, the IP content holders then request from the ISPs for their records of who is on what Tiers and when it is shown that various individuals in the highest tiers are easily responsible for most of the IP theft, the Supreme Court dictates that ISPs must pay a set penalty per upper tier customer, which is then passed down to the customer for using an Internet connection "likely to result in IP theft". All this is done without revealing people's identities so every business is happy, but the number of people with really nice Internet connectivity drops considerably. Since any tier could be doing something illegal, all traffic is watched, but most people are using some form of anonymity service now, anyway, about half of which regularly report their customer info to the government, anyway, and justify calling themselves anonymous because they hide your identity from other businesses, even if not the government. The people who use these services are too stupid to care that their government is spying on them, they figure the government is already spying on everyone, so what does it matter.

4. Most people refuse to do business with people of an opposing political party, and very few will service Independents. Greens and Libertarians aren't illegal, but due to political machinations and the string of various domestic terrorists in the 20-"teens" (2013-2019) that associated themselves with these two political parties, they are not really considered political parties but rather breeding grounds for domestic terrorism. Partisan hackery dominate the TV and radio waves and most forms of journalism (more on this in a minute).

5. For education, you essentially have two choices, the newer Homeschooler Acts lets you choose to educate your child yourself or via someone within your local community that you trust, you also get to see your child at the end of the day. Or you can hand your child over as a ward of the state, where they are given education and you just check the boxes for whichever days of the week you want the state to continue to hold them. If new legislation passes, the options for them to be held over one weekend per month will be allowed, much to the chagrin of "all those nasty evil religious whackos".

6. Speaking of which, most churches are run like corporations now, they lost their non-profit status and well, "it's better this way" is often used as justification. Marriages are formal contracts bound by the church corporations as a third party, and most disputes are handled by the institution itself, though occasionally arbitrage fails and someone has enough money to lawyer it into an actual court case. Obviously the world is better with churches this way, since they are now also in the business of providing education to anyone that doesn't want to make their child a ward of the state. It probably goes without mention that there are pretty partisan lines between how you educate your children, with very few single (and often poor) parents choosing a religious institution, and very few married parents choosing the state.

7. After a slew of cities went bankrupt between 2012-2014, most of the states created provincial governments with appointed representatives from the state that took on the bankrupcy. A handful of state border disputes were even handled this way. Most of these loans were provided by the federal government to the states via the Federal Reserve, and they were given excellent rates on the loans, and the subsequent inflation that occurred eliminated many of the fiscal problems states had. California even recovered, though Illinois went through a radical internal shift as decades of the political machines heavily entrenched there were brought out in the open and subsequently destroyed, one political operative or insider at a time. Before long, everyone was turning on everyone, and it became difficult to tell who actually was guilty of what since nearly everyone was confessing that everyone else was guilty. In the end very few individuals were actually prosecuted, but most had a moratorium on political involvement within Illinois put on them, and many left for Europe or other US states to work there. The US dollar is still used, but Bitcoin is considered better by pretty much any private, non-government entity. The US gov't does not accept Bitcoin for taxes, and currency exchange between Bitcoin and the US dollar is taxed at a 3% rate. Every corporation, whether it does business in US dollars or via the blockchain is still required to post profits and keep clean books, the gov't considers it pretty irrelevant that people are using Bitcoin since tax laws are still laws. A handful (only a couple thousand) of early Bitcoin businesses that refused to adapt and keep clean records were fined, most of the owners fled the country instead of paying, occasionally one of them is stupid enough to come visit friends or family and gets caught and thrown in prison. GLBSE immediately complied to US government demands for US-based and most non-US based businesses when it became clear Nefario would either have to shut it all down, causing everyone to lose record of everything, or comply. He obviously chooses to comply.

8. Gun rights advocates are pretty much universally-shunned, despite being one of the mre bi-partisan issues of the day, the son of one of the prominent presidents of the national gun owners was found to be an actual Libertarian who later participated in open hostilities with the government, and began advocating the overthrow of the federal government. Eventually he was killed, officials say he opened fire first, but it was later found the weapon he used was planted, no one ever served time and most of the story was covered up. Still, a three-week pregnant DEA (he was raided in a joint DEA-ATF event) agent died. It is believed that most gun owners groups fund domestic terrorism, except the NRA, which avoided most of the blame by being as non-committed to gun rights as they've always been.

9. The vast majority of the press/media is independent and anonymous. At least, any of the media worth watching/reading. The rest of them are political and partisan hacks. Many of the illegal things talked about on TOR blogs and livestreams violate the law, but receiving the broadcasts or reading the posts are not yet considered illegal. The people that do watch the shows do so quietly and try not to even let their friends and family know for fear of...

10. The watchlist. A group of people that are likely to have a higher propensity for committing a crime due to their behaviors. It's just a list that the state and federal (and more often provincial) governments have that corporations are supposed to report any financial interactions with. Most companies dealing with these people are subject to audits, so they try to discourage these folks from coming around to them. In an odd manner, some people use being on the watchlist as a form of public protest, such as doing business purposely with certain entities who promote further state intervention in our lives so they are subject to more/additional paperwork. Even most federal and state gov't bureaucrats are starting to question if having a public watchlist is really in the best interests of the people, but it's been difficult for them to get rid of it because the provincial governments are making so much money from errors the audits reveal that they can't seem to get enough support to get rid of them.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of something that we could get to in 10 years time or so. I get detailed in some areas and less so in others, but it gives off dystopian while still being relatively believable. Not sure if all of these things will actually happen in ten years time, but I do think that certain political issues are about to start reversing.

I think in the year 2020 one BTC will be worth around $500 (USD-2011). In nominal terms that might come around 700 to 1000, I expect inflation to be picking up. Millibitcoin will be used for small transactions.

The Bitcoin network will be struggling, with transaction confirmations taking up to several hours, unless very large fees are paid to get past the queue. Scalability improvements will be in the works but as the lead times are long, there won't be any immediate relief.  There will be many bitcoin-backed instruments that can be used for transactions without impacting the blockchain.

I think that would somehow piss off the readers who are not totally virtual with their craftsmanship skills and who would simply drill bigger holes into it. And in case the plumbing wouldn't allow more than 2l/min do a multipath architecture of the water supply. ;-)



Rico

pro-tip: The world is not very different to how it is now.

best wishes, it's more like we adapted to fast changes

I hope by 2020 the society will (start to) transform from money based to value based one.

Is there such a thing as non-thermo nuclear war?

Quantum computing takes over the mining game and raises the difficulty to mine astronomically in a short period.  That mixed with high electricity prices cuts the average Bitcoiner out off the mining game completely .   

Some alien might just come and start mining with their USB size machine which speed is 1000 PH/s...

Even I was modest on my year-end prediction at..$400. LOL

Not a problem.  ;D ;D

in 2020, we all get older

No we get younger by some stem cell technology...

This sounds like some parts of the United States today. Forget 2020, it is already here.

By year 2020 the U.S will run the federal debt well over 20 Trillion dollars from todays 16.3 Trillion.
Can anyone say "Weimar Germany" hyper inflation.

You probably won't like my predictions:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=349869.msg3760634#msg3760634
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=349869.msg3755466#msg3755466

I'd like to see how you can make them funny.

I have an insight that might be more appealing to you:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=336350.msg3736243#msg3736243