Economics is subordinate to Politics - Aristotle

In the years leading up to 2150, the www changed dramatically and many people started to access the internet as a 3D rendered metaverse. Great. But also terrifying (which can also be great). Why? Servers on the moon. There was a time lag of a few seconds, but no biggie. X, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Bitcoin, Crypto, Digital USD and Euros, everything was being migrated. The moon would later that year be designated Ground Neutral. Any damage to it, and everyone would be f'ked. Loonies weren't allowed anyway near Lunar tech and the only job as prestigious as Bitcoin developer was Moon code developer. Bitcoin was the apex predator in the software world. Even as it was top premium prey. This was because of Bitcoin Devs who in the year 2150 were software geniuses of the www. Call them SpiderMen. Few were the “friendly neighbourhood spiderman” type, though. Most were robber barrons. Black Hat and White Hat hackers on steroids. The former on evil steroids and the later on good steroids - like the call to save people and be of the greatest service to humanity. With great power in Bitcoin came not just a lot of opportunity for humans, but a lot of digital thieves too. Power hungry villains working solo and in teams. Privately, but likely, also in government.

The top good SpiderMen though had the perfect mask – their deep state connections. On the surface, it looked like their variable IP addresses and mutating digital IDs and work flows, because their fingers could type arcane code so fast, was their primary superpower. But everybody knew though they didn't want to know, that the Saylor Effect had re-written the rules. Bitcoin was nearly global reserve currency. And nobody could challenge that. So all these guys must have super rich Bitcoin backgrounds. Mic drop. End of story. Anyway, every Bitcoin dev and infact, anybody who could effect a Bitcoin transaction without the help of a Mega Exchange, called themselves a Spiderman. A few, like the SpiderMen who worked for government agencies to crack down on cyber crime, were called “Amazing Spiders”. Because their tentacles extended beyond the computer screen to allow them access to a team of highly efficient agents below, and powerful resource providers above. Tentacles above and below. Spinning order from chaos. If they spun a web and you were the prey, God help you. Financial Operatives, they were called. To mask their power. FO. Fuck-Off - in less polite circles.

By and large, Bitcoin Devs were the best software developers in the world. It was simply a matter of nurture. And the fact that no matter what happened, Bitcoin’s scarcity kept asserting its absolute dominance. Because Bitcoin was a digital protocol, and because they had been born to parents who were millionaire hodlers or working for millionaire and billionaire hodlers x tinkerers, they simply lived online from the time they were born. School was so they could get social skills, but they had all they needed in the Bitcoin Verse they were born into. Now, compounding this effect was the fact that as the years went, every software on the planet was pegged more and more to Bitcoin. Like a magnet, Bitcoin attracted and assimilated program after program. Eventually, every AI gave the same financial advice. “Buy Bitcoin”. Retraining them didn't help. They had been captured by the blackhole. Now all humanity, and it's AIs, had to do was to hodl on for dear life. “And that’s how I got onto this earth with such a rich software background, that I could clearly see the world through a Bitcoin-centric Matrix right from when I was 3”.

Alice looked around at the people around her. She was an Amazing Spiderwoman of the US government. She was also pretty. Alice was a coding prodigy that had picked the Bitcoin bug early enough to understand how Bitcoin fit into the grand scheme of things. Her parents had secured her a summer job at 12 as one of the interns to keep the governments Bitcoin Reserve safe from evil SpiderMen. All coding stacks were a required skillset because, once every while, an innovative hacker / evil spider would break through and cause havoc. She was the most skilled one at chasing down these buggers. She also had an acquired suite from her grandparents and parents that enabled her to type not lines of code, but scripts of code. It was called hyperprogramming. For example, instead of typing some code to query the intruders IP address from the website where their last activity was last logged by whoever owned the page, she simply called up a script using a keyboard combo. Voila – Tracker 01 – and then she’d input whatever she needed. To keep running through sites, she needed to log the activity on one site and based on the data from the profilers, quickly go to another site. If this site needed a password to access its database, then she got another tool. Her toolkit was everything and lately, she was trying to innovate a way to call multiple scripts and run through them fast. It would be her own personal world wide web-swinging from site to site. Maybe she needed more than a keyboard for her fingers. Maybe she needed a suit, and very high speed internet so she could run, literally, through web pages using a very nimble 3D simulator of the metaverse internet. She would be Player One of her “Bitcoin SpiderVerse” (name was hers too. She had invented it at age 12). Step One : Change her name to Spider Bit. Bit for Bitcoin. Work in progress. Step Two : Explain her pitch. She can MetaProgram faster if her tools feel like she was just fighting from a game. Step Three : Sell this idea to any good SpiderMen she knew who could afford it. God knows they needed the capital. People were starting to hodl again. Step Four : Schedule a meeting with Gen. Schiller at the Pentagon.

She was back home. Tonight was her first day with her husband but she had still gone to work. She knocked at the door. Not sure what he would say. He heard her and he went and opened the door for his wifey. Finally, after 2 years of dating and 1 day of marriage, she was his. “Welcome home babe”. She fell into his arms. “I'm sorry”. “But no more work until our honeymoon, okay?”. “Okay”. She was beautiful. Goodness, he was lucky. “I hate moving to Washington”, She pouted. Falling into the sofa. He'd long understood this as a sign that she wanted him to comfort her. Not press his issue. “And I hate that you're a coding genius while I'm just a writer”. She looked at him and they kissed. She received it. But she shook a little. He did too. She was still a virgin after all. And he too was a virgin. Moreless. “Should we try tonight?” “I'm too exhausted. Let's wait for morning”. “Okay”. For two years he had dated her, but he hadn't seen her naked. Nor enjoyed her body. He had sacrificed before and he still had to sacrifice even now. “You're an Amazing Spiderwoman”, he re-assured her. Then went to bed. She sighed. Let the tension out of her body. Let her base instincts to enjoy being a silly girl take over. Then she looked at her comic stack. Sitting on her desk. Calling to her. She went to bed. Let the subconscious enjoy them. In all the Spiderman movies, the Spidermen and Spiderwomen fell in love before they got bit. She'd been bitten at birth. Nah, in the womb. She dreamt how she had gotten to know of her family's legacy. It was a wonderful surprise birthday gift. From childhood, she had always been called special. Then she turned twelve and she really became special. She awoke in her husband's arms. “Ready to travel the world just the two of us?” “Yes” She needed the time off. If anybody died during that time whom she could've saved, the gods really wanted that person.

Brush her teeth. Breakfast. Go save someone's life. Being Spiderwoman was her life. Her work and play. It had been three weeks since her honeymoon, and a call came in telling her that her suit was ready. “I owe you one, General ”, she ended the call. She pulled up her pants so fast she nearly tripped. She was excited. She didn't want to think of the people she hadn't helped, but certainly some had asked for her help and failed to get her. “Don't worry. Spidey is back”. When she got there, she found her suit in a special room. Fitted with state of the art support equipment that could enable her access to any form of pda (phone, laptop, etc), cam, com, sats (gotta spend while on a mission), and a web navigation suit designed so well that it looked futuristic. She put it on and felt like Major in Ghost in the Shell. Q was ready at the shop door to show her how the car works. “Hello Alice”. “Hello you”. “So, my very own 007, I have to show you how to make use of this car”. She got the bells and whistles. “with this suit, physical movement and coding are kinda merged. So you always have your workout done when on it”. “also, you can always just use the keyboard. It's always there. Switching will be seamless. As easy as moving from running to walking”. She nodded. Q then pulled up a case. “Boss put this one on your table. Some smart kid had been calling because his tuition money had been robbed. His parents are broke. He is thinking of hanging himself”. She rang the phone. Q touched her shoulder and went for the door, “you break it, you fix it”. She disappeared. Alice turned back to the kid. “...Hello”. “Hello. Did you call us on a stolen cryptocurrency charge?” “Yes. Yes I did”. “Ok. I handle such cases What happened exactly. Give me all the details”. …. Once, she had to stop another kid from killing himself by sending him fake money. He tried to spend it and couldn't. The experience made him forget killing himself and he called so she could get her fake money back. There were a lot of such cases in her world. Cases of crushed dreams. Where she failed, and it was crucial, the team stepped in. But she didn't want them to step in each time. It would've messed people lives up.

“It would also help if the government stopped inflating and making my life harder”, she once complained. Her bosses just ignored her. Why didn't she quit? Wait, she couldn't. She needed the Chief's protection, and he needed her expertise. And her family money. So she gave up. “What, our debt is now $100 trillion and worldwide humanity has $1 quadrillion debt”, complained a coworker once. It was their go-to rant. She leaned back and faced him. Arms crossed. “It is ridiculous you keep reminding me of these same facts”, she started. Perhaps he wanted into her pants? Most men wouldn't be able to handle her beauty with her brains with her bountiful (silent) wealth. It was a statistical rarity like very few things. “You know what I think we should do”, offered same colleague one day at tea. “We should launch an operation and take over power ourselves”. “What??” “I mean, we're the good guys. If we took over leadership around the world, we would destroy fiat printers and give Bitcoin to all people!” She looked at his stupid head. If he had the guts to say such things while inside the agency, then he was in love. Playing dangerous for her entertainment. “Haha, yeah. Except”, she turned and looked away slightly. Feigning shyness. “You wouldn't last 5 minutes in the seat. You're not built to start successful coups”. “Hoho, low blow Alice. Low blow”, he feigned agony. In the 22nd century, financial problems had grown so big, that the #1 top way to make money now wasn't YouTuber, or even AI developer. It was a digital bodyguard / digital robinhood Bitcoin developer. A good Bitcoin Spiderman. Can you protect people from those who siphon away people's energy? Especially random people on the internet? Yes? Bingo. You made big money and the world was a better place. How did you make the money? You simply shared your LN address and the entire city sent you sats. Loads of them. Sometimes it caused a DDoS attack. Those times brought tears to Alice Satoshi’s eyes. You also got a target on your back, though. From the monsters you had frustrated. If you were so good, you got on the government's radar. Depending on the optics of your skillset, you were either a threat or an asset. No, they didn't leave you alone. However, if you had a rich family connection to the Big Hodlers of the early 21st century, then you were a child of the New Rockerfellers, Vanderbilts and Morgans. You were welcomed into the family and you were never a threat. You would only be a misguided child. Sometimes she wished she could quit and run away with her husband Charles. Just leave her family legacy for her siblings. But they couldn't code worth a damn and she was already doing so much to keep her neighbourhood safe from monsters. It was a noble life. Let her siblings run the business side of the family. She would run the ethical commando side. She enjoyed her work. Greatly. Even if she sometimes felt like she was betraying the Bitcoin compass that always called to separate money from the state. It was silly. She wasn't a retard and the state had evolved pretty well around Bitcoin. So why feel this way? Bitcoin wasn't yet a global reserve currency. It served fiat and vice versa. But she felt it needn't. Could it not, really? I mean, Bitcoiners weren't political like that. Perhaps Aristotle was right, but the political must be subordinate to the ethical. She figured she was a hopeful dreamer.

“Good morning Alice” started Agent Goodman. “Good morning Sir”. “I presume you know why you're here”. “Yes Sir”. “Pay attention". It was a presentation. To ‘educate her’. 'In the past, that is, a few years after 2009, governments did not know what had hit them and our intelligence networks didn't realize how much Bitcoin would change everything. What started to happen, however, was that people slowly started learning how scarce the damned coins were, and they started what can only be described as insane cycles of BTC buying (for hodling), that had never before been seen ever. However, this was done on the low side of tax collection. As you know well, BTC can simply move. No third party existed who could help us get taxes easily'. 'The BTC bug had to be slowed by squeezing people's nascent needs in crucial assets like land, hence drain money to trade vis btc as people had to first pay for a roof over their heads. “We knew people would still gravitate towards BTC, unless inflation became hyperinflation which, as we both know, may stop people from buying BTC to focus on food and medicine, but they'll be torching our office buildings with molotovs thereafter'.

Qn: Was the government evil to buy for itself and fiat era bankers, assets outside BTC which were crucial to human livelihood e.g. housing,, behavioural analytics in social networks, plus the odd taxing of OG holders wallets?

Ans: Yes

Qn : Why

Ans : It is immoral sir.

Qn: Why

Ans : Because human decency calls us to play fairly in the free market. May the strong win from merit, not from cheating.

Qn: Are you a child, Alice?

Ans: No

Qn: Why then do you not see that our strength is our ability to print money and through political power, convince the masses to use it. ?

Ans : (No answer)

Qn : Will you speak?

Ans : I ask to be further educated, sir.

The projector returned. Brighter.

'We don't print while hiding behind computers, that is you guys. We go out and we ask for people to trust us with their votes and their support and they do. Part of that trust is accepting us to operate society using a fiat currency in our control. If not us, then it will be some gold bug running transactions clearance or some crypto bro running their own payments thing. Fiat is for us. Politicians. Because we have the political mandate to do this. Because we are the most trusted by the people'

The jarring clip ended.

Qn : Any response to this?

Alice: I thought you were agents, Sir. Fighting crime for the sake of the people.

Goodman emerged from the shadows : Then you're still a child. We're not superheros like Superman or even that good at the computer like you. But even you wouldn't survive on your own. We cannot be lone rangers, child. We're not suicidal. Not in 2150. He with the power to save the world cannot also be the good guy.

Social Media companies on government payroll were the reason why Bitcoin was not yet global reserve currency in the first place. People loved trusting suitcoiners and state authorities to protect their funds and them when shit hit the fan. So she would serve. She was ready to teach software developers to replace her if that's what they wanted. She would do it like a company and like any company they liked, they would give her "regulatory clarity" - A ticket to keep being needed on the field. Doing good while the government's flag and the people's trust in it soared. They did this with social media companies too so that all the big companies had to play ball. Else, they'd face "regulatory scrutiny".

Sounds benign, being reigned in. But people hated rogue do gooder superheros running around in a mask, without a boss. They would rather let the monsters get at them. Yes, bite the hand that frees you. Humans are one f’ing jealous species.

Goodman : Let's proceed. All the other members at the table started writing, once again. Writing what, no one could say.

Questioner : What is Trust?

Alice : Trust is when one chooses to interract with or chooses to do business with someone, of one's own volition.

Questioner : Do you trust the Agency, now that you work for it?

Alice : Sometimes my trust wavers. I rarely decide anything. All I hear are orders and more orders...

Goodman interrupted: We're going to give you two months off. No orders. So that you're in tiptop shape when you return. How does that sound?

Alice : I will appreciate it.

Goodman : "Next time, I won't let you play the child card. I am your godfather but as the Chief of this Agency, I can be a mean bastard nonetheless.

Now go brush up on your Leviathan and your Aristotle.

For her vacation, Alice decided to go back to her parent's home. The village. Home base. She felt like Superman connecting with his folks back in Kansas.

“Alice! Ah, my child” her father called to her when he saw her. “Daddy” she ran into his arms and he carried-hugged her. She laughed. She had missed the old bear. “Don't dare speak code to me while here”. Like her husband, her dad Wanume was not a dev and he wasn't the blood line of the OGs. That was her mum. And being father to a Bitcoin child with prodigious coding skill was sometimes hard, but he never complained. Even when his wife and her parents tried to drive him nuts, he reigned them all in. Luckily, her brothers had taken Dad's strongman side. Perfect for keeping the family secrets secret. “Alice from Wonderland” a voice called behind her. She turned. It was one of her big brothers. Jamesat. “What are you doing here? You left the bank to come see me?” She bear-hugged him. “Goodman always gives a vacation after being stern and uptight with his loyalty test”. They both laughed. “I didn't know you too had been there”. “It's a right of passage. How's Charles?”. “He is okay”. “Still can't believe you married a writer. Just like Mum who married a farmer", he said looking at their Dad. “Farming has put food in your bellies, boy. Fiat food would've stunted ya”. “We agree” they said in unison. “Mum thinks you should stop saving people. Thinks you'll be stabbed in the back by a weakling who couldn't hodl a penny if it would save their life”. Jamesat was sometimes harsh. “Where is she?" "Preparing lunch. She expects you to pass through the kitchen. Hope you can still cook dear Sis”.

After their lunch and all the needed catching up, Alice sat near her mum. She was aging fast, perhaps because she was no longer active in the Bitcoin dev world. Retirement did that to people. “Alice, I want to tell you something. I know Goodman is a hard ass but he has been with us for 40 years. So if he doesn't protect you at any one time, then he just could not. Trust that”.

“Ok mum. I'll trust him because you trust him”. “I also know you love saving people so much. But here's the thing. Don't try to save anyone you don't feel for. It's a blind spot. Hell, you'll be a play thing for society. Their armour thing that they put between themselves and the harsh world. And trust me, that's worse than being Goodman's stooge”.

“Also”, added her brother, “You're an adult now. You can finish your lessons with Goodman then go solo. You're not like some broke-ass Spiderman. Yes, it will be harder and you will play lots of legal battles and only save 1 person a month from financial ruin, but you'll be OK. I mean, look at me”.

She gave him that, ‘don't be a big fool’ look. Her parents smiled. She wasn't built to sit in an office.

“You could also come to the farm. You and Charles both. This place is miles on every side, enough space for any number of kids”, her Dad tried.

Alice closed her eyes. They had given her what she needed. Family love by constantly offering to take care of her at home base. They had her back and she trusted it like nothing else.

She needed to get back. Some new big shot villain had popped up on the radar. Goodman had sent the flashing red beep. Being a superhero dev was exhausting. Especially if you were in Bitcoin. The monsters never slept, so why should she. Goodman was good. For now. If he ever turned on her, she'd lump him in with his villains.

She imagined herself having a baby, adding to her plate of troubles, and smiled. She would do it.