The Convergence Tales (123,456,789.987654321)

You can tell a lot about a planet by its monetary standard. If “21,000,000.00000000” was all I knew about yours, I would have guessed it had at least two continents during the monetization phase.

You see, over the course of my travels, I’ve noticed that planets with a single Pangaea-like supercontinent, or those that lack oceans entirely, are more likely to choose a round number, 1 trillion for instance, often with no decimal point. Decimals are a feature that seem to be preferred by planets that went through, for lack of a better term on hand, a discovery of a “New World.” I know of one planet, or solar system rather, that settled on a currency which, like some of your scam-coins, had no supply cap at all, but only a controlled continuous issuance (in their case, it worked out).

Perhaps I will never have any way of proving it, but I believe there are subconscious influences at play in the cosmetic choices that go into building a global currency.

The land on my home planet consists mostly of scattered archipelagos, similar to your Oceania but without an Australia, and the maximum supply of our currency is 123,456,789.987654321. It was chosen to represent the infinite and finite in one, abundance from scarcity, an ouroboros-like circle, among other interpretations. The distribution phase was scheduled to last for what would be thousands of years on your planet. That phase had already concluded about a thousand Earth-years before I was born. By then we had taken it for granted and moved on to more pressing matters, like building deep-sea aquariums, seeking out the perfect margarita, and preparing for the all-media fiction competition with subdivisions running all throughout the year. The lackadaisical attitude to financial matters concerns me a bit, now that I’m reading through your planet’s history, but I suppose they’re better off without all of that occupying space in their mind.

I’ll say it before you do. I am a space-hobbit, though the native term for our species is digi-kunao. Digi meaning “finger,” a reference to our species’ inclination to build with our hands. It is used in the names of animals that you would perceive as primates. The suffix kunao denotes one that possesses a relatively high degree of rationality and spirituality.

Here I must commit a cancelable offense, appropriate to place at the introduction to a series. At the (calculated) risk of drawing ire from nitpicking statists for disturbing their quest to eliminate all traces of friendship, love, and magic from the universe, I must say that I firmly believe all languages contain at least one tiny hint of their monetary destiny. In English, it is in the word “digit.”

You may be wondering why an archipelago planet would have a decimal, but if I were to describe it in further detail, and you’re familiar with the Wallace Line, then I think you’d agree it fits perfectly.

I had trouble fitting in there. Having been born with albinism, I didn’t share my peers’ enthusiasm for the beach. Neither did I have much passion for storytelling. I preferred to play with numbers. Naturally, when I was offered the opportunity to visit your planet, to train in a cubicle in Seattle, I jumped at the opportunity. As you might have guessed from my writing this, the thrill of adventure eventually wore off, sooner than I expected. So, consider this my way of reconnecting with a home to which I cannot return.

The fictional characters that I will depict in these stories (though I have tried to depict their planets and circumstances in as historically accurate a manner as possible) are not human in a strict sense, but at a glance, you would likely recognize them as such, despite subtle variations in form. (For example, I was born without an appendix.) Consider the wise hyraxes, “creatures of little power, yet they make their home in the crags (New International Version, Proverbs 30:26). This animal is not exactly a “rodent,” but circumstances led it to converge on the features of a rodent.

Every planet I know of, in the end, each converged on a single decentralized currency that rose above all others to lasting financial dominance. Let the stories to come serve as hopium for those of you still in doubt of Bitcoin’s potential, and a warning to those who would seek to snuff it out.

You will win. Trust me.

Unless, of course, you’d prefer to be the first planet not to? But that would be a much longer story that I’m not good enough to write yet whose time has not yet come.