The Man shifted his glass back and forth along the dull, oak desk, as a symphony of scrapes rippled through the quiet house. The desk proudly wore the scars of many nights like this, its surface etched with scratches and stains. The otherwise dark room, lightly aglow with the blue hue of a holographic screen perfectly framed upon the wall above the desk. A static picture on the screen. Another man. One bearing the resemblance of the Man who routinely stares and scrapes in the dark. The only other marks the screen relayed- the numbers 1:21 and 2330622.

The Man did not notice the Boy enter the room. He was slightly startled when he heard a soft voice utter, “Are you thinking about grandpa again?" The Boy, all of twelve years now, was small in stature for his age but big in wonder. The Man turned to see the Boy in the doorway, casually leaning against its wooden frame. He smiled at his son and said “Isn’t it a little late to be questioning your old man?” The Boy grinned, undeterred, and stepped closer, his bare feet quietly moving along the reclaimed wood floor, his eyes fixed on the screen’s blue light, perfectly framed against the wall. “I love the story. Tell me again” he cajoled. The Man half-heartedly grumbled “I think it is a bit late for that”. The Boy replied “well, I won’t be falling back asleep any time soon with you sanding the desk”. The man thought to himself “this kid”. He stood up, walked to the other end of the room, pulled a chair out from beneath another desk and rolled it over beside his. The boy settled in just as the Man began. “They called themselves the Stackers.

It was before the great hyperinflation of the mid 2030s. Before capital controls and mass surveillance. Before the rise of One World. Bitcoin was slowly being captured by what we now know as the System. Most that called themselves bitcoiners at the time didn’t seem to mind. Many pronounced the System’s acceptance of Bitcoin as victory and vindication. ”We are the Trojan horse” they proclaimed. The principles and ideals that first led them to Bitcoin became secondary to the immense wealth in fiat terms they were attaining. Rising digits on a screen proved a suitable enough distraction from the System’s power expanding as they sucked up Bitcoin supply. Not the Stackers though. Don’t get me wrong, they enjoyed number go up and getting wealthy too but had a creed they adhered to- ‘freedom first’. Though well intentioned the stackers were also somewhat naive in the early years, trusting that ‘freedom first’ would be enough. They wasted a lot of time on ultimately trivial things but the groundwork laid in those early years was just enough for the stackers to survive the dark years to come.

The world reeled as the hyperinflation of the mid 2030s set ablaze and spread across the globe incinerating wealth along its path. It decimated the poor but didn’t spare the rich either as their diversified portfolios could not keep up with the pace at which fiat currencies were losing purchasing power. Only the scarcest and most vital assets for survival kept pace. Crumbling nation states around the world tried printing endless amounts of fiat to quell rioting citizens, who were becoming increasingly more violent as homelessness and food insecurity grew, and to finance wars with other crumbling nation states over critical resources. The System was bifurcating, the rich and powerful of the past who trusted in legacy assets like stocks, bonds and real estate were losing wealth, power and influence at a rapid pace, while the rich and powerful that spent the last decade acquiring an immense share of the Bitcoin supply thrived. The winners from the System and the winners from the crumbling nation states joined forces and One World was born.

One World moved quickly, seizing control of the world’s most powerful AI models, most critical resources and most critically the mindshare of the people. After years of being crushed by hyperinflation, living in fear and feeling like they were constantly fighting to survive, most of the globe’s citizens succumbed without much of a fight. They were desperate, and even though most of them were highly skeptical of One World, what could they do? One World had the power, the AIs, the critical resources and most of the Bitcoin. Bitcoin they kept gated away from the public, only to be used amongst themselves. One World knew they could not allow the people to have access to Bitcoin. It would impair their capital controls, mitigate their surveillance efforts and limit their power but they also knew they could not create another fiat system, so they created a Bitcoin clone called, WorldBit. They sold it as being just like Bitcoin but safe, regulated and secured by their AI “guardians”. Some people still owned Bitcoin but were unable to use it. Only those with access to the freedom protocols and open source AI were able to use Bitcoin without having it immediately confiscated by the “guardians”. One World was aware of some underground Bitcoin usage happening but it was not a major concern to them. After all they held the majority of the coins and most of the rest was unusable.

Before One World seized control and unleashed their “guardians” to patrol the internet, the Stackers used to congregate on a site called Stacker News. It was always more of a niche place on the internet but had grown to a few million users before the crackdown. Despite stackers best efforts, Stacker News did not survive the “guardians” sweep of the internet to remove anything that could be deemed threatening to One World’s power but Stacker News would not stay dead. It still thrived in small, fragmented pockets transmitted over the Nostr protocol. The stackers and other bitcoin users kept peer to peer Bitcoin usage alive but there was little they could do to get it in the hands of the people outside the freedom stack.

One World had the most powerful AIs in existence but their closed end nature and laser focused training on initiatives that maintained One World’s power limited them in ways less powerful open source models were not limited. For years the “guardians” were aware the Unstoppable Protocol was being built but it was so revolutionary in nature and so far beyond their scope of control there was really nothing they could do about it. One World became too trusting in their own power and dominance; they allowed the seeds of their own demise to be planted right beneath them.

It took years for open source AI, computer scientists, physicists, the stackers and other freedom fighters to build and deploy the Unstoppable protocol. A protocol designed to transmit data instantly anywhere in the world through quantum entanglement. The hardest part wasn’t the protocol itself, unrestricted open source AI figured out the framework for that fairly quickly but it was building millions of quantum screens that allowed users to view entangled data through quantum radiation. While the stackers and the protocol builders were able to protect their communication and design from prying “guardian” eyes, secretly acquiring the materials to build the screens was very risky. Many stackers were killed or captured in the effort. The stackers paid a high price to bring this new freedom tech to the world but eventually succeeded getting the quantum screens into the hands of hundreds, then thousands and eventually millions.

The Unstoppable Protocol did not fix everything immediately. Like the early days of Bitcoin, it took many years for trust and usage in the protocol to grow. But its effects were almost immediately noticeable. Ever growing swaths of users were able to access information free from the grips of the “guardians” and One World, and were able to use Bitcoin again. People started to slowly move away from using WorldBit and went back to using Bitcoin. One World still held most of the supply but their power over people was waning. Without the power to force people to use WorldBit they needed to start spending some of their Bitcoin to try to maintain their strength.

It would take many more years but eventually One World’s Bitcoin holdings dropped below 50% of supply and almost instantly their power was gone. The people held most of the Bitcoin and the people had the Unstoppable Protocol. Without power holding its core together, One World eventually dissolved. Its members raided the treasury for all the remaining Bitcoin and melded into obscurity in the new free economy. The Sound Money and Freedom boom followed and brought us to the world of endless prosperity we enjoy today. The End.”

The Boy smiled at his dad and said. “Thanks Dad. I really do love that story. But you always sound a bit sad when you tell it. You know the story has a happy ending, right? Our side won. Freedom won.” The Man reached his muscular right arm around his son’s shoulders, pulled him closer, kissed him on the top of the head and quietly replied “I know son. I know. I am just sad he is not around to see it. Now get to bed.”

The Man watched with pride as his son walked out of the room, hollering back “Night dad” as he reached the staircase in the hall. The Man smirked and hollered back “Good Night”. He rose from his chair, almost empty glass in hand and looked at the glowing screen one final time. He lifted his glass towards his chest and then held it at arms length, tipping it forward slightly.

“Thanks Dad” he whispered.