I made a game where you play central banker. Today's winner gets 10k sats ⚡ \ stacker news

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I made a game where you play central banker. Today's winner gets 10k sats ⚡cantill.one.btcstack.ing

1150 sats \ 14 comments \ @Cantillonaire 24 Oct gaming bitcoin lightning

Hi stackers,

as a side project I built Cantill One, a small economics game in the browser.

You govern a country with its own currency in a world of 24 countries. You set the interest rate, taxes, spending and tariffs, and you pick your money system: fiat, gold standard, fixed money supply or a Bitcoin standard (fixed issuance, halving every 4 years, wild price swings).

Print too much and you get the classic Cantillon story: a boom first, then malinvestment, and finally the bubble bursts. Voters feel inflation right away and compare their purchasing power with the neighbours. Push it too far and you get voted out or ousted. The score isn't just GDP: it also counts the poorer half, equality and approval.

Today's challenge: Today everyone plays the same world, and there's a leaderboard. First place wins 10,000 sats via Lightning. The start time is shown in your local time in the game. Your browser only sends your inputs, and the server replays the game deterministically. So no faking scores. 😉

Free, no account, no ads, works on mobile:
👉 https://cantill.one.btcstack.ing

I'd love your feedback:

Does the model feel right to you?
Which money system wins for you?
Where is it confusing?

FAQ: https://cantill.one.btcstack.ing/faq.html

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66 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby 24 Oct

Fun but the game moves to quickly. By the time I read the recap and plan adjustments it is giving me new notifications.

44 sats \ 0 replies \ @denlillaapan 25 Oct

I thought so too, until I realized I could slow it down

80 sats \ 1 reply \ @Cantillonaire OP 24 Oct

Hey! Thanks for the feedback. You can adjust the game speed where the pause button is located:

4 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 24 Oct

I see. I might have accidentally turned that up.

4 sats \ 5 replies \ @denlillaapan 25 Oct

oh incredible. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!

I tried all manner of things... look away for two seconds and poof inflation was up at 10%. my god!.

also, tried going out with a bang/having some fun at the end:

4 sats \ 4 replies \ @Cantillonaire OP 25 Oct

Thank you so much for the feedback!!
Yep, seems to be the current meta to run public spending high at the end. I'm fiddling around with the end scenario right now to prevent this from happening for the next challenge.

Who would've thought that public spending leads to more equality, but only for a limited time until everything implodes...

4 sats \ 3 replies \ @denlillaapan 25 Oct

Yep, seems to be the current meta to run public spending high at the end.

there is a last-period problem, since the challenge ends and the debt/deficit will be someone else's problme

37 sats \ 2 replies \ @Cantillonaire OP 25 Oct

Yeah, currently thinking about how to prevent this from getting exploited without changing the simulation too much.

The root cause is in the model: investors only cared about the debt level, not the deficit path. So a 30 % deficit was basically free until debt got too high.

I'm working on a fix: bond markets now price in where your debt is heading, not just where it is. Run a huge deficit and borrowing gets expensive right away, for the state and for the economy, just like the UK bond market after the Truss mini-budget. Normal stimulus stays unaffected.

It's still being balanced so it doesn't break other strategies. It'll go live after the challenge.

Thanks so much, this is exactly the kind of feedback that makes the game better.

4 sats \ 1 reply \ @denlillaapan 25 Oct

glad I can help!

I spent way too much time on this game in the morning. So silly

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cantillonaire OP 25 Oct

I spent way too much time on this game in the morning. So silly

Haha, that’s the best compliment I could get. Thanks for playing!

4 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cantillonaire OP 25 Oct

Congrats JV - 118.5 points and first place in yesterday's challenge! 🥇

I replayed your run on the server (only 7 inputs!) and it turned out to be a proper exploit. You found a bug I hadn't seen. Here's how it works:

Run a permanent deficit on a gold standard. Low taxes (income 18 %, corporate 0 %, VAT 10 % → 0 %), spending 22 %. That's a deficit of 8–15 % of GDP a year for 15 years, with debt climbing from 56 % to 138 %. Voters loved it: approval stayed between 75 and 88 %.
Let the peg break, then re-peg right away. The deficit drains your gold reserves until the peg breaks. Here's the bug: switching back to gold refilled the reserves to the starting amount for free and pegged the currency again at today's rate. So the currency never really crashed, and since wealth is measured in gold, you stayed rich. Your peg broke four times (months 134, 155, 169 and 182), and you re-pegged after the first three.
A final sprint in the last 6 months. Spending went up to 46 %, paid for with corporate tax at 60 % and VAT at 23 %. Spending boosts the economy immediately, while the tax damage only shows up later, and by then the game is over.

Bonus: the state went bankrupt in the very last month. The debt was cut from 138 % to 76 %, and you didn't have to deal with any of the consequences.

How much each part was worth (I replayed variants of your inputs):

full run: 118.5
without re-pegging: 25.9
without the final sprint: 41.6

Fair play: it's all within the rules, and finding holes like this is exactly why I run these challenges. The fix is coming: re-pegging will only use the gold you actually have left, and investors will price in deficit paths rather than just the current debt level.

I will try to upgrade the simulation and will launch a new challenge next weekend. Probably with a longer duration and bigger prize pool (1st-3rd)

Thanks for playing, and keep breaking it! ⚡

Screenshot of lightning transaction to @JV:

Stupid me didn't create an Invoice, so you have to believe I sent it :(

4 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 25 Oct

Looks interesting
Awesome username by the way lol

4 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cantillonaire OP 25 Oct

Thanks hahaha

4 sats \ 0 replies \ @denlillaapan 25 Oct

Second round I ran deflation on a fiat standard. I still stagflated in the middle years -.-

Unbelievable!!

Inflation moves so fast in this game. And it's cool (realistic?) to see how much your desire to fiddle is... constantly move the levers a little to "optimize"