We have an exciting announcement: We are pivoting from humor writing to cryptocurrency. Here’s how it will work.
Our new cryptocurrency is called FakeCoin. We are issuing 81 million FakeCoin, and we double pinky swear that we will never issue any more than that. That means this is a resource with a fixed quantity, like coal, or salt, which means that its value is guaranteed to increase. You know how investment ads have a disclaimer saying “investing is risky, blah blah blah”? Well, not FakeCoin. If you invest in a million FakeCoins, we guarantee that you will become a millionaire.1
Cryptocurrencies can seem complicated, so here are answers to a few of the questions you might have.
Q: Describe the FakeCoin architecture.
A: We’re going to keep track of all this on the chalkboard in our kitchen. It’s a big chalkboard so this is a very scalable platform.
Q: How do I purchase FakeCoin?
A: Just send a personal check to P.O. Box 190024, St. Louis, MO, 63119, made out to J.D. and Kate Dobson. We’ll transfer as many FakeCoins to you as your check buys at the prevailing market price.
For instance, right now, we will give you one FakeCoin for one U.S. dollar. So if you send us a check for a million dollars today, it will buy you one million FakeCoins. But at some point FakeCoin will probably start appreciating, and your one million U.S. dollars will only buy like 10.87d8 FakeCoins.
My point is that the time to buy FakeCoins is now. You can get in on the ground floor. Actually, not even that. You can get in on the basement. This is basement investing, folks.
Actually, maybe it’s even lower than the basement. This is like putting your money in a bottomless pit.
Q: Cryptocurrencies are supposed to be anonymous. Using a personal check doesn’t sound very anonymous.
A: We promise not to use your check for anything other than maybe trying to wire money out of your account.
Q: How do you make sure transactions are secure? What kind of encryption do you use?
A: We very rarely forget to remove the key after we unlock the front door when we get home.
Q: How do I sell FakeCoin?
A: No offense but that’s kind of a dumb question. Why would you ever want to sell your sweet, sweet FakeCoins?
Q: Do you use a blockchain?
A: Yeah, sure.
Q: What about miners? Does your platform use miners to validate and timestamp transactions in your blockchain?
A: You misspelled minors. Both of our children are minors, but they are not involved, except for whining about not being allowed to use the chalkboard anymore.
Q: How do I find out which retailers near me accept FakeCoin?
A: This is such a dynamic market that it’s impossible to say which retailers might be accepting FakeCoin at any given moment. Your best bet is to go to your local Starbucks or WalMart or whatever, try to pay in FakeCoin, and see what happens.
Q: How many transactions can the FakeCoin architecture carry out per second?
A: There is no set transaction-per-second, because a lot of variables go into this: time of day, how high up on the chalkboard we have to reach, whether we’ve run out of chalk, whether we’re on vacation, etc. But as a general guideline, it will take no longer than a month to process a transaction. So you might want to call in your order to Starbucks and tell them you’ll pick it up in a month.
Q: Is FakeCoin a safe place to store my money?
A: I mean, define “safe.” Is it as safe as a hard currency like the U.S. dollar or the Euro? No, probably not. But is it as safe as the Venezuelan bolivar, or the Burmese kyat? (Also no.)
Q: How can I be sure that FakeCoin and other cryptocurrencies aren’t just a speculative bubble?
A: Oh, they’re a bubble.
1In FakeCoins.