A Fork in Time Saves Nine! -- Doc Brown reveals his Big Heroic Audacious Goal - a plan to send Bitcoin back to the future.
TL/DR August 1, 2017 is a temporal nexus point for Bitcoin. Three branches diverge from there for owners on that date. Everybody gets three versions of bitcoin running on three independent, dissimilarly redundant networks. This new diversity will stimulate growth of the industry with more decentralization and freedom from destructive conflicts of interest. However, slow incremental special interest driven evolution of the original chain can only spawn more arguments and more forks and confusion. A lot of those can be avoided...
they will quit forking around with Satoshi's old prototype
and finish the global financial superhighway!"
-- Doc Brown
Bitcoin Unchained - The Platform Independence Movement
Part 1 - Doc Brown's Multiple Bitcoin's Theory
Part 2 - Doc Brown's Lab Experiments with Multiple Bitcoins
Part 3 - The Day Bitcoin Went Multi-Platform.
August 1, 2017 - An improvised lab in a warehouse on the outskirts of Hill Valley.
Marty: Hey, Doc, I've been cooling my heels here for a week now and it's getting old. Why did you haul me all the way downtime to 2017? Couldn't you do this stuff yourself? Jennifer and I had plans for a road trip in my new truck this weekend.
Doc Brown: After we fix this Marty, I can drop you back in 1985 a few minutes after I picked you up. I couldn't jump into this period too close to August 1 without disturbing the timeline, so we had to arrive a week early. Besides, I had to get you to help me influence a whole lot of people your age and plant some buzz in the net. I want you to do a little hacking, trolling and tweeting for me.
Marty: Birds and bees and fishing and coughing? Doc, what are you talking about?
I'll explain later. Marty listen to me closely. We're approaching a singularity in the space-time continuum. The closer we get to 2019 the closer these nexus points get to each other. There were 70 years between 1885 and 1955, 30 more to 1985, 23 to 2008, 7 to 2015, 2 to this one, August 1 through 21, 2017! Then the next two are just 15 and 10 months after that! My time machine can't get any closer to 2020 than about June 2019!
I finally backed off and leaped over it clear to 2047. That's where I found an economic wasteland. Feudal levels of government! I tried hopping backward toward 2020 from the future. Same thing. Marty, something BIG is out there just over the temporal event horizon! It's like a black hole creating ripples in time! And it's somehow tied to flux capacitor jump quantization and Bitcoin forks occurring faster and faster on those approaching dates. We've got to use the unique window opening on this date to break that cycle.
We're going to help Bitcoin leap over its next 9 forks in the old timeline!
That's why I had to wait until after the August 1 Bitcoin Cash fork to tell you any of this. If knowledge of this had changed your behavior in any way, it could undo all my calculations and observations. Now that we're past it, the events of August 1, 2017 in this new timeline are locked in and we can proceed with my plan.
Marty: Jeez, Doc. What's the point? If we're headed into a black hole what will fixing Bitcoin matter? Let's just go back to 1985 where it's safe...
Doc Brown: NO! Marty! Think of your grandkids! Besides, this is just a black hole in the stability of time. People will live through it without knowing it's happening. They'll just see instability in everything that used to be nice and predictable around them. But the effect on the world economy will be catastrophic! All the government currencies run by the big banks are going to collapse in the greatest of all possible depressions. Bitcoin is the one currency that might remain immune to the chaos, but it's like a tiny footbridge over Eastwood Ravine. The whole world economy in a currency collapse driven flight to safety is going to hit that bridge like a locomotive and go crashing down to oblivion. Marty, we've got less than two years to bypass that footbridge with a financial super highway before all the world's fiat wealth tries to stampede across it!
Marty: Doc, how is that even possible?
Doc Brown: Oh it's technically already possible Marty, but the people currently running Bitcoin are tinkering with their footbridge prototype like they've got all the time in the world. Some of them are doubling the width of their bridge and others have built a second footbridge doubling that. Each bridge is called Bitcoin This or Bitcoin That but none are building the superhighway we will soon need. What we really need is a single United Bitcoin that can scale up and scale fast. A couple mere doublings in capacity are not going to cut it when the entire world's transaction traffic tries to flee to safety across them in the biggest economic train wreck of all time!
Marty: OK, ok, Doc. I'm in! Just tell me what I need to do.
Doc Brown: Marty, neither you or I have the skills to fix this ourselves. We need to induce the digital currency community to make some simple changes and then get the rest of humanity using this super highway in their daily lives before the chaos hits. After that it will be too late to get the world's wealth moved to the other side.
Doc Brown: We are going to unify Bitcoin by giving it technology so advanced they will quit forking around with Satoshi's old prototype and finish the global financial superhighway!
Marty: I dunno Doc. What if a superhighway is just not possible? Something technical must be holding them up.
Doc Brown: Marty, that superhighway already exists! It's been operating for nearly two years with only a few hours of maintenance and already handling more traffic that all the other Bitcoin footbridges up and down the ravine combined. It's not on many maps yet so most people don't take that route. But it could easily scale to handle all the bitcoin traffic the world could throw at it!
You remember a couple days ago I showed you that schematic with all five denominations of bitcoin on it? That last row with all the lights on was the BitShares blockchain! If we can get the BitShares exchange to host Fast Bitcoin natively we are home free.
Marty: So what's the catch Doc? That sounds like you just need to call them up and ask them to wire up access to that Bitcoin Classic block designated by Bitcoin Cash and hand out the new Bitcoin United (BTCX) Fast Bitcoins to everybody who already has the classic denominations.
Doc Brown: The problem is Marty, there's no one to call up. It's a public blockchain! It's run by a bunch of honest robots scattered all around the world. You have to get BitShares owners to vote for their own hard fork to let those robots know about all the the Fast Bitcoins and who already owns them. Most of them are afraid to do that. They worry that it might make other bitcoin owners mad or something.
Marty: If it was me, I'd be pretty mad if they didn't give me my new supercoins. Especially if they work so much better than the old kind. This seems like going from mailing checks to debit cards, only better.
Doc Brown: Yeah, Marty, its kind of like offering everyone that owns a horse a free sports car. You wouldn't think they would get mad about that. But the whole footbridge industry is determined to make everybody think there's something wrong with sports cars! Maybe if making money is more important than providing service, you want a long line queued up to use your footbridge and paying you extra to cut in line....
Marty: So our job is to convince horse owners to claim their free sports cars and convince the superhighway owners to let them use it, right?
Doc Brown: Yeah, Marty, this is mostly a teaching job. It won't happen unless we convince the BitShares folks to host it and the world to use it.
but unclaimable until if and when the BTS exchange, like all other exchanges,
decides to do the work to release them.
We're not asking the footbridge operators to do anything. Let them handle the foot traffic. But the BitShares-based superhighway for those sports cars is already handling more traffic than all the footbridges combined, so how hard can it be?
Marty: Well, you know Doc, people can be awful stubborn and suspicious. Besides, those footbridge operators are going to think you're stealing business that's rightfully theirs and claim you're counterfeiting their coins...
Doc Brown: Those sports cars are already sitting there on the Bitcoin blockchain itself. As soon as Bitcoin Cash designated that snapshot block, Bitcoin United also came into existence in the hearts and minds of men. Now they are just waiting for someone to set them free. There are virtual Ethereum based bitcoins lying latent in there too only they're just another kind of horse and hardly worth digging out. It's a lot like the victims of the Mt. Gox heist are waiting for their confiscated coins to be released. All that is missing is a rescue squad to dig them out of the ground and give them to their rightful owners.
Bitcoin is now a multi-platform company with several ways to transmit value.
The old Bitcoin Classic bridge is replaced by three: two patched footbridges and a superhighway.
- Bridge One is designed for miners
-- to keep their hardware relevant. - Bridge Two is designed for developers
-- to keep their software relevant. - Bridge Three is designed for users
-- to give cheap, easy, fast and efficient service.
All three are operational and will give the same owners a return on their investment. Their customers are free to choose whichever service best meets their needs. Bitcoin has been further decentralized with something to suit every taste and agenda.
Doc Brown: Say, where's that old clock tower flyer you keep in your backpack Marty? ... Look at this! Just as I thought! See how the printing has changed already! The effects of the fork are already starting to ripple out across time. Demand and outrage at exchanges refusing to release the supercoins is already building!
Doc Brown: All we have to do is get the message out about the plight of the trapped Fast Bitcoins and keep lobbying the BitShares community to share their technology with Bitcoin holders. Besides, when those supercoins are finally released there's going to be a speculative frenzy to scoop them up cheap before others learn about it. That possibility will probably get more votes from Bitshareholders than anything else.
Give supercoins away and quickly buy them back cheap
before people realize what they've got!
Marty: Woah, Doc, that's heavy... So you're saying we don't really have to do anything to convince the superhighway owners to accept the new Fast Bitcoins, economic forces will do that for us?
Doc Brown: Just keep teaching about it till it happens!
Marty: So we just have to convince all the Bitcoin holders to grab a BitShares wallet and claim them?
Doc Brown: No! Marty we won't have to chase after them either! The best way to get a dog to want the bone you're throwing him is to bring in another interested dog!
Marty: So we go find other people who don't know about Bitcoin yet and teach them to use the BitShares superhighway for any other reason. That's almost everybody. When those noobs start buying up cheap Fast Bitcoins it will be the old bitcoin pizza story all over again. Old Bitcoin holders will dump their free Fast Bitcoins and the noobs will gobble them up.
Doc Brown: Noobs and speculators smart enough to see how this will end up! Remember that laboratory experiment we did simulating flow from Ethereum Classic to New Ethereum a few days ago? Well, those noobs are going to be what tips the scale from Slow Bitcoin to Fast Bitcoin as sure as it went from Old Ethereum to New Ethereum! It's practically a law of physics! I'll bet we'll have ten times as many new users as current users within one year. That's what will happen here as we keep piling new users on the scale until we reach a tipping point. Resistance is futile!
Marty: Oh, I see now! And while the footbridge traffic didn't change much, the relative market share of BTCX ballooned on the superhighway and the overall value to bitcoin owners skyrocketed from the new traffic! And even though the slow bitcoin market share shrinks it will still get used to full capacity and the Bitcoin owners now own a much bigger pie Doc! You're a genius!
Doc Brown: Very perceptive of you Marty...
Marty: ...and it will be perfectly fair because only the original holders will be given all the coins to start out. It's like Bitcoin formed three companies and they now own the same percentage of each. If they ignore or dump their gift shares in BTCX, its on them. The flow will really be from the foolish and deceived to the wise and informed!
Doc Brown: That's how it should be, Marty. Keep going!
Marty: Well, most people who don't know about the, um, temporal singularity coming up and don't know about Bitcoin right now, probably aren't going to care about having a bridge across a ravine they can't see. And you're certainly not going to impress ordinary folks with that features table on the blackboard. You need to give them some completely different reason to use the system. Some kind of game or contest maybe?
Doc Brown: Bingo, Marty! That's precisely what I've got set up! I hired some game masters and marketing wizards a month ago and started them working on it. You won't believe some of the stuff they're cooking up. They're going to market Fast Bitcoins under the brand Bitcoin United (BTCX) by talking about a bunch of things ordinary people care about more than surviving an economic meltdown. They'll be using that financial superhighway for everyday reasons before they ever know how to spell crypto-currency!
Check out this new BillionHeroCampaign.com website that just went live today on the Internet, um, that's a global computer network that connects all the world's businesses and hold's all the world's knowledge in a way that you can learn anything about anything just as quick as a Fast Bitcoin can orbit the planet.
Marty: Jeez, Doc!
Doc Brown: You can see what the whole world is going to initially see here. Much more will be revealed week by week. It focuses on a contest we've set up to grow and donate a billion dollars worth of BitShares and all the unmined Fast Bitcoin to the twelve most popular good causes on the planet. Anyone can propose a Big Heroic Audacious Goal, or BHAG, to compete for one of twelve prizes. It's my BHAG to upgrade, diversify and decentralize Bitcoin! The more BitShares products and services people own and use, the bigger voice they will have in who gets the well over 1.21 Gigabucks worth of humanitarian project aid.
Marty: One point twenty-one gigabucks?
Doc Brown: Well, 3,000,000 BTS have already been donated to the BitShares billion-hero-prize account. And since BitShares eliminated mining three years ago there's no reason to waste those last 5 million BTCX paying Big Mining to burn electricity. Those coins can go to humanitarian causes instead! When the Fast Bitcoins are freed, you'll see all the unmined BTCX safely deposited in the billion-hero-prize account where they can be voted on for use in Good Causes for anything from subsidizing superhighway costs to righting unrightable wrongs like the Mt. Gox heist. I'm sure there's lots of better things people can think of to do with those unmined supercoins besides burning them in some Big Mining company's global warming furnace.
Marty Doc! That's Huge!
Doc Brown: Anyhow, the object of the game is for everybody to do things to help grow the value of those donated BTS and BTCX to where the value of the coins in the billion-hero-prize account reach a billion dollars each. While people play the game, they'll learn to use both slow and fast bitcoins and a whole lot more. Given the choice of staying on the BitShares superhighway and using Fast Bitcoins to trade with every other kind of financial product, or isolating themselves on a compromised platform with nothing but Slow Bitcoins to use, what do you think most of them will choose?
Marty: Yeah, Doc, and once this gets going and some Big Heroic Audacious Goals start getting support I bet a bunch of celebrities will jump on board and drive it higher. This could snowball big time...especially if that game teaches them how to use BTCX for everyday stuff. People will be adopting it without even making a conscious decision to do so.
Doc Brown: Very good Marty! And think of this, while the BTS and BTCX are growing from a million to a billion, everybody else's account is doing the same thing! If you've got a dollars worth, you'll have a thousand. If you've got a thousand, you'll have a million! We can all benefit when both BTS and BTCX join the Million-to-Billion Club!
Why don't you study that web site a while and I'll answer your questions about it tomorrow. Clara, Jules and Verne need a little of my time right now.
Marty: Ok, Doc. I'm on it!
Stan Larimer, President
Cryptonomex
The Godfather of BitShares, Bitcoin United, and the HERO
Image credits: see embedded links
About the Author -- Stan Larimer
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Greatest Hits
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The Hero from BitShares Island
