Magic Money

Let's pretend you are a shop owner and I am a potential customer.

I walk around your store and start to fill my basket. You aren't particularly interested until you see me grab a high-value item. And then another, this time not only high value, but super high margin. By the time I approach your counter, I've become much more than a potential customer.

I am a jackpot.

You scan all my items, trying to keep a neutral face. Finally, the unsaid total is staring us both loudly in the face, and you turn to me and ask “how will you be paying?”

I reach in to my back pocket and pull out a notebook.

Would You Accept Dollirs?

The above representation doesn't do it justice; the notebook is actually pretty impressive.

Extremely professional, filled with high quality artwork and logos. Even some thoughtful words about the nature of humanity and the future. And there are some very impressive endorsements, most from people who've been so successful they've turned it into celebrity.

“I don't actually have any cash on me, but do you accept Dollirs?”

I leave it there, obviously expecting recognition.

When you indicate that you don't know what I'm talking about, I sigh - somewhere between annoyance and pity. I begin explaining “Dollirs are the future of money. They are exactly the same as real, American US Dollars, but they are entirely digital.

1 Dollir = $1.

Forever and always."

I then go on to explain some nonsense that doesn't seem to make sense but essentially it boils down to a ledger system. Inside the notebook is a list of everyone who is participating in the Dollir system and their current balance. In order to use Dollirs, you simply change the balances in the book using some sort of system that verifies that the person changing is the sender.

I flip through about a dozen pages and then show you the notebook, pointing at a line.

“Right here, this is me - Haym. As you can see I have 1,051 Dollirs, which is just enough to cover my purchase.”

So… do you accept Dollirs?

Evaluating Money

Every bone in your body is screaming “NO FREAKING WAY.”

But your eyes noticed Tom Brady and Jimmy Fallon on the cover… and your ears heard me talk about the double digit interest you could get if you held Dollirs… and didn't your brain remember that they were naming a stadium and a F1 team after Dollirs?

Before you decide to listen to the soft, squishy parts of your body, you come to a moment of clarity.

You need to do your own research!

So, let's discuss all the things you should think about before trading away your wares for Dollirs.

Kicking the Tires

The first thing you need to think about: what actually are Dollirs?

When I gave you the explanation, I made is super clear that one of the most incredible parts about Dollirs are that ANYONE, including you, can independently verify the entire system.

But verification is a much taller task than it sounds.

Here's one small example: remember that Dollirs are able to verify that the sender is authorizes the transaction? Well that one system in an almost unimaginably complex system, built out of concepts from computer science and math that have only existed for the last ~50 years. Yes, you can try to understand it at a high level, and then try to verify the underlying concepts by actually reading the research papers…

But are you going to put in that work?

Look, the reality is that you (probably) didn't ever bother to learn how cash or credit cards work… you simply accepted it because everyone else did*.

*The real reason you accept cash or credit is because both are financially equivalent to USD (or whatever your local currency is). The reason USD is is accepted is not just because of the social context, but specifically because that is the currency by which the government requires taxes to be paid.

The first thing you look for are people who understand the technology and see what they say about it. For the most part, they are saying extremely positive, encouraging things about the notebook-money industry.

Then, you check out all of the names on front of my notebook.

And let's be real, it's impressive.

Advisors, endorsements, recommendations, you name it. And not only from super-nerds or bimbo-celebrities, it's hard to tell what brings things group together, except for the fact that you recognize so many of them.

But you aren't a chump, it's not just that celebrities, just look at the book. There's hundreds of pages in there, with thousands of names.

I'm not even that big of a Dollir holder… relatively speaking.

Here's where your thoughts are starting to coalesce: “look how many people use Dollirs, and for good reason… you can beat InFLaTioN! Yes, this is a huge amount to me, but it's not really tthhhaaaattttt many Dollirs. Everyone else has so much more to loose, both their reputation and their actual balance.”

But wait wait wait, you think. Social proof is BS.

You need real proof.

The Market Speaks Truth

Before you accept a single Dollir, you want to see that other people actually use Dollirs.

You'll want to see both that other people are interested in acquiring them and that other people are willing to accept them - really two sides of the same coin.

The point is, you want to make sure that once you get a Dollir, you can actually spend a Dollir.

I offer to take you to the market. “You'll see, EVERYONE uses Dollirs there!”

Out in the market, I am able to show you two types of places: open and dark exchanges.

On open exchanges, every single trade is printed into the book and can be easily traced. We can stand there and see that every time a Dollir changes hands the appropriate entries in my book are altered. You can verify with your own two eyes that real people are actually using Dollirs.

Dark exchanges, on the other hand, keep all the individual transactions private. To enter, you deposit your trading amount at the door, updating the Dollir book. When you are ready to leave, you withdraw from the door with your new amount, entering it in the book. All of the internal trades are hidden.

And so, we walk around the market, tallying up all of the Dollir transactions.

By the end, its very clear that if you accept my Dollirs you will DEFINITELY find a place to spend them.

Common Traps

By this point, you might be ready to accept Dollirs.

At this point, many people do.

But there are some things you can only learn through experience. Things that may look pretty, but do not pass the smell test.

Reasons to stay as far away from Dollirs as possible.

Check the Code

No one checks the code, that is absurd.

First, most people do not have the foundational knowledge needed to evaluate the mechanism by which any of this works.

Second, those that do never do it.

Third, the one who prove me wrong only do it to a certain extent. Modern projects are written on layers of libraries of code that stretch back to unknown developers at the dawn of computers.

And, most importantly, code is not the end of the equation. Just is important is how the code creates an interactive system and how that system changes over time.

Verification at any point in time assumes that all dependencies (code, economic, social, etc) will never change.

Celebrities Aren't Paying Attention

This section is an opportunity to dunk on a lot of celebrities, either for being so corrupt they will gladly scam their fans or for being too dumb to notice what is blatantly a scam, but we'll leave that for the rest of the internet.

Instead, let's just use Hanlon's Razor and make this simple: most people who lend their names to projects just educated enough in advanced technology to know anything about what they are selling.

Those that do are not working the project, watching what the insiders are actually doing.

It's Just a List of Names

I showed you a book with a list of participants and a marketplace. Do you really think that is a good way to understand the asset?

Let's set aside the underlying technology for a moment. Pretend all of it works, that none of it is fraudulent or a scam.

Here are just some of the things you cannot see from this vantage point:

How many of these names are real people?
How many of these people are different people?
How many are directly controlled by me?
How many Dollirs total are there?
How many different people are participating in the market?
Why are people choosing to make those trades?
What is going on in the dark exchanges?

The Dollir Machine

Ethereum is the World Computer, a single, globally shared computing platform that exists in the space between a network of 1,000s of computers (nodes).

The nodes provide the hardware, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) provides the virtual computer and the blockchain records Ethereum's history.

The EVM sits at the center of Ethereum, providing a decentralized computing platform to the world.

One of the more common things to do on Ethereum?

Deploy an ERC-20 contract, issue a token, create an LP, start trading.

Our magic Dollir mint!

The Big Question

Let's pretend you are a shop owner and I a potential customer who just walked in.

I fill my basket, you ring me up. I reach in to my back pocket and pull out a notebook.

"Do you accept Dollirs?”

In Crypto, you are not the shop owner… well unless you're CZ, you are here to buy.

So here's the big question:

“Do you want to buy Dollirs?”