Moolah Geeks

[Llanque Mazurek]

Totallyunnecessary fact from an English geek (me): the word geek originally described the member of a travelling freak show who bit the heads off live animals, especially chickens. (How this word morphed into its current usage, I have no idea.)

It is pretty interesting to know that nowadays Geeks could not be easily determined. Gone are the day where geeks will wear eyeglasses and looks like a nerd. Today, somebody wearing a high heel or wearing a punk attire could be a geek.

Basically, yes, many of these kids choose to opt out of the American school system, where in order to be popular it unfortunately often means being or acting dumb and sports is king instead of actual learning.

With San Diego Comic-Con almost upon us, eager geeks are budgeting for where their hard-earned moolah will be allocated. A sizable segment has their eyes on the limited-edition toys that are sold exclusively at the convention by big companies such as Lego, Mattel and Funko.

Aaron and Abe, being the emotionless engineers that they are, coolly devise rules (which are never clearly explained) on how to travel in time, and start to utilize bigger versions of the box to make themselves a crapload of moolah.

The tech entrepreneur has set up a state-of-the-art assembly line to make currency he can spend on the Web or at businesses. His moolah factory, operating 24/7, exists separately from the U.S. banking system and the federal agencies that oversee it.

And Bitcoin is not tethered to any nation, region or central bank the way the dollar is to the Federal Reserve. A Bitcoin's "value," say in dollars, is determined solely by demand for it on currency exchange markets, and that determines what you can buy with it.

Bitcoin is a currency of the Internet age, yet it can be can be converted into dollars, euros, yen, yuan or any other traditional national currency, and back again. But Bitcoin's lifecycle is limited. The auto-pilot program that distributes them to "miners" like Duccini is capped at 21 million. After that, the Bitcoin market will not grow, and the exchange will only exist for those who possess the currency. To keep the market alive longer, the distribution is intentionally throttled, producing ever-fewer Bitcoins in each successive year and making them harder to get.

This involves harnessing computers to solve certain kinds of mathematical problems. Like when a mouse in a maze finds the cheese, each time a complex problem of this sort is solved, Bitcoins are the reward.

That is what Duccini's turbo-charged, water-cooled gear is doing, day and night - crunching away on intricate puzzles that, slowly but surely, yield Bitcoinage. This electronic currency is then stored in a digital wallet on a hard drive or Internet server.

Once obscure, worth little, and used almost solely for anonymous, possibly shady, online transactions, the Bitcoin currency has recently skyrocketed in popularity and value. Bitcoins, worth less than a penny apiece in early 2010, hit $1,000 each late last year and again last month, and have dipped just below that since then.

The Minnesota resident, who has dabbled with Bitcoin for several years, said the currency is a "sweet intersection" for him, with his master's degrees in software engineering and business administration.

The democratic nature of the Bitcoin economy, with no centralized authority, appeals to him. Duccini, and all others who trade in Bitcoin, share that authority as the joint keepers of a public ledger to authenticate Bitcoin activity and avert counterfeiting.

"The role of the miner is to verify transactions," Duccini said. "They prevent the double-spend. This makes Bitcoin counterfeit-proof. Your transaction is accepted into the public ledger once it has been verified as legitimate. Miners act as guardians of the public trust."

"The reason we decided to go for it is it didn't cost us anything, and is easy to do," said Thietje,. "We implemented it in about 10 minutes. And if there are people out there using this currency, we want to make it easy for them."

Somewhere around the middle of the pub quiz, Jenny (my sister) showed up, and watched from a back table. After it was over, she and I headed out to explore the strangeness of Vegas. We ate a little, gambled a little, and walked a lot. She was looking specifically for a slot game she loves called Invaders From The Planet Moolah, which has a fun cascading reel effect, a bit like Bejeweled. We finally found it at Excalibur, but occupied, so we stalked the person playing until she left. By which I mean, we casually hung around playing neighboring machines, until finally she split, and we pounced on the moolah!

In true Vegas fashion, we suddenly realized it was like 3:00 in the morning, and headed back to go to sleep. Thus ended Day 1 of the Vegas trivia adventure. More to come, but for now, the answers to some lingering questions.

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