I heard there was a lot of money in crypto mining, so I headed out to California, trusty shovel and pickax in hand. I was sure my crypto strike would eclipse John Sutter (the guy who started the gold rush back in the 1840s) in the annals of rags to riches lore. Strangely, when I started asking around as to where the best crypto deposits were located no one had a clue. Or so they said.
There’s so much money in that crypto why would anyone in the know be stupid enough to tell me?
Still I persevered.
I rented a mule, bought sufficient provisions to last a good while, and headed into the hills. All that glitters is not crypto, I reasoned, so those Gold Rush era fools were sidetracked by the gold and missed all that crypto. even though it was right under their noses.
Strange, after months of digging not one nugget of crypto showed up in my pan.
Perplexed, I did what anyone would do. As a last resort, I took the step of actually gathering some facts about the stuff. At least I tried. I googled “crypto mining.” Aha! No wonder I didn’t find any. Who could have imagined? It’s an invisible entity that you don’t dig up but just make up out of thin air on a computer!
What you need is a fancy computer that costs about ten grand and enough brains to figure out something called “hash,” which is sort of like some kind of puzzle. That assures, supposedly, the crypto, once made, is secure. Well, it certainly was all hash to me. I knew I couldn’t possibly hash it all out, but would need to hire a nerdy eight year old kid to do the work which, pardon the pun, would be child’s play for them.
Unbelievable but true. There’s no crypto in them thar hills, or really anywhere else. It’s basically imaginary money you make a picture of on your computer and send to anyone willing to hand over real money in exchange for it. And, guess what?
THEY DO.
Don’t be so surprised. In the “there’s a sucker born every minute” department, Donald Trump, no longer holding the political office he originally sought for the lofty purpose of cashing in, is now so desperate for cash and attention he’s selling non-fungibles (the similarity with “fungus” should not be overlooked.) Trump “trading cards” are computer generated images of wonderful collectables like a a picture of him in his patented thumbs up pose, a certificate confirming you are a member of a select group of suckers who still believe his BS and best of all, a genuine image of a “gold card” that will not work in any ATM or payment terminal. Well, this just shows how behind the times Donald is. The card obviously should have been crypto, not gold.
Aside from the money, there’s a lot to like about crypto mining. It’s not bad for your health like, say, coal mining. Crypto miners don’t need to load sixteen tons a day of crypto. Not even an ounce. How something that valuable can weigh nothing is a miracle. The miners just plug away at their computer screens cooking crypto hash browns. They make pictures of coins that they send to buyers who cough up real money. Then they put the real cash into their very conventional investments. They have no risk of developing crypto lung or getting trapped in a cave-in. No toting that barge or lifting that bale. All you have to do is hide the real money in offshore accounts, fool everyone into thinking you are a wunderkind who actually (Ha-Ha!) sank your own money into crypto, declare bankruptcy in a timely manner and avoid going to jail. Now there’s a profession that even tops owning Twitter. Or being former president of the USA.
I’m definitely getting into it. I’ll pay some big sports hero to go on TV and tell the average beer drinker to buy, buy, buy. (In between commercials inducing you to gamble your crypto earnings away on sporting events, complete with admonitions against becoming a gambling addict–wink wink.) We all know sports heroes are experts on financial matters. Logic says if you can throw a football 60 yards, hit a baseball out of the park or jump high enough to dunk a basketball, you must be a financial genius. I hope the sports heroes are willing to take crypto for pay. No matter. With all the billions I’ll make I can afford to pay them real money and finance the TV ads as well.
The emperor’s new clothes were nothing compared to the crypto boom. Well, come to think of it, the clothes literally were nothing. Just like crypto.
But there’s bad news in cryptoland these days. Looks like some of the big companies are going bust. Something about runs on the crypto banks in which, guess what, there’s no actual money. Are you surprised? Would you trust a twenty-ish guy who hasn’t started shaving yet, needs a haircut, wears T-shirts to business meetings and is stupid enough to actually give all his money away to charities with your hard earned dough?
Anyone with two neurons and a dendrite between their ears should have realized way back that the crypto scam was a financial train wreck in process, but, as we all know, common sense and healthy skepticism are no match for greed.
It’s kind of a shame, but here’s the silver lining. Usually when there’s a crash of such magnitude in the financial sector the economy goes into free fall. But since crypto is imaginary, if the whole thing goes belly up it will have absolutely no effect on the economy–just on the personal economies of the suckers who richly deserve to get wiped out.
The important thing is to be on the selling, not the buying end and to git while the gittin’s good. Just before the proverbial spit hits the proverbial fan.
So here I am down here in the crypto mines working my butt off digging up your fortunes. If any of my loyal readers want to get rich quick, (and who doesn’t?) kindly mail me your life savings and I will email you a certificate for freshly mined crypto complete with my ironclad guarantee—that I will soon, under an assumed name, fly my private jet to the sprawling villa on my private tropical island where I will sit on the beach sipping exotic drinks, dance with exotic dancers and otherwise luxuriate in the well deserved fruits of my prodigious labors.
An Author's Inner Mind 