Flaming Cryptocurrencies

Flaming Moe's is the tenth episode of The Simpsons third season. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 21, 1991. In the episode, Homer tells Moe Szyslak of a secret alcoholic cocktail that includes cough medicine and fire that he calls the "Flaming Homer". Moe steals the recipe from Homer, renames the drink the "Flaming Moe" and begins selling it at his tavern. The drink is a success and boosts business and patronage, but Homer is angry at Moe for his betrayal, and seeks revenge.

Moe tries making Homer's drink, and gives it to a customer, who loves it. When the customer asks what the drink is called, Homer starts to respond, but Moe butts in and calls it a "Flaming Moe". Word of mouth spreads, and Moe sees his business boom because of the drink. To help out with the extra customers, he hires a waitress named Colette. Moe's Tavern, renamed "Flaming Moe's", soon becomes one of the trendiest nightspots in Springfield and Aerosmith's new hangout. Homer becomes angry with Moe and vows never to return to the tavern. He subsequently becomes obsessed with Moe and his betrayal, even having a hallucination where he sees Moe's face everywhere.

A large restaurant chain – Tipsy McStagger's Goodtime Eating and Drinking Emporium which is a brand conglomerate becomes interested in purchasing the recipe for the drink, of which they have managed to identify all but the secret ingredient (cough syrup). A Tipsy McStagger representative offers Moe $1,000,000, but he refuses. Colette quickly discovers that Moe stole the recipe from Homer and not only makes him promise to sell the drink, but also apologize to Homer and give half of the money to him in compensation. Later, as Moe is about to accept the deal— and share half of the money with Homer— Homer, unhinged by resentment, arrives at the tavern. He gets his revenge on Moe by revealing to everyone in the bar that the secret ingredient is "nothing but plain, ordinary, over-the-counter children's cough syrup!" The representative quickly retracts the offer and leaves.

Within one week, nearly all restaurants in Springfield are serving "Flaming Moes", and Moe's business has gone back to the way it was before. Homer stops in, and he and Moe reconcile. Moe gives Homer a "Flaming Homer" free of charge.

I grew up watching The Simpsons and i'm a very big fan. As I grew into an adult of course I really began to see the genius of the writers and as a man of 38 I can of course now see very clearly the writers of the Simpsons had really been around. They had vast amounts of life experience to draw upon which is reflected in the brilliance of the series – particularly the older episodes. Especially episodes like Flaming Moes which is one of my favourites.

Flaming Moes is rich in lessons particularly on how people behave when they see dollar signs and especially the opportunity of making large amounts of money. We watch on as Moe's working class tavern starts attracting a more artistic, middle and upper class clientele due to Homers innovative drink. We see one guy walk by wearing sunglasses at night, we see Moes traditional base of working class slobs quickly replaced with the middle and upper classes. We see Barney dressing up and hanging out with a new class of friends which irritates Homer. We see celebrities arrive at the bar and we see Homer sidelined as his status within the new environment sinks to a low level.

Fast forward 26 years (yes – it really has been that long since 1991). Let's think about the current day goings on in the cryptocurrency market.

What do we see happening?

Almost all the same shit my friends but there are very important differences that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general have over the Flaming Moe. The Flaming Moe was a drink. In large part just like Coca-Cola it's success was dependent upon the recipe being kept a closely guarded secret. Homer Simpson of all people was the central, trusted authority (dictionary photo). Having told Moe the secret to the drink Moe too was privy to the secret recipe and both parties made up the central, trusted authority. If Homer and Moe were able to keep the drinks secret recipe a closely guarded secret, hence keeping competitors at bay – their success would have continued much longer and they would have been able to continue making a lot of money but Homer of course blew it which we the viewers expected he probably would.

Bitcoin's source code is open source. The secret recipe is out there for all the world to see and what do we of course see happening in the cryptocurrency marketplace? A proliferation of cryptocurrencies – in the same manner that once the secret to The Flaming Moe was out – many competitors arrived which meant lower prices for consumers (a good thing of course) and much less profit for Moe who was milking his first mover advantage and making monopoly profits off of Homers drink.

In the world today there are 180 inflationary currencies recognized by the United Nations. Each of these currencies are of course managed by a trusted authority – a central bank. We see the same system essentially in every country except Cuba, North Korea and Iran. Fascinating that the global powers that be have a problem with these countries but I digress. The central bank issued currencies have no intrinsic value as they're made of paper, are backed by nothing, are legal tender as decreed by the government of each respective nation and can be inflated away if and when required by the central banks and governments of the world for whatever agenda they see as appropriate. We the people of course have to work hard for this paper currency even as we see it inflated away with our buying power forever going down as prices everywhere keep going up.

Let's close our eyes and imagine that these inflationary currencies, the central banks that issue them and the governments of the world which enforce them as legal tender are essentially much smarter and well connected versions of Moe and Homer colluding with one another to keep control of the people and therefore make and keep as much money to themselves as they can by keeping monopolistic control of their product by making sure nobody else has the ability to issue their own private currencies (ie - their own Flaming Moe's).

The situation that we have going on at this moment of time in 2017 - in the dawn of the proliferation of cryptocurrencies is the Flaming Moe's secret recipe is out for all the world to see and use. Anyone can go ahead and create their own cryptocurrency and build a community around it. Just think about how powerful that ability is. The central banks and governments of the world depend to a very large extent upon their ability to keep monopolistic control of the currency. They're the only ones who throughout much of human history who have been able to issue legal tender. Others have tried of course and in many cases have ended up in trouble with the law.

Once the banks and governments lose that control (and they have – that occurred when Bitcoin was given to the world in 2009 by Satoshi Nakomoto who was smart to remain anonymous), and people start using privately issued free market currency like Bitcoin in large numbers, the central banks and governments of the world start to lose their ability to control the people. Privately issued currency is enemy number 1 to these two very powerful groups.

If the government doesn't have monopolistic control over the issuance of currency how will they ever enforce taxation? How will they finance wars? How will they continue to spy on their own citizens? If they can't inflate the currency at will how will they ever get the people – the citizens they claim to serve to agree to finance and go to war? Do not underestimate just how vital it is for the government to have monopoly control over the issuance of currency – ie the money printing press.

The future economy will be digital and decentralized and this will bring power back to the people – where it belongs. Bitcoin is a worldwide-distributed decentralized peer-to-peer system. The Blockchain technology – the underlying technology that powers Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is without a doubt one of the most important innovations the world has seen in it's history and we my friends are here to bare witness to it. What an incredible time to be alive!

Bitcoin is backed by mathematics, open source code, cryptography and the most powerful and secure decentralized computational network on the planet which is orders of magnitude more powerful than google and all of the world's governments combined. Advantage YOU. You the people who en-mass will have the power to keep your governments in check because you will demand that your government start using public and transparent blockchains for really important things like voting and holding your elected representatives and their promises to account.

The power the central banks and the governments of the world wield is going to be reduced significantly over time due to the blockchain technology and this is regardless of government issued cryptocurrencies which we will no doubt ultimately see and I will tell you why - the people of the world are not being given the choice by their government or central bank about whether to choose a free market cryptocurrency vs the governments authorised and central bank issued cryptocurrency. No – the people of the world get to choose for themselves which cryptocurrency they want to use. That's incredibly powerful. That's a very beautiful, a very powerful and wonderful choice. I'll say it again - the people of the world get to choose for themselves which cryptocurrency they want to use.

Do you really think the people of the world will choose to use government decreed, government authorised and controlled cryptocurrency when they can freely choose to use Bitcoin or Bitcoin like cryptocurrency instead? Do you really think they would choose to use a private blockchain with no transparency, where they have to give their name and other personal details to use over an open and transparent blockchain with no personal identifying information? Many people inherently do not trust banks and governments and they have very good reasons to feel and think this way. One need only study briefly the history of the world to see clearly that banks and governments cannot be trusted to do what's right by their people.

Bitcoin is Open Source. There's a limit of 21 million bitcoins and these are divisible into smaller units. "Backed by Government" money is not backed by anything and is infinitely printed at will by Central Banks. Bitcoin is limited and decentralized. You can receive and transfer money, from cents ie - micro-payments to thousands of dollars almost for free. It has privacy. There is no need to expose your personal information. It's secure. It's encrypted cryptographically and can’t be confiscated. It's instant. From seconds to a few minutes. It's Open source and auditable by anybody. It's worldwide - from anywhere to anywhere on the planet. It's peer-to-peer with no intermediaries that take a large cut. It has a public ledger that's transparent and can be seen and checked by everybody. It's decentralized and distributed with no single point of failure. There are no chargebacks and that’s just as currency, Bitcoin has other uses as well as an investment – it's essentially digital gold as it's a deflationary currency and has more utility value than actual gold.

What will government and centrally bank issued cryptocurrencies become? They will be the Flaming Meaux. They will be the Famous Moe's. In other words – they will be just another competing cryprocurrency but without any of the advantages of Bitcoin. They will be bastardized blockchains. They will be out competed, out innovated and out foxed by the global army of crypto nerds working feverishly around the clock to develop public, open and transparent blockchains.

Believe me when I say this as I know exactly how government works. Let's just say I have very close experience within a large bureaucratic beast and I can tell you with complete confidence the government will not out innovate the private sector in blockchain and cryptocurrency technology.

Homer, Moe, the central banks and governments of the world will have to live with diminished power. The genie is out of the bottle and it's not going back in. There is no way private cryptocurrency blockchains will win this war. The banks and governments of the world will try to convince the people to use their cryptocurrencies instead of free market alternatives like Bitcoin but they will fail. The people, once educated on the important differences between public vs private blockchains will never agree to use en mass the bastardized versions they put out and if they're forced to by law then you will see an even greater black – ie free market develop for Bitcoin and the price will adjust accordingly – by going way up!

All the best everyone,

I'm The Pretender