And this is one how and several competing wise. How do you go about getting the digital equivalent for currency for cash and coining it is a significant technical challenge and you need to create a Digital Object that is difficult to forge and duplicate. Easy to verify, prove it is what it claims to be under all kinds of conditions and constraints for all people. You must be able to carry the information what it is, what it is worth without generating any information how it is used or by whom and has to do this on platforms and networks and machines that generate effectively perfect copies and transaction logs and records. So to figure out the how of how to make Something Like cash digital is a very tall order which raises the question why you would need to build such a thing. Answering the question will take us from fighting surveillance to libertarian theories of economics and the pursuit of human mortality and all of thes agendas fed into the creation of bit coin and the cryptocurrency a block chain currency today. Its not just the story of building a new payment platform but a deliberate attempt to engineer a future society through the mechanism of money a utopian project i like to call the speculative currency projects but also the term speculative fiction these were platforms not just for future outcomes but to aid and then to be accompanied by prototypes and stories and practices seeking to inspire fear or hope to avert future conditions or invoke them to appear the currencies that function not just to the future one of the things i came to enjoy working most on as i was working on this book was how people who work in the currency world talk about currency and passing current is a way to talk about how something actually functions with money that is something you accept because you believe somebody else will take it from you in the future then it passes to someone else to say that the passing current which gives currency its name has to do with anticipation to hold currency is to anticipate a future it will be accepted where there a merchant or gift exchange. So what this book ends up being about is not necessarily about currency but how people use the idea to imagine a future where something will be accepted or valued or in widespread use. So, in other words to transact cash is relief in the future acceptance of the note but also the veracity of the note itself. A paper bank no has a peculiar challenge to prove itself under an extremely demanding condition to do so to the untrained user. Every time you see the sign of that they have we no longer accept 50dollar bills or when you receive these use them in the following way it is the necessary training of how to verify what currency is and make paper banknotes prove themselves up paper bank note must be able to authenticate in the moment as you handle it and into the whole of society generals you can pastor and convince everyone through that change one chain it is not forged for counterfeits to take a 20dollar bill they are dear to my heart after working on the book uniform object of technology and the product of the authenticating authority in the event of the Federal Reserve and then to specialize and it is amazing. I long to write a book that is just about the process of making secure paperwork it is an amazing artform very underappreciated. But this document has to function without recourse with any of these authorities and us 20 has a life between five and seven years will be transacted thousands of times and its lifespan under every condition of circumstances passing in and out of banks before ultimately withdrawn from circulation and destroyed. A marvelous history to be written by someone about the relationship between the secret service and the production of pop money for movies because they need huge volumes of cash. You have to have something to show when you open the suitcase and the secret service watches how that is produced to look believable on camera but not be passable on the set if it is green and has 20 on it somebody will accept it. So the bills have to function as authenticating systems in a context if it is green with a 20 somebody will eventually take it somehow they have to police themselves to the way it doesnt ruin the ability to function. And the singularity that it is forge no more counterfeit we know how it is supposed to feel. We know what it looks like and how it authenticates itself because we have handled so much of it. That is the paradox of the modern bank note how to make something uniquely valuable to the sophistication by which you reproduce it. s everything that decorates the document that resembles of birth and death certificate stamps and seals color shifting inc. And security threads. You cant quite see it at this resolution but the beautiful and psychedelic patterns that we see on the face of currency that is the tool that is specifically good for this because it can mechanically and quickly produce patterns exceedingly hard for the human hand to reproduce. The other place you see rose engine late for work is stock certificates. It is telling that all of these patterns share the banknotes that we transact with those signatures at the bottom. It is precise and reproduction. All major currencies around the world also carry another authentication technology, pattern of circles called the orion constellation of visual arrangement not for humans but Image Processing software to communicate to certain categories of highend desktop publishing systems, adobe photoshop, photoshop, extremely High Precision color copiers that this object with this pattern is not to be digitized. It is a mechanism to walk this out of the capacity to be made digital which is a beautiful thing to think about. Is a system that makes it possible to produce the analog object that digital platforms will refuse to touch. It is strange and magical. And what the orion constellation raises is the difference, the challenge of knowledge of Digital Technology introduces to cash and in practical terms a copy of a bank note is a copy there are flaws and imperfections whether in the paper stock and there are ways to know that a copy of a bank note is not authentic but a beautiful subculture of people who have the expertise to recognize the subtle differences in banknotes so even the best counterfeit can be spotted. But unless it is compressed or altered the company can be the original to be easily verified that is the perspective of reproduction in which one is real or both . How do you know which one came first . The question of authenticity is the issue of digital money itself. How do you know a bank note was issued by the institution credited with it . And it has not been altered or tampered . We can spot with the ball point pen to make a tendollar bill into a 20dollar bill how do you know somebody has not flipped on the digital cash to give it an extra zero . There is one solution and that brings us to the first why of digital cash all the money in a master ledger. And that indeed is the earliest project to predict the future of digital cash would be the case. The computers of tomorrow the atlantic 1964 the same magazine to publish the landmark document that help to inspire hypertext so to predict among many other things that computers will dramatically transform the nature of congress with the creation of Digital Systems of money and do that through total comprehensive surveillance that could quietly police how all money was transacted who had access to what in which notes were authentic or real or issued. That attitude changed over the course of the following decade this fantastic article Behavioral Sciences at stanford who worked at the government of defense and the Johnny Appleseed of cold war computing this is congressional testimony to Warn Congress of the danger of the power created by digital surveillance and in particular by the use of Electronic Fund transfer system. And is part of a team at georgetown that was brought together by a think tank on behalf of the state department with the technological future of the soviet union thats challenges to come up with the best on of trust so unobtrusive Surveillance System after considerable work that is to say Something Like the credit and debit cards and the reason being it gives you a time stamp geocoded place that you engage in every aspect of any form of transaction and that to be computerized and in real time to react to your purchases for example to decline your ability to do something so realtime price gouging and redlining are deliberate forms of inverted visible coercion over assets. This is not that long after and the handmaids tale begins with a nightmare of the money because one of the first rooms of the project to disenfranchise is to use databanks for women for those who have assets and freeze those assets and lock them out of their own credit and was said in an interview everyone cap missing it and said that now that everyone uses electronic forms of credit its easy to deny access and indeed with monetary surveillance and coercion based on the theme in the book to see oranges for the first time in years and longs to get one but cant because she has not been given any money that lets her by oranges she can only have coupons for other things she cannot freely engage in transactions or accumulate value for herself the money is only good for one specific purpose in the way so that can she be tracked and monitored and controlled and the responses were not slow in coming and then to create digital cash with those exact fears of surveillance the electronic surveillance of the future. And this is where we see and those transaction systems to make big brother obsolete. And the project of digital cash was to make withdrawing money from your bank account is easy to do digitally is physically with the equivalent protection for privacy. When you withdraw money you have that cash in hand and theoretically with the notes that you have withdrawn to your particular identity. You can give them to people, circulate, make purchases and redeposit into the identified account and circulation is anonymous. This was an inspiration for a huge set of other projects opening up a vast design space other people try to find ways to work you need a small cottage industry. And how to circumvent in various ways to build your own are added into but in this case for this particular article there was a very different why for why it was worthwhile to focus on electronic cash. And is a great figure for the story and. And then that takes you through a whole new subculture because they navigated through those communities and projects. And then to see the rise of digital cash and how we all came together toward the end of the millennium as a member of the loose advocates that call themselves the cyberpunks as their name might suggest but also with the possibility of computational currency native to the internet that not only ensures anonymity of transactions but operate outside territorial governance. The backslide we use to have the signature of emails and online post with clever droop jokes about lyrics from the talking heads this was his plan and his vision of cryptoanarchy and a description of the master plan he argued was largely inevitable with the spread of strong encryption through anonymous digital cash with new off the books global black market anonymous markets and Information Networks and Money Laundering schemes as that list implies to the collapse of the nation and collapse of government. And not just to transact dollars but to adopt those and to pull them out with the relationship with the direct the creator of the anonymous bit coin book silk road has an interesting batting average for a retired manifesto. But the why of creating digital cash and however and how much currency should be produced how is that amount verified how do you know the token you are transacting is real and to have prototype currency to propose the computational challenge and i hasten to add not to be alone in this there were many other people and they all collaborated so he envisioned the unit of verifiable work that a computer would have to do to produce a do token news cost could regulate the volume of money a mechanism to replace the system of human decision directed central bank. And very provocative. The technological roots of this project he also made his own logo and for reusable work and prototype currency in which with the production of new money that would have to contribute to be measured and verified by other people. The technological roots of the project lay in ideas to deal with email with a price that is effectively free to prevent the flood of worthless paper. For many enthusiasts the Cultural Roots had less to do with reinventing postage than reinventing gold. This is a third why of the political commitment to a currency backed by precious metals. I find this slide to music and that one amusing and i realize this is goldfinger from the james bond movie to make gold radioactive. That of session will characterize this is the third why to make digital cash to the currency backed and the desire to combine the ease and liquidity of transactions but the physical constraints of gold the scarcity and the challenge and the function of collateral that is the medium of exchange and the deflationary character to be able to hoard it. And hg wells called the magnificent stupid honesty. Cold follows that to the plea one the people that believed in it. This pas from the Liberty Dollar system coming off a bank they hasten to add which was attempting to create their own searchable note which were not notes of currency as such but ownership received free volume of precious metal physically stored on the budget pellets. And they would also as soon as they were able to issue paper receipts issued digital warehouse receipts so they could be paid in the precious metal accounting tokens. This version of the project drew on the work. These had the ideology, the network easeofuse and scarcity of precious metal and required a tremendous amount of trust on the part of the users. With its marks and chain of custody documents sitting on the palate and a warehouse which she likely never saw and when someone dropped a dime on the operation of the secret Service Called wind of the notes in circulation everyone asked and got thrown in the van for the eventual trial. Your whole network could be distributed and neither was the ledger. And of course i should say the reason why the quality on these materials is so bad it is the best source of the archives on the digital so debate concurrency scheme the fbi of the stuff that is left over from the various documents be released publicly for which provokes of course another how how could you build a system where the ledger of ownership and scarce material values were as distributed as the owners and trade sectors. Its not the means of the digital gold currencies of particular importance for people of digital cash project it wasnt the scarcity of gold. Going back to the archives it is like going back into the archives of archivists. If these maintained sheets that told you how it was created every single time it was tested in every shelf it has sat on in every country and context and every time someone physically handled it. A kind of knowledge that may ring a bell for us. People in the creators alike proposed ideas for digital cash as a kind of verifiable collected all of the production of money something that would allow them to somehow measure and a snapshot of the overall shape and quantity of their money in the world in the way that they could more or less of you for precious metals. I started going to the libertarian events in New Hampshire in the mid20s since i was working on this but because they were the only places i could find where attachable daytoday transactions were being conducted in the crypto currencies and precious metals. Im sure many of you can already guess, but the reason why you can buy for specific value is because of the changing volume of the coinage overtime. So, basically the metallic content of silver half dollars in quarters at times changed on the date that they note there is a whole kind of New Hampshire libertarian hobby that is to get rolls of quarters and dimes from the bank and then hang out in your house at night going through them looking for the characteristics sparkle that helps you identify the pre 1964 quarters and then just returning all the rest into cycling through the banks on the inventory. So you go to buy socks or chili or what have you libertarian enclave event to be conducted by smart phones were through transacting silver. There was a very specific kind of question of how is it the people that like this one thing like the other and it is because of the way in which both of them could theoretically be known. A when i asked him why he got interested in the money he looked at me baffled and said silver is silver and the weight is to wait. It is a gullibility. So, before the end of the last by making digital cash and sometimes the strangest, the most oddly beautiful that so closely connected begins in this magazine just the same issue he was explaining the system of digital cash, this issue of trans humanist thought. He was an extra being and someone on the margins of the digital gold currency. And the member of a remarkable almost forgotten network technologists, philosophers, futurists and very dear to us at the end of the century. Many that played the creation of art extravaganza at one point or another including virtually everyone outside of the sciences and most of the people that kicked the tires and hoped to get the idea is going for it. The extra pins were focused on the creation of the limitless abundance on the cosmic scale. More energy, more information, more time and space, more intelligence and more life. The devotees of philosophy and economics believe that the path to abundance within the technological innovation accelerated by markets so free that the phrase free market really does them justice. This is one of the many currencies created a and the austrian economists. Extraordinarily influential figure in the 20th century much to our detriment issued from the virtual bank and this is filled with jokes about the future of the extra pins that they were sure they were going to be a part of. The first thing that they had thought had to be freed that would create the radical technological breakthrough that they hoped for was money itself. New forms of future oriented currency distributed by states with decentralized banks would be their vehicle out of the earths gravity well. He wanted to build conceived were enriched beyond measure to