Thinking about that post about TFs getting involved with blockchain that went around while back
***
Perceptor eyed him. “This… artwork… doesn’t appear to have significant value to leverage for profit.”
“Uh, no,” said Brainstorm, “it’s just me and my sockpuppets! We’re trading stuff for incrementally higher prices.”
His mouth thinned to a fine line.
Brainstorm laughed. Mostly at his face. And fondly. Perceptor was so serious. “I don’t care about the art, Percy, it’s funding the research project.”
Perceptor looked unconvinced.
“You can say it’s ugly. I know it’s ugly. That’s not the point. I sell it in the end. Obviously. But, see, the market is anon… well, semi-anonymous. Pseudonymous. So there’s permanent indelible records of the prices it sold for, but you can’t see the real world ID of traders. You can just trade between socks, inflate the price a little, make sure it looks like a really sure thing—this record keeping is great for that, let me tell you—and then sell it for—”
“So it’s fraud,” said Perceptor, with the kind of keen and penetrating insight that Brainstorm admired, just, so much, when it wasn’t pointed at him.
He deflated. Fraud! Well. Well.
“If you want to get technical,” he muttered sourly. Once again his genius was going unacknowledged because blah blah morality.
Butnow Perceptor was frowning in a totally different way.
“Itdoes seem significantly more straightforward than the competitive grants process,” Perceptor admitted slowly.
Yes, thought Brainstorm, a victorious little cry in the lowest recesses of his processor. Yes!
