CHAPTER 2

The Long Road to Decentralization

The Challenge of a Digital Currency

The weary traveler hoisted a heavy bag over one shoulder and slouched down the ramp into the spaceport. A barrage of unfamiliar sounds and smells assailed their senses, interrupted by the hiss of a disinfectant curtain and the regular sterile tang of CL2. Shaking out a mess of wet feathers in disgust, they looked around for the nearest bar. A new planet? That called for a cocktail.

For decades writers have dropped their characters into alien lands, both on earth and around endless fictional universes, assuming blithely that they have the means and method to settle their bar tab wherever they may be. The fiscal realities of multiple currencies and foreign exchange ...

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