by Max Barry

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brb buying ByteCoin

by Max Barry
Tue, 01 Apr 2014

BitCoin has been in the news a lot lately, turning ordinary people into millionaires, then back into ordinary people again. The wonderful thing about BitCoin is it's a currency, but without any of the cumbersome government regulation that stifles innovation, facilitates tax, and prevents banks making off like bandits with all your money.

NationStates is a progressive place, so it's only right that we unveil a cryptocurrency for nations. But not BitCoin—no, we have something better. Eight times better, in fact. It's NS ByteCoin!

Getting started with ByteCoin is easy. Just navigate to your nation's home page and click the START MINING BYTECOIN button. This commences a process whereby ByteCoin is manufactured out of unicorn tears and orphan wings. It may feel strange and uncomfortable, seeing money produced out of thin air, but that's only because you don't pay much attention to the Federal Reserve. This is actually how it usually works.

Of course, you need somewhere to put your ByteCoin. It's not like you can just pop it into your pockets. It doesn't really exist. So you need to select a ByteCoin exchange to hold it. Exchanges are other nations that have completed a rigorous application process, probably right now while you're reading this, which involves paying a hefty fee. Then they can hold other people's ByteCoins! This is actually completely safe and under no circumstances is there any chance that an exchange will lose your money, unless hackers.

But that's not all. You can also swap ByteCoins into your own nation's local currency. I mean, it's not what I'd recommend. Everyone's really getting into ByteCoin these days. Selling out... well, I won't tell you what to do. But it's weird. Anyway, you can do it. And since the price of ByteCoin fluctuates, just a little, you might even be able to make a little by swapping in and out at the right times.

Good luck! And remember, ByteCoin isn't about getting rich: It's about freedom! And getting rich!

ByteCoin MarketplaceByteCoin Activity

Update 1! Well, the servers are being destroyed by traffic. That's why everything is slow to load. Sorry about that. Of course, back in the day, we often had lag worse than this. Not because of April Fool's events. That was just what we called normal. But nowadays, a server gets slow and everyone's like, WHAAAAAAT.

However! If this is annoying you, don't worry, it will all be over soon. Soon-ish. I'm letting this run a little longer than usual, to avoid forcing US East Coasters to stay up until 3am again, and because a lot of work goes into setting these events up and I like watching them.

Update 2! I'm shocked at how little thievery there was. Oh sure, a few trillion were pilfered here and there, but for the most part, ByteCoin exchanges stayed true to their word and stole almost nothing from their customers. I have to say, I feel it's my fault. I failed to create an adequate simulation of the real world.

There was some debate about whether the ByteCoin prices were market-driven or just some dumb random algorithm. I can now confirm that a true market mechanism was always the only acceptable option for ByteCoin, up until about March 31 when I realized how hard that was to code. So it was a dumb random algorithm. Except for Titanfall, which was a plan by some big ByteCoin players to try to crash the market by all selling at once, which I caught wind of and simulated to freak them out. That was fun.

Thank you for playing with ByteCoin! If you'd like to see your final holdings, you can use the tiny "ByteCoin Status" on the right side of your nation page, or click here.