21 Futures: Financial Fallout Anthology Event

Can you hear me?

I can hear you fine. Yeah, I'm not certain if you're on the stream. I can see and hear you. Uh, if anyone is, uh, watching on YouTube or, or, uh, Spaces, please let us know. I'm just going to refresh the page on X to see if you're actually on the screen, because where I'm streaming from, it looks like it's still just me. May take a little while to catch up. Anyway, uh, Niko, while I'm trying to get you on screen, Ah, here we go. Great. All right, we're both on screen. I'm pretty sure we can both be seen. Welcome along, Niko Laamanen, the head of ConsenSys Network, worn his t-shirt, publisher of the book. We're talking about dystopias and the concept of financial fallout. What are your thoughts as a publisher on Is this old hat? Is it more relevant than ever?

Well, it is more relevant than ever. People are starting to wake up to the fact that the old stories that have been told to them about money and inflation are not necessarily true. So I see a lot of people are on the lookout for better stories. To listen to and to believe to and put your hopes and dreams into. I see a lot of hopelessness among people. Regular people are starting to be worried about the purchasing power of their money. Now, while that may be a true concern, it's not a concern enough for most people to pick up a book on economics and start your road in a hard way like that. So that's where 21 Futures fiction initiative comes in. And I think this is a nice, like Hayek would say, a roundabout way to introduce these important topics to broader audience without actually addressing those topics. So just interesting stories to whet the appetite, the mental appetite of humankind.

Whet the appetite of humankind. That is a lofty ambition. I like it. And of course, you are handling book 1 there. Do you want to just show that to everybody who might be watching? It's our first anthology, the world's first Bitcoin fiction anthology that came out almost a year ago to the day. Uh, great, just changed some of our authors in the background. Right, so we've covered a couple of things about the concept of the book and, uh, the space in general. What about the publishing process? Um, talking everybody through that, we designed this as a competition to attract more people to submit great stories. We had well over 150 submissions, I think. So if you submitted to the competition, well done. That's great. If you made it this far and you've got into the book, really congratulations. The, the standard of the writing was great. We had a lot of varied entries. Some were more on point than others, and I guess we'll get to that. But, um, really looking forward to revealing the big winners. We'll do that in about 15 minutes or so. Um, publishing process where I was like, yeah, so next up for us, we've completed the communication with the authors and editing. Um, behind the scenes at Consensus, we'll be working on the artwork, typesetting, and getting the book together. We have, um, I think Alex is going to be writing the introduction. We may have a foreword from Max Hillebrand, a great Thinker and reader and writer in the space. Um, and yeah, we will be getting everything ready for the big launch, which I can reveal will be on March the 14th, 2025. Uh, I told Niko this the other day, so I guess he can remember, but why is that date? Especially important? 2 reasons, maybe. Niko?

Oh, why don't you tell the audience?

The date is important because, uh, it is in 1900, the day that the Gold Standard Act was passed in the US. And we believe it may be the date as well when Saifedean Ammous is releasing his book. So we may be able to work together to launch a fiction project in a bigger way. I think it would be really cool to have, to make the TradFi press, if that is possible, and spread the word about the dangers of our current financial system. And what that might lead to through fiction. That's my idea anyway. So we'll be working towards that and we'll keep all the authors updated. If anybody listening is here just as a reader or an interested party, the best way to keep up with what we are doing at ConsenSys Network is to subscribe to our newsletter. There'll be a link for that. In everywhere that you're seeing this, um, a bit later. I'm not sure if I can add that now. Maybe I can. Hopefully this is appearing on the various platforms where you're watching this. Um, anyway, our newsletter is maximumfreedom@substack. Uh, please join that and find out what we're doing. Um, also you can pre-order the book. You can see a very tiny version of the COVID in the corner there. But it is available for presale now, so please check that out if you want to know more about project. And as I said, it'll be out in March. All right, final thing to talk about is, um, I know Niko's got a lot of views on this, is AI.

Um,

what are your thoughts about AI in the publishing

I wrote a lengthy thread about this when the thing about Spines came up. And those who don't know, Spines is a publishing company, a hybrid publishing company that is using AI to help you publish your book. Basically what we are doing, but the main difference is that they are really trying to make you the product. Um, there's nothing wrong with— like, there's a lot of good ideas, uh, good reasons to write a book, but especially if you're talking about niche books like, like Bitcoin books, I, I feel like operators like Spines are maybe not being completely honest about the sales potential, and maybe they are selling them the wrong product. To the authors, I think writing a book is kind of like an extension to your business card or to your LinkedIn profile. Like, it's good to have a book. It usually is not a great idea to use it as your only business, to try and write books unless you're really good. Really difficult to set yourself apart. There's a ton of books even about Bitcoin. Like, there's half of the books out there about Bitcoin, I don't even know about them. And, you know, I work in the field. So the really important thing, can't stress it enough, is the advertising of your product. If you're going to get self-published, you need to be able to commit some time to it. No one else can market your book better than you can. So I guess I would just say I don't want to trash the competition. The product is probably, you know, if people want to buy shitty AI generate a book, I guess they know what they're getting into. I, I think, uh, I don't want to bash AI either. It's a great tool to help you come up with some ideas, world building. I've used it for that, um, to get, get some ideas quickly out, but not necessarily saving time. It might actually take more time because you get it much more into, into the depths with AI. Same with AI art, really. Like, it's not necessarily a time. If you use it to save time, most likely your content is shit anyway. So to sum it up, I guess if you only want to have a book to check that box that you have written and published a book, I guess you can go ahead and use AI and KDP and, and get it out. Nobody's going to read it, then nobody's going to buy it, but at least you can do that. It's very accessible, so that's pretty cool.

Yeah, a couple of things to add to that is, um, I guess, um, what Niko is indirectly saying is if you have a book which relates to the ideals of freedom, Austrian economics, uh, and Bitcoin, Consensus Network wants to hear about it, and they may be able to help you to publish it in a hybrid manner, which means putting out a decent product but also getting behind you as an author to help you do that to help you market and sell the book. Some publishers in the space want to take your money and don't give a damn whether they sell one copy or a million. Um, most likely going to be fewer copies. The second point about AI is I brought this up because in the anthologies we use AI art, or it's sort of hybrid AI art because we, um, play around with it and use designers to make it better and more human, and That can be quite controversial because a lot of authors shy away from doing that and think, oh, we're taking opportunities away from designers. The reality of publishing on a tight budget and being— giving the opportunity to so many writers to be in a book like this is that these books wouldn't happen if we had to pay thousands and thousands for all of this chapter art. So we made the decision that, and hopefully it makes the book better, that we'll be doing it in a hybrid way, which is more affordable but that also creates some really cool visuals that we'll be able to use to promote the book as well. Um, so yeah, just a bit of an explanation about that. Hi to everyone who's, um, chatting away. Uh, Damon, I can see Eric K. Hi. Um, thanks for coming everybody. Uh, Matt Penny, hi on LinkedIn. Um, what about Andy? I'm not sure who that is. Is it Andy? Hi to everyone who's checking in. Uh, Niko, just to let you know, I have messaged you, um, the details of our prize winners, just to confirm that if you want to go ahead and announce in reverse order our 4th place winner. Now, just before you do, the 4th place for our Financial Fallout competition, um, the 4th place prize is $100 and a signed book. I'm not sure what book that's going to be, but we'll let you know. And for anyone who has won a prize, we will be in touch, right? We have your details. We will be in touch in the next couple of days with details on how to claim that prize and how it works, but we'll get that all, um, ticked off and sorted out. Now, what happened with our 4th place is we actually couldn't decide between 2 of our entries, and we thought it would be such a shame if one of them missed out that we decided to split the prize in 2. So Both of these authors with their great stories will be winning $50, and they will each get a signed book. And Niko, do you want to reveal which stories they were and the authors?

Well, I would be happy to reveal them, but I would be amiss if I didn't let you do it because you actually did all the work. I, I did help a little bit. in selecting the best titles. And I have to say, I didn't read all of them. I read the ones that Phil recommended to me. And I think between the editors and myself, I think we, we reached consensus pretty quickly on, on what the top 5-ish is. As Phil said, that there was a really, really close call with the 4th place, so we decided to split that one. But I'm pretty happy to I'm confident that we found the correct one. Phil, you found the correct one with, with Alex. And, uh, yeah, maybe, maybe you can shed the light on those little by little. Let's see. All right, watchers on— 8 watchers now on YouTube. I can't see the other numbers.

Uh, we've definitely got some people on Twitter. I can see the views racking up. I'm really not, uh, Ofo Twitter Spaces. Anyway, final bit of, um, Preamble before I announce the prizes, I will do, is I forgot to mention how we came to this decision. As I said, I am the editor along with Alex Bost, and Niko is the publisher. So to be transparent about this, we read the stories. Obviously we know them pretty well because we've edited them and seen them out of these 21 entries. We Drew up a list of 10 stories which we thought could win the prize, and that was based on originality, whether they really hit brief of financial fallout. I think some of our stories were really closer to the theme than others. The quality of the writing as well, so just whether we felt that they were well-rounded, original, engaging stories, and I suppose a bit of personal taste as well because we're all different. But Alex and I drew up our lists, they were fairly similar, and we then let Niko in and had a call to decide the winners, which we pretty much agreed on. So I hope all of the authors out there see that it was a process that we didn't take lightly and was based on some kind of Mad methodology. 4th place goes to 2 authors. Um, the first was a wonderful Lovecraftian horror-like story about slugs. It's called Supplying the Slugs, and it was by Tomás de Saavedra. I'm not sure if Tomás is with us today. No. But congratulations, Tomas. Brilliant story. It's so much fun. And I know all the other authors and everyone reading the book is going to love it. The second winner of 4th place is an author who also had a story in our first anthology. This story, I would say, is like a timeless fable. It really reminded me of something like The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. It was a chilling, almost fantasy-like, old-style story, a bit different from what we normally get in 21 Futures. And it's called We Are Living Well, and that is by an anonymous author who goes by Satoshi Symbol. So brilliant, well done to you, Satoshi Symbol. Not sure if you're following But that $50 will be making its way to you along with a signed book, and congrats on getting published in the anthology. Just to give everyone a rest from my voice, Niko, how about announcing 3rd place, which is a prize of $250, and we will be giving them a big shout out on social media? I'm not sure exactly what that means, but promoting their links and reposting and retweeting some of their work, and so that readers can find out more about them.

I think DJ Borden is probably somewhere in the chat. I think I saw your name. Are you there?

DJ is with us on the stream. Yeah.

That is excellent. Are we bringing The authors up, or are we just doing it like— oh, there you are.

Let's, let's bring DJ in.

DJ, yeah, why don't you come in? Hey DJ, congratulations!

Thank you, appreciate it.

Tell us a little bit about your, your story, The Big Slash. Um, what can people expect from it?

So, inspiration— the, The Big Slash is, is inspired by that feeling you get when you swipe your card through the ATM and it either hits, uh, PIN code incorrect or insufficient funds or that little kind of center-of-your-chest anxiety moment that you get, except it's, it's really about what would happen if you had a centralized digital currency system. Because obviously the dystopian aspect of all of this is all of this would be impossible with Bitcoin. And so it's really down to if you have whitelists, if you have CBDCs, if you have stablecoins that are approved and KYC'd, and all of these things are still under the control of a centralized authority, what happens if you have a critical event that blacklists everyone in that network and suddenly you don't have currency anymore? It's been 20 years since you've printed money and all these things collapse. And on top of that, who could you possibly trust to restore a financial system like that? And so we just follow the main character as he goes through and tries to reclaim some semblance of life post-centralized currency and postmodern society, if you will.

Yeah, it's a very fast-paced story, I would say, really on theme. for our Financial Fallout anthology, and it's another one that I'm looking forward to sharing with everybody. I'm just adding some of the prize winners to the chat so everybody watching can confirm who they are. You'll all be published on the 21 Futures website as well, so we'll get We'll get that published soon. DJ, thanks so much for coming on. Um, congrats again, and thanks. Looking forward to working with you in a book.

Take care.

Okey-dokey, down to our final 2 prizes, the big ones. Second place, picking up a prize of $500, We should say this is US dollars paid in a settlement method of your choice. And they will be appearing on a podcast with either me or Alex. We have a podcast. We did one with many of the authors last time, and we'll be— the listeners, sorry, will be hearing a part of the story and getting an interview with this author. I believe this is an author who is not currently with us. They may be asleep because I think they live on the other side of the world from, from me or from us, and it will be very late for them. It is the author who again is anonymous but goes by the moniker DM. So the 2nd place prize Is a great story, more of a technical story, I should say, called Proxy Temit Noski. And I can't remember what Proxy Temit Noski means, Nico. Can you? It was it was Latin for something. I think DM told us at one point. If any of the other authors know, if they heard that in the chat or in our Telegram group, then remind me.

I think it's Know Thyself.

Know Thyself. Okay, well, well done. It was a— I love Diem's writing. Again, he was an author who was published in our first anthology with very sort of deep and thought-provoking piece about AI this time. Slightly different approach, but a similarly deep and meaningful story. And it's going to be—

I should say, based on the feedback we've gotten during the last 1 year, I think it's the top story of Volume 1, which is this book, the AI story. I think it's the first— it's not the first one, it's the second to first. It's like after the prequel, so it's right in the beginning of the anthology. Starts with a big bang. It's a really good story too, so great job. And so obviously that's why I got the reward.

Great. Yeah, I'm just showing some of these, uh, our 4 prize winners so far on the screen, and we've made it to the half-hour mark, so we won't keep you much longer. All we have to do is announce. The winner of the Financial Fallout 21 Futures Anthology competition. Super exciting to be giving away such a great prize. I know as a short fiction writer myself, this is a really cool opportunity, and, um, hope that it will inspire more people to write this kind of fiction, more people to write short fiction, and to enter competitions like this, which to be honest, take maybe more effort and time to prepare a story for because it's on a theme and it's something that our publisher and we care about very much. The prize, as well as winning $1,000, is a feature interview. We will be launching our new site portal for 21 Futures. We have a bunch of exciting things coming— reviews, videos, possible audiobooks. A bigger world of 21 Futures in addition to this, these anthologies that will be coming along with this anthology in Q1 next year. So the winner will be receiving an interview that we published on the site. They will be welcome on our podcast as well, so we'll arrange an interview on that. And of course, we'll win $1,000, which is what we're all really interested in. This story, I think, for me hit the brief to a tee. It was something that when I started to read it, I immediately thought, this is somebody who has written a lot of sci-fi short stories and futuristic short stories. It was very well paced, accurate, and hit the brief. It was exciting until The very last word, uh, and has a pretty engaging twist at the end. Without further ado, the winner of our anthology competition with his story Infinite Debt is Graham Shimmin.

Yeah, here we go.

Uh, it's $1,000 featuring— goes to Graham Schimann.

Really nice work on the brief indeed. This could be— this is probably the closest to what I had in mind when I made the, the concept art for the COVID which I think the— maybe you can see it somewhere here, somewhere here in the corner, with the kind of like Fallout-ish type of art. And, um, quite a few. I, I think this time the narrowing of the topic did good for the anthology. I think it's much more coherent than the first one. The first one was kind of like a taste of everything, which is also fine, but this is— I'm really surprised and happy with how on topic the, the stories are. And of course we had like 3 times more than for the first anthology. So there's a lot of interest in this. And I guess worth stressing what Phil said earlier, like we're building a much broader community, not just something beyond the anthologies. So this will be— 21 Futures will be the home for Bitcoin and libertarian fiction. And we're doing, uh, in January we're doing the Lodging by Wayfaring Men which is a cyberpunk fiction classic. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend you read the one, the definitive edition that we're pushing out next month. I couldn't get it out for Christmas. We still have some work to do, but it will be out early next year. So look forward to that. And this is going to be the way forward, I think, to bring these interesting stories to a broader knowledge through using the 21 Futures imprint and And brand. And the anthology is just going to be a big part of it, bringing new authors and old authors together. We have this Telegram where ideas is shared, and I, I think it's going to be a really interesting community to be a part of, especially in the beginning. So you, you can join the Telegram and help us build it.

Exactly. If you're watching on X and you like reading or writing fiction which is based on any of the things that, uh, Niko just said, come and spam our page, join our Telegram group, uh, check out our site, and, uh, just be a part of it because we are building from, uh, pretty much, you know, nothing to something pretty big. All right, Graham, uh, do you want to come on and say a few words? We'd like to congratulate you in person. We'll bring you on.

Hey, hi, Graham. Very surprised.

Big congrats.

Yeah, thank you very much.

Congrats.

Can you tell us a little bit about the story? How did it come about?

Yeah, sure. I mean, it was really— I run a writing group and we saw that the competition was on and we just did it as a kind of a theme for us all to write about. I'm not going to pretend I know a huge amount about Bitcoin, but dystopias are dystopias. And yeah, it was just a financial dystopia. Like, I mean, the title gives a lot of the story away. It's about people misusing the debt system, really. A kind of— it's not exactly fascism, but it's— and it's also got a lot of sci-fi in it as well, you know, with the debt enforcement drones that they use and that kind of thing. So yeah, yeah, quite surprised, but yeah, it's fantastic.

Great. Well, thanks for coming on, Graham. I hope you're Pleased with it all? Yeah, it works again.

Please God. Yeah, well,

uh, we've, we've got a bunch of other authors to say hi to, so I don't know if it will crash the stream if I try and bring everyone on, but, uh, I'm gonna try and do it anyway. Let's all just have a party and see if the internet can, can handle it. Um, Will, welcome along. I can—

I kind of need to go in a couple of minutes anyway, so I could drop out if you like.

All right, Graham, I'll take you off screen and just add in a few other people here. Gillian, welcome along, another author in our great anthology. DJ, welcome back. Um, Alex, I can see you waiting in the wings. I think that's everyone that we've got joining our live stream at the moment. Welcome all. Um, I just want to say, uh, even if you didn't win one of our prizes today, big congrats on making a book. As somebody who read all the stories that came in, I can say that the standard was very high. We had to reject quite a lot of good stories which would have made it into other anthologies or which would have been published, you know, elsewhere on a blog or in another magazine. So really well done. Thanks for submitting, and I hope you enjoy the process and get behind the book and help us spread the word of 21 Futures. Great. Well, I'll give you all just a second. Where can people find you? We can see your names on screen, but maybe you just want to— might want to say where people can find you and connect with you online just before we go. Gillian, do you want to go first? Sure, yeah.

Actually, it's very funny. I was laughing when Niko— you can hear me, can you? You can hear me?

I can hear you fine.

Yeah. When Niko was saying about the AI crap, I had some fun recently. I wrote a poem with my local writing group and the poem stroke prose, whatever. And then I got AI to do a review of my poem. Gosh, it was very favorable. And then I said, oh, I wonder if I wrote my poem in a a Kavanagh version or a James Joyce version or a Hunter S. Thompson version. So I put it through AI. It's an amazing experience just to see Chaucer, Jared Mandy Hopkins, all these different poets rewriting my poetry. So it was just— and I totally get it. I mean, Niko, writers, we are a dying breed in some respects, whatever. But this was such a fun project to do. Anyway, so thank you so much for involving me. I really enjoyed it. I'm LinkedIn. My name is Gillian Gottschall. I'm a journalist in Web3. So I write about this stuff a lot. I do less— I don't do so much sci-fi writing, so I really enjoyed this one. And, um, it's given me a taste. And also, it's on your site there too, you need more women writers. So I, I may come up with some pitches because, um, definitely need more women in the space.

If you're a woman writer in the space, reach out to us. And of course, we want to reach everyone and publish, you know, more people from All walks of life. So agree with that, Julia, and congrats on being in the book.

Thank you.

DJ, where can people find you?

Hey folks, you can find me just by typing DJ Bodden in Google and you will find one of the channels that my wife has set up because she's my marketing director. I've got 18 books with my name on them in sci-fi. This will be my first honest specific focus on crypto, although I do use crypto in a number of my books. It was lovely to be part of it, and we need more women in the space as writers or otherwise, so that is always welcome.

Yeah, welcome. I can see SF in the comments is another one of our authors. If you're just tuning in, you've missed the prize winners, unfortunately, but But one of them is here with us, and the grand winner, Graham, had to shoot. But we're just going to kick it for another minute or so. And congrats on SF on being in the anthology. Alex, you've been waiting very patiently there. Welcome back. Alex is another one of our writers who has the honor of being in both anthologies so far. Hi.

Thank you.

Welcome back.

Well, uh, yeah, thank you. It is— it's been fun to participate in the first project, and it's fun to participate in the second one. I look forward to reading everyone's stories. The best way to find me is, uh, uh, on X, or you can Google my name, Alex Gurevich. It's a common name, but fortunately I think I come up first. But @agurevich23, uh, is my handle on X. And I should pop up pretty easily there.

Great, thanks for joining us. Um, just 2 people to say hi to before we go. Uh, Will, Real Bitcoin Dog, thanks for joining us, uh, all the way from the West Coast of the USA, I believe.

That's right, from LA. Uh, and like, you know, Philip, uh, there's no such thing as being too busy We're all busy. You got to make time. So I just dropped off my kids at daycare, made it happen, made it work. I mean, there you go. The Bitcoin message, Bitcoin fiction doesn't stop trying to raise the next generation of Bitcoiners and start it all. But yeah, so happy to be included in the first anthology, 21 Futures, like you said. And For me, my website's realbitcoindog.com. I have 2 books, The Bitcoin Dog, following a set to the Bitcoin C++ source code, and the name of my short story in The First 21 Features is Who Let the Bitcoin Dogs Out? Definitely a treat. I hope all the authors in this anthology read it. Thank you.

I hope you're not having a childcare fallout or a Daycare Dystopia over there. Uh, thanks for joining us, Will. Uh, Satillionaire, do you want to just say hi? Thanks for joining, Sati.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Very excited to be back and read this next, uh, edition of stories. I, I really loved a lot of the stories in the first version. I think this is a great thing you guys are putting together. I'm super pumped to be part of it. And, um, Satillionaire, I'm on, uh, Satillionaire21 on X, but I'm slowly becoming a Nostr maximalist. I really like it over there. I mean, I strongly suggest like checking it out. It's awesome, like sending Bitcoin, receiving micropayments in Bitcoin. I have a little like daily film festival I run over there called Bullish Bounty. Uh, the best film of the day wins 2,100 sats every day at 2,100 UTC. So check it out, Bullish Bounty. Thanks again, guys.

Seconded. Nostr is a brilliant place for creators and Zero bullshit social media, so check it out. It is a bit complicated to get into at first, but if you know anything about Bitcoin and you're a creator, then head over there. Twenty One Futures has an account over there too, and we generally post memes and fun stuff. Great! Thanks so much for joining everyone. Congrats again on being part of the anthology. March the 14th is the big day for the book. We'll be having a launch event, so you'll all be invited back then. everyone who wants to come on and say hi and talk about their stories. We'll be putting the podcast out in the meantime and annoying lots of traditional media outlets by trying to get them to publish news about our dystopian anthology. So that's gonna be my job over the next couple of months.

Will you share the press release and I'll see what I can do on this side of the world?

Will do, will do. Really appreciate all your support and help in spreading the word. for the anthology and the idea. And yeah, 21 Futures, keep your eye on our social channels, follow Consensus's newsletter. Remember, that is maximumfreedom.substack. And yeah, just check out the comments for any other links. If you have any questions, you can always get in touch with me via the 21 Futures account on X or on Nostr. or reach out to ConsenSys Network. Thanks so much for coming, everyone, and big congrats to the winners and everyone in the book.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Bye, everyone. We'll see you next time. We'll keep you all informed about your prize money and next steps for the book.