21 Futures Live Special

Sure. So much to say. First of all, I think by saying it's something new, I think you're doing the book a bit of a disservice. This is a world first, people. This is a world first. I don't think there has been an anthology of stories, of fiction stories written about Bitcoin. And I think it's going to be really big. And hopefully, people out there will like it. I mean, one thing you said, Niko, was that you want to get people interested. For me, it comes down to the word care, right? People have got so much to focus on nowadays that it's hard to get attention, to get them interested. You have to make them care, and people care about stories. I'm pretty new to Bitcoin myself, but if you were to mention Bitcoin to the man on the street, they'd probably remember some guy, uh, who, who bought pizza for 10,000 bitcoins and, you know, read about that story. And it's because we connect to people, um, and connect to these ideas through stories. So yeah, first and foremost, I think that's why the project is really cool, because it's trying to get people to care, um, and also to, to build sort of empathy and understanding in the Bitcoin world as well through, through getting people more involved in, in fiction and, uh, and stories. I suppose let me back up a little bit and tell everyone who I am because, uh, people involved with ConsenSys Network might not know me. I'm a, um, what am I? I'm an author, I'm a writer. I write short stories and I've published quite a few books and published in anthologies my short fiction. That's sort of my passion in life. And as Niko said, we came into contact when we were working together on Niko's writing. That's something that I do. I help others with their writing. And This eventually evolved into coming up with this idea. You know, I thought it would be great to try and reach out with stories and get people involved in Bitcoin. And Niko has the perfect, amazing publishing house dedicated to the very topic. So I thought it would be really cool. And as an added benefit, we have superstars like Nutt and other writers who are going to be ready to submit some stories for the anthology. So maybe I'll pass it over to Nutt and you can tell us how you got involved with the project and what you think of it so far.

Yeah. We'll have to wait and see if I can write fiction because this is a first for me writing fiction. So it's very interesting because it's so out of my ordinary box. Like, I don't really know what— I'm not a fiction writer, but I— or at least I don't know if I am one until I've tried. But like, I didn't know that I was a, you know, Bitcoin author either until I tried. So the only way to figure out is to write something, I guess. And I hope I can live up to all of these expectations. And we'll see what the story is supposed to be about. I think that will unveil it. The story will Reveal itself during, during the journey, I guess. And I got involved because I'm involved with the ConsenSys Network and Niko. So we had a couple of meetings about this and decided to, to do it this way. 21 short stories for people who've seen The Matrix 10 times and still don't get it, I guess. So yeah, the aim is to orange pill people in the end and make them realize that there is another way to coexist with your fellow human beings peacefully. And we do that through Bitcoin.

Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what kind of submissions we're going to get. Like you said, if you don't try, you will never know. I'm looking forward to see not only from some, some big name Bitcoiners, but also just anybody to see who, I mean, who can rise to the occasion. Like, for example, like you said, you didn't know you're an author. I didn't know I'm a publisher either. Like, that happened by accident. So I just have to kind of like try and figure out where you fit in, in the world. Yeah.

There's a Kurt Vonnegut quote from the beginning of a Kurt Vonnegut book. I don't remember which one, but it starts with, All characters, fictional or non-fictional, are purely coincidental. So I kind of like that. So you figure out what you are and what your abilities are during your journey, I guess. And yeah, we'll see what this turns out to be. Excited for the project and excited to get like bring all the authors together. That's a big aspect of it, to do a collaborative project like this. It's all about collaboration, so why the hell not?

Yeah, why don't we talk about what stories we would like to read? What kind of stories, like a short story, would you love to read about Bitcoin?

Yes, because we should also make it clear to everyone that we still take submissions and we'd like to read your stories. Niko has something to say about that.

What's the deadline?

No, I'm just saying that pressing Bitcoin matters reads on my—

Yeah, yeah, yeah, pressing Bitcoin matters, Black Matter Lives, and so on. So we're We want you to submit your best fictional Bitcoin stories, and then we'll pick 21 out of however many submissions we get in the future. That's the plan here.

Of course, we should mention that Knut is going to have a slot in the book anyway. Yeah, so far. Unless magically we find 21 better stories than Knut's. So the heat is on.

Yeah, so my, my, uh, my story has a free pass to be the shittiest story in the entire book then, I guess.

Not necessarily, because we've been also actually thinking about, uh, well, maybe I shouldn't spill the beans on this, but, uh, I'm gonna anyway, thinking about actually publishing secretly one story written entirely by an AI, and just to see if we can pass it off as a— will people pick up, pick up on that? I think that will be That'll be interesting. I don't know if we're gonna do it, so maybe, maybe not.

Yeah, so when's the deadline? I forgot, like everything else.

End of February.

End of February.

There's a little bit over a month, so plenty of time. Only 3,000 words or, or less. Um,

I can also spill the beans, going back to what you said about AI, that, that we have received a submission written by ChatGPT, and I immediately understood that it was written by ChatGPT because it was not a story and it was not very interesting. So

we have a guest joining us, by the way.

Yeah, into the final cut, but you know, I'm sure it will improve.

There's a legend in the house.

Yeah, Fractal is in the house. Hey, Fractal, nice to have you.

How you doing, man? Fractal, you're muted.

Well, we'll let Fractal reply when, when able. Yeah, and he's dropped out again. Coming back anyway. Continue, continue. ChatGPT, all this.

Yeah, I, I'm curious, did ChatGPT submit The story, it's— was it ChatGPT that submitted the story or someone submitting on ChatGPT's behalf?

It was someone submitting on ChatGPT's behalf. And I should—

thank God for that.

I should say that with AI, it very much depends on input, right? Because if you give these tools a poor prompt, something that's very vague, you're going to get something very vague back. So if you really know how to use these tools, then you can get something better out of it. But I expect that this person wrote something like, write a story about Bitcoin, and they got something back which wasn't really a very engaging story.

All right, let's, let's see if Fractal is with us now. Fractal, can you say something so we can see if you're here, or hear if you're here? Oh, Fractal?

Still nothing.

Fractal, feel free to chime in whenever you like.

That's interesting, Phil, what you said about the prompting, because I start to think that the inevitable direction of authoring is going to take the direction of prompting, similar way that Googling kind of overtook going to library in information search. So maybe this whole AI thing is going to kind of replace bulk of the authoring work, and then it will be just a condensed, you know, prompting experience to actually write a book, and then a lot of editing, obviously. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I think certainly writing will change, um, what we do as writers. I think one of the last elements to change, or one of the more difficult things to replicate, will be stories because they are so rooted in a very deep and diverse, like, human experience, which is experienced over a long time in a variety of different ways by different people. So I think it may be a while before we see a really great story that's written by By computer. Yes, sorry, Niko, go ahead.

Yeah, we can use it as a tool for our own writing though. Like, I use Grammarly, for instance, and I love it. The trick though is to know when to use it and when not to use it. So sometimes when it gives you a suggestion, you have to tell it to fuck off and That took a while to figure out that you don't always have to do what the machine tells you to do. But when you learn how to use it properly, it can be a very powerful tool. So like everything else, you need to learn how to tell it to fuck off. Like, that's always key.

I'm glad you said that. I mean, people might be surprised to hear, you know, my job is being a writing coach and helping people with their writing. So everyone might be surprised to hear me saying what I do about digital tools and that they're useful. And I agree, I think Grammarly is great, it's very useful. All these other tools too, we can get a lot out of them. The key for me is like, you don't want it involved in the creative process. And if you've got Grammarly switched on while you're writing, it's telling you, tapping you on the shoulder all the time saying, use a different word, or, you know, do you really want to phrase that in this more authoritative, longer way when you could be shorter. It's like, well, I don't want Grammarly telling me that until I'm checking, right? Until after the process is done. But that's my thoughts on it.

It depends on what you're writing and how, I guess. Like, if I'm writing something that is very boxed into a certain category of writing style, I might want Grammarly suggestions to be there all the time. But if I'm, you know, constructing a story, I might want to use Grammarly afterwards, as you say.

But I'd counter that by saying that Grammarly doesn't know anything about style because it doesn't understand your intent as a writer. So it has hard suggestions, things like, you should use the active voice because we generally prefer that, right? Yeah, but it doesn't understand if you're writing a business report, then using the passive voice might actually be quite helpful and appropriate, and it won't understand that. But it may, as I said, it may develop and sort of get better functions too.

Yeah, it's a pity that Fractal seems to have some technical issues here. We'll see Fractal has published a fantastic comic book, Bitcoin comic book called the Time Chain Codex, which you should all, I urge you to check it out.

Oh yeah, you need to check it out. Yeah,

he's been using an AI for the artwork there. But, and it looks absolutely stunning. So check that out if you haven't yet. So let's see if, if Fractal is with us.

And that's, by the way, something worth mentioning. Like, I at least want to see some really cool artwork in the book. Like, once we have selected the stories, we're going to be looking for also artists to provide us some art to go with those, those stories. So I think it's going to be a really, really nice product from, from that end. Maybe even we worthy of some kind of a coffee table book with some nice full-color or full-page art or something. I'm just thinking out loud. What do you guys think?

Absolutely. Fractal is asking me a couple of questions here. Fractal, we only see a gray square and nothing else, so we can't really see you.

Sorry, Fractal. Thanks for your efforts. Um, yeah,

well, not even the Avatar. No, sorry. Uh,

that's unfortunate.

It's very unfortunate. But anyway, another idea about this, uh, book is that we, we might turn these things into, uh, into little movies afterwards if, if, uh, I mean There are a lot of filmmakers in the Bitcoin space that might be interested in doing that. So we'll see where it leads. I mean, well,

I mean, why don't we spill the beans on that as well?

Am I spilling too many beans here, Niko?

No, no, no, I was gonna say that as well. I'm glad you mentioned it. I actually, like, one week after we launched the project, somebody— I'm not gonna tell necessarily who because I'm not sure if they want to be mentioned yet. But let's say that somebody contacted us and are interested in making this anthology into a short movie series. And they're like professional movie makers, recently orange-pilled. So that seems like a slam dunk to me. And maybe this will work as a motivation for any of the writers, because we really want you to bring your A-game. We want the best stories. So, and also in my mind, like, these are just like we're setting 21 moods through the lens of Bitcoin into the future. And if those moods resonate and they create, you know, interest and feelings, there's no limit really how much we can expand. Like, we can take a story and expand it into a whole series of books or movies or anything. Like, that's what I want to see. I want to see these— portals open into possible, like, Bitcoin dimensions. And I think Bitcoin fiction can be big. It hasn't been done properly. And yeah, really excited about that.

Well, The Matrix, The Matrix was done properly.

Matrix was done properly, correct.

And I would say, if you haven't seen a series called Severance, you should check it out because I think that's like The, um, I second that. It's spot on, uh, full of Bitcoin references without even knowing that it's referencing Bitcoin. I think

it's amazing. When Knut told me that it challenges Matrix in the Matrix analogy, I was like, get out of here. But then I watched it and, uh, I'm inclined to agree. So check it out.

Well, looking forward to the second Second season, they might fuck it up. Who knows? All right, we can see Fractal's wonderful artwork now, so we can see his avatar now.

All

right, okay, there he is. Perfect. Welcome, Fractal.

Nice. Guess it was a browser issue. Beautiful. Thanks, uh, for a suggestion there.

Good to hear your voice, man.

Oh yeah, man, glad to join y'all. I've been enjoying listening, uh, listening along. So I, you know, I thought I was commenting and stuff. It was just Nobody else was hearing me. So good to have my voice heard with y'all. It sounds like a really interesting conversation. Definitely glad to join in.

Yeah, I think you should start thinking about a— if you haven't done so already, you should start thinking about a story to submit for this thing.

When is the submissions deadline?

28th of February.

Nice. I mean, the thing is, is I've got a lot of stories swimming around my head. You guys had mentioned the Timechain Codex, and I looked at that as more setting up a framework, almost like a world building. You know, the story itself didn't really have like personal interconnections or people interacting with each other or the drama of, of something horrible happening to the main character, which you really need in a story. So, um, I think we were kind of doing some world building in my mind, just creating that story. And now I have a lot of things to insert into there. So what does it look like if you have to be on a ship traveling for 75 years to deliver an iceberg, but your, your life happens to be longer? And you know, that, that's how you stack sats and stuff is by, by actually providing work in these, these really far-out scenarios. So, so doing that was really fun, just kind of creating the world. But now I think there's just— I have stories to tell within that world, but I'm also like selfishly hoping for entertainment to come from other people by having that world to build within. Maybe other people will be inspired. And, you know, like, this basically sets out a framework that lasts millions of years, so there's plenty of human stories to tell in that time. So yeah, I've been thinking about it, so maybe something will come. We'll see.

Just those sentences alone is like spot on exactly what we're looking for, isn't it? Like, this is amazing. Yeah.

Yeah, man, you, you, you gotta, you gotta submit. Like, I want to read that story.

I think the thing is, if you put something in here, right, then the 2 are linked, you know, the anthology will have part of Timechain Codex in there and then the worlds are automatically linked and it all goes, right?

Absolutely. I love that. And, you know, I heard you guys talking about using ChatGPT and other AI tools, and I think what these things are, just like any kind of creative tool, like a Photoshop or a pencil or something like that for an artist— like, I don't have much experience using it for fiction or word stuff, although I did play around with it— but I think there's a lot of really neat tools for artists. Like, I've used it for— I think as an artist, we always look for reference images. For example, if you want to draw a picture of a cat, you kind of want to know what a cat looks like. So you go to the internet and you see what other pictures of cats are out there, and then kind of draw from that. And, you know, because you want it to look realistic and you want to transfer that basic idea. So now, like, these weird AI tools, you feed it in this image or this idea and it comes back with something totally outlandish, and it's still actually in line with what you were kind of wanting to do. And I think these, these kind of leaps in imaginary thinking and, and reference images for, for artists and using it as a tool is very powerful. So I thought kind of the next level of doing the Timetane Codex, because I was limited in the AI. The reason I didn't do a character story was very purposeful because the AI, the Midjourney software I was using to generate the images, didn't handle, uh, character arcs. For example, if I wanted to do a character that goes through a story, it's hard to get the same character over and over and over again through Midjourney, at least at that time. It may be easier now. So if you want to follow characters, a whole bunch of them doing different things, that was almost impossible to do with that time. But now you could do things with Stable Diffusion, like train it on what a person looks like, give it like a whole bunch of images of a person doing different, different things, and then tell it, this is John, and then give it a girl doing a whole bunch of different things, and this is Betty. And then you can actually create a story with those characters in it in these fantastic worlds. So I think there's some really neat opportunities there. And I was thinking, oh, it'd be cool to get some Bitcoiners that wanted to be these characters in the story, and you just basically hire them to do a whole bunch of photographs of themselves in different poses, and then you feed that into the AI and train it on the dataset. This is character A, this is character B, this is character C, and then you just use them in your story. And then that person is also like forever within the story. You basically hire the actor by having them do that. So this is just a thought, you know. Go, go.

Sorry. Uh, yeah, can I have the hat on,

please? Roll

with it. Tell me where to send the photos. I want to be in your space story, of course.

Oh, see? All right. Yeah, yeah, see, that would be super cool. We can have Knut. I think, I think he'd be a great like lead character. So definitely. We gotta, we gotta do this up. So I think that would be fun. And, um, oh yeah, there's a lot of opportunities for, for storytelling.

Have you ever considered translations of the Timechain Codex?

I've had a couple people already translate it into other languages, and that just blew my mind that people wanted to do that. I just like— that was actually extremely humbling. And, and it's already been translated into a couple languages. We actually had Spanish recently, which I thought was a major win since that's such a huge world, world language. And Really like the way that it includes other people that I guess couldn't interact with it before. So that's super trippy. But yeah, the translations are super powerful and I hadn't realized anybody cared enough about my stuff to do that. So it's very neat.

Yeah, I think we got some of our starfish helping out with that.

Yeah. All right. So we're already on that ball, of course. Yeah. I'm just behind the curve here.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, Fractal, you should do whatever you feel like doing because everything that comes out of you is fucking spectacular. So we shouldn't try to tell you what to do and what not to do because you're by far the best judge of that already.

Yeah, it's hard to bifurcate your time into what projects exist, but it's definitely good to get these nudges and these pushes here and there because like, You know, sometimes things come out of your mind for a while and like re-enter again. So, you know, for example, I had something with the, uh, the original Bitcoin full node sculpture. It, you know, it has like a— in my mind there's an animation that works to it. And I was talking to the conference guys about doing a big animation of it for the Miami event. And so that was like something I had dropped years ago and totally forgot about. Now it's like back in my mind again. So yeah, you never know where your time might line. But I do think that What you, you know, what you guys are doing, this story, uh, project is extremely powerful because humans have been telling stories for, you know, since we sat around the campfire and there was nothing else. You know, history, human history translates through stories. And that's what, you know, like it was mentioned earlier, I think Niko was saying, like, that's what makes people care about it is that there's some kind of a human element. And that's almost what I was saying before. You have to have something horrible happen to the main character because you want to care about this person. Like, oh my God, are they going to make it through? So, you know, I, I love the storytelling aspect. I've never thought of myself as an as an author, really. So I don't know where that path might go for me. But certainly, like, the Timechain Codex was a really neat thing because mostly it's just a translation of Drew Van Sol's articles. But to make it work in my framework, I had to actually write the first 40 pages myself. So that was like my first foray into, like, I guess, fiction. So that was fun for me.

Excellent.

Well, it shows that, you know, just with some creativity, right, you can produce this short stories, this fiction and all this. And so we're hoping to see some great submissions, including from our Canoe tier, who's a little bit worried about whether he can produce some fiction. So glad to get some inspiration directly to him here.

Yeah, I think you can go from 0 to 1 pretty quickly with a lot of this stuff. It's, you know, you can like never have done this before. And then all of a sudden, you know, once you actually take yourself from I've never done this before to actually producing one piece of work, that's actually a huge step in your life. So producing the comic book was actually huge for me just you know, first conceptualizing. Honestly, if you think about it, because comic books— I've always loved comic books. As a kid, I just read them. It was just such an amazing storytelling medium because there's unlimited special effects budget. You could literally like go as far out as you want with the special effects, and there's really no cost other than your time to draw it. And so I just have always loved comics as a storytelling medium, but I hadn't ever thought it was possible to make one myself. And then really— and that's a pretty big task if you think about it. Normally, like, to make a comic book, you're going to need like a colorist, a pencilist, a letterer, You know, like there's an anchor, there's multiple people that are going to touch this to make it happen. And so to make it possible for one person to do that, that's one of the things that I think the AI is neat with. It allows us to leverage tools that we may not have been able to do something before, whereas now it's something that becomes possible because we just have a new toolset to actualize. So I think those are neat things. But I think what's important for everybody listening is just the fact that you can go from 0 to 1 where it's like I wasn't an author before, in quotes, and now like I've produced something. I mean, I even have an article in Citadel 21 too now. So it's like I have 2 actually like just non-visual pieces, although they do have some visual— well, I guess Time Tank Codex is not a non-visual piece, so I will stop lying.

It's very much a visual piece.

Yeah,

you get— but you don't go from 0 to 1, you go from 0 to 21.

Beautiful.

That's the trick.

I'd like to pick up on a couple of things you said. I mean, it's great to hear your enthusiasm, and I'm really looking forward to checking out your cognitive fractal. Sounds awesome. Yeah, I just wanted to pick up on what you said about going from 0 to 1. You can do it. The idea behind this project is twofold, really. Like, let's get Bitcoiners writing fiction and into that. It's possible. Like, if you've got a story, if you've got an idea, you can already see how amazing it will be for it once it's published to fracture off into all of these different universes and mediums, and including, you know, AI and video making and comics and all of the things that we're talking about. I think that's, that's really exciting. So my message, uh, yeah, I'll just echo what you said. You can do it. Um, my role as editor, I'm you know, going to be selecting the stories which are most moving, which are most, um, that make me care the most. And I really liked what Niko said about stories told through the lens of Bitcoin, right? What we want, um, to read really is a great story with something that's made possible by Bitcoin, a situation that arises because of it, right? Rather than a story about technology or about the, um, about that. Uh, I just read quickly from the, um, from the submissions, uh, call that we put out. It says, uh, primarily our editors are looking for gripping human interest stories with emotional impact. They want strong characters, high stakes, and moments of epiphany and change. The idea is not to predict the future of Bitcoin, but to expose a situation it may uncover. We're keen to publish a variety of visions, not just sci-fi dystopias or stories of crime and fraud. I'm really hoping too that a lot of normies like me, writers who are not Bitcoiners, will be happy to get involved. This has such huge scope to bridge the gap of, you know, sci-fi writers or speculative writers especially who want to submit And the story doesn't have to heavily feature Bitcoin, has to use it in some kind of meaningful way. So I hope that a lot of fiction writers will get involved as well, that they'll want to submit. And yeah, I just, I guess I'll pass it back to the rest of you guys.

Before you, before you do that, Phil, maybe you can go a little bit into that because Phil has connections to the normie author land. So this project is open to everybody, so not only Bitcoiners. So maybe talk a little bit about that, like where else is this project advertised and what are we expecting?

Yeah, sure. I mean, as I said, my sort of background with writing is in the world of short fiction. The way that universe works is there's normally literary magazines which have quite a low circulation. They're often passion projects of people who are putting out quite challenging and high-level writing and stories. So a lot of short fiction will be published in those zines, either online or in physical copy. There's also anthologies like our one, which some will be themed, some will be competition-based, some will be you know, not have a theme where writers can submit, you know, different types of stories and get published along with others. Those are probably the primary ways that short fiction gets out there into the world. It's not a big seller like your novels, right? If you go to an airport and you look in a bookshop, you probably won't see many short fiction books. I wish that you did because it's so— it's such an exciting form of writing. I

basically grew up with sci-fi anthologies, the little magazines that you'd get, and they were just a little bit bigger than maybe, you know, the palm of your hand, and they were just full of different stories by Harlan Ellison and, you know, just every science fiction author that you can imagine. I think that was such a powerful way for me to kind of come into contact with some out-there ideas kind of growing up, and that was certainly formational. And I think for anybody listening, this is like an area of Bitcoin culture that has yet to be mined. This is a very revolutionary area because there's so much educational content. There's so many like how to use Bitcoin, what is Bitcoin. There's even, you know, Bitcoin visual art, which I do. I think that's also underrepresented in an area where people can do a lot still. There's just so much there. But the fiction Bitcoin area is just so underrepresented. There's so little of it and so much— like, I have every Bitcoin comic and every kind of like Bitcoin book that you can imagine, and most of it has to spend a little time with, you know, exposition and telling what is Bitcoin and how does it work. And now we're at a point where actually the readers are more educated than that. You don't have to start at level 1. You can actually— like, the Timechain Codex actually assumes a pretty high level of understanding of Bitcoin for the reader. And even if you don't have it, it's— it can kind of, I've been told, bring some people into it because it kind of engages you in that way. So I think fiction is something that, that any listener should be inspired to kind of create. We all have a story to tell, and I think if you tell that story through this Bitcoin lens, you're going to find a whole new audience that kind of starving for some content. And I, I hope this project does really good because I personally think, like, I would like to consume content made by and for Bitcoiners with a little bit of Bitcoin ethos thrown in, you know. Like, so much of content that we experience nowadays is diluted or polluted with, with viewpoints. Pretty much since the beginning, you know, the CIA has been involved in, like, movies and telling people what to do with it, you know, since the 1920s in Hollywood. So there's always been a bit of narrative, public narrative, that you get in these publicly consumable stories. So I think producing content by ourselves for ourselves allows us to break out of that narrative tunnel that's being forced upon us and also give us a little chance to spread our wings and think about things in a different way and share those thoughts. And I think other— just by doing this, you know, it opens you up to so many other possibilities. And, you know, just like until you have actually produced the work, nothing happens. You know, ideas are a dime a dozen. Anybody can have an idea. Ideas mean nothing. It's the execution. You know, it's like once you put the work on the table that people start to listen.

Yeah, and there are so many great science fiction writers and fantasy writers that started by writing short stories and submitting them to magazines, right? Like from George R.R. Martin to H.P. Lovecraft, like— Yeah,

it's like a lost thing.

Almost everyone. Yeah, it's like a lost art form that we could like revitalize by doing projects like this, I guess.

I think like you said, Fractal, it's still the short fiction magazines and community that's still going quite strong, or is still fairly— short fiction is fairly mainstream, is sci-fi and is speculative fiction. And just to touch on what Niko was saying, where is this out there? We're hoping to get submissions from these short fiction writers, people who are publishing in these kinds of magazines, that they'll be interested through submissions portals, through contacting things like Sci-Fi Writers of America community, and yeah, any groups that we can find to get the word out about writing and submitting a story for this. And yeah, I really liked what you said about the project, or sorry, just these sci-fi magazines and anthologies sparking your imagination, right? Your neurons are going to fire on all of these little ideas which are presented, and it's going to be cool to have a book where there's 21 of them. You know, there's going to be 21 universes, 21 different presentations of, of a future. And I think all of those have really cool possibilities to, to keep going, keep spreading out into other languages, other places, other characters, other stories, other mediums, and, and so on. So yeah, really excited about it.

Yeah, talking about the other languages, I already got like one, one submission in, in, uh, Somebody wanted to submit in Portuguese, I believe, or another language. And I think this has a chance to— like, we could also publish original stories in other languages, you know, maybe on the second round or something like that. And of course, not to mention the translations, which obviously is going to happen once we get this one out in English. We can easily translate it into several languages, which is what we do anyway. And maybe just to mention, my role in this is I'm going to be co-editing with Philip. And my role is mostly going to be focusing on the accuracy of Bitcoin terminology and ideas to make sure that, you know, the stories don't need to be like 100% realistic in that sense, but they should be somehow like plausible or, you know, like— able to be derived from what would conceivably be possible within like the Bitcoin protocol. So it's not— it's believable stories, like let's put it that way, like not necessarily super realistic scenarios, but something that can be believed in the frame of fiction about Bitcoin. So I think that's where I bring most of the value on the project.

Sure. I mean, Niko's there to help out the non-Bitcoin authors, maybe represent what they're doing in a realistic and accurate way. And I'm, you know, here to work with writers as well. I mean, I wanted to talk about what you said about a Portuguese submission. We're accepting submissions in English, but, you know, I regularly work with people who are not native English writers, and what we're looking for in the work is a great story. It doesn't matter if there's an i that's undotted or a word out of place. It doesn't matter if, you know, the English is not 100% perfect. I will be there to work with, with the submitters to make their story the best possible. So you're going to get, if selected, you're going to get some editorial input and And we'll be here to help you make the story the best possible. And just super quickly as well before we move on, because I have to jump off and get on to another call at some point, just to— yes, just nail down exactly what we want, when, and what people are going to get in exchange, which I think is interesting. And should hopefully be motivating for people. Again, just reading from the 21 Futures website, so 21futures.com, uh, writers should submit stories between 1,500 and 3,000 words before the deadline of the 28th of February. If selected as one of the 21 stories to feature, authors will receive $100 in exchange for global publishing rights. And you can even get paid in Bitcoin, I believe. Is that right, Niko?

Of course.

You'll also get a copy of the book. And as we said, there's some super exciting possibilities for your work to be made into a video, to be released in other forms, and for this thing to, to really starfish or spider out into the world. So, and yes, as I said, we're looking for submissions in English, and please submit one story only, your best one.

Yeah, and the best one, like Phil said, it doesn't need to be perfectly worded, just as long as the story is good. We'll take care of the editing and and everything that goes with that. And, uh, yeah, what, what Phil said about the starfish thing and everything, uh, we go back to reputational capital. Like, this is an opportunity to, to try your wings in fiction writing and, and get your, get your name out there. Um, I, I believe that the monetary compensation comes secondary here. Maybe in the long term, like, if the story is really good and turns into like a bigger bigger thing, then there might be some long-term monetary compensation. But that's certainly not the point. Like in all of our work, it's more about educating people and getting the word out and accumulating informational and reputational capital. And to that end, we also like— it's not going to be like we don't really believe in intellectual property like that as Bitcoiners. So we do encourage people to also publish through their own channels. Like, we, of course, we would like to publish, be the first publishers. And after we've done that, I mean, we're not going to stand in anybody's way to publish in other publications or, you know, do a rehash of their story and do whatever they want with their work. So it's more like, I would say, like a platform to try fiction writing and give it your, your best shot. 1,500, 3,000 words is not much. It's like a standard blog post, basically. But in my opinion, that's also kind of like this restriction. Like, I've got a lot of comments that, oh, it's, it's, it's so restrictive and it's so short. Like, I don't know if I can do it. It's kind of like also the point that these— this restriction works as an inspiration because you really have to get to the bottom of the, of the story, the, the good stuff right away, and, and to pique the interest. And then we expand from that. So I, I think that's a really nice way, um, to go about— yeah, Philip, go ahead.

I'll just jump in on that as a, as a short fiction buff myself. I think for a lot of people out there, they might think short fiction is, is a condensed story, right? Most of the stories we consume are novel or movie lengths. They have this 3-act structure of, you know, the hero's walking along one day and falls down a hole and, you know, manages to get out of the hole in the end. Short fiction is different. You can present one scene, right, one moment which is important to a set of characters. It doesn't have to be a condensed movie. My suggestion would be, yeah, to really try and focus on What moment of change do you want to present? And if you do write long, you know, if you've got a 10,000-word story, you can cut it down. There's a lot you can cut out because readers can really figure out the jumps between sections. You're handing the keys to the story to the readers to some extent because they're able to make these leaps and to write some of the story themselves. So yeah, if you've got a longer story, cut it down. Just consider which bits that the reader can fill in, and you've got yourself a short story.

It's about— you can write one about falling down a hole and never getting up again. A rabbit hole, that is.

I mean, you could just— you could have 1 second of somebody down a hole and Then the, the, you know, short story could be the backstory to that, or the, you know—

Yeah,

by the way, you don't have to go with it finishing all in one story either, you know. Like, if you have a grand thing that you need to lay out, you could just use this as a proving ground to see if your idea is any good, you know. So if, if you, you know, it's like you're writing a long trailer in essence for, for your idea, and if it grabs people's attention, then you know, hey, there's a lot of spin-offs here. I can take all these ideas And kind of expand on them. So, or if you just have it like a very long story, you can just kind of put the first part of it and if people like it, then you just keep rolling with it, you know. So it's like you don't have to get it all out in one short story. So even though, yes, it's a limitation of the characters, how many words you can include, that's actually like sometimes these constraints help you be more creative because, you know, you don't have to look at this as the end. You know, an artist is never done anyway. So you just keep going.

Yeah, constraints are great for creativity. Um, they're sort of necessary because if you have— I remember like realizing this when working on a, on a like funk rock album 15 years ago, and we had just, uh, downloaded all sorts of soft synthesizers and, and effect pedals digitally. So we had a plethora to choose from, and we spent like a year figuring out the correct hi-hat reverb, and the songs were no better for it. We just forgot about like what's important and what's not important. So you need to like, you need a frame to make a painting. Uh, maybe that's a bad example.

Even something as simple as Twitter, you can't write a 1,000-word tweet, you know, you have to be concise. No, then decide what you're gonna say. And say it. And that's the beauty to that.

Yeah, I think that's part of why I love Twitter so much. It's just this 144-letter constraint because it forces you to get to the point of the poodle's kernel or what you want to say. Like, you can't— it forces you to boil things down to their essence, which is like making a good stew is, look, Very much akin to making a good song or a good short story. You boil it down to its essence so you get the tasty bits.

And as a creator, that's sometimes very powerful. You actually look at the end result of the tweet and you're like, look, I was going to say all this extra nonsense and like this is much more concise, says what I want to say better, and like even allows people to read in between the lines a little. So sometimes like these constraints are very powerful for, you know, helping you hone your craft and not produce as much like frilly bullshit as you might want to with, you know, if you're just given free rein to go about like, you know, like Knut spending a whole year on this thing. And it's like, you know, if nobody's telling you hold up, you know, like, you know, perfect is the enemy of done, then, you know, you end up on these wild quests. So yeah, constraints are helpful.

2 tips on creativity. 2 tips on tips on creativity. There's a short book by John Cleese called Creativity. The audiobook is about an hour long. It's very, very good. And there's a short documentary called 6 Days to Air about how they make South Park. And that's just wonderful. They make South Park— a South Park episode in 6 days. So that's why they can be so you know, about such timely subjects all the time. Like, they really feel like they're in touch with what's going on at the moment, and it's because they start writing them 6 days before they air, which is crazy, mind-blowing.

I had no idea they did that. But yeah, that totally works because they're always right on point with the cultural relevance, you know, whatever's going on this week, they're on it. And I had no idea it was because of that. So that's—

no, and, and Trey's big tip on writing is like, be 95% satisfied, never aim for 100%. Like, when you're 95%, let it go. Because if you're too much of a perfectionist, you're gonna waste it. Spending 2 more months on it would have made it 5% better. That's basically what he says. I know. Maybe you don't subscribe to that idea, Fractal. You're a bit of a perfectionist, but for me, it has certainly helped to be, you know, satisfied with the 95%. No,

I have to agree with that. I have to be satisfied with 95% as well. And sometimes it kills me and I'll just kind of like redo it if I have to, but, you know, at least get something done and be done with it and say, you know, this is what it is. And, you know, if you need to iterate, then there's time in life for that, but there's certainly a time when you need to to move on, and it's good for your own growth and not to say, okay, this is what, you know, this is where I was before, this is where I'm going, and continue down that path. So that was a lot.

Yeah, the 5% is something hopefully we can add at our end. I love the idea of food as a metaphor for writing, for stories. I mean, just thinking about it, cooking a meal is like a novel, right? You go buy the ingredients, you you follow the recipe, you chop up the stuff, you cook it, and at the end you get this big satisfying meal. A short story is like, it begins with you putting the spoon into your mouth and the taste and what that taste can generate from the past, where it came from, the future, what will happen, who you're with. So one tip that I'd give to anyone looking to write a story and submit is pick a moment pick that moment, which is the putting the spoon in the mouth, that moment where something changes, where it's important for that character. Obviously, we need some conflict, as Fractal said, right? We don't just want a story about someone having a lovely meal. Something has to go wrong. But just thinking as well, I'm going to drop a few links of some great sci-fi stories to read. things where listeners and the viewers, people checking this out, can get some ideas of some of the great stories that we like. And as a quick tip, I'd say also watch Love, Death and Robots. There's some great short presentations of—

Oh, those are great. Those are great.

They're perfect examples of, you know, it's not a long story where there's a huge lifespan It's a one-shot thing about the future, so definitely watch them if you haven't. I'm sure most people have.

Some great ideas. I'll also quickly add The War of Art, which we heard about in our last livestream for Freedom Footprint. That was brought up in the chat, which was nice, but I can vouch for that one. It's pretty good for getting past Creative blocks, but maybe that's a little bit more of a long-term thing that's a little bit less relevant to the short story side of it. But, uh, yeah.

The War Blocks and The Art of War by Sun Tzu. That's a good one too.

Might as well, might as well check that one out. Uh, yeah, we've got some nice, uh, South Park, uh, content coming out in a couple of days here too, by the way. Uh, you, you will never believe who, uh, we talk about South Park with for 2 hours. But that's out on Tuesday on the Freedom Footprint show.

Yeah, and there's a new season coming soon. So looking forward to that too.

I think we should probably wrap this up just out of that we've gotten out the idea here, the 21 Futures. Thanks to everyone who's joined us in the chat. And on the livestream here. So thanks for that. And yeah, Niko, Filip, anything else? And thanks, Fractal, by the way, for coming and chatting with us.

Yeah, man. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thanks, Fractal. That was excellent. And yeah, just to reiterate, you have time until end of February to submit your story. Don't worry too much about it. As long as the story is good, just submit it and make it your best effort. Don't worry too much about the structure, language, all that stuff. Focus on the story. Make it interesting from human perspective through the lens of Bitcoin. Doesn't have to be 100% technically accurate, but it does have to be believable in the realm of fiction. What else? Yeah, looking forward to reading all those submissions. Phil, anything to add?

Nothing to add, I don't think. Excited to read your submissions. Get them in, tell everyone about this, and really get the word out there. I think we're going to have a great book, and that book could turn into something even bigger. So looking forward to those submissions, and yeah, I'll be checking out some of the links and a few other shows as well.

Let's get one final thought in from the chat. 21 times everything versus divided by?

Oh, good luck, good luck popularizing the, the, the former. That, like, yeah, well, what, what thoughts are we supposed to have around that? I don't know, same thing. It doesn't really matter, right? If you multiply something by infinity or if you divide infinity by something else, you get the same result. So that's that.

All right, 21futures.com. Submit your short story by the end of February. Reach out to any of us here. We've got a bunch of Twitter handles up here. OmniFin is Nico Knutsvanholm at Knutsvanholm. I'm BTC PseudoFin. Chat with any of us about this project if you like. 21 Futures, Consensus Network. And happy to help. Happy to discuss.

And looking forward to seeing you in Miami, Fractal. Looking forward a lot to that.

Oh yeah, man, for sure. I actually am. That reminds me, I need to— we need to jump back into our little group chat and organized. Let's go.

Yeah. And I need to send an email to Bitcoin Magazine. All right.

Glad I'm not the only one late. All right. Well, let's— yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing everybody there. That's going to be a good time for sure.

Yeah.

Thanks for joining us live. Or if you're watching later, thanks for watching. This has been 21 Futures and looking forward to your submissions.