So, please help me if you can. What in tarnation is a Bitcoin, anyways? To my mind, a day’s work has always earned an American dollar, a Russian ruble or a French franc. I understand coins are disappearing as they aren’t worth much anymore, but what is a Bitcoin, and what’s it worth? I posed this question to a savvy friend of mine and he shrugged his shoulders and said, “sixty-six thousand?”
Oh, so you’re telling me there is a coin out there in circulation that is worth more than the price of a new Tesla? Well that beats most anything I ever heard. And who exactly is minting these Bitcoins, anyways? Might our mint in Carson City start turning them out? I’ve been after our mint for years to turn out a Mark Twain Commemorative Coin, but I might let that slide if I could get my hands on a bright new Bitcoin.
Just as a lie that is repeated enough times will eventually be accepted by some as the Gospel truth, if you keep on selling the idea that your shiny new coin is worth $66,000, I guess it will be worth $66,000 to somebody.
So long as I have your ear, there’s another quandary that’s been bothering me of late that maybe you can help me with.
We Americans have a fiscal emergency heading our way, where the government will run out of money and shut down next month if congress doesn’t lift the debt ceiling. So tell me this, if the president has sole authority to start a nuclear war and destroy the world as we know it, why can’t he exercise his appropriation powers to head off a financial calamity? We should change that. We should flip that one around. I would humbly suggest that we pay the national debt off in Bitcoins, and leave the declaring of nuclear war to a vote of entire populations on both sides of any proposed nuclear conflict. Take this advice to heart, and well my friend, we will no longer have a national debt, and we will no longer have a threat of nuclear war.
Yes, were I superintending, well, things would be different. First and foremost, I would always ask the advice of my gentle reader before making a decision of any consequence. Then I would ask the advice of my ex-wife, because she always had a better idea than mine, and could articulate it in a way that I never could have thought of in a hundred years.
In closing, I would ask, should you happen to get your hands on a Bitcoin, would you be so kind as to call me and I will drive as far as thirty miles to have a look at it. Plus, I will show you the Nevada quarter with wild stallions on it that Governor Guinn gave to me…I might even consider a trade.
About the Author McAvoy Layne
For thirty-four years now, in four thousand performances from
Piper’s Opera House to Leningrad University in Russia,
McAvoy has been preeminent in preserving the wit & wisdom of
The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope, Mark Twain.
McAvoy is a winner of the Nevada Award for Excellence in School and Library Service.
He plays the ghost of Mark Twain in the Discovery Channel’s Cronkite Award winning documentary, 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.'
Says McAvoy, “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher,
whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”