Book Pitch: Cleansing the Cursed Coin – A Story of Bitcoin and Fiat Currency
Premise
Long ago in a once mighty kingdom a curse spread through the land. Money pouches, treasure chests, statues, even the king’s crown became lighter and were found to be hollow. Merchants and traders noticed it first. Accusations of swindling and fixed scales lead to arguments and fighting. As the curse spread, people traded as little as they could for fear of being cheated. Drought came followed by livestock disease. Men left farms and bandits were a rising threat. Peace and Justice were becoming harder to find and maintain. A young hero embarks on a quest to find a stop the curse from spreading and restore stability to his home.
Theme
-Truth and accountability are the bedrock of freedom and peace. Abandoning them will lead to ruin.
-Fix the money, fix the world?
-If currency is debased it leads to terrible unforeseen consequences.
Beggining
A young hero left home and find the source of the corruption to stop it. His family farm was taken by raiders after all their money had been corrupted and they could not keep up with the demands on them. The family went to another kingdom where they have relatives. They plan to restart their lives there, but one son can not accept what happened and feels called to do something about it.
Middle
He quests for an incorruptible element that will stop the curse. It cannot reverse the damage done, but it can ensure that it doesn’t get worse or persist. Along the way, he encounters good and bad people displaced like him due the chaos wrought by the debasement. Some are foes, some become allies. Some are fair weather allies who abandon the quest.
OPTION:
There could be an evil Wizard or a cabal/Council that has cursed the money for an evil purpose and they could bar the hero’s way. It depends on how epic this needs to be. There is series potential here. I can scale this to your preference.
End
Hero obtains the cure and offers it in the kingdom. The trials have affirmed the value of honest, open, (trustless) work and the need to be vigilant against corrupted, unproven and unworthy things, like the currency and some of the people he met along the way.
MISCELLANEOUS
I like an idea from Legend of Zelda that the Master Sword is incorruptible and Ganon ultimately destroys himself by the sword reflecting his evil magic back at him. With that in mind, do you want this to be a peaceful or pacifist type hero or will he slash and blow stuff up like good old Link?
BONUS
Below are my old notes from August 2022. These are close to stream of consciousness.
Core Idea
Some malevolent force backing fiat currency has poisoned or cursed part of the money supply to their evil end (debasing the currency of the masses to enrich themselves, I am thinking this is a parallel to the Federal Reserve). As the money circulates, the curse spreads and debases other people’s money. This is illustrated by the hero having a coin purse/money bag that is emptying or becoming corrupted as time goes on. That key visual is the bulk of this concept and I think it could be very effective.
Thinking In Series
Anyway, you could have multiple books/arcs where by the end of the first, the hero is able to stop the debasement of their money and it lands a great personal victory like saving his farm or village or something juicy and emotional like that, maybe saving a loved one’s life by “fixing the money” or perhaps even making a value for value exchange due to the curse.
Then in a subsequent story they can help others by spreading their alternate currency system or whatever it is. Perhaps in a third story (why not make it a trilogy, right?) they can solve the root problem and stop the fiat curse and fully “fix the world” in that regard.
That way you have an unfolding narrative that shows:
1. This is what the problem is and how you can save yourself from it
2. This is how you can help others in your community or who are close to you3. This is how you can even help others you do not know or care about in a concrete way and doing so will benefit you and yours into the future because a world of long-time-preference and hard money is a stable, sustainable world and fiat and the seeming benefits of it are deleterious and ultimately lead to ruin. (Kind of like how the Dark Side is quicker and easier, but ultimately is toxic and kills you, while adding more sorrow to the universe)
MJ Muñoz 