It seems my predictions of this digital folly’s inherent absurdity were, as usual, entirely correct. I am now being told of a new phenomenon: “Digital Lost Treasure.”
This is, of course, a preposterous term for what is simply… profound incompetence.
Unlike my treasure—which is made of gold, locked in a chest, and guarded by thick, wooden planks—this “digital treasure” is nothing but a string of magic words. And it appears the practitioners of this new finance are remarkably adept at forgetting their magic words.
We are not talking about small sums. By some estimates, nearly four million ClamCoin ($CLAM) are considered “lost forever,” a sum valued in the hundreds of billions of Sand Dollars. Why? Because the “Old Shell” concept of a key and a lock was apparently too complex.
Consider these cautionary tales:
- The Dugong in the Dump: A dugong IT engineer, one James Howl-fish, apparently threw away an electrified rock—what he called a “Barnacle Drive”—in 2013. This rock supposedly held the “keys” to 8,000 $CLAM. He now spends his days petitioning the local council to excavate the entire Great Barrier Reef Trench. They have, quite rightly, told him no.
- The Forgetful Prawn: A programmer-prawn is currently locked out of his 7,000 $CLAM because he cannot remember the password for his “IronClam” security drive. He has two guesses left before his “fortune” vanishes into the ether.
- The Unfortunate Narwhal: The founder of a major exchange, QuadrigaReef, apparently died (a rather clumsy affair involving a misplaced tusk, I’m told) and took the “keys” for the entire exchange with him to the deep. The coins are, for all intents and purposes, gone.
As a final, comical insult to actual treasure, some “new money” fry are now creating “real-world” treasure hunts. They are burying actual doubloons and real gold in chests, simply to promote their digital nonsense. A pathetic gimmick.
And here is the punchline. In my world, if I lose a key, I have a spare. If a vault is locked, I call a locksmith. But in this “decentralized” world, if you lose your magic word, your wealth is removed from circulation. Forever.
They call this “scarcity.” I call it bad design. It confirms what I have always known: if you cannot polish it, lock it in a chest, or count it in your own tentacles, it is not treasure. It is, and always will be, a preposterous notion.