"You can't have a decentralized coin if half of it is owned by the CEO," Stacey says to Jim.
At that moment, Silicon Valley wiz-kid Jerald Vilt steps onto the stage in his leather jacket. The booming, bass-heavy music repeats: "The future is now! Vilt to the hilt!"
Jerald looks remarkably different from the attendees, most of whom are in t-shirts or flannel. Maybe a hoodie here or there. Definitely no leather jackets.
"How much do you think he spent on that haircut," continues Stacey, "$500?"
Jim tries to imagine how one could spend $500 on a man with short hair. It couldn't take more than 30 minutes... Does that mean the stylist charges $1000 an hour? The presentation is much too loud to have a conversation, so they wait until being herded with the other thousands of attendees to eat mass-produced hotel food for lunch.
"Look, there's no doubt the guy is smart," continues Stacey, as they wait in the buffet line, "but like most of these tech cult personalities, he's more salesperson than genius inventor. More 'The Music Man' than, say, Nikola Tesla."
"Yeah, well I'm not talking about Vilt's FutureCoin. That's vaporware, a scam coin... Okay, maybe it's not that bad... But it's being shilled massively on social media, and that's what bothers me. Airdrops/bounty programs based on pyramid schemes..." says Jim.
"Don't forget the paid influencers," interjects Stacey.
"Right! What the hell even is a crypto influencer? How do you even become one? It's not like you start an Instagram account, take scandalous pictures with filters and surgery until you're unrecognizable, and pay for followers," says Jim, laughing.
"You laugh," says Stacey, "but mark my words, before the ICO there will be a 'leaked'"--she uses air-quotes--"sex tape with Vilt in it."
Jim laughs again, "Probably with one of those Instagram models!"
"Anyway," says Stacey, "I just came to see how ridiculous this Vilt presentation was going to be. And it didn't fail."
Jim interjects, "Can you believe they brought a tiger on stage?!"
Stacey rolls her eyes. "But back to Logg. It's got some real promise, but I don't like how much of the coin is owned by the CEO."
"FutureCoin is supposed to be kind of like Logg. They're both supposed to be platforms for monetizing and giving infrastructure to cultural legends and myths."
"Please," says Stacey, "we all know what's going to happen with FutureCoin. Vilt is going to get his millions in investments, the coin will ICO, it'll skyrocket immediately on the exchanges, Vilt will make even more. Then Vilt will carefully/stealthily sell it off, so it doesn't completely tank instantly, and move on to the next 'revolutionary' coin before people catch on and it does finally tank to crap-coin levels."
"I don't know," says Jim. "A coin's success is a function of both interest and value. And success can actually breed later value. Fake it 'till you make it applies pretty much everything. FutureCoin isn't a complete crap coin. It's actually pretty similar to Logg. I still like Logg better."
They reach the front of the line. Stacey grabs the salad tongs: "Yeah, well, at least Logg isn't owned by Vilt. It's at least got that going for it."