"That was the coolest explanation I never understood," says Jim, as Tullus gets up for more ultra-processed meat.
Stacey is looking at her phone.
"Oh my Dude in the Sky..." she says in a hushed tone. "You are not going to believe this. Jerald Vilt just posted, and then immediately deleted, this video on social media."
Jim's phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out and raises an eyebrow.
"That's the story on CoinNewsReel. Watch the video. There are copies on a number of sites. Do you have DistroVid?"
"No, I have invested in the DistroVid coin, though. I just don't trust it enough to actually use the platform."
"Uh..." She looks askance. "Anyway, here's a traditional link."
Jim's phone buzzes again. He puts in a Bluetooth earbud and taps the screen.
Jerald Vilt is apparently on a yacht. The video is supposedly of him "live" less than five minutes after he finished his presentation.
"Hey," says Jerald, "wow, how exciting was that. I want to thank Satoshi for coming out on this yacht with me, he's in the cabin right now. Kinda camera shy. We had a great conversation. He agrees with me that FutureCoin is really... Wait for it... The coin of the Future!"
Jim taps the screen. He looks up to Stacey, "Is he serious?"
"With Jerald," says Stacey, "who knows?"
Jim taps the screen again.
Jerald continues, "He also thanked me for helping him on that paper he did earlier. Whoops, sorry, meant to keep that between us. Anyway, wow. I think it's safe to say, move over Guilded Age, we're in the Vilted Age!"
Jim taps the screen. "Does he know that the Guilded Age wasn't a good thing?" Stacey shrugs. Jim taps again.
Jerald walks to a cage that is, apparently, also on the deck of his yacht, and contains the tiger from his presentation. Next to the tiger is a trainer. "This, by the way, is my boy Hodl. Cause, don't you know, when you catch a tiger by the tail, you got to hodl tight! Haha! I bought him for a large, undisclosed amount in crypto from Joe Exotic himself. Which, you know, if he ever gets out of jail might be nice to have."
He goes to touch the tiger. The trainer says, "I wouldn't do that."
He bends down to talk to the tiger, "What do you think Hodl? Is FutureCoin the future?"
The trainer says, "FutureCoin?"
"Yes that's my..."
The trainer say, "Isn't there already a coin called FutureCoin?"
"What?"
The trainer pulls out his phone, types something, then shows it to Jerald. His eyes go wide. The trainer scrolls through... "In fact, it looks like there's more than one called FutureCoin. There's FutureCoin, FTRC, there's also, it seems, FutureCoin Light, FTC."
Panic goes over his face. "Did I say FutureCoin? I meant, uh, Futur... o... Yeah, FuturoCoin."
The trainer types something. "Yep, that already exsits too. FTO."
"Holy crap! I mean... Futur... ix. FuturixCoin."
Types something... "Futurix Lab... 'Systems and Methods for using kinetic energy to assign coins exchanged for cryptocurrency.' I guess it's not exactly the same thing..."
Justin approaches the camera with his hand up, "Shut that off!" Screen goes black.
"Wow," says Jim. He puts the phone down. "Wow." He turns to Stacey. "What I don't get is... Why did he even post it? And then delete it? Well, I guess if it was 'live' as it says..."
"Actually," says Stacey, "Jerald posted it on one social media outlet, then deleted it, and then a few minutes later posted it on another, then deleted it, and then posted it on another, then deleted it, then..."
Jim says, "Uh, how many different platforms..."
"It's still happening," says Stacey.