Bitcoin’s World Tour: From Moroccan Souks to Kazakh Power Grids, the Global Game of Make-Believe Rolls On
Bitcoin: The Glorious Global Game of Make-Believe We All Pretend Has Rules
By A Correspondent Who Still Owns Some, Just in Case
Marrakesh, Morocco – While the call to prayer echoed over the medina last Friday, a French tourist in a linen suit tried to buy saffron with Bitcoin. The shopkeeper, who has survived three coups and the rise and fall of the dirham peg, laughed so hard he dropped his Nokia. The tourist left with pockets full of saffron, the shopkeeper with a QR code he plans to frame next to his counterfeit Picasso. Somewhere in the cloud, a transaction either did or did not happen; everyone involved has agreed not to check.
This is the state of Bitcoin in 2024: a planetary parlor trick that still works because nobody wants to be first to admit the magician left the stage ages ago. From the battery farms of Sichuan—where coal smoke and hydroelectric dams compete to keep the blockchain breathing—to the glass towers of Dubai, where influencers rent Lamborghinis by the hour to flaunt their “digital assets,” Bitcoin remains the Esperanto of money: theoretically universal, practically spoken only by hobbyists and scoundrels.
The International Monetary Fund, whose economists still think in 1945 technicolor, warns that El Salvador’s full-throated embrace of BTC could destabilize the entire global financial system. El Salvador, whose GDP is smaller than Apple’s quarterly coffee budget, nods politely and keeps stacking sats. Meanwhile, Argentina—where inflation has turned the peso into origami—has discovered that Bitcoin ATMs are more reliable than the central bank’s website, provided the power stays on for more than six hours. The grid fails at hour five, but hope, like the blockchain, is immutable.
China banned Bitcoin mining in 2021 for the same reason it bans most things: to remind citizens the Party owns the monopoly on make-believe. The miners simply moved to Kazakhstan, where they now bribe local officials with graphics cards. Kazakhstan’s power grid, held together by Soviet-era duct tape and nostalgia, promptly collapsed. The miners shrugged and relocated again, like Bedouins with extension cords. Today they are in Texas, where the governor brags about “freedom electrons” while praying that ERCOT survives another winter. Spoiler: it won’t, but the miners will simply move on, locusts with Wi-Fi.
Europe, ever the continent that regulates first and reads the manual later, just passed MiCA—Markets in Crypto-Assets—because nothing says “innovation” like a 400-page rulebook written in seven languages. The law demands that exchanges identify every user, which is adorable given that half the continent’s banks still can’t tell you where their own customers live. France is especially proud: the same nation that once tried to decimalize time now requires crypto firms to register with the Autorité des Marchés Financiers, a body whose acronym sounds like a throat disease.
In Nigeria, where the naira trades like a meme stock, Bitcoin is less a currency than a lifeboat with a slow leak. The government banned banks from servicing crypto exchanges, so the kids meet on Telegram and trade peer-to-peer. Peer-to-peer here means “in a parking lot with armed escorts,” which is still safer than the official banking app. Last month, the central bank launched the eNaira, a CBDC so unpopular that even the Lagos bus drivers refuse it. They prefer dollars, or, failing that, barter. One driver told me he’d accept two goats for a fare to Yaba. “Goats don’t crash,” he said, patting the hood of a 1994 Toyota.
And yet, despite every rational reason for Bitcoin to vanish—its carbon footprint rivals Poland, its price chart resembles a lie detector test administered to a politician—it persists. Why? Because humans are incorrigible storytellers. We’ll trade seashells, tulips, or digital gold as long as the story is good. Bitcoin’s narrative—decentralized, finite, borderless—tickles the same brainstem that once believed the emperor’s new clothes were haute couture. The difference is the emperor now tweets laser eyes and lives in a Miami penthouse.
So the game continues. Pension funds in Oslo allocate 1.5 % to “digital commodities” to look edgy. Hackers in Pyongyang launder ransomware proceeds through mixers named after cocktails. And somewhere in Ohio, a father of three tells his kids Bitcoin will pay for college, neglecting to mention he bought at the 2021 peak. They’ll learn economics the hard way, which is still cheaper than an MBA.
The saffron-scented air of Marrakesh thickens with dusk. The shopkeeper flips his “Bitcoin Accepted” sign back to “Cash Only.” The tourist has already posted the encounter on Reddit, where it will live forever—or at least until the servers melt. Both men understand the same quiet truth: value is just consensus wearing makeup, and consensus can change its mind faster than a teenager. Until then, we HODL, because the alternative is admitting we spent a decade worshiping a very expensive hallucination. Pass the saffron; at least it tastes real.
