Talk given at Refactor Camp, May 2018

1. Bloodcoin
Venkatesh Rao

2. “From unity, strength” “Existing because of oneself”

3. “The Blood Debt”

6. “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates
so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone,
they will be forced to deal with pain.”
- James Baldwin

7. There are, however, rules about how blood feuds are to be pursued.
The kinsman of a slain Nuer man may go after the perpetrator, and
also any of the perpetrator’s close male kin, but has no right to touch
the mother’s brother, father’s sister, or mother’s sister, since they are
not members of the slayer’s lineage…Parties to a dispute go through
elaborate rituals to prevent escalation, such as sending the spear that
injured a man to the victim’s village, so that it can be magically
treated to prevent the wound from becoming fatal…
— Francis Fukuyama, Origins of Political Order

8. McKay Savage,
CC-BY 2.0

10. Source: Arch Foundation

12. “Of course it’s right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and
injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change
the nature of existence. We can’t prevent suffering. This pain and
that pain, yes, not not Pain. A society can only relieve social
suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the
reality.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

13. Painchain
An impressionistic block explorer
Trigger warning: moderately upsetting images

14. Adam Jones, PhD CC-BY-SA 3.0

15. From: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R02190 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

16. DixonD CC-BY-SA 3

17. From: reckontalk.com (orig: Life magazine)

21. Source: CNN

22. Source: NPR/Hawes Spencer/WCVE

24. Source: http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/truth-and-reconciliation-commission-trc

25. Source: India Today

26. Source: News18

27. Source: CFR
Source: CFR

31. source: kohinoordiamond.org

34. Forgiveness
Promises
Loyalty
Irreversibility
Punishment
Blood
Economics
Memory
Amnesia
Transgressions
Scars Healing
Judgment

36. “In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to
transgression and which because of the irreversibility of the action
process can be expected and calculated, the act of forgiving can
never be predicted…
“It is therefore quite significant, a structural element in the realm
of human affairs, that men are unable to forgive what they cannot
punish and that they are unable to punish what has turned out to
be unforgivable.”
— Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

37. energies in which a narrative is encoded does not get overwritten,
but gets applied again over. The energies encoding the narrative of
the break and the energies encoding the narratives of a patch are still
present. That kind of bandaid is fragile...
"Instead, the direct, mindful witness of the pain (that is the source of
the wound) brings that back into natural alignment. As such, the {
personal | karmic | social | ancestral | transpersonal } memories has
their pain dissolved back into the transcendental ground. The
memory itself takes on a kind of beauty, but it is natural, not
artificial."
"Deep forgiveness requires mindfulness of the pain. Someone has
to experience it...to be in the intense, burning anger (it feels like
the Buddhist Hell Realm, suffering so intense, it feels eternal), and to

38. Judgement Day
Stefan Lochner,
Last Judgment, c 1435

40. The folk ergodic hypothesis
“We are all descended from equally long lines of murderers”

41. The statute of limitations hypothesis
The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy,
forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means
clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers
upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation.
Numbers 14:18

42. The naturalistic [fallacy] hypothesis
“Darwin is a bitch”

43. Identity iceberg whataboutism
“whatabout the 9/10 invisible or non-social identity markers?”

44. Whig “Grow it out” hypothesisOut, damned spot! Out, I say!…
What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so
much blood in him.
…
What, will these hands ne'er be clean?
…
Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will
not sweeten this little hand. Oh, Oh, Oh!

45. The Socialist-Fascist Approximation Hypothesis
(also Thanos)

47. Bloodcoin Game Rules (finite game, closed world, zero/negative sum)
1. Blood debt is double entry. The victim pays an immediate cost, the
transgressor accrues a moral debt.
2. You inherit moral debts in proportion to structural advantages
3. Unredeemed suffering debt accrues interest until it is either paid off
4. If the suffering party goes extinct, the debt turns into a permanent scar in
proportion to terminal value, since no balancing is possible
5. Blood debt can exist at all levels from playground bullying to civilizational
grievances
6. There is no free lunch, no get-out-of-jail-free card
7. Somebody always has to experience the pain
8. Conservation of history: history cannot be erased.
9. Even if memories are erased, ghost of suffering remains and grows
cancerous.
10. You cannot forgive yourself, only the trespassed-against can forgive
11. Your identity IS the sum of all the unredeemed debts you owe and are
owed.
12. You cannot “keep your identity small” except by passing the burden on to
the next generation.

48. Bloodcoin++ Game Rules (infinite game, open world, nonzero
sum)
1. Time does heal all wounds, but a wound can stay raw
longer than your descendants can trace your ancestry
2. Natural fortunes compound or erase both sides of a
historical debt to the extent that it is not predictable by
history or merit.
3. Rule of appropriation: If somebody wins big by their own
merit, then the surplus goes into a commons wealth store,
any appropriation from the commons wealth store is a fresh
scar against everybody else

49. Using markets to take “oppression olympics” seriously
- Anyone can issue an ISO: Initial Suffering Offering, claiming a
historic debt. People who agree with the narrative of the debt,
can invest in it, and use it to create a generic economy. FUBU
economics basically.
- As truth-and-reconciliation events happen naturally and
deliberately, people adjust the valuation of the debt
- If many people compete, then the market decides who has the
most authentic version.
- Bloodfutures: anticipatory debt issued in terms of future social
costs imposed.
- Narcissistic Wound Pitchdecks: You can lay out your sense of
debt owed in some weird alternative universe, and issue “debt”
against it.

50. History is the set of permanent scars so far

51. Bloodcoin White Paper
Bloodcoin will mine true freedom by facing both
historical pain and anticipated future pain head on, and
working through it by actually experiencing it, rather
than papering over it selective amnesia narratives.
The Bloodcoin Team will build a universal layer one
Painchain, equipped with a basic DUKKHA coin.
Teams may issue other tokens on top of Painchain
through ISOs (Initial Suffering Offerings) representing
historic blood debts, future social cost debts, or personal
narcissistic wound debts.