Comedicoin

Bitcoin is all very well I never, but the underlying technology is useless. What I mean by that, is that the "work" that has to be done to mine a new bitcoin is just some arcane piece of computation that serves no purpose other than to make it difficult to mine a new bitcoin. It's a bit like having prisoners break rocks - no real benefit (unless you truly want small rocks). Worse, bitcoin mining eats up power and computation that could be better used elsehwere.

On a different subject (but one which will, like the Titanic and the iceberg, converge with the previous subject shortly), good jokes are hard to come by. Entirely original good jokes only get invented a few times a year; even good jokes based on pre-existing ones are fairly scarce. Creating a good joke is difficult. But, when a new joke _is_ created, humanity has acquired one small, new nugget of humour which can never be taken away again.

Now, to the aforementioned convergence.

The solution to the whole cryptocurrency problem, obviously, is the Comedicoin - the international symbol for which will be one of those smiley faces with dollar signs for eyes. Comedicoins can be traded and used just like bitcoin, and each Comedicoin can divided into 100 Chuckles; each Chuckle can in turn be divided into 100 Chortles (though this will not be necessary until the value of one Comedicoin becomes quite large, as is sure to happen).

Now, how are Comedicoins generated? Well, obviously, to mine a new Comedicoin you must create a new joke. Jokes will be submitted first to an automated joke parser and syntactic extrapolator, which will determine if the joke is, potentially, original. Jokes passing this test will then be examined by a panel of experts famed for their diverse senses of humour.

A truly original and hilarious joke will equate to one Comedicoin. Jokes of slightly lesser originality, or of lesser hilarity, will be pooled to enable the cooperative creation of a new Comedicoin.

The Comedicoin has the advantage over Bitcoin in that Comedicoin mining can be performed by anyone, without the purchase of any special equipment, and does not consume any valuable resources. Also, of course, it tends to enwealthen good comedians rather than spotty teenagers with large heatsinks - which can only be a good thing.

The blockchain method used for Bitcoin will, of course, need to be adapted for use with Comedicoin. Our software mechanics are working on this problem at the moment, but a "stop me if you've heard this one before" algorithm is showing some promise.