Silent Emptiness

Achieving Minimum Guaranteed Income with a Cryptocurrency Suppose we were to create a new cryptocurrency in which EVERYONE who participates, gets free coins on a regular basis.   1 a day to start, eventually perhaps 10 a day. Call it NewCoin (TM) - "Newk" for short.   (FreeCoin is sort of taken, or it could have been "Freeks") Declare a starting value of $1 for simplicity.  Or 1 euro.  It will float with market forces, but should not change as rapidly or as much as Bitcoin (TM) has.  It isn't intended to be a speculative instrument, nor a long term store of value.  With NewCoin, there's no need for government involvement to establish a guaranteed minimum income.   The prospect of regular free money for anyone signing up should make this currency very popular, taking off with consumers FAR faster than Bitcoin has.   [Yes, I know, somehow we'd need to make sure no one is able to sign up multiple times.  I'll discuss enforcement

[One of my older speculations - feasibility unknown, slightly updated for posting] Mars' atmosphere is severely lacking, from a human perspective.  Near vacuum pressure, mostly poisonous carbon dioxide and nearly lacking in free oxygen, unable to provide any decent radiation shielding.  Yet it's sufficient to support world-encompassing dust storms that can last long enough to be a major problem for any human colonists trying to use solar as an energy source.  If the atmospheric pressure could be increased and free oxygen added, humans might be able to go 'outside' on Mars with just warm clothing and a sort of artificial 'gill' to extract and concentrate the oxygen. It seems reasonable to suspect that if Mars were given a denser and somewhat warmer atmosphere,  Mars soil might release frozen carbon dioxide and water to make the atmosphere even denser. Synthetic biology has been making great strides over the past decade, closing in on the ability to create s