Blockchain activist Preston Byrne has come up with the so-called ‘Marmotcoin’, an imaginary project that focuses public attention on marmots, who are extremely endangered in Canada. Its circulating supply corresponds to the population of marmots with one marmot representing one coin.
Byrne’s fascination with marmots
During an interview with Hard Fork, Byrne, a lawyer who has been keen on marmots since his childhood, reveals that that this species also impacted his professional life. “When I co-founded Monax, my co-founder, as a joke, had his uncle design a mascot for the company that he described, in the spec, as a punk rock marmot,” he says.
The article further states that Canada’s Vancouver Island marmots are extremely rare, but 50 marmots are not produced per year. Of course, Marmotcoin is fictional, however, marmots in Byrne’s basement are absolutely real.
Does he really sell marmots?
“Marmotcoins, in theory, are issued as and when I receive an actual, live marmot,” he explains. That means that the supply of marmots in his yard doesn’t exceed the circulating supply of a fictional coin (Tether, take notes!).
With that being said, there is still a catch – marmots are not prone to performing financial transactions, and Marmotcoin doesn’t even need Blockchain, so what is the coin’s modus operandi? Byrne jokingly claims that reaching a higher level of understating of loop quantum gravity could reveal more about these creatures.
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The marmot emoji
Byrne is currently fighting tooth and nail in order to get a much-coveted marmot emoji, but the Unicode Consortium claims that one couldn’t tell the marmot emoji from other animals, such as teddy bears.
“Vancouver Island Marmots are cute, friendly, and utterly harmless animals whose existence is threatened by human encroachment,” says Byrne while insisting on the importance of corresponding emoji.
Arman Shirinyan
