'The Valentine Coin': This Cryptocurrency Will Not Get You Laid

By Tori Preston | Miscellaneous | February 12, 2018 |

By Tori Preston | Miscellaneous | February 12, 2018 |

Not too long ago, I answered an advice question about Bitcoin that turned into a garbled, angry discourse on what the fuck blockchains and crytocurrency are. One thing that I only briefly touched on, however, is that blockchains don’t HAVE to record financial transactions. Any kind of data can be recorded onto blocks for all eternity. Even love notes. Which brings me to the greatest Valentine’s Day scam I’ve ever heard of: “The Valentine Coin.”

Basically there is a special new coin on the cryptocurrency market, which you can buy the same way you buy any other “coin” — except that you have the opportunity to attribute a message of love to it, which will be recorded into a block forever and ever and ever. Until, you know, our global systems crash and we’re all reduced to fighting raccoons for whatever raccoons eat.

So. For the cost of about $29 USD, you can buy a digital “coin”, which will be added to your digital wallet. In doing so, you will fake “engrave” a message on the blockchain of that currency, and get a certificate too! And then I guess you give the certificate to your significant other, or transfer the coin to their digital wallet (if they have one). I don’t know. Either way, you’re spending almost $30 to give the person you love basically nothing.

Look, Valentine’s Day itself is kinda bullshit. After all, we don’t need a special day every year to show our loved one how loved they truly are. We can buy them flowers or chocolates or diamonds or whatever ANYTIME. But the key here is that we DO show our love. We take the time to get sappy and romantic, in whatever way we’re comfortable with. Maybe it’s a home cooked meal, or a card. It doesn’t matter. The act is what matters.

And if you’re the kind of person who is so completely into fucking cryptocurrency that attaching a love message to a digital coin is the most meaningful gesture you can think of, then more power to you. I hope your significant other appreciates it. Because personally? I can think of many other gestures that would be more meaningful that that shit. You could buy two tickets to a movie for $29, or a few chocolate-filled hearts from the drug store, or a better-than-average bottle of wine. Hell, you could literally write “I Love You” on a twenty dollar bill and it would mean more than this shit. Because that’s all you’re doing, really. You’re attaching a message to a piece of currency, and then either never spending it, or spending it and thus returning it to circulation. But CURRENCY ISN’T ROMANTIC. What you BUY with it can be romantic, perhaps, but the money itself fucking isn’t.

So this Valentine’s Day, if you’re so hard up for ideas that you’re considering paying real money for a piece of fake money that will be digitally attached to “Sit on my face forever, Rhonda” or whatever you pithy poetic statement of forever love is… why don’t you try just telling her in person and save yourself the time and effort of figuring out what the fuck to do with “The Valentine Coin” come February 15th?