Central Bingo: The unstoppable power of pretend money

Introduction

It is 1992, except banks have never been invented. Everyone still uses metal coins as money. Given that there are no banks, there are no paper notes and there are no digital payments of any kind. Anyone who acquires an amount of gold or silver can visit their local mint to have it stamped into coins. But mostly, people earn coins at their job, use them to pay for local shopping and so on. Remote purchases, like rent and utility payments involve having the coins physically delivered to the recipient.

There is nevertheless a boom in consumer computer technology and the advent of the internet. Some of the first successful internet businesses are computer games. Rather than expecting people to deliver coins via the postal system, some of the bigger game producers open up physical stores throughout the country where people can visit to create accounts and pay for the game, amongst other conveniences like getting access to game tutorials, events, and so on. Having visited the store, signed up and paid, customers are then free to return home and play the game online.

One of the earliest and most popular games is Central Bingo by Bingo International Studios (BIS). This started off as a straightforward online bingo game, but it quickly grew in popularity and sophistication. It appeals to a broad range of the population because of its simple rules, an addictive social element and of course the chance of winning money. Given its accessibility and being at least a little entertaining to every demographic, it has gradually become a fixture in the lives of almost everyone. Inside the game, players can chat with one another, form teams, trade in-game items and collectables, and so on. Especially when used with VR headsets, distant players feel very much at home, enjoying time together in the same space. It has become the default place where friends and families keep in touch with one another.

When players win games, they have the option to keep their winnings in the game – to pay for further games – or they can withdraw. To withdraw, as with depositing, the player needs to visit a physical store and ask a staff member to make the exchange. The player needs to log in to their game account at a terminal at the store to efficiently prove their identity before staff are authorized to hand over the coins. In the early days, this meant having the customer enter their username and password. But over time, many other forms of identity verification were accepted; including one-time SMS codes, passports, contactless NFC, and ultimately using biometrics such as fingerprints and facial recognition.

Since the game has become such a fixture in the lives of most people, major companies and ultimately even small local businesses now have accounts so that they also have a presence in the game. This allows their customers a convenient and fun way to discover and interact with them.

Money for nothing “legitimately”

With such a broad segment of the population using the game, staff at the game development studio, BIS, notice that they have the opportunity to grant themselves money for nothing, without technically breaking any rules or laws. All they have to do is type in a larger number for their own in-game balance, walk into any of their own Central Bingo stores and withdraw money as usual. This might seem like counterfeiting, but as in any computer game, the game developers have legitimate control over how the in-game money is handled.

The game is an entirely artificial, virtual world, where the creator/developer has supreme control over all game rules. The in-game money, being a component of the game, is similarly legitimately under complete control of the developers. Anyone disagreeing with the rules of the game can simply choose not to play. The only limit on the developers’ power is that if they annoy their customers they risk ruining their business and shooting themselves in the foot. But fundamentally, they are fully within their rights to grant themselves as much in-game money as they like, and they are not breaking any rules by withdrawing this by following the standard withdrawal process that applies to everyone.

And so, tempted by this newfound power, BIS staff do indeed create new in-game money for themselves. Typically, this newly created in-game money is only used inside the game itself to pay for occasional promotional awards for players, throw festive celebrations and so on. However, it is also sometimes withdrawn as physical coins to help pay programmers to develop the game, to pay for marketing, and so on. Very few Central Bingo players know about this somewhat dubious funding mechanism, but those who do are mostly satisfied that it is quite appropriate. After all, the money is generally spent on worthwhile causes that clearly benefit the game itself and its players.

Taming the risky business

BIS staff eventually come to realise that there is a limit to how far they can push this. They notice that if they were to withdraw too much physical money from the system, there’s a risk that there wouldn’t be enough money on-hand to cover withdrawal requests from players. The danger here would be most pronounced if all players wanted to withdraw all at the same time. For instance, if players became concerned that the game didn’t have enough money to pay out everyone’s winnings, there could be a frantic scramble with everyone trying to get to their local Central Bingo store to get their money out before the money ran out completely. As a result, BIS staff are very careful not to push it too far. They make sure that there is always at least 50% of the deposited money available immediately for withdrawal by customers.

BIS executives recognise that this is an important money-making option at their disposal. In fact, they soon realise that this is the primary way they can make money. They find themselves duty bound to investigate ways to extend and enhance this lucrative scheme and to minimise its associated risks. Accordingly, the first mission they set for themselves is to figure out ways to encourage customers to keep their money inside the game, and ideally to never withdraw. They quickly form two solutions to achieve this.

First, BIS expands its physical presence dramatically, adding as many Central Bingo stores as possible throughout the world. Given that money can then easily be requested from any store at any time almost anywhere in the world, players are incentivised to put and keep their money in the game. Players discover, to their delight, that they no longer need to carry lots of physical money around but can request it only when and where needed from their nearest store.

Secondly, and most importantly, BIS enables in-game payments between players. With this new service, players can send their deposits or winnings to any other player for any reason whenever they like. The idea here is to encourage people to pay for things in the real world by making in-game transactions instead of physical transactions. So, for instance, instead of players needing to withdraw physical money to pay for their home internet connection, they can instead just pay their ISP electronically by making a payment to their ISP’s player, in-game. An added benefit to these new in-game payments is that BIS can keep an eye on all of these transactions directly. If anything went wrong with a transaction, for instance especially in cases of fraud or other crime, BIS has the power to reverse the transaction, or at least provide detailed information to police about the transaction and the parties involved.

BIS takes its seat in the halls of power

With the roll-out of stores worldwide, and with the introduction of in-game player-to-player payments, Central Bingo has significantly improved its resilience, position and power. These in-game transactions become extremely popular, to the point that many people almost never touch real money. Central Bingo players deposit any and all coins they have into their game account, and from that point on, only make in-game payments. Players have become literally penniless, and instead depend entirely on Central Bingo to hold all of their money, and to make transactions on their behalf.

BIS now has much more practical power than any king or emperor of the past. Now that there is far less tendency for money to be withdrawn, BIS executives can stretch the limits much further and grant themselves much, much more money-out-of-nothing. Instead of ensuring a minimum of 50% real money available for withdrawal, they reduce the limit to 5%. Thus, they are able to spend truly enormous amounts of money – a large fraction of all money that exists in the world. They use this to pay for lobbying to ensure that only allies of BIS gain any political power throughout the world, ensure favourable regulations, ensure favourable academic attention, ensure that only favourable news is broadcast, and so on. There is now a well known revolving door where top executives of Central Bingo become senior politicians and vice versa. They command great respect, mainly due to the misconception that they have legitimately earned their dramatic wealth and influence.

In each country throughout the world, there was never a particular moment when Central Bingo captured the government, or when the government captured Central Bingo. Instead, the two institutions simply found each other to be extremely useful and gradually grew together into a single force. The government could get unlimited money from Central Bingo, while Central Bingo could get favourable laws and regulations from the government. Laws were put in place to try to maintain a facade of legitimacy by dictating that government and Central Bingo must be independent. Nevertheless, the same small groups of people run both institutions, and their policies seldom conflict with one another.

The “identity” Trojan horse

Using its influence, BIS promotes “responsible” Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations. These new rules state that most high value transactions must include customer identity (ID) checks. For instance, when buying a house, the selling agent is required to find out and record the ID of the buyer. This “ID” really just means the Central Bingo player’s account name. This of course helps incentivise people to get a Central Bingo account, if only to help jump through such hoops. But as time goes by, KYC regulations are extended to cover more and more basic purchases. People soon discover that they need to “prove who they are” for such mundane situations as buying alcohol, accessing public Wi-Fi, checking in at the dentist, and boarding a train. People are routinely led to believe that their ID and “who they are” is really their Central Bingo account. Most other identifiers such as given names, nicknames, occupations and home addresses are either subject to change, or easy to fake. Central Bingo account names on the other hand are much more reliable; being one-per-person, lifelong and easily verifiable. This is why in practice these accounts end up being the main way to demonstrate one’s “real” identity.

Since having an ID (a Central Bingo account) is so important for daily life, it is soon considered to be a human right. People without a game account or who only make partial use of their account are known as the “un-gamed” and “under-gamed” respectively. As part of efforts to address this and improve “inclusiveness”, rules are put in place requiring doctors to register Central Bingo accounts for each child at birth.

Originally, various government departments would use a variety of means for checking IDs of their citizens. This became obviously convoluted and time consuming, especially when compared to how Central Bingo accounts are being used so successfully by popular shops and services. So, soon there were initiatives to have a more streamlined and “joined-up” approach in how governments handle identities. The old, largely paper based and uncorrelated identity verification processes of the past were ultimately abandoned in favour of simply using each citizen’s Central Bingo ID for all government-related identity verification purposes.

Presenting ID has become such a common, everyday ritual that people have forgotten that their Central Bingo account is only a thing they have access to use (and that they don’t actually own). It has instead become something inherent to their identity, something they are. The idea that someone might not have a Central Bingo account at all seems bizarre if not completely impossible. It’s even more extreme than the prospect of someone never having been given a name. Not having a name might make social interactions a bit strange; but without an ID, life itself would be next to impossible.

Monetary debasement

Eventually, BIS takes advantages of its position, seriously overindulges in spending, and the real economy starts to suffer. With BIS trying to get something for nothing, the payment eventually becomes due in the form of monetary inflation/debasement. With all the newly created money floating around (with 20 times as much in-game money as physical money) the value of money itself starts to drop relative to all goods and services. Or put another way, all prices start to rise. What BIS gains by creating money for itself becomes a loss for all savers. Savers discover that their money pays for less in future than it did when they saved it. And at the end of the day, they have effectively paid for the spending spree of the game developers.

The face value of the coins in circulation starts to become significantly less than the value of the raw metal in the coins. This encourages people to start melting down any coins they can get their hands on, turning them into bullion bars to sell for a much greater price. In response to this, governments introduce new laws allowing for coins in circulation to be produced using less valuable metals, staving off such activity.

If things were to continue like this, people would eventually catch on to the debasement of their money. Savers would eventually try to avoid it by buying assets that maintain value over time more effectively, like real estate, gold bullion, artwork and so on. They would also try to spend money faster, even if it is not for saving purposes, simply to avoid later higher prices. People would tend to go out and buy a new wardrobe of clothes now rather than next month when it might cost a lot more! The risk here is an inflationary spiral, where even if no one ever withdraws physical coins, the money could instead simply lose value faster and faster as everyone chooses goods and services above an ever increasing sum of money. In the worst case scenario, money could end up losing all of its value, with BIS rightly blamed for the destruction.

This is the next major challenge for the BIS executives. They need some way to mop up their own mess, by essentially re-absorbing the excess money they had created and spent into the economy. The only way they can do this is by raising Central Bingo fees and then destroying (or at least not spending) the incoming money. However if fees were too extreme, this would of course tend to push people to abandon the game altogether, withdraw all their money and go back to paying with coins.

Just say no to coins. In-game money is the future!

Caught in a catch-22, BIS executives eventually realise that they must make it impossible for players to leave the game. They need to firmly instil in the minds of everyone that in-game balances are entirely real money and that there is less than zero benefit of withdrawing to weird historical physical money. To achieve this, they build and roll out as many quick and easy digital payment solutions as possible, across all businesses across the world. These allow people to pay each other via their in-game account at the touch of a button, and ultimately without even a touch – with contactless payments. Special phone apps are published that interact with the game and communicate with point-of-sale terminals in shops which automatically make transactions between the two players in-game.

Using their connections in the media and in politics, BIS executives establish a worldwide campaign to gradually convince everyone that physical coins are dirty, typically used for nefarious purposes, backwards, worthy of derision and should be abolished.

They introduce additional fees, first for businesses and later for individuals who want to withdraw their in-game money. They scale back staff in Central Bingo stores to ensure longer queues to process withdrawals. They use their connections to increase dramatic news stories about thefts, money laundering and tax evasion, all blamed on the existence of physical coins.

Sure enough, businesses start refusing coin payments, gradually reducing opportunities for the public to spend coins. And soon afterwards, customers start abandoning coins entirely.

This is still not enough encouragement, however. There are many cases where physical coins still make most sense even with the most convenient technology imaginable for digital payments. For instance, there are many people who for one reason or another are unable or unwilling even to create a game account. For them, physical coins might be the only practical means of payment, with anything else being either too complicated, too expensive, or outright impossible; e.g. for people who have been explicitly banned from the game, or who are unable to provide necessary information during the sign up process. This is to say nothing of the many cases where people might be either embarrassed, scared, or simply indignant about BIS having full view of all of their transactions.

So, BIS turns its focus to develop something that is as close to coins as possible, but where BIS nevertheless has fine-grained control, similar to in-game money. Something like a digital money token that can be passed around without an account, without necessarily transmitting any private information about the transaction to BIS.

Forget coins. Forget in-game money. How about CBDCs?

Eventually, Central Bingo Digital Coupons (CBDCs) are developed. These are subtly different from normal in-game money.

With in-game money, players always need to have an account (an actual game character) and must log in to be able to make transactions. In the real world, players have have apps on their phones which are essentially always logged in, which provide an extremely quick and easy payment interaction. Because it is so seamless, they might not realise they are using their game account. Nevertheless, they do need to have a game account to make such transactions, and all of these transactions are clearly tracked by the game.

CBDCs on the other hand explicitly do not require an account. Anyone can receive a CBDC by installing an app on their phone (which would not necessarily require any sign up process) and have someone or some business simply transfer a CBDC to them, using a similar process as contactless payments in shops. The recipient can then send the CBDC on to anyone else the same way, again seamlessly without requiring any sign-up process, or any kind of tracking or oversight of any kind; much like with coins, or gift vouchers.

With such an alternative available, PR campaigns ramp up tremendously to get rid of physical coins. Now anyone with a smart phone can switch to entirely digital payments. People no longer need to have a game account, or even know what Central Bingo is. There is no need to be worried about BIS spying on transactions, since strong privacy is built in. There is not even a need to have a smartphone as BIS now provides smart cards and simplified phones geared specifically towards making such payments as easy as possible. The devices are delivered for free to the most needy, and ultimately to anyone who simply asks for one.

With the various and increasing major economic instabilities across the world, political movements appear in support of universal basic income (UBI). This entails a set small amount of money that is paid out regularly to everyone, no questions asked, to ensure that no one is ever left starving with zero income. BIS is careful to ensure that a such UBI schemes are paid out only in the form of CBDCs or in-game money, and never as physical coins. This further encourages uptake of CBDCs, especially amongst the most desperate and needy, who were some of the last holdouts using physical coins.

As economies of the world break down further, food shortages arrive and food rationing is instituted. In order to keep track of the amounts of goods each person has received, and to avoid inefficient manual ID checks during the crisis, most ration distribution services are only available to those paying with in-game money or CBDCs. ID checks happen quickly and automatically when paying with in-game money, as usual, and with CBDCs, the payment the process is even more straightforward. Received rations are automatically tracked against each CBDC account, making ID checks entirely unnecessary. This further squeezes out any remaining holdouts trying to live their lives with any alternative forms of money.

The CBDC bait-and-switch

With everyone firmly comfortable using their Central Bingo account and/or CBDCs, at long last, governments around the world announce the complete abolition of physical coins. Soon after this, all associated services like the minting industry, coin couriers, coin counting systems and so on close down completely, with their property broken up and sold off.

With physical coins irrevocably a thing of the past, BIS executives find themselves with nearly unlimited power. They can now grant themselves any amount of money without fear of a cascade of withdrawals, because the CBDCs themselves are within the game. CBDCs appear to be independent of Central Bingo, like the coins of the past, but this is nothing but a masterful illusion. Similarly to the in-game balances which BIS has total and legitimate control over, BIS still has total and legitimate control over the CBDCs. The CBDCs are effectively coupons or vouchers which can be redeemed for in-game money; not for real money. With physical coins, there was always the risk that Central Bingo might run out. But with CBDCs, BIS can simply create more when needed. Therefore there is now zero risk that BIS can ever run out of money.

With prices rising dramatically, players angry at Central Bingo or BIS for any reason might attempt to withdraw out to their CBDCs. But they will find that they are still exposed to the monetary manipulation, even if they never interact directly with the game again. BIS is secure in its position since it can simply create new CBDCs to replace those extracted by the lost player. Better still, the lost player still takes the hit for any future spending splurges – via the drop in value of all CBDCs.

This still is not truly unlimited power of course. If things got particularly bad, there remains a risk of violent revolution! So BIS executives next work to keep a lid on things by mopping up their own mess. And now, dramatic fee increases are a lot more viable since there is limited scope for people to exit the game. Such fee increases are dressed up as emergency solutions to natural economic crises. With the newly raised fees, everyone finds their in-game balance tending to reduce over time while the value of the money itself also drops in value. This would of course lead players to withdraw their game balance to CBDCs and close their account, in an attempt to at least avoid the fee. But to their horror, players discover that CBDCs also reduce not just in value, but in number too! Among other techniques, CBDCs are mopped up using enforced timeouts, causing the CBDCs to expire if they are not spent within a certain amount of time. The timeouts are centrally configured to target a similar rate of CBDC re-absorption as with in-game balances. BIS justifies this by explaining that CBDCs must be treated similarly to in-game money, otherwise everyone would simply withdraw their CBDC to evade the necessary corrective monetary intervention!

With this nasty tool at its disposal, BIS can forcefully stop people from losing confidence in the value of Central Bingo money. If it ever looked like people were trying to get out from under it into other assets, BIS can increase fees and timeouts, which reduces the supply of money, and thus increases the value of the remaining money (as a result of basic supply and demand). Of course, this explicit extraction of money would draw its own derision from the public.

In the face of such bald-faced theft, people might start migrating to an alternative money and payment system entirely. For instance, they might try cryptocurrency. This is likely to happen in pockets of the population. But these groups will be easily associated with the black market, and accused of attempting to undermine and destabilise the financial system. Ultimately, if such alternative currencies ever came to threaten the dominance of Central Bingo money, they would simply be outlawed. Such laws would need to be respected by a suitably compliant public, of course...

Finishing touches

Now that there is no money alternative, BIS finds itself with total, unchallengeable power. Although the CBDC system was initially deployed with an explicit absence of spying or tracking, such unpopular features are now forcefully introduced through automatic software updates. Every CBDC user is now required to provide verifiable identification information in order for their payment app to function. Those who are unable to comply for any reason are provided with a free visit by a Central Bingo agent who helps gather and processes the required information.

Once reliable biometrics are gathered from every single Central Bingo player and CBDC user, all payment systems can finally be dramatically simplified. Cameras are set up at all merchants throughout the world such that each customer can be recognised without them needing a phone at all. As soon as someone steps up to a shop counter, cameras automatically recognise the customer, can intelligently determine consent for payment, and the customer’s Central Bingo account is debited accordingly.

AI systems are rolled out that can detect and identify any attempt, or tendency by anyone to undermine Central Bingo or BIS. These people, having been clearly identified, can systematically be locked out of the global monetary system; ostensibly to defend against fraud, money laundering or terrorist financing. On being locked out for any such reason, the person is only ever told that Central Bingo is “complying with its legal obligations”. There is an appeal process for such cases, but it is intentionally complicated, cumbersome, stressful, time consuming and generally expensive. BIS executives, having the ability to create an infinite amount of money out of nothing, also routinely pay for expert defamation teams to ruin their enemies, cause unfortunate accidents, and so on.

Eventually, the Central Bingo game goes out of fashion. People stop playing the game but continue using their Central Bingo accounts to participate in society.  The concepts of 'players' and 'in-game money' disappear from common usage and, even without any fundamental change to their nature, these instead come to be known simply as 'digital IDs' and 'money'. The fact that they were ever artificial elements of a computer game is seen as nothing but a weird quirk of history; even while the game developers continue to wield supreme control.

Many people throughout the world come to realise that it is the money system that is both the single greatest restriction and economic drain on their lives. However, they know that they cannot complain about it without drawing attention to themselves and risking being marked as enemies of the state, dangerous extremists, or idiotic regressive idealists radicalised by online misinformation.

With complete, irrevocable control over all the money of the world, Central Bingo uses its power to detect and completely squash all radicals, ultimately ending all international and civil wars. The BIS team announces the establishment of permanent world peace and are celebrated worldwide as the saviours of mankind.