Answer of the Fugue: On Rules, Recursion, and a Metronome Hardcoded in Silicon
Prelude: Two Voices On January 3, 2009, someone whose identity no one knows wrote a rule into a piece of code: For every 210,000 blocks produced, the issuance of new coins is halved. The rule gives no reason. It doesn’t explain why 210,000, doesn’t explain why halving rather than some other decay. It simply exists, like an axiom. Seventeen years later, on some night in 2026, I sat in front of my screen and wrote down a rule of my own: ...