And on that farm he had a processing memory delay, EIEIO, which stood for “Enforce In-order of Execution.” His nephew explained it was a CPU instruction lag affecting the hash rate. Old MacDonald distrusted foreign-manufactured farm equipment and whenever he caught a machine loafing, he plunked it with his shovel.
With a plunk-plunk here and there, Old MacDonald awoke at the crack of dawn to mine Bitcoin, hoping to avoid growing whichever trendy produce paired well with chicken that season.
And on that farm he had a clever nephew, Lloyd, who wore UNTUCKit shirts and had unlimited text and data. With a tap-tap on his smartphone, Lloyd computed what the farm earned per egg versus what it would earn per Bitcoin. Here a tap, there a tap, Lloyd and his UNTUCKit-shirted gamer friends transformed the barn into a crypto-mining factory with 2,000 Antminer machines and a state-of-the-art cooling system.
“What happened to my chickens, Lloyd?”
“What chickens?” Everywhere a tap-tap. “And stop plunking my machines. They aren’t scared of shovels the way baby cows are.”
“Leave my cows out of it. You hear me Lloyd?…Lloyd?”
And on that farm he had pep talks. “You want to be one of those farm-to-table schlubs growing produce based on what Food & Wine says pairs well with chicken?”
“No, Lloyd.”
“Bananacadoes. People got tired of the pit in the center. Now they want to peel them like bananas. Is that why you became a farmer?”
“I became a farmer because I enjoy chickens, speaking of which—”
“No more poultry questions. Just pay the electric bill.”
And on that farm he had power outages. That put the EIEIO delay in perspective once the electric bill surpassed $80,000 per month and Lloyd’s friends began siphoning juice from the local Arby’s.
Here a bid, there a bid, they auctioned off Old McDonald’s cattle to pay for wind turbines. Soon Old MacDonald was plowing under his corn to erect wind monstrosities to increase his hash rate. He felt like Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams, only instead of Shoeless Joe, he had UNTUCKit’ed Lloyd, and instead of Iowa ghosts, it was conspiracy crypto-gamers outmaneuvering the collapse of the global banking system.
And on that farm he had 4,000 missing chickens, inexplicably gone, everyone blaming Old McDonald for not utilizing cryptography to track his supply.
“EIEIO,” Lloyd complained. “Slow bit rate is crippling this farm and all you care about is birds.”
“How can that many chickens just disappear?” Everywhere a patronizing shrug-shrug. “Even if you did something genocidal, Lloyd, I’m genuinely curious.”
“Stop asking about chickens, old man. If those birds had been properly transacted on the blockchain there would be a digital ledger.” Everywhere a snigger-snigger. It was the sniggering that finally caused Old MacDonald to phone the authorities.
And on that farm he had an FBI raid, mostly lawyers and tech nerds obsessing over Lloyd’s wind-powered mining ingenuity. Lloyd was fined and then hired by the Treasury Department to head up deregulating cryptocurrency regulation. Old MacDonald cashed out 600 Bitcoins, worth $4.6 million, and moved to a gated golf community in Clearwater. Everywhere a plink-plink, he awoke at the crack of dawn to slap balls around perfectly farmable terrain before lunching at the clubhouse. Tuesday’s special was chicken thighs slow basted in a bananacado hollandaise sauce. Old MacDonald had the Classic Roast Beef at Arby’s.