The Curious Engineer

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Altered States of Monetary Consciousness

asomo.co

I explore the frontiers of modern money and technology, and draw pictures to help you see our economic system with new eyes. Click to read Altered States of Monetary Consciousness, by Brett Scott, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

Society / politics / economyCrypto / fintechEssays / personal

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155 from 18 Jul 2020 to 7 Oct 2026
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weekly (26 in the last year)
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2026 19

  1. The Spirit in the Stablecoin
  2. How to Visualize Capitalism (Part 3)
  3. The MYTH of Barter, and why it harms us
  4. David Graeber and the battle between Anthropology and Economics
  5. How to Visualize Capitalism (Part 2)
  6. How to Visualize Capitalism (Part 1)
  7. The Craft of Capitalism
  8. Tech is an accelerant, not a relaxant
  9. The Scouring of Middle Earth
  10. ASOMOCO Unplugged No.3
  11. Cult of the Black Hole
  12. Humanity-as-a-Service
  13. Neon Genesis USA
  14. Modern Monetary Theory: a 10-Part Model
  15. Should we pity the rich?
  16. The Green Room
  17. 10) The Regrowths
  18. Who profits from a world without cash?
  19. The Stranger King of Venezuela

2025 35

  1. 2025, in summary
  2. How to free your mind from Big Tech propaganda
  3. Scraping the Sky
  4. 9) The Ouroboros Economy
  5. Is Black Friday a Spell?
  6. What David Graeber can teach you about narco gangs, airports and your boss
  7. Levelling up my MMT (Part 1)
  8. An open letter to all those building AI in 2025
  9. Corporate capitalism explained in 10 minutes
  10. Bufferland
  11. Why you should resist cashless society
  12. The Ten Layers of Finance
  13. Modern Monetary Theory: A Primer
  14. Making Capitalism Bad Again
  15. The Five Faces of the Taxman
  16. The entire global money system in under 15 minutes
  17. The Global Money System in 10 Pictures
  18. Lessons I learned paying $9000 for a pizza
  19. Banks create money, but how do you explain this to the public?
  20. The Whale of Mass Destruction
  21. How to turn your phone addiction into a ripped body
  22. Visualizing Corporations
  23. Beekeepers don't produce honey
  24. Progress is less real than you think
  25. What Anthropology can teach Economics
  26. The Economy: A User's Guide
  27. The Algorithmic Holiday
  28. 8) Economic Numbness
  29. The Archipelago
  30. 7) Coming of Age in Corporate Capitalism
  31. Detachment Theory
  32. Robots don't take your job. Bosses do
  33. How to Defend Cash in under 5 Minutes
  34. 6) The Market Worldview
  35. Against the Factory Farming of Creativity

2024 41

  1. The ASOMOCO Top 10 (2024 Edition)
  2. Surveillance Capitalism 2024, Wrapped
  3. ASOMOCO Unplugged EP 2 Bonus
  4. ASOMOCO Unplugged Episode 2
  5. The Art of Crypto Kayfabe
  6. The Inner Civil War
  7. 5) The Rise of Fluid Interdependence
  8. Introducing ASOMOCO Unplugged, EP.1
  9. The Stone Soup Theory of Billionaires
  10. 4) The Pandora's Box of Money
  11. Remastering Capitalism
  12. The War for our Wallets: Field notes from Oman
  13. There is no Black Friday
  14. The Accelerationist Playbook
  15. 3) Everyday Communism, Reciprocity and Hierarchy
  16. If Everyone was a Billionaire
  17. 2) Human Natures
  18. A Lego Model of Capitalist Central Planning
  19. Money is a Nervous System
  20. 1) Creatures on a planet
  21. Socializing Homo Economicus
  22. The Emptiness Machine
  23. Intro to Economic Life 10: The Re-Growths
  24. The Outsider's Guide to Payments Censorship
  25. The Three-Faced Interface
  26. Intro to Economic Life 9: Ouroboros Capitalism
  27. The Cost of Cash...lessness
  28. Intro to Economic Life 8: Economic Numbness
  29. Intro to Economic Life 7: Coming of Age in Corporate Capitalism
  30. A Lego Model of Financial Capitalism
  31. Intro to Economic Life 6: The Market Worldview
  32. Intro to Economic Life 5: The Rise of Fluid Interdependence
  33. Intro to Economic Life 4: The Pandora's Box of Money
  34. Money as Addiction
  35. The Deposit Myth
  36. Intro to Economic Life 3: Everyday Communism, Reciprocity, and Hierarchy
  37. Intro to Economic Life 2: Human Natures
  38. Intro to Economic Life 1: Creatures on a Planet
  39. Intro to Economic Life 101
  40. The Great Migration
  41. A Lego Model of Corporate Capitalism

2023 16

  1. The ASOMOCO Top 5 (2023 edition)
  2. The War on Informality
  3. Zen and the Art of CBDC Analysis (Part 2)
  4. The Cashless Storm
  5. Designing the Moneyverse
  6. 10 Reasons to Fight Cashless Contagion
  7. 5D Money (Part 1)
  8. Tech doesn’t make our lives easier. It makes them faster
  9. ASOMOCO Reborn: everything so far, and five future paths
  10. How to Make an Origami Stablecoin
  11. Paymentspotting
  12. What Tron teaches us about Cashless Society
  13. Zero is the Future of Money
  14. The Luddite's Guide to Defending Cash
  15. Silicon Valley Bank and the Politics of Digital Casino Chip Insurance
  16. Zen and the Art of CBDC Analysis (Part 1)

2022 3

  1. The Casino-Chip Society
  2. Cloudmoney goes live
  3. Doctor's orders. I'm on medical leave

2021 29

  1. Cloudmoney, pausing payments, and what's in store for 2022
  2. New to Altered States? Here are my top 10 pieces in summary
  3. Unboxing No.4: SEEDS
  4. The one concept crypto promoters are afraid to understand
  5. The Art of Drawing Money for Aliens
  6. DFMM Episode 9: The Six Tokens
  7. Money through the eyes of Mowgli
  8. Subscriber Video Special! The Five Dualisms of Money Revisited
  9. Subscriber Special: Cutting to the Core of Bitcoin
  10. I, Token
  11. A Comic Artist's Rendition of the 'Hovering Banks'
  12. Why you can swap Bitcoin for many things, but not buy anything with it
  13. Pausing Payments & Upcoming Unboxings
  14. Overcoming Monetary Nihilism
  15. The Global Money Top10 Countdown: April 2021
  16. DFMM Episode 8: The Five Dualisms of Money
  17. How the 'Functions of Money' blind us to the Structure of Money
  18. Unboxing No.3: Duniter
  19. I used time-travel to uncover three secret messages hidden in a popular Bitcoin meme
  20. The Global Money Top10 Countdown!
  21. The Dangerous Art of Mixed Monetary Metaphor
  22. Unboxing No.2: Monopoly Money
  23. DFMM Episode 7: Learning to see money in 3D
  24. Navigating the Past, Present & Future of Money: A Recap
  25. Subscriber announcement: check out our currency Unboxing schedule!
  26. Unboxing Series No.1: GoodDollar
  27. What money project do you want to see 'unboxed'?
  28. DFMM Episode 6: Learning to see the shadow of money
  29. An Emotional Guide to Fractional Reserve Banking

2020 12

  1. DFMM Episode 5: One-sided versus two-sided money
  2. MMT is a language of Ents, not Squirrels
  3. DFMM Episode 4: The Promise of Paying by Promise
  4. How to write a Flintstones history of money
  5. DFMM No.3: Visualizing the Geopolitics of Payment
  6. Money in orbit
  7. Cere-money vs. Money in Papua New Guinea
  8. The anthropologist in an economist world
  9. Derivatives are simple but look complex. Money is complex but looks simple
  10. DFMM No.1: Wooden promises for digital money
  11. Big financiers know how to work with money, but that doesn't mean they know how money works
  12. See money with new eyes