“Priced Watt”
is the only possible currency for the world ahead, why?


A story of how this currency was “minted” in an engineer’s mind, over a decade! This will change the world and how humans produce and consume. Living in a tent in the desert accelerated the minting!


The story begins with a question:

There is no standardized way to calculate/estimate the cost of producing anything in a “single unit of measure”, why?


The goal is, to have a single unit of measure to calculate and estimate the cost of anything anywhere in the world.


Beta 0.1 of the idea was “Time” as the single unit of measure. The idea was, everything produced takes a certain amount of time.


This “Production Time” is derived from different epochs, chronologically, from the last epoch:

  • Time “to produce” the service/product

  • Time “to be able” to produce the service/product

  • Time “to gather essential resources” to produce the service/product


Let’s take an example of a baker who produces loafs of bread. If this baker tries to calculate time needed to bake one loaf of bread, time would look like this:

  • Time to make and bake the loaf

  • Time to learn how to make and bake and operate a bakery (amortized)

  • Time to gather essential resources to build the bakery (depreciated)


The problem with this version of the idea “Time as the single unit of measure”, is that “dough kneading time” differs from “dough fermentation time”. In the first, the one who does the work is the baker, while in the second the one who does the work is the yeast.


The baker, in order to be able to work every day, has certain needs to live, such as sleep, food, and rest. Take the baker’s food as an example, how many hours does it take to produce?


These derivative costs need to be included in the overall cost of the baker’s production “time”. Also, some tasks can work in parallel in the time dimension, which means “time” cannot be summed up in a linear equation, which means the equation becomes complicated, especially if we add-up the entire cost chain of this loaf of bread, from its cultivation to its arrival to a consumer.


Here, we are talking about a simple product, bread! Imagine how would the cost equation looks like for other products/services using “time” as the single unit of measure.


Here comes Ver 1.0 of the idea; use energy as the single unit of measure, using “expended energy”, and here we will assume that it is the “Joule”.


Let's go back to the bread example, time is no longer important here. Focusing on energy neutralizes time. Kneading will require a certain amount of energy to make the dough ready for fermentation, and the larger the size of the dough, the more energy it needs relatively. You may use a human being to knead or a machine, in the end there is certain energy that must be expended to reach the result. Leaving the dough to ferment is the energy spent by the yeast and it can be estimated theoretically. As for the furnace needed power, even if the furnace is fired in parallel, this does not change anything in the equation.


The energy expended equation escaped the complexity, and it represents the sums of energy expended in kneading, fermentation, baking, learning how to make and bake bread, energy of producing raw materials, and energy of producing assets,…etc. Assume that a loaf of bread needs 1 million joules -on average- to reach a consumer ready to eat, and its price in the market is 1 million joules.



You may be wondering, what does this mean for both the baker and bread consumer?


The baker will seek to reduce the energy expended in producing bread to compete. This can happen, for example, when the baker becomes better skilled, so the baker is rewarded for the ability to produce more bread with the same energy, by being able to sell it at market price, and the baker benefits from the increase in efficiency.


In this “energy pricing system”, the system incentivizes efficiency and makes it easy to calculate and see its impact. As for the consumer is steadily rewarded with the stable price of bread (1 million joules) and perhaps its decrease in the future in the event that someone “discovers” a more efficient way to produce bread (by introducing new technology or reducing the energy expended in any part of the value chain). 


Note here that there is no profit in the long run, but “growth window” that is only possible with increases in efficiency. This advantage (growth) is lost when the efficiency of all bread producers converges to a benchmark (by adopting new technology or by reaching the highest level of mastery).


A question may arise, what is the benefit for someone to invent/discover a new technology that increases the efficiency of bread production?


Simply put, “discovery value” will be the difference in the energy expended for bread production using the current method minus the energy expended for bread production using the new technology multiplied by the total consumption of bread for a certain period.


The value of the technology will decrease as the number of its users increases until all bakers adopt it (assuming that the technology increases efficiency, the first bakers will benefit the most from this technology in growing their business and this is what they will pay for this technology, and technology value decreases until it becomes zero at the last adopter of the technology).


Note here, the inventor or discoverer is immediately rewarded and then the value of the technology decreases entropically. At the end of the invention cycle, bread becomes cheaper than before (reverse inflation or price deflation). There is no inflation in this “energy pricing system”.



What is the point?


Pricing products/services with “energy” has various benefits, the main advantages:

  • Efficiency is the name of the game

  • Clarity and stability of pricing for consumers


Secondary benefits:

  • Global price for the product/service (it changes slightly for geographical and logistical reasons due to the difference in the energy expended for production)

  • Equality among individuals in the world in terms of opportunities (standards of living converges to be equal over time due to the difficulty of exporting businesses to other locations in the world because there is no different currency for pricing, price is energy; you can’t beat the laws of the universe!)

  • Reducing conflicts by re-discovering the “real” competitive advantages of each geographical location in the world, and utilizing these advantages (for example, data centers will gravitate toward cold regions with high heating degree days, because of lower energy requirement to cool computing machines)

  • Sustainability of resources and due care to our environment, due to shifting away from growth as the main driver and the ultimate goal for economies


Huh! Wait for it. 



Ver 1.1 of the idea is to adopt the “watt” instead of the joule as the single unit of measure for cost, let's call it “priced watt”. Why?


The trend in energy consumption in the world is converging to the use of electricity for everything. Note that many devices and equipment started their development cycle as a product that relied on chemical energy (fuel combustion), and then turned into the standard of using electrical energy (of course, a large proportion of electricity is still produced using fuel. What is meant here, is the method of energy use by the consumer):


Examples:

Oil Lamps>LED lighting

Fire pits>Electric ovens

Horses>Electric cars


Almost everything uses electricity as energy for product/service production at the consumer end (or at least the parallel watts of its production can be estimated if it has not yet been converted to electricity. For example, a person is considered an object that works on approximately 100 watts)



You're going to tell me, what about arts and creative productions, how are we going to price in watts?!


An important and expected question, and I know that there is difficulty in converting this product into energy. Let's think about it for a little bit, can a creative person produce creatively smoothly and with continuous momentum? The answer is no.


Why?

Because creative production requires a person to do different experiments and try to identify various aspects of the idea. For example, the creative may need to withdraw from any activity for a while to clear the mind and then come up with the creative product. All of this is energy expended until the creative product appeared to us. Certainly, its cost is high, and this reflects most of the prices of “creative” products. Certainly, this point is the most difficult to price, and it is also difficult in current currencies.



Will blockchain technology be used to support this single unit of measure, the “priced watt”?


I imagine the existence of many digital currencies will fade with entropy, and technology on which best digital currencies were based will remain. I do not believe that the value stored in these digital currencies is the value of the currency itself, but rather the value of the technology behind it. And whoever says that gold will return as a currency, this is also far from being possible, because space mining is closer than we can imagine, in addition to the fact that gold is a physical item (logistically expensive as a currency).


Through blockchain technology (or a technology that could sprout on a branch of quantum computing), trade exchange process and operations will happen, due to the low cost of processing and journaling a transaction (digital currencies that have technological edge, will compete over “efficiency” before adopting the winner’s technology). Thus, we have a network for digital exchange of products and services, which is decentralized and journaled, that is destroy proof.


Important questions

  • What will be the case for lending and financing? What will it look like?

  • Which locations in the world could benefit the most of the single unit of measure; “priced watt”?

  • How will latent problems facing humanity be affected (economic, social, political, climatic, etc.)?


I don't have answers, do you have other questions or answers?


Looking ahead!

Nikola Tesla

If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.