The G-coin
If Indian Gods & Goddesses were Crypto Currencies
India has always been known as the land of diverse languages, cuisines, crafts, and most importantly castes or religious ethnicity. For every religion, caste, class, region, you will find subcastes and then even more varied Gods and Goddesses that are worshiped. For example Gujaratis are Hindus, but they might be Lohanas, Jains, Patels, Kathiyawadis, Saurashtrian, Sonis, Patnis, and a lot lot more. Now, after you go from Indian to Gujarati to Lohana, there are still sub-castes like there can be Kutchi Lohanas or Goghari Lohanas, Halai Lohanas or Mahikanta Lohanas. Among these, any specific sub-caste follows a certain set of religious paths, which may or may not have different Gods and Goddesses based on their geographic location, class, and other things.
The point is, there are a LOT of names, idols, books, myths, or beliefs that qualify as the God factor in this country. According to popular belief there are close to 33 millions such divine figures in the country. If we do the math on the population of the country, this means that there is a new God-figure for one in every 41 people of India. Woah!
Naturally some of these Gods are more popular and rampantly found than others. Combining this “data” with today’s contemporary “markets”, a friend of mine created an online trading wallet with G-currency. It started with just one G-coin, a really popular one, that of Lord Ganesha. It was literally called G-coin. Early adopters and curious people actually did start buying it & with the help of some people on impactful social media handles, my friend managed to make the phenomenon quite viral.
As the concept picked up, not only did the people believe in something so unique made in India, the association to their beloved elephant-headed God made the G-coin skyrocket.
Soon there was a rage about owning G-coins. Some people bought them in huge amounts when the rates were right, and some saved up to buy a few but everyone wanted a piece. There were a few “gurus” that came up to help people set up their G-coin accounts and a few brokers set up office as well. The G-coin grew and kept growing becoming far too valuable for everyone to get their hands on. Meanwhile there were other coins that came up. There were some that grew popular like the REM coin, Sitayte, Saras, Allather, VMRy, Indron, BVM, Balajim, and Kaliq. However, the one coin that was said will reach that of the G-coin was LXMI. Everyone wanted LXMI even if it was 0.00002 units. I don’t know the source of the rumor, but some said people were fasting on Fridays to be able to be blessed with the LXMI coin.
Owning these coins was not a completely financial decision but was also dependent a lot on your families beliefs and inclinations. The moon calendar and its dates really affected the buying and selling price of these coins along with the one big religion of India — festivals. Trends in the app were analysed based on whether it was Ugadi or Buddha Poornima, Durga Puja or Eid. There were a couple of new apps that came out too, and newer coins kept coming up like Karthikoin, AMB, Zorcoin, Guru, etc.
As more and more people bought these coins and started creating a buzz around their favourite one, the authorities grew inquisitive about the apps that were stealthily creating a mark in the crypto world and creating a shift in beliefs. Needless to say, they intervened for regulatory measures but were ironically happy with receiving units of G-coins in exchange of letting the apps function. Some activists and socialists as well as traditionalists/purists created noise around how their religion had been put “up for sale” and how they would get to the bottom of stripping it down. The good (yet scary) part was that the apps and their sources were anonymous so there was no news of anyone being hurt.
Pretty soon there were more authorities that questioned this, some days the coin rates swooped, some days it soared. An educated pandit seemed to be extremely disturbed and vocal about his opposition of the G-coin apps. Even if anonymously, he decided to communicate with my friend. Through twitter, he vehemently questioned the entire concept and also made some points about quantifying the things like hope, devotion and prayer with these new-age gambles. A fair number of people also joined his twitter petition looking for answers to the way in which their divine beliefs were being personified into coins. My friend didn’t shy away from these. In fact, his replies shut most people up. He also had supporters, I’m guessing people who owned a lot of coins.
Most often then not, their arguments just had one question. What exactly are Temple trusts and donations doing, or how everyone is selling merchandise that has ohm symbols or Krishna figurines whether it was t-shirts or bags, music videos or books, online courses or prasadams, being a guide or even the movie industry. They listed out so many different industries targeting children and adults the same that have made a full-time business out of the divine presences in the country then why is Crypto any different? Who gave the copyrights for chants and mantras to YouTubers or for idol making to sculptors? There responses were fierce and explanatory and in turn created a huge positive impact on the coin trade.
Which one would you buy?
