A reader recently asked me to comment on the demise of MtGox and its implications for Bitcoin enthusiasts.

I refused to do so, on account of the MtGox scam having been thoroughly beaten to death elsewhere - long before the recent and final convulsive fit people erroneously describe as 'its demise.' - The unwashed masses, eager to be fleeced, have no plans to listen now, just as they did not listen then.

So, instead, I wrote this.

In the English-speaking world, the period of lawless bacchanalia "enjoyed" by millions of people in the decade following the Soviet collapse is sometimes called the "Roaring '90s." ¹

Just as much of the nautical terminology used by modern sailors was born during the famed "age of sail," an epoch of "bold and free experiments" in the fields of... fraud, corruption, murder - likewise gave us a wealth of new "terms of art."

Useful, catchy words for the defining concepts of an era tend to migrate, slowly but surely, across cultural and linguistic boundaries. But, since words are not themselves alive, they cannot do it without some help. So, like many other people, I intend to do my fair bit to help them.

You have already met our old friend, rectothermal cryptoanalysis. (I should hope - in the written word, rather than in person!) Now meet the Chumpatron (Лохотрон) - a short and self-documenting term, encompassing a variety of concepts essential to the daily life of modern man.

A chumpatron is not necessarily a physical contrivance, like a cyclotron. Although it can be. Modern, state-of-the-art chumpatrons tend to rely heavily on automatic machinery. But the machinery alone never suffices, for its operator must always take care to bring the machine fuel. That is to say, chump (Лох.) To be fair, chumps are not the fuel per se - merely the containers in which fuel is packaged and transported.

The fuel of a chumpatron is not necessarily money, as a naive reader might suppose. It could be something else entirely. But more often than not, it is something that, when reprocessed (perhaps in another kind of chumpatron) can be alchemically-converted into wealth. The chumps, as we noted above, are not necessarily consumed when the fuel is burned - being mere containers; and containers are often re-usable! In fact, these particular containers have arms, legs, and rudimentary nervous systems - and will, if correctly cared for, amble about the world semi-autonomously and gather more... fuel for the chumpatron.

A chumpatron, given as it converts human beings, their labour, hopes, aspirations, etc. into something tangible and useful for its master can easily be confused with other types of machines. Say, a biodiesel fermenter. But it is not the same thing! Anyone with the ill-fortune to end up in a biodiesel reactor will be fermented. But there is nothing fortuitous or accidental about ending up in a chumpatron.

The defining attribute of a chumpatron is that it does not run on just any kind of human being, but on chumps in particular. A conquering war-machine which practices ordinary, traditional enslavement of the conquered (with or without reprocessing into biodiesel!) is therefore not a chumpatron. The fuel-containers for a chumpatron carry out their duties on their own free will.

The chumpatron is more usefully-specific concept than the ordinary English word "scam" - because it implies an automatic, mechanical regularity to the workings of the people-to-resource converter. This is a considerable improvement on mere scamming - which is a somewhat unreliable, labour-intensive, and, more importantly - risky - affair. The perpetrator of an ordinary scam, should he fail to abscond with the proceeds in a timely manner, is liable to face some angry victims and perhaps some sharp pointed sticks. The operator of a chumpatron, on the other hand, can operate the mechanism by remote control. The highest grade of Chumpatronic Engineer can even make use of chumps directly in the machine's control system, thoroughly shielding himself from the inevitably hot, fast-moving fragments of an exploding chumpatron (perhaps the only well-known, established fact about chumpatrons is: they tend to explode. Though almost never without some warning.)

When chumps find their way into a chumpatron, they tend to emit a variety of crunching and squeaking noises, as the gears turn, grind, and empty them of their useful contents. If you are not yet in the gears, have not yet been emptied - and would like to stay out, and remain full - you can try to learn something from these noises. But it will be, by and large, a waste of time. Don't listen to the noises. Instead, learn from other people. For example, from people who have stood near the hopper, but at a safe distance - and have not wound up inside despite the mighty suction of the intake manifold.

One could spend years in the study and cataloging of chumpatrons. And others have done this, and you, dear reader, are invited to learn from them. One such man is the well-known Dmitri Orlov. Whether or not you agree with his uncommonly poor health prognosis for modern civilization, his analysis of today's subject - how chumps find their way into a chumpatron - is worth considering:

"...the first hurdle, for many people, is in understanding what trust actually is, because there is no innate human quality called trustworthiness, possessed by some people, lacking in others. Rather, it is more along the lines of a generalization concerning a given individual’s behavior over time, within a given relationship. Trust is transactional: a person needs a reason to trust you, and you need a reason to trust that person. There is, however, such a quality as trustfulness: this is the property of small children, tame animals and, most unfortunately for them, many regular, salt-of-the-earth, mainstream Americans. It is of negative survival value in the context of financial collapse. It is being exhibited for all to see by some of the people who recently lost money when MF Global stole it to cover some private bets it had made. They licked their wounds, complained bitterly, and then...went looking for another financial company—to be taken advantage of again. Since the head of MF Global wasn’t punished, why wouldn’t another company do the same to them, knowing that it can do so with impunity? There also seems to be a certain set of traits possessed in abundance by a category of highly effective American financial operators that makes it easy for them to prey on trustful people. It may be the suits they wear, or the English they speak or their general demeanor—let us call it “trustiness,” to go along with the “truthiness” of their financial disclosures. Deep down, trustful people feel privileged to be robbed by such superior specimens. The predator-prey relationship has been honed to the fine point of a pen: told to sign their life away on the dotted line, the besotted, trustful American gulps quietly—and signs."

Dmitri Orlov, "The Five Stages of Collapse."

"...we need a word that describes the artifacts generated in response to irrational actors who demand to be fooled. As the old saying goes, “A fool and his money are soon parted” – at the fool's own insistence, no less! If the deer comes out of the forest and walks up to the hunter, it is not proper hunting, and this is not proper con artistry or grift or embezzlement or any other term we use to describe proper works of evil. If the victim, at the sight of the economic predator, goes into doggie submission, we must stop discussing the phenomenon in terms of conflict and consider whether what we are observing might be some strange instance of symbiosis."

Dmitri Orlov, "Welcome to Fuffland!"

If you have read this far, and happen to be one of the people who suffered from the collapse of MtGox, learn to recognize yourself in Mr. Orlov's zoological portrait.

Given as falling into a chumpatron is entirely voluntary, you can easily opt out of doing so if you can 1) decide that you do not want to, and 2) learn to distinguish the business end (hopper) of an operating chumpatron from your everyday surroundings (I should hope that there is, at the present time, a difference!)

For instance, was MtGox a proper, free-standing automatic chumpatron in its own right, implementing the entire "fuel cycle?" Or was it merely one component of a larger chumpatron? That is, a media machine which made sure that every glossy magazine page mentioning Bitcoin would take care to also mention "MtGox, the premier Bitcoin exchange..." And now that MtGox is gone, are you in search of a new, improved, glossier magazine, so that you can be introduced to a new MtGox, in which you can lose whatever remains of your coin?

Are you eager to trust your cryptographic private keys to some "trustworthy" fellow, by using Bitcoin "banks" - or otherwise?

If so, you are fuel, and you belong in a fuel tank. If you do not care to be fuel, use your gifts as an advanced living organism (e.g. nervous system) and learn to identify and evade your predators. You don't even need a human brain for this - the brain of an insect will easily suffice. But you must use it.