Antwork introduces more than 100 concepts from economics and technological innovation – from the earliest introduction of payment methods in human society to cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens, bartering to central banking. Each of these concepts is introduced in the fictional narrative of the book, but also explained in their real-world context in the 30,000 word glossary.
The below list includes the concepts, theories, technologies and ideas introduced in Antwork, along with a few sample explanations.
Account: When Leodie and Wimax give Sveper some silverwitch leaves to have stored at the borrowing burrow, they are opening up an account with Sveper’s bank. This system of accounts is exactly the same system that banks use in our human world. An account is a record in a ledger (see: Ledger), which is a book or digital system that is used to sort and store records of transactions (see: Transaction). For example, you might have a simple account in a bank, where you store your money that you do not need right now. There exists a lot of different types of accounts, which permit you to do different things. For example, a checking’s account allows you to write checks, which are backed by the money in the account. A savings account is used for saving up money for the future, and usually has a higher interest rate (see: Interest) than a checking’s account. In a company, money can be stored in numerous accounts. For example, the sales account will hold the money made from the sale of the products the company produces. Really large companies can have thousands of accounts.
Amortization: In economics (see: Economics), amortization is a fancy way of saying that you pay for something in many small payments. We can also say that you ‘spread’ the payment of something over ‘multiple periods’ or smaller payments. If for example, you have a loan in a bank of 100 of your local currency, you could amortize your repayment of the loan in 10 repayments of 10 each.
Automaton: An automaton is a self-operating machine, or a machine that is designed to follow a pre-defined set of operations. Some automata are designed to look like they are operating under their own power. Some definitions of the word automaton specify that they are constructed to be human-like. The automata that Uncle Satomi employ to distribute computers to the people in the colony are very advanced, bordering on being actual robots (like the clanks, which are sentient robots).
Bailout
Bank (Banking)
Bartering see Trade.
Bitcoin
Block time
Blockchain
Blockchain ledgers
Blockchain node
Blocks
Central bank
Code Wheel
Coding
Collateral
Commodity
Commodity Money
Compound interest
Computer networks
Consensus
Costs and benefits
Cryptanalysis
Cryptocurrency
Cryptography
Cryptology
Currency
Cyber security
Debt
Decentralization
Digital currency
Digital economy
Digital Wallet
Distributed (decentralised) Ledgers
Economic system
Economics
Economy
Encryption and decryption
Fees (bank fees)
Fiat Money
Fractional Reserve Banking
Free
Fungibility
Hacking.
House of Medici
Incentives
Inflation
Instincts
Interbank lending
Interest
Larvae
Ledger
Legal Tender
Lender of last resort
Loan
Macroeconomics
Manufacturing
Marginal Utility (the paradox of value, the diamond-water paradox)
Market
Microeconomics
Microtransaction
Middleman (intermediary)
Mining
Minting
Money
Money neutrality and the Cantillion Effect
Money supply
Mortgage
Nations
Nixon Shock
Non-Fungible Token (NFT)
Numeraire
Opportunity costs
Optimisation
P2P (Peer-to-Peer) and client-server networks
Planning
Private Key (Blockchain)
Profit
Program
Programming
Promissory Note
Proof of Work
Proof of Work in Cryptocurrencies
Protocols
Public/Private Key Encryption
Reserve requirement
Revenue
Risk
Scarcity
Signatures S
Society
Stock-to-Flow ratio.
Sub-prime Loans
Supply and demand
Tax (Taxation)
TCP/IP
Technology
The Court
The Double Coincidence of Wants
The gold standard
The internet
The Queen
Token
Too Big to Fail
Trade
Trade route
Transactions
Transferability
Value and Price
Virtual economy
Wealth
Antwork 