Nanacoin
Explanation
The Joke
The comic introduces "Nanacoin," a cryptocurrency created by a grandmother who wrote all the transaction records in a spiral-bound notebook. A series of panels explain its features by parodying real cryptocurrency talking points: "transactions can be trusted because Nana would never lie," "any user can check the ledger because Nana leaves it on the kitchen counter," and "transactions are accurate because they are verified by her friend Barb using a ball-point pen." Each selling point directly mirrors blockchain concepts like trustlessness, public ledgers, and consensus verification — but replaces the complex technological infrastructure with a grandmother's personal honesty and household items.
The comic escalates with characters trying to spend Nanacoin ("Sally, give me a little NC" / "Jolly, give me a large NC"), and culminates with a character asking "do you really need all of those?" A final panel promotes Nanacoin as "still a better use of electricity than using 100 terawatt-hours to maintain an indispensable currency."
The Humor
The joke works on two levels. First, it satirizes the complexity and jargon of cryptocurrency by showing that every supposedly revolutionary feature of blockchain technology could be replicated by a grandmother with a notebook — and arguably more reliably. The decentralized ledger is just a notebook on the counter. The verification system is just Barb double-checking with a pen. The implicit argument is that the technological sophistication of cryptocurrency is solving problems that don't require such elaborate solutions.
Second, the final panel delivers an environmental critique: cryptocurrency mining consumes enormous amounts of electricity (Bitcoin alone uses roughly as much energy as some small countries), and the comic suggests that a grandmother's notebook-based system achieves the same result with zero environmental cost. The phrase "indispensable currency" is used sarcastically, questioning whether cryptocurrency is truly necessary.
Broader Context
This comic was published in April 2021, during a period of intense public interest in cryptocurrency and growing awareness of Bitcoin's environmental impact. SMBC frequently takes aim at tech culture's tendency to over-engineer solutions to simple problems, and this comic fits squarely in that tradition.