Corn is weird.
Consider maize—this enormous, bright-yellow cereal that defies expectations about what a grain is supposed to be. Most grains like wheat, barley, and millet rely on seed dispersal via "shattering," scattering their seeds freely. But corn? Corn holds onto its kernels, utterly dependent on humans for its reproduction. It’s hyper-domesticated—unable even to reproduce without careful human intervention.
James C. Scott, in Against the Grain, argues convincingly that early states preferred grains precisely because they could be counted, taxed, and controlled. Rice and wheat fit the bill perfectly: compact, harvestable, easily taxable. Corn, in some ways, aligns perfectly with Scott’s ideal state crop. It’s countable, taxable, controllable—but it’s also profoundly strange. When Europeans encountered maize, they didn’t initially know what to do with it. Yet, once they figured out that corn offered more calories per acre and could thrive even in harsh, nutrient-poor soils, maize quickly became the caloric substrate of colonial empires. Corn thus underpinned global empire-building, not only in the Americas but also forcibly exported to Africa, becoming the backbone of plantation economies.
Atop the Chicago Board of Trade building stands Ceres, Roman goddess of grain. She gazes down upon a temple of commodified agriculture—a necropolis of calorie futures, derivatives, and financial speculation. But here’s the irony: Ceres is thinking wheat, not corn. Maize is a New World intruder, alien to her Roman sensibilities. Yet perhaps it’s maize that truly haunts the Chicago Board of Trade—a spectral intrusion of Mesoamerican cosmology, of polyculture milpas, reciprocal agricultural systems, and decentralized, non-state forms of life. Indeed, one might even imagine five-dimensional Mesoamerican corn demons slipping through reality’s cracks, whispering ancient polycultural wisdom, haunting every kernel traded. Each bushel traded there may indeed carry ghosts from an ungovernable, multidimensional world.
And maybe maize likes being commodified—perhaps it even orchestrated its global conquest through the mechanisms of empire. Maybe corn is using the state for corn’s own ends. Who, precisely, domesticated whom?
Because corn is not merely a crop; it’s a mode of existence. Biologically, it’s far superior to its grain brethren. Most cereals use what’s called C3 photosynthesis. Under heat and drought, their key enzyme, RuBisCO (ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase), falters, wasting precious energy.
Maize, however, employs C4 photosynthesis—a biochemical turbocharger. It captures carbon dioxide efficiently, even under scorching heat, drought, and blazing sun. This metabolic hack makes maize ideal for harsh climates, thriving precisely where other grains falter. Maize, in short, is not just state-optimized—it’s biochemically elite.
C4 plants first fix CO₂ into a 4-carbon molecule (oxaloacetate), using a different enzyme (PEP carboxylase) that’s not confused by oxygen. Then they shuttle this molecule to a different part of the leaf where the CO₂ is released in a high concentration, and then RuBisCO does its thing, but now under much better conditions.
This biochemical arrogance is precisely why maize punked Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet Union. After a 1959 visit to Iowa, Khrushchev became enamored, famously declaring corn "the queen of the fields." He saw maize as the future, a caloric miracle for feeding the Soviet masses and livestock. But the Soviets fundamentally misunderstood maize. Their agriculture—built for C3 grains like wheat, rye, and barley—couldn’t handle maize’s C4 demands: sun, heat, long growing seasons, and careful agronomic practices. Lacking the necessary infrastructure—hybrid seeds, rotations, irrigation—they forced maize into unsuitable contexts. Predictably, crops failed, livestock starved, and corn became a symbolic disaster. It became a kind of symbolic disaster—the state forcing an alien form of life into places it didn’t belong. In attempting to domesticate maize, maize revealed itself as an unruly, context-dependent biochemical double agent. Corn gave Khrushchev the middle finger and whispered, "You can’t domesticate me."
All of which brings us neatly to "Bitcorn." What might seem initially like a silly malapropism—an innocent slip-up blending Bitcoin and corn—actually offers profound insights. Consider their uncanny parallels:
Bitcoin, like maize, initially seems tailor-made for state control. A perfectly transparent ledger? Ideal for surveillance, counting, taxation. Yet, Bitcoin slips the leash through privacy enhancements, decentralization, and cryptographic resistance. Just like maize, Bitcoin is domesticated yet unruly, hyper-controlled yet fundamentally ungovernable.
Both maize and Bitcoin have built-in "upgrades"—maize with its C4 biochemical turbocharger, Bitcoin with its cryptographic protocols—allowing them to flourish precisely in harsh conditions (economic crises, drought, inflation). And both carry within them spectral echoes of decentralized worlds: maize with indigenous cosmologies, polyculture agriculture; Bitcoin with cypherpunk libertarian ethos and decentralized finance. Perhaps both are even guided by elusive, higher-dimensional forces—corn by ancient 5D Mesoamerican corn demons and Bitcoin by similarly esoteric crypto entities.
States attempting to force Bitcoin into traditional regulatory frameworks might suffer conceptual catastrophes akin to Khrushchev’s Soviet maize fiasco. Like maize, Bitcoin stubbornly resists domestication without respecting its native logic and conditions.
So Bitcorn isn’t merely amusing—it’s richly symbolic. Both Bitcoin and maize highlight the fundamental tension between state-driven commodification and inherent, biological, cryptographic autonomy. Maize as Bitcoin, Bitcoin as maize: both reveal the futility—and perhaps arrogance—of human attempts at absolute control. Both haunt the centralized state like unruly spirits, forever resistant, persistently spectral.
Corn, indeed, is amazing—or should I say, a-maize-ing. The city of broad shoulders remains possessed by this enigmatic grain, and the ghostly echoes of maize and Bitcoin alike whisper subtly: domestication, commodification, control—who exactly is in charge here?
My hope is that humanity and Bitcoin will co-evolve together, much like it has with corn.
Bitcorn indeed.
