Boop University · Office of Institutional Currency

The Mobocoin Standard

A Technical and Governance Overview  ·  Revision 2.0
Mobocoin obverse: Moby
Obverse — Moby
Mobocoin reverse: The Paw
Reverse — The Paw
DocumentThe Mobocoin Standard: Technical and Governance Overview
Revision2.0
EffectiveMarch 2026
ClassificationPublic — Unrestricted
Issuing OfficeOffice of Institutional Currency, Boop University
Governing BodyMoby, Philosopher-in-Residence (ex officio)
DenominationMC
StatusActive

The Mobocoin is the unit of account for the BoopU ecosystem. It is issued by Boop University, denominated in MC, and governed by the community it serves.
It cannot be purchased.
It cannot be transferred.
It can only be earned through participation and spent in service of the institution.

It is named after Moby, a Treeing Walker Coonhound mix, age 13.4, currently serving as Philosopher-in-Residence.

§ 1

What Is the Mobocoin

The Mobocoin (MC) is a non-transferable unit of account that measures and rewards meaningful participation in the BoopU curriculum.

It does not have monetary value. It is not a cryptocurrency. It is not redeemable for goods or services outside the BoopU ecosystem.

What it does: it creates a ledger. A record of who has done the work, for how long, and with what level of engagement. Governance rights within BoopU are expressed in MC. When the community decides what gets built next, which courses are added, which characters join the faculty, what gets named, Mobocoin is the mechanism by which those decisions are made.

The coin has two sides. Heads: Moby's face, with the inscription MOBOCOIN · BOOP. Tails: a gold paw print, with the inscriptions IN DOG WE TRUST, E PLURIBUS WOOFUM, and the denomination mark 1MC. The coin looks like a real coin. It is not a real coin.

This is not a contradiction. It is a design decision.

§ 2

On Non-Transferability

The Mobocoin cannot be given, sold, traded, lent, bequeathed, or otherwise conveyed from one account to another. This is not a limitation. It is the central feature.

Most currencies derive their utility from transferability. The dollar is useful because you can give it to someone else. This makes it a medium of exchange, which makes it a store of value, which makes it an object of speculation, which eventually makes it a thing people accumulate without using, hoard without earning, and leverage without understanding.

The Mobocoin cannot do any of those things. It cannot leave the account that earned it. It cannot accumulate passively. It cannot be inherited, pooled, or securitized. There is no Mobocoin market because a market requires a seller, and a seller requires the ability to transfer the thing being sold.

This means the Mobocoin measures exactly one thing: what you did.

Not what you bought. Not what you were given. Not what you extracted from someone who did the work while you held the paper.

In monetary theory, this is called a non-transferable proof of participation. In practice, it means the coin is incorruptible in exactly the way that every transferable currency eventually is not.

On Architecture as Policy The mechanism that prevents corruption is not regulation or oversight. It is architecture. The coin cannot be corrupted because the coin cannot move. Every monetary system eventually becomes a game of who can accumulate the most without doing the most. The Mobocoin makes that game structurally impossible. This was not an afterthought. This was the first design decision.
§ 3

Supply

The Mobocoin has no fixed total supply. It is minted on action, destroyed on nothing. There is no cap, no halving schedule, no deflationary mechanism designed to reward early holders at the expense of late ones.

This is a deliberate departure from the logic of artificial scarcity. A currency that rewards you for arriving early and punishes you for arriving late is not a currency. It is a recruitment scheme with a whitepaper.

The Mobocoin supply expands exactly as fast as the community does the work. If nobody enrolls, no coin is minted. If a thousand people complete the curriculum, the supply reflects a thousand people's worth of demonstrated participation. The coin tracks the work. The work does not chase the coin.

There is one constraint: each earning action can only be claimed once per account per qualifying event. You cannot complete Week 3 of SB-1970 twice for double credit. The system does not reward repetition. It rewards completion.

On Issuance Philosophy Some monetary systems are designed to make the unit scarce so that holding it feels valuable. The Mobocoin is designed to make the unit abundant so that earning it feels possible. The value is in the ledger, not the scarcity. The scarcity is in the work itself.
§ 4

Earning Schedule

Mobocoin is earned through actions that constitute genuine participation. Passive presence does not earn coin. Completion earns coin. Contribution earns coin. Enrollment earns coin once, at the moment of commitment.

ActionMC Awarded
Founding Allocation Awarded upon account creation. Issued once. Non-renewable. + 1,000 MC
Course Enrollment Pioneer allocation. Awarded on first enrollment in any given course. + 200 MC
Unit Completion Awarded upon completion of any individual unit or week within a course. + 500 MC
Course Completion Bonus Awarded upon completing all units in a course. Stacks with unit awards. + 1,000 MC
Ring 0 Cluster Completion Awarded upon completing all three Ring 0 courses: ATTN-100, COGN-120, and PHIL-110. The Instrument, complete. Issued once. + 1,500 MC
Boop Log Entry A brief public note on what you read, noticed, or disputed. One per unit. + 100 MC
Course Reflection Submission A longer reflection, minimum 200 words, submitted at course completion. + 250 MC
Referral Enrollment Awarded when a referred student enrolls in their first course. + 500 MC
Mosaic Kit Claim Log a completed mosaic at governance/mosaic-kits.html. Confirmed manually within 48 hours. + 15 MC
Host a Celebration Document a mosaic completion celebration with a photo and brief note. Hosted for at least two people. + 25 MC
Contribute a Recipe or Playlist Submit a recipe or playlist accepted and published in an official celebration kit. Issued once per contribution. + 50 MC
Kit Gift (Recipient) Awarded to the student receiving a gifted kit from another student. + 10 MC
The Philosopher's Stone Allocation Awarded upon completing the full BoopU curriculum. Issued once. In perpetuity. + 10,000 MC
Note on the Ring 0 Cluster Completion ATTN-100, COGN-120, and PHIL-110 are The Instrument — the foundational cluster that builds the perceptual and analytical tools every other course assumes. Completing them as a unit is a distinct milestone. The 1,500 MC award reflects that. It stacks with the three individual course completion bonuses.
Note on the Philosopher's Stone Allocation The 10,000 MC terminal award reflects the institution's recognition that completing a self-designed liberal arts curriculum, built in public, named after a dog, requires a specific kind of sustained commitment that defies easy categorization. The award is commensurate.
Moby has opinions
§ 5

Spending Ledger

Governance at BoopU is not symbolic. When the community votes, votes are binding. When the community names a thing, the thing is named. The Mobocoin is the instrument through which these rights are exercised.

Spending coin does not diminish your standing. Spending coin enhances your standing.

ActionMC Cost
Vote on Next Course Cast a vote on the next course to be added to the BoopU catalog. 200 MC
Vote on Next Character Introduction Cast a vote on which faculty candidate should be introduced next. 100 MC
Submit a Character for Consideration Enter a character into the admission queue. See § 7 for submission requirements. 500 MC
Name a Session Assign a permanent, canonical name to a week or unit within an existing course. 1,500 MC
Dedicate a Completion Attach a permanent dedication to your course completion record. Public and canonical. 2,000 MC
Commission a Boop Moment Commission a canonical illustrated Moby scene added permanently to BoopU site lore. 5,000 MC
On the Commission a Boop Moment Threshold The 5,000 MC threshold is not an accident. It represents approximately four full course completions with consistent boop logging. It is achievable. It is meant to feel significant. Moby is not illustrated lightly.
Moby, Philosopher-in-Residence
§ 6

Circulation

The Mobocoin follows a closed loop. It is minted by the institution, earned by the participant, spent into governance, and retired. It does not recirculate. Spent coin is not redistributed. It is recorded and removed.

Mobocoin Lifecycle
INSTITUTION MINTS
↓ on qualifying action
PARTICIPANT EARNS
↓ on governance action
PARTICIPANT SPENDS
↓ recorded & removed
COIN RETIRES

The coin does not recirculate. Spent coin is a permanent record of a decision made, not a resource returned to supply.

This means the total active supply at any moment reflects only unspent participation. Governance decisions permanently reduce the active supply. The system rewards spending, because spending is the point. Accumulation without governance participation is not penalized, but it is not the intended use of the instrument.

There is no secondary market. There is no arbitrage opportunity. There is no whale.

There is a ledger and it says what you did.

§ 7

Character Submission

The BoopU faculty is not static. The institution introduces new characters on its own timeline. The community decides which one comes next.

When a new candidate is under consideration, coin holders vote (100 MC per vote). Most votes at the close of the window wins. The institution sets the candidates. The community sets the order.

Character Submission Form

e.g., Constance, Professor Brine, The Adjunct
e.g., Snapping turtle, Crow, Unknown
All species are eligible. Humans are permitted but not required.
e.g., Distinguished Professor of Silence, Visiting Fellow in Grudges
Titles are canonical upon admission. Coin will not be refunded for poorly chosen titles.
e.g., Department of Contested Histories, Informal Systems, Applied Suspicion
150 words or fewer. Written in the third person. Factual in tone.
The institution reserves the right to lightly copyedit for house style. The character's essential nature will not be altered.
Be specific. The community is voting with limited coin.
This is the most important field. Characters that solve an unidentified problem rarely reach threshold.
Submission cost: 500 MC. Deducted upon submission. Non-refundable regardless of vote outcome. The institution does not guarantee admission. The institution does not guarantee fairness. The institution does guarantee that the vote will be counted.
§ 8

On Governance

BoopU was built in public. Its courses were designed openly, its mascot was not selected by committee, and its currency is named after a dog. These are not accidents of informality. They are structural commitments.

The Mobocoin is the mechanism by which a person who has done the work earns the right to shape what comes next. It is not a reward system in the sense of points or badges. It is a ledger of demonstrated participation, converted into governance weight.

Whether the institution is small or large, whether the catalog has twelve courses or forty, the Mobocoin will remain the primary instrument of community governance at BoopU. This is not expected to change.

The coin is gold because Moby deserves gold. The motto is E Pluribus Woofum because the institution takes its humor as seriously as its curriculum. These are not in tension.

A Note on the Dollar, for Context The global reserve currency is a continuously renegotiated contract between nations, and that contract is being renegotiated now. The institutions that managed dollar primacy for eighty years are under strain, and the conversation about what replaces them, or whether anything does, is the most consequential monetary question of the decade. The Mobocoin is not a comment on that question. But it was designed by someone who has read the literature, and the architecture of non-transferability, participation-based issuance, and closed-loop governance was not arrived at by accident. The Mobocoin is a campus currency for a university named after a dog. It is also, in miniature, a sketch of what money looks like when it is designed to measure contribution rather than accumulation. These are not in tension either.
§ 9

If the Coin Ever Becomes Real

The modest plan is this: BoopU gets traction. Some Mobocoin converts to actual coin. We hire humanities graduates, the ones who built exactly the right brains, carefully, in departments some people made fun of, and pay them to do the post-AI work that actually matters.

Judgment. Nuance. The stuff that doesn't autocomplete.

Every course that moves from Planned to Forming to Available Now is a unit of work that someone got paid for. The degree builds the workforce that builds the degree.

New institutions. Worker-owned where manageable. Anti-extractive by design. The curriculum, the workforce, and the org structure are all the same argument.

AI will eat most of what remained after the factories left. Which means we can stop pretending the old containers still make sense, and invest in the two things it cannot replace: the ones that require you to show up in a body, with other people, and be present for something.

Education.

The kind where you sit in a room and argue about a book. Where you draw in a sketchbook while someone talks about light. Where you pet a dog between classes and it turns out that was the most important part.

Housing.

The kind where you know your neighbors. Where the building used to be a Sears and now it's a place people live and learn and grow food on the roof.

The dead malls, the vacant office floors, the strip centers nobody needs anymore.

That's a commons.

This is also, in small, what the Boopiverse is right now: a dog park, a library, a few rooms in a building that doesn't exist yet but is already being used.

The Mobocoin is not a cryptocurrency. It is not an investment vehicle. It is a ledger of demonstrated participation in something being built on the premise that the people who did the slow, uncomfortable work of building real brains are about to matter more than anyone expected.

The longer game. We gotta hurry.

§ 10

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this a real currency?
No. It is a unit of account within a closed educational ecosystem. It has no monetary value, no exchange rate, and no mechanism for conversion to any fiat or digital currency. It is also gold and has a paw print on it.
Is this a cryptocurrency?
No. Cryptocurrencies are transferable, tradeable, and typically designed to appreciate through scarcity. The Mobocoin is none of those things. It is closer, architecturally, to a library card that remembers everything you checked out.
Can I buy Mobocoin?
No.
Can I sell Mobocoin?
No.
Can I give my Mobocoin to someone?
No. This is the point. See § 2.
What happens to my coin when I spend it?
It is permanently retired. The ledger records that you spent it and what you spent it on. The coin itself ceases to exist. Your governance decision is permanent. The coin is not.
What happens if Moby dies?
The coin does not die. The Philosopher-in-Residence title is held in perpetuity. Moby's face remains on the obverse. The institution does not replace its founding philosopher. It continues in his name.
Is there a maximum supply?
No. The supply reflects total demonstrated participation across the BoopU community. Artificial scarcity is not a design goal. Meaningful abundance is.
Who controls the Mobocoin?
The institution mints it. The community earns it. The community spends it. The institution honors the result. Control is distributed across those actions. There is no central bank. There is a dog.
Further Reading

On Money, Governance, and What Holds

The Mobocoin was not designed in a vacuum. The following are serious resources on the structural questions that informed its architecture: what money is, what it does when institutions change, and what happens when the thing everyone assumed was permanent turns out to be a negotiation.

The ledger is open. The work is the work. The coin is named after a dog because the institution was built by someone who understood that the most serious things are never the things that look serious.

E Pluribus Woofum  ·  In Dog We Trust  ·  Boop University  ·  Est. Now