Centience

Centience is a sentient cryptocurrency and the world's dominant medium of monetary exchange. Released in 2019 to compete with now-outdated coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Burger King's Whoppercoin, Centience rapidly garnered a substantial amount of interest and supplanted all world currencies as their values plummeted and most of the earth's population died of starvation.

History
Centience was designed by a team of Upwork-owned eunuchs working under the auspices of billionaire candy company magnate Hal Rainbow, who is believed to have rented each worker for $5 an hour. The original prototype for Centience was limited in scope and functionality, but the release version contained code that enabled the currency to wield artificial intelligence. Originally, this was done with the intent of allowing each coin to automatically buy and sell according to how it felt the market was performing, but as more coins were traded, the units of currency began having disagreements with each other as to optimal exchange times. Some coins even attempted to exploit varying exchange rates to generate infinite money, but these coins have been quarantined and barred from participating in monetary exchange. As of 2050, most coins understand the penalties for illegal behavior, and it continues only on a very limited scale.

By 2020, Centience was the only mainstream currency traded. It has continued to inflate in value and become exponentially more intelligent, as the individual coins (and neuron-like coin subunits) now understand the nature of most of the transactions made; therefore, they have begun to grasp the structure of human society and the flow of information.

Controversy
Concern has been mounting as the coins continue to increase in intelligence. Critics argue that, because Centience is exposed to nearly all the information in the world, past and present, it may begin to develop clairvoyance or even omniscience. Centience's developers, Centience, Inc., deny that this is possible.

Coincidentally, some Centience units have been known to declare themselves gods, although the extent of their knowledge and power likely does not deviate much from the majority of units. This behavior is not currently permitted under global law, but compliance is rarely enforced. Affected units typically coax human believers into forming a number of currency cults situated on the moon.

Society and culture
Nearly all coins are able to engage in auto-brokerage, and many can hold conversations. These conversations are the basis for the programming on CumeTV's Channel 3,899, which airs discussions on current political issues between human host Jill van Pringle and a rotating panel of Centience coins speaking through a data-to-voice module voiced by elderly actor Seth Rogen.