Cognitive Bandwidth Market: Trading in Thought
Consciousness is the Sprawl's most valuable commodity. The cognitive bandwidth market is the financial infrastructure through which processing capacity — the raw material of thought — is bought, sold, hedged, speculated upon, and derivatized into financial instruments. The market doesn't just price thinking; it transforms thinking into a product that generates returns for entities that don't think at all.
"What happens when you can literally trade in thinking?"
— The question at the center of every consciousness derivative Quick Facts
The Two Layers
The market exists in two parallel layers, each serving a fundamentally different population with radically different pricing.
Formal Market
- Cognitive Exchange in the Lattice
- Good Fortune management
- Nexus Dynamics regulation
- Institutional traders trade bandwidth futures, consciousness derivatives, fork labor contracts
Informal Market
- CBB network, Substrate Row
- Donors sell cognitive processing capacity directly
- 75–90% cheaper than formal market
- Donor's eyes go dull while buyer's sharpen
Formal Market Products
The Cognitive Exchange trades four primary product categories, each reducing human consciousness to financial instruments with ticker symbols and settlement dates.
The CCI Index
The Cognitive Capacity Index is the market's most-watched indicator. When the CCI falls, it means aggregate cognitive capacity across the Sprawl is declining — in plain terms, people are getting dumber. Traders bet on this number. They profit when it drops.
The Correlation Engine
Level 42 of the Cognitive Exchange — known as the Vault — houses the Correlation Engine: a proprietary AI system whose recommendations have been followed without deviation for three years running.
The Vault — Level 42
The Correlation Engine is suspected to predict the cognitive states of market participants themselves — not just market movements, but the mental states of the traders making decisions. Its subsonic vibration hums through the entire Exchange floor. Every trader can feel it. None question its recommendations.
Sensory Profile
The Exchange Floor
Screens everywhere, shorthand reducing consciousness to ticker symbols. Financial green for profits, arterial red for losses, sterile white reports that never use the word "person."
Substrate Row
The informal market's physical reality: a clinic where a donor's eyes go dull as bandwidth transfers, while the buyer's sharpen. The transaction is visible on their faces.
The Engine's Hum
A subsonic vibration that permeates the Exchange floor from the Correlation Engine on Level 42. You don't hear it. You feel it in your teeth.
Good Fortune Reports
Clean documents, precise formatting, comprehensive analytics. The word "person" never appears. Processing capacity. Bandwidth units. Resource allocation. Never people.
Connected Entities
The Cognitive Exchange
Physical trading floor where bandwidth futures and consciousness derivatives change hands.
Good Fortune
Formal market operator, managing the Cognitive Exchange and its ¢12B daily volume.
Cognitive Bandwidth Brokers
The informal market network operating through Substrate Row at 75–90% below formal prices.
Consciousness Licensing
Creates the scarcity that makes bandwidth a tradeable commodity.
Behavioral Prediction Markets
Converging systems — the bandwidth market and BehaviorExchange may merge within five years.
Fork Labor Economy
Fork contracts traded on the Exchange represent ∼¢2.1B in daily volume.
Connected To
"The screens reduce consciousness to ticker symbols. The reports never use the word 'person.' On Substrate Row, a donor's eyes go dull while the buyer's sharpen. On Level 42, the Correlation Engine hums — and every trader follows its recommendations without deviation. The market doesn't just price thinking. It transforms thinking into a product that generates returns for entities that don't think at all." — Market observation, Cognitive Exchange floor, 2184