Tally sticks were used in medieval England as a brilliant way to record debts by carving notches into a piece of wood and splitting it in half, ensuring both the debtor and the…

A closer look

Tally sticks were used in medieval England as a brilliant way to record debts by carving notches into a piece of wood and splitting it in half, ensuring both the debtor and the creditor had a perfectly matching receipt that could not be forged. this primitive wooden blockchain worked flawlessly for over six centuries until the British government finally modernized and decided to throw all the obsolete wooden sticks into a furnace in the basement of Parliament in eighteen thirty-four. predictably, this massive bonfire of historical debt records raged completely out of control, burning the House of Lords and the House of Commons to the ground in a fiery display of bureaucratic incompetence. it is incredibly comforting to know that government officials have always been capable of literally burning the entire system down just because they failed to properly manage the transition from an old financial technology to a new one