Doctor Strange's magical powers are pushed to their absolute limit when Marvel reveals their latest enemy: the blockchain.
Warning: SPOILERS for Strange #8wonderfully strange doctor You've battled interdimensional aliens and otherworldly sorcerers, but now your most dangerous enemy is revealed: cryptocurrency. Stephen Strange may be a genius surgeon, but he has little patience with modern technology, not because he doesn't understand it, but because he uses it very little during his day-to-day life as the Sorcerer Supreme. But in Stranger #8Marvel explains why blockchain is Strange's weakness.
In the current comic book continuity, Doctor Strange is dead. The Sorcerer Supreme was killed during the death of doctor strange event, assassinated by baron mordo. Despite the efforts of his magical allies, Strange died permanently, but Death had other plans for the Sorcerer Supreme and is using him for his own purposes. Meanwhile, Clea seeks to return Strange to the land of the living, having also granted herself the title of Sorceress Supreme (angering others who believed they were more worthy of the position, such as Doctor Doom).
In Stranger #8Written by Jed MacKay with art by Stefano Landini, the series flashes back to a moment in the life of Doctor Strange; Director Peters, in charge of WAND (a magical equivalent of SHIELD) explains the villain's plan. Tibetan prayer wheels work by placing a prayer scroll inside a wooden wheel (and turning the wheels is believed to have the same effect as saying the prayers out loud). The director then turns to cryptocurrency. "What would happen if a large-scale cryptocurrency being mined around the world became infected with the code for a spell formula, integrating that spell into its routines?" Strange immediately realizes the danger: the sheer number of prayer wheels could exponentially multiply the effect of the spell: turning ordinary people into undead monsters.
Doctor Strange Fights the Blockchain in Marvel Comics
Just a few numbers ago Strange's wife, Clea, found the stash of the Blasphemy Cartel of secret weapons: racks upon racks of computer servers. She's even more technophobic than Strange, and she relegated them all to the basement of the Sanctum Sanctorum. This is what Blasphemy Cartel planned throughout this run: to merge the magical with the technological to create her own method of controlling others. In this sense, Doctor Strange and Clea did not see the problem until it was almost too late.
Understanding cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is difficult enough for the tech-savvy. Presumably it's considerably more difficult for magic users like Strange and Clea. strange doctor used to dealing with people like Dormammu and Baron Mordo, but advanced technology like blockchain is apparently a bridge too far.
Weird #8 is now available from Marvel Comics.
