I wrote this in 2014 when I was living overseas where there were no Girl Scouts. Thin Mints, when we could somehow get them, were like money in the bank, unlike bitcoins.

Little-known fact: Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies can be used as currency among American expatriates. Technically, these Thin Mints are a community currency, an alternative form of exchange among a group with a common bond: in this case, Americans without a Girl Scout troop nearby. Cookie sales begin every February — without us. Our hearts ache.

Contrast these cookies with bitcoins, a cryptocurrency, a peer-to-peer payment system using Bitcoin software exchanges on the internet. The facts demonstrate Thin Mints’ superior value:

Bitcoins are a form of public-key cryptography involving alphanumeric strings. Thin Mints are crispy chocolate wafers dipped in a mint chocolaty coating. Chocolate covered chocolate!

Bitcoins can be stolen. We have no Thin Mints, just sweet memories and sad longing, and they can’t take that away from us.

Bitcoins have been used on the black market for illegal drugs, tax evasion, and gambling. Thin Mint profits build girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place.

Bitcoins suffer an extremely volatile exchange rate. Thin Mints, like all Girl Scout Cookies, continuously change and improve. In 2007, two 10-year-old Scouts, Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen, began a campaign to make sure that the cookies use only sustainably produced GreenPalm-certified palm oil, protecting both human rights and rain forest habitat for the endangered orangutan; the girls won the United Nations Forest Heroes Award in 2011.

Cookies sold by brave, confident girls, real-life heroes: that’s what we miss. Keep your cryto-cash. Give us minty chocolate wafers! Please.