The future of currency ladies and gentlemen. This money is literally gone. Unrecoverable. Like he took the money out to a barrel and burned it. Only he didn't get any warmth out of it in exchange.
When I was growing up, I saw Triumph of the Nerds by Bob Cringely on PBS. About midway through as I recall there's Jim Warren sitting in a hot tub with a killer view talking about the West Coast Computer Faire and early computing. I had only recently started coding in QBASIC then Visual Basic. Seeing that documentary helped cement my interest in programming and computers in general.