Consols and high-value notes — a 300-year-old bond meets the blockchain
In 1751 Britain issued “consols,” bonds that paid interest forever and never matured. Mobick borrowed the idea — earn interest by holding coins in your own wallet, without handing them to anyone. How it differs from staking, and what high-value notes were.
A bond with no maturity
In 1751 the British government issued an odd bond: it never repaid principal but paid interest forever. These were consols. Buy, hold, collect interest — a structure that worked for over 260 years and is the textbook archetype of perpetual bonds.
Why crypto lacked this
In crypto, “earn by holding” usually means staking. The Mobick blog lists its structural problems:
- You give up control — usually you hand coins to an exchange or validator. As FTX showed, once handed over, “your” assets are only half yours.
- You are locked — unbonding periods stop you withdrawing.
- You are diluted — rewards are mostly newly minted tokens, so if everyone stakes, the gains are nominal.
The Mobick consol avoids these: coins stay in your wallet, you never hand over keys, and holding itself is the condition for interest. Instead of a government’s credit, protocol rules guarantee payment, as the blog puts it.
High-value notes
When the consol was introduced in 2024, fixed-amount and high-value notes came with it. High-value notes are large-denomination paper wallets sealed in gold foil. Per the September 2025 weekly news, the only things governance guaranteed were sealed lock-up paper wallets and these gold-foil high-value notes; on 20 September 2025, holders could place sealed wallets in governance’s bank safe-deposit box. Note applications closed in December 2025.
From paper to code
Paper, envelopes and safe boxes are still guarded by people. On 24 December 2025 Oh named one goal of the New Bedford upgrade as making Mobick “smart money” so that programs like consols can run as smart contracts. A community team separately issued a token, SBMB, based on high-value notes; it is separate from the official consol (see the SBMB lesson).
Summary
- Consols: perpetual bonds paying interest with no maturity, Britain 1751.
- A Mobick consol pays interest for holding coins in your own wallet — unlike staking.
- High-value notes were gold-foil paper wallets for consols; the aim is to move this into smart contracts.
Check yourself
Get them right to add a block to your chain
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Q1The biggest difference between a Mobick consol and ordinary staking?
Self-custody is the core: you never hand over keys, there is no lock-up period, and no third-party risk.
Sources
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