Bitcoin clowns, p.1
Bitcoin Clowns, page 1
part #3 of Master Shanghai Series
Bitcoin Clowns
by Vann Chow
Copyright © 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Master Shanghai Series
Book I : Shanghai Nobody
Book II: Shanghai Fools
Book III: Bitcoin Clowns
Background
On Feb 4th, 2018, on the eve of Chinese New Year, news broke that the Chinese government had announced the ban on all foreign cryptocurrency exchanges and ICOs. The flourishing cryptocurrency trading market crashed. Bitcoin price nosedove to a mere US$6,920 the next day after hitting an all-time high of US$19,783 earlier. Before that, the Chinese Yuan accounted for 90% of all crypto trades. The crypto world was shaken. The critics announced that China practically killed Bitcoin trading, while some applauded its move, saying that China saved the world from a mega cryptocurrency bubble in the nick of time.
Wise Men and Women Said
"This is the first time I know of that we are trying a non-trust based system."
— Satoshi Nakamoto, Creator of Bitcoins
“When I first heard about Bitcoin, I thought it was impossible. How can you have a purely digital currency? Can’t I just copy your hard drive and have your bitcoins? I didn’t understand how that could be done, and then I looked into it and it was brilliant.”
— Jeff Garzik, Co-Founder of Bloq Inc.
"Blockchain is not a giant gold mine; it’s a solution to data privacy and safety. It creates value for the society. A lot of people these days used it to make money, and that forebodes a terrible end."
— Jack Ma, Founder of Alibaba
Important Disclaimers
This publication is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to real persons, places, companies, institutions or events is purely coincidental.
The publication is a work of fiction and does not offer investment advice and nothing in them should be construed as investment advice. The information contained in the publications is not, and should not be read as, an offer or recommendation to buy or sell or a solicitation of an offer or recommendation to buy or sell any form of securities. Our publication is not, and should not be seen as, a recommendation to use any particular investment strategy. The author and the publishing house do not accept any liability for any loss or damage which is incurred by readers acting or not acting as a result of reading any part of the publication. Readers should acknowledge the use of the information provided at their own risk.
Vann’s Wallet Addresses
As the book is about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, I want to give our readers an opportunity to see what they are in action (for those that are unfamiliar with them). I have decided to put the QR codes for any donation[1] here at the beginning of the book hence. You are welcome to donate in Bitcoins and Ethers. Thank you very much for your support.
Table of Contents
Master Shanghai Series
Background
Wise Men and Women Said
Important Disclaimers
Vann’s Wallet Addresses
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Memo
Chapter 2: Dormitory
Chapter 3: Parents
Chapter 4: Electricity
Chapter 5: Announcement
Chapter 6: Lamborghini
Chapter 7: New Money
Chapter 8: Real Money
Chapter 9: Interviews
Chapter 10: Betrayal
Chapter 11: Hotpot
Chapter 12: Intruder
Chapter 13: Chinese New Year
Chapter 14: Dinner
Chapter 15: Rollercoaster Ride
Chapter 16: Policewoman
Chapter 17: Lujiazui
Chapter 18: Forking
Chapter 19: Conference
Chapter 20: Bridge
Chapter 21: Bitcoins
Chapter 22: Bilious
Chapter 23: Addresses
Chapter 24: Code
Chapter 25: Atomic Bomb
Chapter 26: Shut Up
Chapter 27: Jump
Chapter 28: Billionaire
Chapter 29: Racks
Chapter 30: Savior
Chapter 31: Club
Chapter 32: Race
Chapter 33: Jessie Boy
Chapter 34: Twenty Thousand
Chapter 35: Cao
Chapter 36: Hack
Chapter 37: Heck
Chapter 38: Coffee
Chapter 39: Space Ship
Chapter 40: Tweet
Chapter 41: Kitties
Chapter 42: Power Button
Chapter 43: Stench
Chapter 44: Army
Chapter 45: Games
Chapter 46: Trip
Thank You!
Find Vann Chow on Social Media
About the Author
Chapter 1: Memo
I love my job. I love my job. I love my job. — Of course I do. Everyone does. Otherwise, how else do people get through their days?
***
It was nuts.
After I came back from my newhire training week at Bilious' Norwegian Headquarters in Oslo, famous for the Vikings, Norse mythologies and slightly more recently, the Scream by Edward Munch, I was informed by my secretary Janice that I had a new boss. Me, the Head of Cybersecurity and Financial Innovation. I had a new boss, she said. (Cue the screaming man with a distorted face.) I meant, I had a boss before, yes, I was aware of that, thank you. Everyone had a boss, but still. I was reporting, so I assumed, to the CEO directly. That essentially meant I was as good as my own boss, given how the CEO was constantly on the road making appearances from press conferences to industry forums to advocate for Bilious and the Nordics Banking Union as far as I knew. And yet a week later, someone was airdropped right on top of me, a woman with the title of Chief Strategy Officer, lifted from a small consulting firm that no one had ever heard of, was put to boss us around. I felt insulted, hurt, betrayed. I was literally on the phone with Mr. Olaf himself a few days ago, after he announced plans to launch a series of new fintech products. Okay, it was just his voicemail, but still, I had his direct line, and now some serious reporting line changes occurred and I was not made aware of it ahead of time? I could not believe it!
“Don't get me wrong, Jong,” Janice said, with a cup of coffee in her hand. The mug was pink. Okay, I could take a cup of coffee from my personal secretary in a pink mug, “but you're kind of too...how shall I put it without hurting your feelings? Emm...well, you're too...too junior to be a manager of the team.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, well, don't worry. Nothing's really changed.”
“Right.” I looked around at my new office space. It looked exactly like my old office. — It was my old office, the computer lab, except my desk now had a sign that said, 'He Yuan Zhong, Head of Cybersecurity and Financial Technology', in Chinese.
“Anyway, I've just come by to tell you the news personally. I'm going to work for Miss Li starting,” she stared at her watch, “now. Good luck with everything!” And she gave me the evilest, triumphant pitying smile I had ever had to take from my very first and last secretary in my career. “What?” I stood up from my chair which fell backward because it was designed so poorly and said in disbelief. “Who authorized this? You work for me, Janice. It was announced only two weeks ago.”
“Read the new announcement,” she rolled her eyes. “I'm a senior secretary. I'm not going to be a new guy's nanny.”
New guy. Did she just call me 'a new guy'? Did she really? Did she think I was some intern fresh from school ready to take any bullshit from anyone who was willing to give and just eat it all up? “Janice, I need to speak to your new boss about this,” I demanded.
“Your new boss is booked up till next week Friday,” she said. “Just settle down and try not to mess up before Friday.”
“What's on Friday?”
“The town hall. Check your mails!” And I thought I caught her rolled her eyes again as she turned around and walked off towards this Miss Li's new office right down the hallway.
I ran after her, ignoring the wires on the floor and whatever machine that I dragged behind me, and caught her slipping into my new boss, the Chief Strategy Officer Miss Li, a.k.a. The Sneaky Bitch's office with the pink mug of expensive-smelling coffee. The Sneaky Bitch had replaced the transparent glass walls of what used to be Mr. Qi's office with frosted glasses. Behind the blurry haze, I could only make out a bright red blob sitting behind Mr. Qi's old desk.
I ran back into my office to read the damned new announcement that Janice was referring to on my laptop, but Outlook just wouldn't connect. Turned out, I had pulled the router off the socket when I had dashed out after Janice. Frantically I carried my laptop back into the open office and searched like a hungry boar sniffing for truffles for a spot that had reasonably good WIFI. Eventually, I got connected. An annoying event notification popped in front of my face, inviting us to a 'new vision' town hall. I clicked it away and found the cursed email I was looking for, signed electronically by Mr. Olaf himself in my inbox. And it read...well, it basically read like a punch in my f
ace. The woman from out of nowhere, a Rebecca Li, was as Janice said appointed as the new CSO, a position that did not exist before and all the heads of departments, including myself, would be reporting to her, for 'strategic reason'.
'Strategic reason', 'new vision'. If she was the one calling all the shots around here, what was I doing here then, as the Head of the Underinformed?! I slammed my computer shut angrily and stood up.
“I wouldn't rush inside if I were you,” said a small, skinny young man in pinstripe shirt. He had dark circles around his eyes that would beat the pandas’.
“Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry, I am Ted. I am the new intern. First day at Bilious. I am going to be in your team, or so I have figured out this morning...since everyone else ignored me when I asked for the Fintech department.” He stared in dismay at his feet. I followed his gaze and saw that he had worn what could have been his best leather shoes to work. “That's all I know. After all, I've been sitting here waiting for someone to give me an orientation all morning. But then in the past three hours, I have already heard Miss Li yelled and threw things at people a couple of times...This is really worse than going to class. And I've given up my master scholarship to be here...Oh gosh, I shouldn't have said that in front of you, should I? Anyway, it's nice to meet you.”
“Well...okay.” I was not at all unhappy that I got a man back in my team so quickly, except I had hoped to be able to handpick people in my own team, which consisted hopefully not of nut jobs, although one was inevitable to get some in the tech department usually. “What languages do you know?”
“Err... Mandarin, a bit of English and...that's about it,” his eyes dashed insecurely at me and at the mural behind me on the wall, and said, “Sorry. No Norwegian here,” he pointed at his own brain apologetically.
“What computer languages, I meant,” I repeated my question in plain words.
“Oh, that!” He made a sudden realization. “I don't know any. Sorry, I studied Business Administration. But I could always learn!” I thought I saw his lips trembling when he said that, and I caught myself cheering up. At least someone around here had the proper respect for their manager. “What would you like me to do, like now? I have been sitting there staring at an empty desk for three hours and I really don't think I can take it anymore...” his voice trailed off to La La Land inside his head where I couldn't go.
“Hey Ted,” I said, “are you nervous about being here?”
It took a few seconds before he replied me. “...Yes, I am sorry. I can't help it. I heard the last intern really messed up. I don't want to mess up. I need an impeccable recommendation letter, otherwise, my mother will...”
I was about to forget about my own personal woes being next to this sack of walking troubles, but just then, Janice tiptoed gingerly out of Miss Li's room and shut the office door carefully behind her. Only when she was two feet away from the door did she walked normal again. She caught me staring at her in such a miserable state, and she shooed me off. 'Fuck off!' I imagined that was what she said to me as I couldn't hear it over Ted's rumblings. I would have given her a mean look had Ted's voice not been so soft and soothing that it was hard to concentrate on making an ugly face.
“Ted, is this your first 'real' job?” I asked him when Janice was out of sight.
“Yes, I don't have any work experience, but, but, I can assure you that it is because I am a very dedicated student at Jiao Tong University,” he said. The name Jiao Tong felt like a dagger in my heart. It was one of the best, if not the best university in the entire China. “I have very good grades. Would you like to see my grades? I have my transcript with me. Would you like to see it? Mother told me...”
“No,” I put my arm on his back and steered him into my office. “Nobody cares about grades after you left school,” I let him on the 'big secret' after we were alone inside the computer lab that I had resigned to as my office from now on, once again. “And nobody cares about what their mothers think anymore after they start making money either. You're going to start making money, with us, here, in Bilious. You're a big boy now. So drop the talk about your mother...and father for that matter, from now on, okay?” I gave him a warm smile, lest he got the wrong impression of me as a mean person. I was a generally warm person and definitely a great manager. At least that was the hope.
“Okay...let me write this down.” He threatened to write down what I just told him.
“No, it's not nec...”
“Did I do something wrong?” He lifted his head and looked nervously into my eyes. “Did I mess up? I don't want to get fired like the last intern...”
“Don't...ever...mentioned...the last intern again, ever.” I had to stop him from talking about Marvey like that in the company. “The two of you are two different persons. And you're going to be fine if you just follow my lead and do what the team does.”
“The team...I think, um, there's something you need to know about the team.”
“Wwwwait a minute....” I peered into mini-office next to the server room beside my office and saw that there was nobody there. All the desks were emptied and the drawers cleared out. And worse yet, there were no computers. I tried breathing in and out really hard while suppressing the feeling of horror rising inside me. Did the old team under Mr. Qi just get dismissed while I was gone? What the eff was going on now?!
Ted handed me a half shredded letter he found in the dustbin. It was another announcement that described exactly what I saw, that the whole team was axed because of fear of undying loyalties to the convicted, embezzling Mr. Qi and possible ties to the criminals that he used to work with. It didn't really say that in the letter, but anyone with a brain could have guessed the meaning between the lines.
“Is there no one who could coach me then? It took me three months, four rounds of interviews and a lot of sleepless nights to get this prestigious internship. They offered me a position in marketing and I turned it down for Fintech...and I was hoping to...” Ted was starting to get pessimistic about his future again.
I decided that it was best to keep him busy, since I was generally not very good at chirpy prep-talking whenever I felt like punching somebody in the face.
“Go get me a cup of coffee. Black. Go get yourself one, too. No, get a tea. Tea calms. And when you're back, come help me with this mess.” I eyed sordidly at the bundle of laptop screen, wireless router and printer wrapped in a tangle of cables that I had dragged behind me, as I lifted my chair back up.
“What a great beginning of my first day...” I whispered, trying not to let Mr. Jumpy hear his boss's true sentiment.
Chapter 2: Dormitory
“I love you,” I climbed out from under the blanket and looked straight into my girlfriend's eyes, although she still had them closed. She was enjoying my gentle smooching on her body just a moment ago. "I want to marry you, Marvey, will you marry me?"
My work life may be a mess, as always, but I have to say, my love life was getting on pretty well after the whole Mr. Qi's debacle. Marvey, the wonderful and the one-time 'intern' at my company, was now officially my girlfriend, which meant, I was getting laid. Once in a while at least, whenever I got to visit her on the weekends that I wasn't horsing around in Shanghai. She lived all the way on the other side of the country in Qing Hai on the Tibetan plateau but it didn’t matter. In fact, it was great. Not just the sex, but the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing.
