Fisherman's Profit

Fisherman's profit?

An absurd turn of events.

But of course it was. This was only natural.

Yeah. This is the futures market for you.

You stepped into a fight between whales. The risk of getting your back broken like a shrimp was something you had to accept.

This was exactly why the futures market was so brutal. But for me, this level of chaos was just another Tuesday.

It was only a matter of time.

The fact that I was taking losses—the institutions running the program could smell it. The textbook response in a situation like this was to cut and run. A retail trader who got greedy got trampled to death.

That was the conventional wisdom. But I hadn't survived this long by following the textbook.

The moment they start looking down on me, I have to walk away from this goldmine.

So I bought more. I gave them even more room to attack.

A retail trader, of all people? If this went the distance, they were the ones who would win. That much was obvious—to them.

But did I ever say I was retail?

That was the standard assumption. In actual trading, though, one more factor always applied.

The bluff.

Not just poker or hwatu—trading itself was an extension of gambling.

Get caught lying and you lose a hand. Literally.

Showing your cards was dangerous. The moment the other side knew your hand, they came at you with a fight they were guaranteed to win. Stocks worked the same way. The second your asset size got exposed, they could print money off your corpse.

But what if you bluffed?

From their side, placing the next bet suddenly got a lot harder.

People always think, "What if I'm wrong?"

They might be the ones who lost. They started overvaluing whatever firepower you actually had. The moment an overwhelming favorite got dragged down to even footing, their whole mindset shifted. Whales didn't like losing money either.

Of course, none of this was easy. Dragging a powerhouse down to your level never was.

Not with my strength alone, anyway.

But there were others who thought the same way I did—traders locked in combat with the program's support lines. Those lines had broken. Their objective was complete.

And when things went a little too far—

—the price dropped further than anyone expected. Even the short side hadn't seen this coming.

Yeah. This isn't what they signed up for.

Crypto was an asset with no underlying physical value. Psychology was everything. A freefall in a short window? People started assuming something was fundamentally wrong.

Even if nothing was actually wrong.

Once buying sentiment snapped like that—

Volume dries up overnight.

The fundamental principle of crypto was, at the end of the day, a Ponzi scheme. You needed buyers. And when the buyers disappeared? With no retail left to catch the bag, even the whales struggled to push the price back up.

Panic selling was already hitting the tape. Even if every other coin was fine, Ethereum was a different story.

Once trust broke, it was nearly impossible to rebuild. The problem wasn't just that the price was falling. The number-two coin's entire position was shaking. Investors were starting to reassess it—and not kindly.

A towering green candle. I went all in—full buy. And I did it with a hundred times leverage.

Two billion won at a hundredfold… roughly two hundred billion won's worth of exposure.

Risk beyond anything words could describe. A slight dip and I'd be liquidated—destitute, just like that. This was the one all-or-nothing play a retail trader like me could make.

Three in the morning. The hour when sleep should have been crashing over her. But Rachel's eyes were sharper than they had been all day.

She had to focus. Even a casual glance at the order book told her nothing about this was normal.

Click. Clack.

She had to respond in real time—and track every other coin's movement simultaneously.

Hedge with a preemptive short on Bitcoin.

Then she loaded an even heavier sell order onto Ethereum. Classic basket trading. Coins moved each other's prices. Exploit that correlation and you could minimize losses while—

—driving Ethereum even deeper into freefall. This was precisely why deep pockets were an advantage.

Alright, Korean A. You've got a hundred million dollars left, don't you? What are you going to do now?

Korean A's estimated assets sat somewhere between one and three hundred million dollars. But it wouldn't be a full two hundred. She had never once watched him buy more than fifty million in a single stroke. Factor in the coins he was already holding—

You're out of moves. No—you've already figured that out, haven't you?

Everything he'd been doing had been read by the primary market force. Pulling back was the only sensible next step. Anyone managing tens of millions of dollars would know exactly what ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠happened if you fought to the bitter end.

A massive buy order slammed in out of nowhere. Korean region. But the scale was nothing like before.

T-two hundred million dollars?!

And he shoved the entire thing through in a single strike. A towering green candle punched straight through the Ethereum chart.

Of course, the overall trend hadn't flipped. Retail was still selling. The market remained gripped by fear.

If I dump an even larger short right here…

It was possible. She could drive the price lower still. But several things hung in the balance.

One: her asset estimate on Korean A had been wrong.

Two: another whale might have entered the fray.

Three: the coin's underlying value could be damaged.

Rachel's fund was in the business of pushing coin prices higher. They had solid grounds for buying—preemptive intelligence, catalysts that could more than double the price from here.

A prolonged correction isn't in the current plan.

Her uncle had told her to wrap this up as quickly as possible. Something was about to break. An unexpected intervention had made time critically short. And the Chinese forces were moving in ways that didn't sit right either.

They were propping up the support line. The reasonable read was that this was an early signal of a directional shift.

Click. Clack.

Rachel made her call in an instant. She rewrote the program's pattern and took manual control herself.

She loaded call option buys. In millionths of a second, Bitcoin and Ethereum buy orders fired in tandem—techniques only institutions could deploy. Dedicated lines and high-performance machines made it possible.

The Chinese forces' program defense volume is… yes. There it is.

In a coin market where the big institutions hadn't fully planted their feet yet, this was an enormous edge. She hadn't stirred up this chaos for nothing. She had always been confident she could reclaim control whenever she wanted. In response speed, in trading technique—she was a full step ahead.

But this left her with one problem.

Fisherman's profit. Korean A, who had bought in early, was now sitting on the gains. And she had no choice but to watch it happen with both eyes open.

Damn it.

The curse slipped out before she could stop it. That was how deeply she was locked into this fight. Korean A. Looking purely at the result, she had been toyed with by his games.

Of course, she wasn't going to hand it over cleanly. She would force the price into a sideways grind and keep him from realizing any real profit.

Dumping the position immediately? Don't tell me he went all-in on high leverage as a make-or-break play… No. Speculating about it now is pointless.

Two hundred billion won scraped through at market price. If this had been a confident bottom buy, he would have held a little longer. There was no reason to shake free so fast in a correction zone. But watching him dribble out sells, bit by bit—

—the thought wouldn't leave her alone. That kind of noise. She knew it was poison for trading, and still it clung to a corner of her mind, refusing to be scrubbed out.

Then the market climbed back onto its normal track. Confirming the program trading had stabilized, Rachel picked up the thought where she'd left it.

Hah… what am I even doing at this hour.

Four in the morning came and went. Even if she went to bed right now, two hours ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of sleep would be a miracle. And it wasn't as though she had anything to show for it. At best, she had held her position and locked in a hedge. That was the entire sum of the night's work.

And yet Rachel was smiling. In all the years since she had first set foot in the world of investing, nothing had ever been this much fun.

Fun? Investing isn't something you do for fun.

She knew that. For her, investing was the family business—one of the pillars that held up the Rothschild name. It demanded absolute seriousness. And yet the game of tag she'd just played with Korean A had been genuinely fascinating.

She swallowed.

She was the one in the overwhelming position. And still, she had been jerked around by every call he made. She had rewritten her strategy multiple times. It was absurd—and at the same time, she couldn't help but admire the skill.

Fine, Korean A. This round is my loss. But this is nowhere near over.

She was getting obsessed.