Coin Boom!
Campus life.
"Coins these days…"
"Went up five percent yesterday, right? Dropped two percent again after that, though."
"Just buy and sell and you can make bank so sweet it hurts!"
You couldn't miss the shift in the air that had taken hold in barely a month.
The chatter of students in the lecture hall drifted into Sora's ears.
Coins, huh…
Originally it had only been a fad among the economics majors. Lately it had become everyday talk even in the general-education classes.
"Should I buy some now?"
"Not buying is the real idiot move."
"But Bitcoin's way too expensive right now."
"True. That's why I jumped into altcoins. Holding till it 10x's."
"Ten times?!"
Students from other departments were getting into coins too. That much was fine on its own.
With stocks, even a double is a pipe dream, never mind a tenbagger.
The conversation simply wasn't realistic. From the perspective of someone who actually traded stocks, it was almost laughable.
And yet it was genuinely possible. Coins rose for no reason at all.
One of the countless coins sitting on the exchanges. Something no one had even known the name of suddenly "mooned."
"Moon" was a newly coined slang term. There simply wasn't another word that could describe a surge like that.
For some reason, though, it feels like my senior's been using that word forever.
If he'd been trading coins, it made sense. In the stock world, jumps like that simply didn't exist—daily gains were capped at thirty percent. Coins could multiply tenfold in a matter of days.
"What'd you buy?"
"Scam coin. Doesn't even cost ten won apiece."
"For real? If it hits ten million won like Bitcoin someday, you're set for life."
"I'm not hoping for ten million~ Just a thousand won would be plenty."
People were piling in with inflated dreams. Even Sora felt a little tempted, if she was honest.
I used to be like that.
For a while she had stared at coin charts all day long. Then, at some point, the steam had gone completely out of it.
She herself had gotten lucky and made money once. At first the fact that she'd earned anything had made her happy.
"A thousand won would be… a hundred times!"
"So if you put in a million, that becomes a hundred million?"
"Yeah. I saw online that someone put in ten million and it turned into two billion, so they just graduated."
"Graduated?"
"Made so much money they didn't need to work anymore!"
Was what she was doing even investing? That kind of doubt had started to creep in.
There was no reason for the rise. Even a pump-and-dump stock at least got one or two articles floated about it.
Investing just… isn't fun anymore.
She hadn't given up on the dream. It was only a short slump. Even a ten-percent gain used to feel so good she couldn't believe it. In coins, that was nothing special.
Everyone and their mother was doing coins. People who had simply gotten lucky enough to buy early were raking it in left and right. Money didn't feel like money anymore. Cyber money. Everyone was aiming for a life-changing reverse through pure gambling.
Honestly… it feels a little insane.
It might be rude to coin investors. But that was how she truly felt. Not investment—speculation. People were making such bizarre "investments" that her senior almost looked normal by comparison.
Was the world wrong, or was she? Until she found the answer, she had decided to take a break for a while.
"Cult Leader!"
"Cult Leader!"
"Sora, what are you doing? Get up and say hello."
"Huh?"
She felt the energy drain right out of her. A friend who took the same lecture was saying something strange to her. No—she knew what it meant.
Was he the president of the coin club?
She hadn't even known who he was, really. But once coins became the hot topic and scenes like this started happening more often, a vague memory of having seen him somewhere surfaced.
"Do you believe?"
"We believe!"
"Do you believe?!"
"We believe!"
A bunch of lunatics doing lunatic things. She never would have guessed one of her own friends was mixed up in it.
She never even touched stocks before.
Somehow coins had hooked her. Looking at them, they only resembled a religious cult. Coins were a religion. She was starting to understand what her senior had meant.
"You're Yoon Sora, correct?"
"And if I am?"
"The Cult Leader requests your presence."
"Me?"
A story that had nothing to do with her—or so she had thought—until someone came looking for her. She had no idea what it was about, but refusing would be rude, so she stood.
Me?
Curiosity was there too. Maybe they had called her thinking she was a fellow investor.
"Ahem! Would you step this way for a moment, Miss Sora."
"Do you know me?"
"Of course I do. Memorizing a junior's name is a senior's virtue."
A little suspicious. But he was a senior, and he knew who she was, so she followed—only for him to pull out a luxurious-looking box with a soft click.
She knew instinctively what it was.
"What is that?"
"Ahem! This is a diamond ring made by Tiffany."
"And?"
"I don't think my intention is quite getting across. Simply put, I would like you to accept this ring."
She had forgotten. The past year had been pure insanity, all because of her senior. It was also true that thanks to him she had experienced all sorts of things.
Is this guy crazy?
People around her had started seeing her as an investor. The guys who used to hit on her had disappeared.
"Why am I supposed to take this?"
"You may not know much about Tiffany. It's a high-end brand where a single piece costs over ten million won~."
"I'm asking why I have to take it."
There had been times like this before. High school. No—middle school. Seniors had called her over whenever they got the chance.
Worry about your own lives first.
Pathetic. She couldn't understand the obsession with romance between men and women. She had thought university, where people were supposed to be grown, would be free of that sort of thing.
"It's a little embarrassing to say this, but—"
"Then don't say it."
"I worked up the courage to speak, so I'd appreciate it if you listened."
"…Fine."
There it was. The president of the coin club—the one they called Cult Leader—apparently had feelings for her.
Honestly, my senior's the same kind of guy.
From the very beginning he had made blatantly sexual appeals. He had been so open about it that she had somehow forgotten.
"What I'm saying is that I like you, Miss Sora."
"And?"
"Wh-what do you mean 'and'? You're supposed to say something…"
"I don't even know your name."
"…"
In a way, it was surprisingly comfortable. Easier to deal with than the pathetic little advances other guys sent her way.
He wants to date me. I don't feel even one percent of that.
She couldn't figure out why he was smitten, either. It was impossible not to know it was almost certainly her looks.
"I appreciate the thought, but I'm not interested in that sort of thing."
"W-wait a second!"
"Yes?"
"As a fellow investor, I felt interest in you, Miss Sora."
No matter how he dressed it up. She wasn't so stupid that she couldn't see through even that much.
Investor, my ass.
The empty flourishes, too. Words meant to dress himself up only felt cumbersome.
"I'm not interested."
"P-please don't say that. As fellow investors—"
"I don't consider coin investors to be investors. No matter how much they make."
"!!"
What mattered was the essence. As a man and as an investor, he simply wasn't trustworthy.
He just got lucky that coin prices went up.
Could he make money the same way again? Ask that and the answer was obviously no. Investors who had simply picked up free money in a bull market. You saw the same type all the time in the stock market. Practically the same as winning the lottery. Not investors—lucky gamblers.
…
He knew people thought that way. He knew there were those who resented anyone who had made money on coins. Even she looked at coins as gambling?
For Dokyeong, the shock was anything but small.
His clenched fists trembled. The pressure of his grinding molars grew stronger and stronger.
A few months ago he might have accepted it. The Dokyeong of now was a completely different person.
"Cult Leader!"
"Summon the believers."
"What?"
"Did you not hear me? Gather the flock!"
The position makes the man. That saying is not always used in a good sense. He had made money on coins. Countless followers propped him up. It steadily warped Dokyeong's personality—until it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
How dare she talk to me like that!
Futures trading.
—Sell order filled!
He had pocketed an enormous price differential. Enough for an ordinary person to live on for the rest of their life.
Well, for me it's just seed capital.
Seed money for the trades still to come. Thanks to the coin surge he had made a tidy sum. All because he already knew the future. Low-risk futures trading was practically cheating.
It just punched through the seventeen-thousand-dollar range.
It would try for twenty thousand and then collapse. No need to ride it all the way there.
Yes or No
No—he would. Selling at the higher price was his investment strategy.
Using the Kimchi Premium, that is.
Bitcoin currently sat at seventeen thousand dollars. In Korea, though, it was already past twenty-three million won. At an exchange rate of around 1,100 won to the dollar, that made no sense. And yet the nonsensical thing was happening—because of the coin boom that had erupted in Korea. As trading volume exploded, sell-side inventory on the exchanges dried up.
A kind of inflation effect, basically.
They called it the Kimchi Premium. You could make money off it. How? Buy coins overseas. Move them to a domestic exchange. At current levels you could lock in more than twenty percent profit. He had prepared it as the finale of his coin trading.
Of course there was risk. The Korean market was closed off, so large fund transfers took time—two or three days. If the coin dropped hard in that window, you ate the loss for that amount.
But come on, is that really going to happen?
It was still only the first week of December. The bubble wouldn't start deflating until mid-month at the earliest. Until then, no problem. He had even thought the price would keep climbing and the spread would get even fatter.
Sudden news flooded every feed.