Coin Boom!
A shift in the atmosphere.
Just what the hell is this coin thing, anyway?
Sora had a little stressor lately.
No—actually, it was a big one.
She was getting trash-talked behind her back by the kids in the coin club. Whose doing it was needed no detective work. That pathetic club president’s handiwork, no doubt. She was doing her best not to care, to ignore it completely.
Those bastards who treat their own feelings like the center of the universe but have zero clue about anyone else’s.
It was the kind of thing she’d dealt with constantly in high school, so she was used to it. No response was the best response. Give it time and it would die down on its own.
That time arrived sooner than she expected.
"Chae-eun, how deep are you in?"
"Pretty deep…"
"I’m at minus thirty percent."
"Fifty for me."
"I should’ve sold when I was up double!"
The current in the lecture hall. Noticing it had shifted yet again was not difficult.
And the reason for that shift was equally obvious.
Lately Bitcoin had been plunging hard day after day. The kind of freefall you saw from the worst trash stocks on the KOSDAQ. Even the WooriSon Food she’d gotten stuck in before hadn’t been this bad.
"Where the hell is the cult leader? Why won’t he even show his face?"
"Cult leader my ass—he’s a scam artist."
"Yeah, total fraud!"
Coin investors were taking massive losses across the board. No matter how low their average cost basis, a drop this steep left everyone underwater.
So that’s why that guy’s catching all the heat too.
He had become the designated punching bag. The same people who’d been trash-talking her had spun their blades a full hundred and eighty degrees.
"If it weren’t for that bastard I never would’ve gotten stuck in this evil fucking scam called crypto."
"I was only gonna put in a little, just for fun."
"Same, same!"
"He kept saying it would only go up no matter what."
Without a scapegoat they simply couldn’t stand it. And in fairness, he really had been the one who pushed them into even bigger losses.
"Even when it dropped twenty percent he told us to average down because it was going to bounce."
"Ah…"
"Did you buy more too?"
"Yeah."
"I swear if I ever see that bastard again—!"
But they still owned their own responsibility. In the end they were the ones who decided to invest.
It never made sense to begin with.
The coin club president’s logic. He couldn’t explain a single thing about the actual value of crypto; he just kept screaming that it would go up. It was basically a religion. The members calling him “cult leader” had started as a meme and become reality.
"He claimed he made tens of billions off coins, right?"
"Ugh, so annoying! Even if he’s down half he’s still sitting on over a billion."
"He probably sold and bailed, dumped it all on beginners like us."
"Wow, this is straight-up multilevel marketing fraud. And I fell for it."
Why would anyone believe that?
But Sora, who had watched the whole process unfold, couldn’t bring herself to laugh.
The atmosphere really was like that.
Not buying made you the idiot. Everyone else was buying, everyone else was making money—if you alone stayed out, you genuinely felt like a fool. You held out and held out, but the moment you watched it rocket like mad your reason snapped. By the time you came to your senses you were already holding coins.
She swallowed hard.
If she had never had any investment experience. If she hadn’t traded with firm criteria of her own. She might very well have been underwater on coins right now. The thought made her flinch.
The real reason she had managed not to buy was because of her senior.
That bastard is so damn irritating.
He’d pushed some Son Heung-min related stock on her. She’d called bullshit and refused, then watched the price explode and bought in. Getting stuck in WooriSon Food had made her suffer for a good while. Ironically, that experience was helping her now. Coins had risen too far. Everyone around her was buying. The judgment that it was a bubble had settled in.
"Think it’ll go back up?"
"How the hell would I know."
"It will. It has to."
"It really needs to bounce… I’ve still got exams…"
Her senior’s mean-spirited prank, that cheap little joke of his, hadn’t been for nothing. If he had intended it that way—
Nah, that’s overthinking it.
Still, it had helped. Lately the slump had kept her away from investing. Naturally she saw less of her senior. She hadn’t even run into him these past few days. She’d thrown herself into the backlog of schoolwork. Double majoring meant she was twice as busy as everyone else.
Because of her senior.
But the thought that even this would help her someday gave her strength.
Scratch, scratch.
Second-semester finals were next week. The free time had let her prepare more than enough.
"God, what am I gonna do…"
"How deep are you that you’re freaking out like that?"
"I put in the rent money too."
"Why would you do that? Leave the rent alone."
"I was averaging down, okay? I was just gonna pull everything out the second I hit break-even, no greed!"
There were friends whose lives had been wrecked by coins as well. Since grades were curved, that made it easier for her to snag a good GPA.
I used to be like that too.
A snort of laughter slipped out. She wasn’t laughing because they were the ones who’d trash-talked her. She had made similar mistakes herself. She’d jumped into steel stocks without a clue and gotten wrecked. That experience seemed to be paying off now. Looking back, that had been the moment she started seeing her senior differently.
I’ve finished studying for the exams.
She had free time. Dropping by her senior’s place might not be a bad idea.
He kept sexually harassing her. Lately he had honestly crossed the line. Starting with kisses, she’d given in one thing at a time, and now he was asking for every filthy thing imaginable. Literally everything.
She spat.
Why the hell does he want me to jerk him off?!
Her mood soured instantly. The list of grievances piled up against her senior was long. Why she kept giving in, she didn’t fully understand herself. If she had to name a reason, it was because he looked cute. Normally he acted like the world belonged to him, but the second he was about to finish he made the cutest face. It was the only time she could beat him. Touching someone else’s weak spot was fun.
Click.
Lecture over, Sora sprinted for the parking lot. She’d bought a used car not long ago—an Avante she’d contracted for about ten million won. Low mileage, nothing wrong inside. The worn exterior had been cleaned up nicely. Come to think of it, her senior had helped with that too.
If he’s got another call girl over and is fooling around again, I won’t let it slide.
Something that had been inside another woman. Just imagining it gave her chills. And a prostitute, no less. She would never understand why men wanted to go that far.
She swallowed.
Maybe that was why he hadn’t been showing up at school. He must have made serious money off coins.
A guy like him would do it without blinking.
She arrived at her senior’s place. The door she always threw open without hesitation—she couldn’t find the courage to open it now. What exactly was happening inside. If her guess was right, what was she supposed to say.
I closed my eyes and jerked him off. I even gave him my first kiss…
She figured she had every right to be angry. She would kick him in the ass and crush his balls. Out of pity she’d leave him one.
Having settled her heart, Sora flung the front door open.
Tap, tap!
A familiar sight was waiting for her. Her senior staring holes through the monitors.
Huh?
No—it was a little different from usual. Because she had seen him so many times, she could tell the difference. His face was a shade darker. The room around him was a mess. She had seen this somewhere before.
Ah. It was me.
Déjà vu hit her. Coin prices had crashed hard recently. If her guess was correct—
Sora’s lips curled into a sly smile. She went over to comfort her dejected senior.
An unbelievable situation.
Bitcoin bad news was pouring out nonstop. That much could happen on its own.
No, fuck, this doesn’t make any sense!
The timing was far too perfect. Right while I was transferring coins from overseas exchanges to domestic ones for the Kimchi Premium—
News about the collusive relationship between Bitcoin and stablecoins dropped. And that wasn’t all.
Old news. Bad news the market had previously ignored was getting re-examined under a spotlight.
People with no real authority were raining down criticism. Fear filled the air both at home and abroad. It was as if someone had decided to crush Bitcoin flat.
I knew this kind of situation.
Fuck…
Because I’d been through it. But that was the past. Before the regression. Back when that damn bitch had toyed with me.
Stock prices aren’t judged by a company’s value alone. All kinds of market conditions back them up. There are powers that can manipulate those conditions. If necessary, they can manufacture bad news out of thin air.
Exactly like this.
By the time my coins finished transferring to the domestic exchange, they had already been cut in half again.
My Kimchi Premium…
In reality the drop wasn’t quite that severe. But Korea has the phenomenon called the Kimchi Premium. The short-term excessive plunge. Investor psychology snapped, and that inflation premium simply vanished.
Where there is an excessive drop, there is a corresponding rebound. I tried to catch the dead-cat bounce.
The program is massacring!
DOUBLE KILL!
TRIPLE KILL!
As if mocking me, it slammed even lower. The more it fell, the closer the Kimchi Premium got to zero.
How the fuck does this make sense?!
Even in the original history there had been waterfall crashes. But never this compressed into such a short window. Even the operators take losses this way. At minimum they should string it out over one or two weeks, making people sweat.
"Senior, what are you doing?"
"Can’t you tell by looking?!"
"Minus twenty billion… wait, did you lose all of that?"
It kept falling with no brakes, as if it were desperate to crush me alone.
Forget the past—looking at the trading patterns alone, this shouldn’t be possible!
At least once a proper pillar of fire should shoot up. Without even that, it just kept plunging straight down. Stubbornness kicked in. With my mental state already shattered, I was trading on pure break-even psychology.
"Senior. You always say trading is psychology. Are you really buying and selling while your psychology is this broken?"
"You think I wanted to trade like this?"
"Then what is it?"
"There are people inside the order book!"
"…Yeah, you’re addicted."
Sora, who had shown up out of nowhere, was throwing a wrench into things. Rationally I knew she was right. But it wasn’t that easy. Even the titans of Wall Street make this exact mistake while knowing they should stay away.
"Stop and rest a little. Today I’ll indulge all your whining."
"Gimme the boobs."
"Ugh, fine~."
Sora put the brakes on for me.