The Coin Club
The Stock Club.
"You're quitting the club? Why?"
"Must've gone completely broke."
"That's not it at all!"
After the last school festival, ETSD had hemorrhaged members. The top club in the Economics Department had collapsed overnight.
And the biggest winner? A huge chunk of those dropouts got absorbed straight into the Stock Club. The festival results, plus the fact that stocks were suddenly trendy, had done the work.
"Ahem! I've been into coins lately, you know."
"Coins?"
"You don't know coins? When it comes to coins, they're the next-generation reserve currency built on blockchain tech that achieves true decentralization—"
But trends never stay put. Especially for students, stocks were just too hard. Hell, even the professors couldn't crack them. There was endless material to study, and studying it still didn't guarantee you'd make money.
"Honestly, me too…"
"You too, Ye-jun oppa?"
"I'm in as well."
"Geon-woong oppa too? What the hell is going on?"
Coins, on the other hand, looked easier. No dense, convoluted explanations like stocks.
Above all, the price just kept exploding. In the last five years alone it had jumped more than four hundred times.
"But can you actually make money with that? It's not even a real company that earns anything."
"Haha."
"?"
"I used to think that way too, once upon a time."
Jiwoo, completely hooked on coins, launched into a full lecture for Hye-ri. He was basically announcing his club resignation. More coin comrades would be nice. It had turned into a kind of missionary work.
Over break, Jiwoo had invested in Bitcoin and pocketed more than 10 percent in gains.
"See that?"
"Whoa…"
"You're actually making money?"
"The big winners pull in tens of times their money. I just started a little late, so this is all I've got."
His shoulders were practically bouncing. Jiwoo had dabbled in stocks too, but the losses had outweighed the wins. I'll make it all back with coins and then some! The change of heart was only natural. He had transformed into a full-blown coin evangelist.
"Ugh… what do I do?"
"Looks like a ton of people are leaving."
"It's not like we can get jobs in coins later. I wish they'd stick with the club and think longer-term."
"Hye-ri."
"Yeah?"
"Actually, I'm thinking of switching clubs too."
"You too, Chaewon?"
Hye-ri was rattled. She was running the club on Chanuk's orders. After clawing through every kind of crisis, they had finally started finding their footing.
Did a coin club already form or something?
That was the only explanation that made sense. And her worry wasn't unfounded.
"So a coin club really did start…"
"There's this senior who made a killing on coins. I heard he founded it."
"How much did he make?"
"Hundreds of millions. Literally hundreds of millions!"
A real coin club had appeared. They had already lost a big chunk of their members to it. They needed a countermeasure, fast. The problem was they didn't even know who or what they were up against.
But what even is a coin?
She'd heard the word floating around, but she had no concrete idea what it actually was.
"What about Uk oppa?"
"Chanuk oppa? Who knows. He's probably somewhere."
"And Sora?"
"Yeah, I haven't seen her either."
The person who would know. The first name that popped into Hye-ri's head was, of course, Chanuk. He barely showed up to club meetings—that was half the reason she was president in the first place.
Sora's missing too…
Hye-ri could only stamp her feet and wait for the two of them.
The Coin Club.
It was a brand-new club—papers approved less than a week ago. And yet the place was already packed with hopeful applicants.
"Do you know how much Bitcoin cost when it first launched?"
"How much?"
"A hundred won? A thousand?"
"One won. A single won!"
An actual coin investor was doing the explaining. Club president Joo Do-kyung had made serious money on coins, so he knew the material cold—what coins were, and how to make money with them.
"Five years later it hit twelve dollars. That's a twelve-hundred-fold jump."
"Ooooh~!"
"And another five years later—right now—what's the price? Looking at it… it's up another 1 percent from this morning and closing in on 5.7 million won. Over four hundred times!"
"Woooah~!"
He started from the history. Bitcoin was only ten years old. In those ten years it had risen 480,000 times. Was there any other asset on earth that climbed this fast?
"Um…"
"Yes! Got a question?"
"Doesn't that mean it's at the top? It's already gone up so much…"
That was the natural doubt. Joo Do-kyung smiled at the person who asked. I used to be that pure once too.
Five years ago it was only twelve dollars. Trying to buy it now at over a million won made your hands shake. That was exactly the wrong mindset. You had to open your eyes to the true value of coins.
"What kind of money do we use right now?"
"Won?"
"Overseas they use dollars."
"Yen too!"
"Exactly. Paper bills. But will we still be using paper money in the future?"
He pulled a King Sejong bill from his pocket and waved it. Everyone knew what it was, yet it already felt like a relic.
Well…
Who even carries paper money these days? Everyone uses cards.
I use Oseong Pay.
Nobody walked around with thick wads of cash anymore. One credit card handled everything. Even that was a hassle—people just loaded Apple Pay or Oseong Pay onto their phones. Paychecks hit bank accounts automatically. Paper money was basically obsolete.
Numbers are money now.
That was exactly Do-kyung's point. Modern currency was already outdated.
"The day is coming when we won't use won, yen, or dollars—we'll transact entirely in Bitcoin."
"Ooooh~!"
"There's no early or late when it comes to investing in the currency of the future. The moment you think you're late is the earliest you can start!"
"Woooah~!"
The reason to buy Bitcoin. The students who had listened to his lecture erupted in cheers.
I can't keep something this good to myself.
At first he had only taught a handful of friends. They made money and thanked him. It was the first real sense of fulfillment he had ever felt. That was how the Coin Club got started. Watching the followers multiply was pure joy. Ideally a few pretty girls would join too.
"Excuse me."
She caught his eye. No—he had been watching her from the start. The fact that she was showing interest in his club…
Her name was Sora, right? She really is insanely pretty.
Do-kyung was a third-year Economics major. As a freshman, Sora never shared classes with him. But he had heard the stories. A ridiculously beautiful new student had arrived.
"Yes, do you have a question?"
"You said Bitcoin is the currency of the future. But for something to function as currency, places have to actually accept it, right?"
"You can already convert it to cash on coin exchanges!"
"Then it doesn't seem any different from just using won."
And she was the valedictorian on top of it. That already gorgeous face now carried a sharp, intellectual edge.
Damn, look how sharp she is.
Until now he had only watched from a distance. A returning senior striking up conversation always felt awkward. Talking to her directly only made his interest spike higher. He wanted a deep, serious conversation about coins.
"Your friend's name is…?"
"Yoon Sora."
"Yoon Sora just asked a razor-sharp question. And that exact point is why we have to invest in coins!"
"Huh?"
The more you learned about coins, the more magnetic they became. The reasons to buy them weren't just one or two.
She saw straight through Bitcoin's fundamental limitation.
Sora's critique was excellent. Paradoxically, that very limitation was why Bitcoin's price kept climbing.
"Right now Bitcoin still isn't fully commercialized. In other words, it hasn't received a proper valuation yet."
"Ooooh~!"
"The day Bitcoin becomes commercialized—we'll all be sitting on piles of money!"
"Woooah~!"
Any smart person would end up investing in coins. Sora would fall for them too.
The day she understands the true worth of coins will come. And when it does…
A coin couple. Being called that wouldn't be so bad. Do-kyung was already painting a rosy future.
What the fuck is this bullshit?
Sora was thinking something entirely different. She had come because she was curious about coins, and now she only had more questions.
Check the news every day and you couldn't avoid seeing it even if you tried. Bitcoin was climbing at a ridiculous speed. It went up a lot, huh? A month later the leading digit had changed again. Even Sora, who had started with zero interest, couldn't help getting curious.
"How are merchants supposed to trust Bitcoin and accept it? It's not even currency issued by a government."
"That's exactly what makes Bitcoin special. It's built on blockchain, a brand-new technology."
"Ooooh~!"
"Every single Bitcoin holds value independently. The fancy term for that is decentralization…"
She had expected the club president to know something real. His words were no different from the stuff floating around the internet.
Even the so-called experts all say the exact same things.
Blockchain was old technology. Anyone who wanted to could whip up something similar. Calling it the currency of the future was nonsense. Currency, as a store of value, demanded stability above all else. If the price swung wildly, it couldn't function as money. It had to be classified as a speculative asset.
The whole premise of decentralization is weird to begin with.
The only reason worthless paper could hold value was because a nation guaranteed it. The stronger the nation, the stronger its currency. That was why the dollar was the reserve currency. Who guaranteed Bitcoin?
When she asked, he just spun in circles with more weird talk. Contradictions everywhere. And yet the price kept rising.
After several days of research, she had reached only one conclusion. At its core, wasn't this basically gambling? A pure speculative phenomenon where the price went up simply because people were buying.
Senior would absolutely love this.
Sora felt a flicker of unease.