Coins vs Stocks

The Korean securities market.

.

.

.

A major turning point had arrived.

Trading volume on the stock market had plummeted.

A new craze was spreading.

Bitcoin's explosive rally had the whole country buzzing.

And the fallout?

Stock market volume had dried up.

While the stock communities sat around looking miserable—

.

.

.

The crypto communities were booming.

It wasn't just stock market investors flooding into coins.

A wave of new investors.

Bitcoin was the talk of the town.

Even mainstream media was covering the rally.

What the hell even is that thing?

People who'd been skeptical at first were starting to waver.

The more they heard about someone making money—

It felt like you were the only one falling behind.

Just not making money felt like taking a loss.

There were already a few people like that around you.

Looking at the communities, there seemed to be even more.

And so the temptation set in.

Investor psychology.

It was nothing new on the stock market.

You refuse to buy when prices are low, then the second they climb you can't wait to smash the buy button.

Nobody is immune.

And brand-new investors who'd never even touched stocks were even more susceptible to Bitcoin's siren song.

They were even making money.

It barely felt like they'd done anything at all.

Money they'd always thought of as precious was suddenly dropping into their hands with absurd ease.

And so the delusion took root — that they were brilliant investors.

A little profit was all it took to pull freshly minted crypto investors under.

"There, you see?!"

The Crypto Club.

Joo Do-kyung was run ragged dealing with the flood of would-be members pouring in every day.

Even the talking was exhausting.

At first he'd explained everything one by one, but lately he didn't even bother with that.

"Woooow!!"

All he had to do was show them.

It lit up across the specially ordered beam projector.

His returns.

When he'd first started investing, it'd been with small amounts.

Then he'd opened his eyes to Bitcoin.

"You've been doing this since the early days of Bitcoin?"

"Not quite the early days. I haven't even hit a year yet myself."

"Then how do you have returns like that……"

"You beginners don't need to know this yet, but there's something called leverage. Just let it go in one ear and out the other, okay?"

He'd thrown his entire life into it.

Investing in Bitcoin when nobody else would had paid off.

And I'm just sharing a little of that knowledge.

Bitcoin had been drawing massive attention lately.

Thanks to that, the Crypto Club was in its golden age.

The biggest club in the economics department.

It had taken barely two weeks to rise to the top.

"Let me say this again — there is no such thing as too late or too early for crypto. Could you come out here for a moment?"

He planned to grow it even bigger from here.

He'd also figured out how to reel in the new investors — or rather, the membership hopefuls.

Creeeak—!

A figure stepped out through the front door.

A club member who'd been waiting on standby.

Not exactly a zealous crypto believer.

"This friend here joined one week ago. You could say he's a preview of what you'll all look like a week from now."

"Hello. Some of you might already know me — I'm Shin Yong-tae, sophomore. Haha."

Barely a week.

And that was exactly why it mattered.

Because what the people gathered here really wanted to hear was—

Whether they could make money too.

What crypto even was.

Why they should invest in it.

That kind of complicated talk didn't hit nearly as hard as this.

"This friend here didn't really do anything. He just bought some coins and held them."

"Yes. And that alone made me two hundred fifty thousand won."

"Ooooh!!"

Dozens of people packed in to hear the crypto lecture.

Awestruck murmurs rippled through the room.

Making money was easy.

First, he'd get them hooked on how fun crypto was.

And after that—

"Right now he's trading carefully, but once you start learning one thing at a time, returns like mine will be within reach. Not just for this friend — for all of you too."

"Woooaaah!!"

—he'd pull them all the way under.

This was how he was growing the club's membership at an exponential rate.

Sora, one of these days, you too.

He'd get every single student in the department to join.

And Sora would be among them.

Money and love, both in his grasp.

Do-kyung was drunk on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his own dreams and ideals.

Bitcoin.

There was more than one way to get it — buying through an exchange wasn't the only option.

"Mining?"

"What's mining?"

"Are they, like, digging coins out of the ground or something……"

You could mine it.

Bitcoin had a system that paid out coins to whoever found a 64-digit hash function expressed in hexadecimal.

They call it mining because it's similar to digging for gold.

You didn't exactly need a pickaxe or a shovel.

Bitcoin mining was done with graphics cards or dedicated hardware.

And the scale of it—

Anyone seeing it for the first time would have their jaw on the floor.

The moment the photos he'd brought were sent to the Stock Club group chat—

"These are all graphics cards……??"

"One, two, three, four…… even a rough count, that's like three hundred of them."

"What the hell. That's insane."

They were smart kids.

Hankuk University students, after all.

They'd grasp what he was getting at in a heartbeat.

"Are there a lot of people doing this mining thing?"

"It's growing."

"Then—"

"Semiconductors must be selling like crazy!"

Coin prices go up.

More people get interested in coins.

And people want to make easy money.

It was ironic, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠really.

They invest in risk assets and still chase stability.

That was why mining had started drawing attention.

You could make money steadily and consistently.

"Can't we do this too?"

"Crypto's insanely expensive right now!"

"You'd have to find a commercial space, the electricity bills would be massive, and you'd need to buy hundreds of graphics cards?"

"……"

Assuming coin prices held.

In a period when everyone was staring at a bull market—

Plenty of people were taking the plunge with both ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠feet.

For a student, it was a burdensome sum.

But for someone who'd run a business before?

It wasn't all that different from running a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠restaurant or a PC bang.

It became an investment worth considering.

"You could say semiconductors just got another momentum catalyst."

"So should we buy semiconductor stocks?"

"Which ones are good? Osung Electronics? SQ Technics?"

"For now—"

"For now?"

The ripple effect of crypto on the stock market.

The first things to rise would be semiconductor-related stocks.

Safety-oriented? Osung Electronics.

Chasing returns? SQ Technics.

Willing to take on risk? Halla Semiconductor and the like.

Among overseas stocks there were NVIDIA, Intel, Micron, and others, but foreign stock trading regulations were heavy right now.

Semiconductors alone were more than enough.

Because mining rigs are burning through extra semiconductors.

And there were second- and third-order effects too.

A stock investor shouldn't get seduced by crypto — they should know how to use crypto.

"Hey, though."

"Yeah?"

"Won't they still underperform crypto? Crypto's upside is insane."

Mansu, one of the club members, tossed out the question.

Even among the ones who hadn't defected to crypto—

There were bound to be people wrestling with it.

Those guys are making multi-baggers over there!

Relative deprivation alone was enough to torment an investor.

It was the kind of thought you could only have if you didn't understand crypto.

Once you understood it, the thinking changed.

"You've all been bagholding stocks before, right?"

"Obviously."

"Do you even have to ask?"

"How does it feel when a stock you're holding starts dropping?"

"……"

Crypto.

At a glance, it seemed incredibly easy.

Just hold it and the price keeps going up.

It was only after you actually bought coins that you realized.

Making money on crypto was the weird part.

Looking at the chart, it feels like you just buy and wait and the money rolls in.

Live trading was nothing like the fantasy.

In real trades, one extra step got bolted on.

"It's funny, right?"

"Why didn't I buy lower……"

"The second you hit breakeven you just want to dump it."

"Right?"

"But the moment you sell, it rips higher!"

So you just keep holding.

And that alone generates an enormous amount of stress.

They'd learned that lesson thoroughly over the past semester.

These weren't starry-eyed stock newbies dreaming of overnight riches.

That's why you need analysis. Why you check filings and news every single day.

If it were really just buy low, sell high, all you'd need is a chart.

Roughly buy when it's dropped a lot, roughly sell when it's pumped a lot.

As if that would ever work.

Even the day traders who operated that way only could because they'd internalized ordinary trading mechanics and the flow of the market.

"Imagine you guys bought crypto."

"Okay."

"Imagined."

"Then what exactly are you trusting to keep holding it?"

"!!"

Crypto had no underlying substance.

Its value was priced entirely by investor psychology.

The more rational the person, the greater the anxiety they felt while holding it.

Shake it up and down just a little and they get shaken out.

That was why, for all how high crypto had climbed, the number of people who'd actually made money was smaller than you'd think.

The second it ticked up even a little, they scrambled to sell.

And right now the price was sitting in the five-million-won range.

If his memory wasn't wrong, a correction had unfolded right around this period.