Coins vs. Stocks
Yeouido's securities district.
"How's the walk-in traffic today?"
"Well, it's… pretty sparse."
"That bad?"
"The ones who actually deposit money are even fewer."
The brokerages were suffering through an untimely slump in performance.
Untimely.
Under normal circumstances, new investors should have been flooding in by now.
It was a bull market, damn it. A bull market!
The month-long correction had just ended. Looking back, it had only been a correction—but at the time, people had braced themselves for a full-blown bear market.
And now the bulls were back.
Markets in the developed world—the United States, Europe—were climbing. Emerging markets in China, India, and Southeast Asia were looking healthy too.
Only Korea remained stuck in the doldrums.
Lee Tae-ho, division chief at Gaemi Investment Securities, had no choice but to clutch his head in frustration.
"You've all reviewed the agenda."
"Yes, sir!"
"Don't you think the thaw is coming soon?"
"You want to find out how soon you're getting fired?"
"I—I'm sorry!"
He had called an emergency meeting. This was not a place where you could clock in with the lazy thought that things would sort themselves out eventually.
You think this is some cushy conglomerate that guarantees you a job until retirement?
Even the big conglomerates couldn't compare. In the securities world, every single day was war. Anyone who couldn't pull their weight got cut without mercy.
Gulp.
The sound of someone swallowing hard carried through the room. Anyone who wasn't a complete idiot could tell the atmosphere had turned dangerous.
"With the major global markets settling into an uptrend, I may have been a bit too optimistic in my outlook. I apologize for the misspoken remark…"
"Does 'sorry' keep you employed?"
"…"
"Analyze the reasons! The reasons! You're securities men, every last one of you."
At an ordinary company, losses simply belonged to the firm. At a brokerage, they became the employees' personal responsibility. You had to move before the higher-ups came down with the reprimands—analyze the situation and prepare countermeasures.
Not a single person in the room was giving him anything satisfactory. Once you reached team-leader level, people started carefully avoiding any statement that might leave them holding the bag.
"Division Chief."
"Ah, Deputy Manager Yeom. You have something?"
"It may be overstepping, but may I offer a word?"
"What's there to overstep? Speak freely."
"Yes, sir. Then I will."
Just one of them. The man had stuck in Lee Tae-ho's memory. Strictly speaking, a deputy manager had no business sitting in this room—but results spoke louder than rank.
I like people who deliver.
Deputy Manager Yeom was Gaemi Investment Securities' star analyst. The nature of his work put him in close contact with ordinary retail investors, so he knew things that never showed up in the numbers—what the ants were really thinking.
Lee Tae-ho listened with genuine interest. Manager Park, who had just been chewed out, shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
What the fuck is so special about that crap?
The size of the coin market was nothing next to equities. It didn't even come close to the KOSPI, let alone the Nasdaq.
"I'm aware coins are making noise, but the idea that they could challenge the traditional stock market…"
"That's a statement made from ignorance, sir."
"What did you say?"
They hadn't bothered to respond. Deputy Manager Yeom was about to point out that this had been a mistake.
A guy who climbed to manager through office politics—what does he know?
Yeom offered Manager Park a bright smile, his expression carefully saying that there was no malice, only explanation.
"It's true the coin market is still small in absolute size. But the trading volume is far beyond what most of us realize."
"How far?"
"Daily turnover is more than twenty times that of the KOSPI…"
"T-twenty times?!"
Brokerages were arrogant by nature. They had every reason to be. In game terms, they ran with permanent map hacks on. They knew exactly what the retail ants were doing. Listed companies even pre-notified them of major information.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
That arrogance had become their blind spot. Because they believed they already knew everything, information from outside the equity markets had actually reached them late.
"Manager Park, you lose."
"…"
"You're too kind, sir."
"Go on. Continue."
"Yes. The coin market may have a short history compared to equities, but…"
The younger generation was at the center of it. Through social media and online communities, it was spreading at an astonishing speed. Despite having caught fire only recently, it had already grown into a body that could not be underestimated.
"What do you think we should do?"
"Yes, Division Chief."
"I assume you didn't bring this up without a plan."
"Of course not. Personally, I believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
Coins had grown on the twin engines of rising prices and pure trend. The stock market simply needed to answer in kind. What they required was a hero—someone investors would flock to. If one didn't exist, they would manufacture one.
And that plan is going to be mine.
A brokerage was an organization with more than enough power to make it happen.
The coin club's explosive popularity had produced results no one had anticipated.
Tap-tap. Tap.
Tap-tap. Tap.
The sound never stopped inside the lecture hall. Everyone was pecking away at their phones.
"Did it go up?"
"You can look yourself."
"I can't. I'm too nervous to check…"
The reason was simple: they were all in coins. The money they had parked was changing value in real time.
They had been told that if you just bought and held, it would go up no matter what. The moment they actually bought, the market performed a little magic trick and dropped instead.
"It fell."
"God, why does it only ever go down…"
"No matter how you look at it, we're bagholders."
"Why?"
"Think about it. The price went up four hundred times over five years."
Coins. Making money was nowhere near as easy as they had imagined. The anxiety that they might lose everything loomed larger.
I don't even really know what a coin is supposed to be.
They had heard the rough explanation—something something based on blockchain. But was any of that actually necessary? If someone asked them to explain it, they wouldn't be able to. They had lived just fine without coins, and they had a feeling they would continue to do so.
"You guys still have it easy."
"Min-gu, you're in coins too?"
"I'm down over thirty percent."
"What?!"
"Bitcoin hasn't even dropped ten percent from the top."
"I'm not in Bitcoin."
When the people around you were losing money, it hit even harder. The ones holding Bitcoin were relatively better off.
It was under a hundred won, so I figured it was cheap and bought it.
Min-gu had bought altcoins. The crypto market was full of coins besides Bitcoin. The price looked ridiculously low—wouldn't this one shoot up like Bitcoin someday? He had bought it with nothing but dreams and hope.
"Whoa."
"What? Did it go up?"
"It dropped another ten percent."
"That… isn't that dangerous?"
"I'm going to have to starve this month."
Relative deprivation played its part too. So-and-so had supposedly made a hundred times, a thousand times their money~. They wanted to be the protagonist of that story themselves. So they had made investments that were closer to pure gambling.
Those students could at least chalk it up as a life lesson: try to make easy money, lose it just as easily.
Not everyone was so lucky.
Dae-hoon didn't have many friends. He openly called himself an outsider.
It has to go up. Why—why the hell is it dropping now of all times?!
For the first time in his life he had joined a club. He had made seniors and juniors, people he could actually talk to—with coins as the medium. He had fallen deep into coins. The more money he made, the more recognition he would earn.
He had thrown in six million won—allowance borrowed from his mother, rent money, even his savings.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…
That money was melting away. He had even added leverage on top. The melting speed doubled. He couldn't put his phone down. Checking coin prices had become a daily ritual.
Looks like Dae-hoon's in coins too.
That's a hundred-percent bagholder face.
Damn, I never should have touched this coin crap either.
Normally he would have stood out. But everyone understood. They all knew the feeling of being underwater on coins. You ended up staring at your phone all day. You developed the habit of refreshing communities looking for good news or bad news.
The atmosphere in the economics department was gloomy. Bloodshot eyes and depressed-looking students were everywhere.
"Hye-ri, you're investing too, right?"
"Yeah, I am."
"Your face looks bright. Did you short something?"
"Short? No, not that."
Not everyone was suffering.
Chae-won, who until recently had belonged to the stock club, felt a flicker of curiosity.
The stock market isn't exactly great either.
She had transferred to the coin club. The moment she switched, coins had entered a bear market as if on cue. But stocks were the same. She had assumed the stock club members would be wearing the same long faces.
"Coins are trending hard these days, right?"
"Y-yeah."
"So we bought stocks that should rise when coins get popular."
"?!"
That wasn't the case at all. Hye-ri's words hit a blind spot. Chae-won had simply been swept up in the coin frenzy.
There are stocks like that?
The stock market. News from the wider world often got priced into equities. Coins were no exception.
"W-what did you buy?"
"I bought Osung Electronics."
"Osung Electronics? I heard a lot of people are underwater on that lately."
"Which is why I got it cheap. Already up five percent."
She showed her account with the profit clearly marked. You didn't flash a winning account unless you had real confidence.
She actually made money…
A losing account was too embarrassing to show anyone. And it wasn't just one person.
"Me too."
"Me too!"
"You guys bought Osung Electronics as well?"
"I got SQ Technics."
"I bought Halla Semiconductor. Heh heh."
"What's with the 'heh heh'?"
"That guy bought pure garbage stock."
Every single member of the stock club was sitting on profits. Until recently she had been one of them.
I'm down three percent on coins…
Her feelings were complicated. By switching clubs, she had become a traitor of sorts.
"Chae-won, you should come back!"
"M-me?"
"The coin kids all look like hell."
"It's not even going to help with job hunting. Why are they grinding so hard?"
Surprisingly, there was no hostility. The club members' words made Chae-won's resolve waver.
When you think about graduating and getting a job, stocks are definitely better.
Even if you never became a trader, it helped with finance-sector employment. From a pure personal-finance perspective too.
Gulp.
This was no time for pride. After finishing her internal debate, Chae-won decided to return to the stock club.