Every Answer Is in the Charts
Even after that, Jisu kept checking the paid room's calls.
When he had first joined, the signals had been coming in at a fairly brisk clip, but whether the market had gone gloomy again or not, a stretch of rather idle days had followed. The one difference from the free room was that here, even vague information never appeared at all.
Lynx was, in fact, still feeding information into the free room even during this stretch. The range of coin picks was wide, but when it came to the part that actually mattered — when to buy and when to sell — the information was always broad, and never quite distinct.
Every call Lynx had made in the paid room so far could fairly be called 98% accurate. But as Jisu had already learned the hard way, the calls in the free room had a high hit rate without ever quite being what you'd call precise. His own abilities, which had thoroughly tanked, were living proof of that.
When he puts it like that, I guess it's not that strange people trust him this much.
For a brief moment, Jisu found himself beginning to understand Lynx's followers — then he shook his head.
No. Nobody deserved that kind of worship. You used what you could use, and you did not put your faith in it. That was the only correct way to play this.
The room was essentially Lynx and his flock of devotees, and Jisu was having a hard time adjusting to the atmosphere. But he'd already paid, so what was he supposed to do? Aside from sitting it out, there wasn't much of a choice.
And so the days passed with no further calls. He ate the meals Seyeon prepared. He checked the Bitcoin sites. Time went by like that, and a question began to surface on its own.
Where the hell does Lynx even get his information?
Lynx was no god. There had to be a real reason his hit rate sat at 98%. Some high-up standing behind every coin on the market? Why would someone like that bother running a signal room?
People who knew stocks liked to say that every answer was in the charts — that if you analyzed them, you could get a decent read on how prices would move. Coin trading, in a way, was just a stock market that never closed, running twenty-four hours a day. That was how a lot of people talked about it, anyway. So Jisu started digging.
Candlesticks, uptrends, chart movement, order flow… what the hell is any of this?
He'd never thought of himself as a bad student, but studying stock charts from a dead standstill was, frankly, not easy. He sat through a few lectures from famous instructors on Nertube and still didn't fully understand any of it.
This time he searched for "coin chart analysis" instead of stocks. The results were far more disastrous than the stock-chart posts had been.
"Fuck. And they call this analysis…"
The curse left Jisu's mouth on its own. If these had been troll posts, he could have sworn, closed the tab, and been done with it. They were not. Unbelievably, the vast majority of the analysis sitting on Coinler was garbage of exactly this caliber. Even the comment sections weren't hostile.
An atmosphere like that could only mean one thing: this was simply what the coin market was.
The buying methods above had all already been "verified." That's right. There were actually coins that had mooned after going through those exact processes. So someone had slapped the word "method" on them, and that was the entire story. Nobody was trying to analyze this market in any real detail. There was no need. Not in a place like this.
Goddammit. I can't believe I'm actually studying this shit.
A brief wave of self-loathing rolled over him, sharp enough that he found himself desperately craving a cigarette he'd never once put to his lips. He didn't quit. He got back up and looked at the monitor of his aging computer.
Fine. Let's just brute-force this. Try everything.
The first thing Jisu did was pull up the cryptocurrency price boards of every major exchange in every major country. There was no particular reason. He just figured that if he sat there watching how the charts moved, something might start to make sense.
A little searching confirmed what he probably should have expected: beyond Korea's Bitstorm, coin trading sites existed in staggering numbers all over the world. The most recognized of them was America's BitTrader, the world's first Bitcoin exchange. Other well-known names included Bissam and Downbit.
He opened every coin trading site on the planet, then pulled up the Bitcoin chart — the representative coin, if any coin could be called that. Lined up side by side, a few things became obvious.
Bitstorm's prices are definitely the highest.
Back when he'd first set foot in the coin market, he remembered hearing about something called the kimchi premium. Korea was one of the most active trading markets in the world, and every coin there maintained a price higher than the global average — that gap was the kimchi premium, wasn't it? He didn't know the details, but some kind of premium was clearly in effect.
The swings were bigger on Bitstorm, too, both down and up. When it rose, it rose hard. When it fell, it fell hard. Calling it the world's greatest speculative arena was no exaggeration. The Korean love of all things spicy was reflected perfectly in the charts.
Leave it to Koreans to show their national character even here.
Jisu kept watching the charts. There was no real movement. Bitcoin made headlines because of what it represented, but most people actually trading coins barely paid attention to it. It had been sideways for a long time north of twenty million won, with no major rallies and no major dumps, which made it a poor vehicle for making money in a hurry. At this point, the only people buying Bitcoin were beginners just starting out, or people who genuinely believed in the market's potential and were in it for the long haul.
How much time passed like that? Jisu, who couldn't see anything useful no matter how hard he looked, let out a long breath, as if a wave of sudden, crushing clarity had rolled in all at once.
Forget it. You can't cultivate a decent skill overnight.
He said it to himself and stood up. He considered turning off the computer, but leaving the twenty-four-hour price charts running didn't seem like it would hurt. This was Jisu's room, and unless something came up, neither his mother nor Seyeon ever came in.
I should get some fresh air.
He left the charts up and stepped out of the room.
"They're not broadcasting it at all?"
"That's what I said, and I have no idea why. People want an explanation for the headline, but we can't actually confirm anything. Honestly."
The editor-in-chief clicked his tongue. They'd spread it all over town that Cheon Woohyeok of the Seongwolhoe guild would be facing Earth's Strongest Hunter in a one-on-one, and then Seongwolhoe had clammed up about the match everyone had assumed would be made public, sealing it away with a single word: draw.
Park Jeongsik looked at his editor and spoke in a worried voice.
"Will we be okay? The article's been out for a while now."
"I already told you. It's not like we can prove it — but there's no proof it's false either, so we'll be fine. And if there's a problem, I'll take the heat. All of it."
"Still, though."
The editor-in-chief flicked him lightly on the head.
"Drop it, kid. Go grab some other story. Nothing's going to happen."
"…Alright."
Hearing that his editor would take responsibility was enough to get him moving, but that didn't mean he wanted to watch something go wrong because of him. Park Jeongsik sank into thought for a moment.
Maybe I should head over to the Hunter Association. I might even land an interview with Earth's Strongest Hunter. Or if not that, an interview with someone connected to him would still be good. I'm also curious why Seongwolhoe — a guild that loves this kind of spectacle — would go out of their way to keep it private.
It was only after thinking that far that he noticed his body had already started getting ready for the assignment on its own.
There I go again.
Park Jeongsik, rookie reporter at Today Hunter. He'd originally dreamed of becoming a hunter himself, which was why he'd joined the department that covered the industry. He hadn't had the talent for hunting — but that didn't mean he couldn't report on it, did it?
"Editor-in-Chief! I'll head out on assignment, then!"
There was no particular answer, but he hadn't been waiting for one. Park Jeongsik's feet carried him toward the Hunter Association as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Dungeon exploration?"
"Yes, a few related requests have come in. There don't seem to be any raids coming up for a while — are you not interested in this side of things?"
Jisu scratched his head.
"No, it's not that I'm uninterested. To be honest, I just don't really know what dungeon exploration is."
"Oh — have you never heard of dungeons?"
"I've heard of them, but I don't know the details."
Being an SS-rank Hunter and not knowing something like that was a little embarrassing, but what was he supposed to do? Being honest about it was the better call going forward, too.
"That's okay! That's what I'm here for."
Right. That was Seyeon's job. Jisu felt a faint, steadying sense of reassurance.
"Right now, hunters handle two kinds of work. One is raids — that's what you've been doing so far, Jisu. Going to wherever a gate opens and defending that location."
"And the other — the livelihood of the lower-rank hunters who make up the vast majority, far outnumbering the high-rankers."
"That's dungeon scouting and exploration!"