Chapter 47: 52 Times
Chapter 47: 52 Times
Before I started investing, I never understood how people who bought put options felt.
The stock market was crashing, and everyone was losing money, but they alone were raking it in.
- New York Stock Exchange Market Cap Evaporates by $3.6 Trillion
- Global Stock Markets in Panic
- Worst Crash Since the Financial Crisis
- Dow Jones Plummets 1,000 Points Day After Day
- COVID-19: Hedge Funds That Predicted a Bear Market Hit the Jackpot
- Fed Strongly Hints at Interest Rate Cut
- Fed Chairman Jerome Powell in Emergency Statement: “We Will Protect the Economy”
- New York Stock Exchange: Anxiety at an All-Time High
- COVID-19 Pandemic Fears Send Global Markets into a Panic
The New York Stock Exchange, the linchpin of the global economy, was collapsing.
Investors were said to be in a panic, recording enormous losses.
But having sold my stocks and bought put options, I couldn’t feel more secure.
‘This is really sweet.’
I felt like a successful villain.
If I were alone, I’d be jumping for joy, but a camera was currently filming me.
Producer Seong Ho-jin asked.
“CEO Kim, are you not closing out your put options because you expect the market to fall further?”
“Yes. I don’t believe the shock from COVID spreading in the U.S. will be over in just a day or two.”
“If there’s another drop, your returns will increase even more.”
“I hope I’m wrong. But if I do make a profit, I’ll be able to invest more into Biolife.”
While filming, I checked on the progress of the coin with my employees.
“Nora, how are the coin designs coming along?”
“I’ve come up with about twelve. The development team has already selected one.”
The designs were modeled after various types of currency.
The one that stood out was a design that resembled a yellow brick.
“I like that one.”
“It’s pretty, isn’t it? Many say the design, being similar to a gold bar, reminds them of a game.”
“Approaching it like a fun game seems fine. Source Coin is supposed to bring joy, after all. And the resemblance to a stone is also a slight nod to the development of human civilization.”
As Source Coin neared completion, detailed tasks like design were added to the workflow.
The good thing about being the CEO? I could make the major decisions myself.
‘I remember the criticism when Mirae Motors’ car designs came out horribly—that it was because executives kept meddling with what the designers had painstakingly created.’
It’s an affair if someone else does it, but a romance if I do it, right?
Since we didn’t have established management or PR teams, there were many decisions to be made ahead of Source Coin’s launch.
“Please get some rest, CEO Kim.”
“Good work today. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The day’s filming only ended in the evening when I entered my apartment.
It might have seemed like my schedule was over, but I still had something to do with Oh Myeong-woo inside.
The president and vice president.
After working hard from morning till evening, didn’t we deserve a break?
- Oh Myeong-woo: Computer’s on. Logged in. We're jumping straight into ranked as soon as you're here.
- Kim Shin: Heading up. Queue up now.
* * *
Producer Seong Ho-jin and the film crew had rented a nearby house through Airbnb.
“This house is amazing!”
“It has a pool, too.”
It was a huge house with eight rooms.
But before they could enjoy their break from Korea, they had to work.
“Send the raw footage to the cloud. Let’s edit the YouTube version here.”
“Yes, sir!”
Dream Art Rainbow.
The production company had just been founded, and they didn’t even have an editing suite in Korea yet.
They hastily began editing the footage shot in the U.S. on their laptops.
“Seon-hwa, you handle the subtitles.”
“Okay!”
“There’s no need to blatantly hype up the CEO. The video and the content will do that for us.”
“Don’t you worry!”
It took them five hours to create a 22-minute video for YouTube.
After working nearly all night, they immediately uploaded it to the Dream Art Rainbow YouTube channel.
* * *
Kim Shin. Kim Shin. Kim Shin.
To the employees at Arcor, his name was very special.
The man who used to eat lunch with them had become a super-rich mogul.
‘If only I had invested a little better, I could be living like Kim Shin.’
Na Sang-guk felt a pang of jealousy.
He couldn’t count the times he’d wished he could go back two years, convinced he too would have become a billionaire.
And so, he searched Kim Shin’s name every day.
He read news articles about Kim Shin and browsed through forum posts.
- Trillions of won at 32. Seriously jealous.
- That's how you should live life.
- Heard he went to the States. Probably rolling around with blonde bombshells, right?
In Korea, Kim Shin was pegged as a lucky nouveau riche.
The very fact that he had amassed a huge fortune through crypto drew a lot of criticism.
‘He’s on a completely different level from me…’
As Na Sang-guk was searching Kim Shin’s name like he always did, a YouTube video popped up.
[The Daily Life of Super Rich Kim Shin, Part 1]
It was a video uploaded to the Dream Art Rainbow channel.
Posted just ten minutes ago, it only had a few dozen views.
‘What is this? Is it real?’
The video started in an American apartment. He was surprised to see Kim Shin and watched with interest as it showed him starting a business in the U.S.
‘He was creating a coin? Source Coin?’
He firmly imprinted the name in his mind and kept watching. The video said Kim Shin had made a massive investment in put options in the U.S.
‘Not even stocks, but $200 million in options? The scale of this is insane.’
Along with jealousy, he had a strange sort of affection for the man, so he hoped Kim Shin wouldn’t lose too much money.
Being a super-rich mogul was better than being poor like before, wasn’t it?
He hoped Kim Shin would at least buy him a meal whenever he came to Seoul.
“A 487% return? Is that for real?”
He had earned nearly a billion dollars in just a few days. Moreover, he wasn’t cashing out his put options, saying the market could fall further due to the coronavirus.
‘He thinks it could go up even more? That the stock market will continue to fall?’
He remembered buying Ripple on Kim Shin’s recommendation a long time ago.
How much he had regretted not putting his entire life savings into it back then.
And after that, he had regretted not selling Ripple when Kim Shin had told him to.
Unable to accept the loss, he had invested his salary into it for nearly a year before finally selling everything just a short while ago.
‘I have to follow Kim Shin and buy put options.’
He didn’t know if Kim Shin’s investment was right or wrong. But if he regretted it again, he would go insane.
- Na Sang-guk: A video of Kim Shin is up on YouTube. I think he has a solid reason for it. I'm going all-in on put options too.
He posted in the company group chat for employees who had invested in crypto together.
Then, through an investment account he had made long ago, he went all-in on put options with his entire life savings of 40 million won.
* * *
The next morning, the faces of Producer Seong Ho-jin and the film crew were etched with fatigue.
“Did you pull an all-nighter?”
“No, sir. We slept for an hour and a half.”
“…”
Usually, sleeping that little would make you even more tired.
Nevertheless, they were diligently filming him heading to work.
In the car, Producer Seong Ho-jin handed him a tablet.
“We’ve uploaded the first episode of your video, CEO Kim. It currently has 20,000 views.”
“Oh, really?”
Seeing popular YouTube videos with millions of views, I couldn’t really gauge how significant that number was.
I skimmed through the first episode; it was mostly about the apartment, the company, and the option investment.
There were scenes of me talking with the producer at a coffee shop with Palo Alto in the background.
A brief glimpse of the Earth Resource office was also shown.
“We edited the first episode to be short and promotional. The stories about starting the company, the coin, and Biolife will be covered properly starting from the second episode.”
The calm, flowing video seemed to reach its climax at the 487% return rate.
Even though I had been inwardly shocked when I checked the return on my phone, my on-screen self appeared perfectly calm.
‘Looks like my poker face worked well.’
By the time we arrived at the office while I was watching the video on the tablet, the total view count had surpassed 40,000.
“The views are climbing quickly.”
“This is a huge hit, even for YouTube. It’s also being talked about a lot on various online communities.”
When I searched, I found quite a few articles, not from major newspapers, but from online news sites.
They talked about the super-rich mogul’s extraordinary investment sense.
Or how he had earned a major corporation’s annual net profit in just a few days.
I briefly skimmed the comments on one of the news articles…
- Fucking nouveau riche. Just got lucky and struck it rich.
- I'm so jealous. For real…
- Is he the greatest success story to come out of the Korean crypto scene?
- America must be nice when you have money.
- Where are the blonde babes?
Reading the comments, I suddenly thought of Ellie, working hard on Wall Street.
I worried about how the Korean audience would react if she appeared in the video.
“Ahem.”
“We structured the first episode around the provocative profit story to grab viewers’ attention. Once your sincere stories about traveling the world after making a fortune and your explanations about Biolife come out in the second episode, the public’s reaction will be much more positive.”
“I see.”
A documentary from the first episode might have been boring.
I trusted his words that he would use editing to make public opinion as positive as possible.
Producers were known to love their “devil’s editing,” but surely they wouldn’t do that to the company’s CEO, right?
“The assistant producer and writers are already working on the second episode.”
“Okay, I understand. Make sure you all get some rest.”
My workday at the office was a series of back-to-back interviews and meetings.
The launch of Source Coin was just around the corner.
How many computers would participate in mining and how many corporations we could attract would be decided within the week.
During a meeting, my mind briefly wandered.
‘It would be awkward if I lost money in the footage for Part 2 or 3.’
If that happened, I would have no choice but to believe in the power of editing.
- U.S. Fed Executes Emergency 0.5% Rate Cut
- COVID-19: Dow Jones Drops 975 Points
- Despite Drastic Rate Cut, Market Signals Economic Crisis
Even the Fed’s interest rate cut couldn’t calm the New York Stock Exchange’s collapse.
Two more days passed like that, and my returns continued to grow.
[826%]
[1,597%]
[2,120%]
When I bought the put options, I never imagined the returns would get this high.
If I had known, I would have invested $2 billion, not $200 million.
‘Is this really happening?’
A historic crash on the New York Stock Exchange.
I’d heard that during the 9/11 attacks or the financial crisis, returns on put options were astronomical.
The COVID crisis was spreading not just through Asian countries but also to Europe and the United States.
Fears of a global recession led to adjustments in corporate earnings, and the market was filled with terror.
As stock prices plummeted, the returns on put options skyrocketed exponentially.
Producer Seong Ho-jin’s voice was a little hoarse.
“CEO Kim. Your current return is… over 20 times.”
“Yes, it is.”
On variety shows, the producers, writers, and cameramen would chat casually with the cast.
But even though we were filming a YouTube show, the writers and staff were strangely quiet, as if intimidated.
It was the look of people being beaten down by a sum of money they couldn’t even imagine.
They probably never expected to face a situation like this when they came to the U.S. for filming.
Producer Seong Ho-jin asked.
“You’ve made over $4 billion now. What on earth are you thinking?”
He seemed curious to know what was going through my mind after achieving such a phenomenal profit.
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be thinking in a situation like this.
I decided to just state my honest feelings.
“I think it’ll go up more.”
“Even more than this?”
The producer and staff reacted with disbelief.
Their eyes seemed to say, ‘Isn’t that enough?’ But I decided to trust my gut.
It felt like I could faintly hear the screams of the market.
“I’m going to wait just a few more hours and then dispose of them.”
I passed the time with meetings for the Source Coin launch.
I even intentionally drove to a San Francisco beach to enjoy a walk.
And then, I checked the returns one last time.
[5,261%]
A return of over 52 times.
It was astounding.
In one week, $200 million had turned into over $10.5 billion.
“I’ll close it out now.”
As they filmed the scene of the $10.5 billion entering my account.
The camera in the cameraman’s hands was shaking so much it trembled uncontrollably.