Chapter 52: Cloud Computing
Chapter 52: Cloud Computing
The global stock market was in shambles due to COVID-19, and fears of a recession were mounting, but it all felt like a story from another world.
He was running a company that grew by leaps and bounds every single day.
“The mining queue is over 1.2 million machines long.”
“There's a lot of interest in our company.”
“The queue might get even longer. There are billions of idle personal computers around the world, after all.”
“That's true. It's rare to find a household without a computer these days.”
As the number of miners in the queue increased, the amount of Source Coin paid out gradually decreased. It was now one coin per four hours.
It had reached a point where it was difficult to turn a profit with average electricity costs.
*'The Korean miners won't be happy about this.'*
He worried he would face criticism from the miners, but the public's reaction was quite the opposite.
- Congrats! Source Coin is now 1 coin per 4 hours!
- Bullish!
- Totally bullish!
- Let's raise a toast. We who started mining early are the winners!
- Lately, collecting Source Coin is the only joy in my life.
- It's getting harder to mine, so it's better to hold on and not sell!
- Let's not sell for anything less than $5, LOL.
Who would have thought that a reduction in mining rewards would cause the price of Source Coin to rise even further?
The number of people exchanging their Source Coin for one dollar from the company dropped to less than 3%.
Most of them were users from countries other than Korea, exchanging small amounts just to see if it really worked.
During one of the daily meetings, the PR team made a request.
“We'd like to do some corporate marketing. There must be plenty of companies in Silicon Valley that need our services.”
The PR team had misjudged the projected mining volume after the service launch. However, their core strategy of acquiring corporate clients and expanding services through marketing was sound.
“Yes. Go ahead.”
The PR team promoted Earth Resource's services on local California broadcasts and social media. Soon, a variety of clients came knocking.
“We'd like to contract with Earth Resource to analyze our data.”
“Of course. Welcome aboard.”
They signed contracts with e-commerce sites and social media companies, and revenue began to trickle in as they provided high-performance computing.
$20,000, $30,000.
For a company in its early stages, these were by no means small amounts.
“I think we'll be able to sign a contract with Stanford University. There are a lot of research teams waiting their turn for the supercomputers. But if we're going to do business with a university, we'll probably have to give them a better price than our corporate clients.”
“Do it.”
The lower Source Coin payout rate had created more room in their margins.
They partnered with the university and entered into contract negotiations with various other companies.
Financial trading systems, insurance analysis, simulations, uploaded video analysis, cryptographic system development, manufacturing component analysis.
The applications for computing were vast, and clients were satisfied with the pay-as-you-go model for computing resources.
Since they could pay $10,000 to open a channel and not be charged if they didn't actually use it, contracts were signed quickly.
Excluding Biolife, the profit from Source Coin was $30,000 per hour.
For a startup, it was an incredibly rapid growth rate right from the get-go.
“Shin. If we sign contracts with all the companies we're negotiating with, we could be making $60,000 an hour.”
“We'll have to make even more in the future.”
As he was enthusiastically running the business, Eddie came to him with a suggestion.
“Boss. What do you think about building our own data center?”
“A data center?”
“We've already created a super-high-performance computing environment with Source Coin. We're building large-capacity data servers in-house to run the software for our current clients. If we add a proper data center to the mix, we can offer our customers a complete cloud computing service.”
“Cloud computing service?”
“Yes. It was the concept you originally had in mind, wasn't it?”
“…”
He had only intended to utilize the computing power being wasted on coin mining for Biolife's sake.
He had never considered venturing into the cloud computing service market, an industry worth tens of billions of dollars.
“Um… well.”
“I'm truly amazed by you, Boss! I've been called a genius many times, but you're the real genius. To attempt something like this from the moment you came up with Source Coin... it's just revolutionary!”
“…”
The atmosphere was such that he couldn't bring himself to say it wasn't his idea.
* * *
Lee Jong-yeop's arrival time at work was exactly 9:00 AM.
Even if he left whenever he pleased, he was strict about his arrival time to maintain an image of a diligent employee.
“Jae-hee, good morning!”
“Good morning.”
“Yeah. The weather's getting warmer.”
He exchanged friendly greetings with his office colleagues, especially the women.
Ever since breaking up with Yoo Hye-ri from the support team, he had no intention of dating anyone at the company, so he kept his greetings light.
“Yaaawn.”
Lee Jong-yeop sat down at his desk.
He waited in the office, doing some simple paperwork.
As the COVID-19 situation worsened, ophthalmology clinics postponed their surgeries, leaving him with nothing to do.
It was pointless to try and sell surgical equipment when no surgeries were being performed.
*'I'm so bored.'*
11:00 AM.
He went up to the rooftop with some coworkers.
Lately, the conversations were led by Na Sang-guk, who had earned the nickname 'Perpetual Assistant Manager'.
Na Sang-guk had become a Source Coin evangelist.
“Everyone's buying Source Coin, right?”
“Of course.”
“Buy up everything you can get. I even set up a mining farm.”
“A mining farm?”
“Heh heh. My uncle runs a PC bang. Sixty computers. I rented the whole place out and have been mining since the early days.”
“Wow… that's amazing. It's not even easy to get into the mining queue these days.”
The coworkers were deep in a conversation about investing.
Lee Jong-yeop kept quiet when he was with the male employees.
He was of the opinion that a group of guys talking about this and that was just a waste of calories.
Among the employees who had joined in the last couple of years, Kim Shin had become a legend.
“Assistant Manager Lee. What was it like doing sales with Kim Shin? Did he have that same incredible intuition and insight for stocks back then?”
A new employee from the tech team asked him.
“Intuition? Heh. It's already been over two years since I worked with him.”
Recalling the past brought on a wave of nostalgia for Lee Jong-yeop.
It had been fun back when he first joined Arcor, getting introduced to the hospitals and going on sales calls with Kim Shin.
Flirting with the young nurses.
He even went on a date with a female doctor once.
It was a time when everything felt new and exciting.
Even when he messed up and got an earful, it was never boring.
“When I was on the road with him, we almost never talked about stocks.”
“Then what?”
“It was just fun. We weren't just in charge of Gangnam; we traveled all over the country when needed.”
“You must have been really close.”
“We were very close.”
They saw each other every day except for weekends.
And when they had business trips to other regions or were preparing for conferences, they were together on weekends too.
Having grown up as an only child, Kim Shin had felt like an older brother to him.
*'I'm so sick of this corporate life.'*
Lee Jong-yeop thought to himself as the cold wind blew on the rooftop.
He felt he had hit a plateau as a salesman.
There was nothing more to learn, nothing more he could achieve.
Spring was just around the corner, but he couldn't muster the energy to be passionate about anything.
With the pandemic getting worse, he just killed time at the office every day before heading home.
No one even batted an eye if he left at 3 PM.
“Team Leader.”
“Yeah?”
He finally decided to talk about his concerns with Team Leader An Myeong-guk.
“I've lost my passion for work. It's just so boring and tedious.”
“Really? Me too.”
“What?”
“Who do you think actually enjoys corporate life? We do it to make a living. If you don't have another way to put food on the table, just stick with it.”
“…”
Listening to the staunchly realistic Team Leader An wasn't going to make anything better.
Lee Jong-yeop left work early and went home with some alcohol.
He drank a mix of beer and soju while watching YouTube videos.
Gaming, travel, music, skiing...
After watching various videos, the last one he played was about Kim Shin's daily life.
In the fifth episode, which he had already watched several times, Earth Resource's business was shown booming from day one.
*'When is episode six coming out?'*
He read through the comments.
- Oh... Source Coin? Starting to mine right away.
- This is insane. So interesting.
- It's the life of a super-rich guy that has nothing to do with me, but why is this so fun to watch?
- Thank you. Made another $20 today.
- Nobody sell your Source Coin. It could go up at least 30x.
- Anyone who sells now just for some chicken money is a certified idiot.
There were many comments, and most of them were favorable toward Kim Shin.
The Kim Shin in the YouTube video... was somehow different from the man he remembered.
Confidence and an attitude of self-belief.
He was building a company and achieving new things.
*'I'm jealous. I really am...'*
Lee Jong-yeop drank, reminiscing about the old days when he roamed Gangnam with Kim Shin.
He had no idea how many bottles he'd drunk without any real food. Just before he passed out from drinking...
He opened his phone and sent a text.
- Lee Jong-yeop: Can't you take me with you? I'm good at anything.
- Lee Jong-yeop: Just use me. I'll even run errands.
And then he fell asleep, still sitting in his computer chair.
When he woke up at dawn, his head was throbbing with a severe headache.
“Damn it. Why was I sleeping like this?”
He drank the water on his desk.
YouTube had autoplayed to an old variety show he'd seen before.
“Ughhh.”
Lee Jong-yeop was about to go to the bathroom when he remembered what happened before he fell asleep.
He thought he had sent a text to Kim Shin.
*'What was it? Oh. No way...!'*
There was nothing more pathetic than using a past friendship to ask a successful person for a favor.
*'Did I really just do the one thing I hate the most?'*
Startled, Lee Jong-yeop opened his phone.
- Lee Jong-yeop: Can't you take me with you? I'm good at anything.
- Lee Jong-yeop: Just use me. I'll even run errands.
His face turned bright red as he read the messages he'd sent. What a cringeworthy moment! But below them, there was a reply.
- Kim Shin: Are you coming to the US?
- Kim Shin: You'd be welcome. We need people we can trust here.
- Kim Shin: Come anytime.
His mind cleared as if the alcohol had evaporated in an instant.
That day, as soon as he got to work, Lee Jong-yeop submitted his resignation to Team Leader An.
It was a decision he made instantly, following his heart.
“You're quitting in times like these? What are you going to do for a living?”
Lee Jong-yeop smiled and replied to Team Leader An's question.
“I've decided to go work for Kim Shin. I'm going to try living by his side, doing whatever I can.”
The staunch realist.
Team Leader An's jaw dropped in surprise. After a long moment, he spoke.
“I'm jealous.”
“What?”
“Try getting married and having kids. I'm jealous that you can live as you please.”
* * *
Chairman Jin Myeong-il of Mirae Motors attended a business leaders' meeting with his daughter.
He hadn't attended for over a decade when his elderly father was the group's chairman, but after inheriting management control, he never missed a meeting.
“The COVID-19 crisis is severe. It looks like this year's economic growth rate will fall significantly.”
“How are things at DK Group?”
“We have no choice but to drastically lower our business targets for the year.”
“Imports are blocked, making it difficult to source raw materials. Production costs have also skyrocketed.”
The business meeting was filled with people voicing their grievances.
They would likely gather the opinions of the business community and petition the government for aid, but it was difficult for any company to predict the full extent of COVID-19's impact.
“Everyone's just talking about how difficult things are, aren't they?”
Jin Myeong-il asked for Jin Yoo-kyung's opinion.
“Yes. Because it really is a difficult situation.”
“In what way?”
“Take our company, for example. If a case appears at one of our car factories, production could be disrupted for a week. And it's not just us; our parts suppliers could have their supply chains cut. Plus, there are concerns about recessions in the US and other countries.”
“You're right.”
“Most importantly, it's impossible to predict when COVID-19 will end.”
If even Mirae Motors was feeling the crisis, what must it be like for other Korean companies?
They were canceling or postponing planned facility investments and reducing hiring.
In Mirae Motors' case, with its vast assets and consistent profits, there was no danger of it becoming unstable.
“Are you still in touch with Kim Shin?”
“We message every day. Though he doesn't reply much.”
“That can happen when you're running a business.”
“Yes. So I understand.”
Ever since he appeared in the news, people in the Korean business world had been talking about Kim Shin quite often.
A level of wealth that even corporate chairmen envied.
Some acknowledged it, while others dismissed him as new money.