Chapter 54: Business Expansion
Chapter 54: Business Expansion
I told Oh Myeong-woo, the Vice President, about the coin manipulators who had approached him.
“What? Who are those crazy bastards?”
“They must be a group after our money.”
I remembered back when I was a kid, when my father was deep in the gambling world, there were always people stirring the pot and others who walked away with the winnings.
I thought that kind of shady business was confined to Korea, but it seemed like organizations looking to make a quick buck existed everywhere in the world.
“Shin. There’s no need to get distracted. We have so much to do.”
“You’re right. We need to focus on our business.”
From stabilizing Source Coin to cloud computing.
For a new startup, we had been expanding at an unbelievable pace.
It was likely thanks to the combination of skilled developers, money, and a business model that could generate profits quickly.
The better the business did, the less I wanted to slow down.
“I’ll head to Redwood City and get to work on the data center.”
“Eddie. Thanks for your hard work.”
We bought the data center outright, and a solutions provider and our cloud team were dispatched together.
They said they were developing an integrated platform system to make it easy to incorporate other data centers as we expanded.
“Myeong-woo. Is that an easy thing to do?”
“I don’t know. But since it’s Eddie, I’m sure it’s possible.”
It was a job that would take at least fifteen days, and the broadcast team followed Eddie to film the process.
The broadcast team was doing a great job, taking on the role of promoting our business on YouTube.
‘It’s been a while since I had some downtime.’
At the office, at home.
I was enjoying a leisurely pace when Ellie suddenly came to mind.
- Kim Shin: Some people calling themselves ‘investment accelerators’ came to see me. They wanted to partner up regarding Source Coin.
I contacted Ellie via Telegram.
The New York stock market had been plummeting day after day due to the coronavirus.
I hadn’t contacted her for the past few days, figuring financial firms would be in chaos from the falling stock prices.
- Ellie: A partnership with Source Coin?
- Kim Shin: Yeah. They said if I worked with them, they could help me make a huge amount of money.
- Ellie: I’ve never heard the term ‘investment accelerator,’ but I can guess what kind of work they’re trying to do.
- Kim Shin: Is it a scam?
- Ellie: It’s probably not a scam until they’re legally charged. It’s likely something in a gray area.
- Ellie: I’ve heard there are a lot of manipulators involved with anonymously traded coins.
- Kim Shin: I see. What if I participated?
- Ellie: You’d have to look into them carefully first. But if they’re a legitimate group, you could probably make money.
- Kim Shin: I could make money?
I was quite surprised by Ellie’s answer.
I expected her to say they were dangerous people and that I should stay far away from them.
- Kim Shin: So you think it would be good for me to invest?
- Ellie: Why don’t you get some legal advice and look into them? It could be an investment opportunity.
- Kim Shin: Really?
I knew she was saying it for my benefit, but I never expected her to say something like that.
Staying with other travelers in a cheap $30 hostel.
Cooking together with strangers, sharing a slice of pizza or some pasta.
My memory of Ellie smiling brightly at a country festival was still vivid.
I never thought that same woman would tell me it was a good opportunity to make money.
‘Is it because she worked on Wall Street?’
Time changes people.
Even I was probably quite different from the person I was when I worked at Arcor.
- Kim Shin: Thanks for letting me know.
- Ellie: See you later.
- Kim Shin: Yeah…
* * *
News of Lee Jong-yeop’s resignation spread quickly through Arcor.
“Assistant Manager Lee, think it over. Don’t you feel bad leaving after coming this far? In this coronavirus economy, where are you going to find work if you quit?”
“You should be thinking about working for 20 years and holding on. These days, you don’t even have to go out for sales, you can just slack off. I don’t understand why you’d quit.”
Many people tried to talk him out of it, including Kim Sang-gi, Na Sang-guk, and Team Leader Seo from the tech team.
Lee Jong-yeop just smiled relaxedly and said.
“I’ve already found my next job.”
“Really? Where’d you get hired?”
The people asking didn’t have high expectations for where he might have found a job.
As a fourth or fifth-year sales rep at Arcor.
Given the company’s specialization in the optics field, it was difficult to leverage his experience to find a new job at other pharmaceutical companies.
That was why most employees who left Arcor ended up regretting it, wishing they had just stuck it out.
“I’ve decided to go work for Kim Shin hyung.”
“Who?”
“Kim Shin hyung.”
“So… you’re going to the US?”
“Yes.”
“That’s amazing. Is he taking you on specially because you were his junior colleague?”
“I suppose you could say I was always good to him.”
Only then did people start looking at him with immense envy.
Lee Jong-yeop was the type to enjoy this kind of attention.
Na Sang-guk, who was also an assistant manager but his senior at the company, had always subtly looked down on him, but his attitude changed completely.
“Assistant Manager Lee. Let’s send each other Katoks often when you’re in the US.”
“With me?”
“Yeah. Let me know if there’s any good news. Like if Kim Shin is investing in something.”
“Come on. Why would a bunch of guys message each other? That’s no fun.”
The female employees at Arcor were genuinely disappointed.
“Assistant Manager Lee, you’re not going to leave the group chat even after you resign, are you?”
“Of course not. I couldn’t leave the group chat if only for you, Soo-min.”
“Assistant Manager Kim left, and now you’re leaving too, Assistant Manager Lee. It feels like all the cool guys in our company are leaving.”
While the female employees lamented, the handover was completed quickly in five days.
It was thanks to the coronavirus situation, which meant there were no sales calls to be made.
“Take care.”
“You’ve worked hard.”
On his last day.
He shook hands with each of the employees in the office, then went to the support team to deliberately see Han Chae-won.
The woman he once respectfully called *sister-in-law*.
As someone who had been by Kim Shin’s side, Lee Jong-yeop knew best what kind of person she was.
Lee Jong-yeop clicked his tongue and spoke.
“Chae-won.”
“What? What did you just call me? You’re an assistant manager, and I’m a team leader.”
“Now that I’m quitting, who cares if you’re a team leader or not. Besides, I’m older than you, aren’t I?”
“What did you say?”
Han Chae-won’s face flushed red, dumbfounded.
The surrounding employees, who had been listening to their conversation, were shocked.
“Chae-won. You regret treating Kim Shin hyung so poorly, don’t you? You must be feeling pretty sorry for yourself. You should’ve reined in your temper a bit.”
“Hey! Lee Jong-yeop!”
“I’m leaving now. I should get away from this filth. Take care, and let’s not cross paths again. And don’t text or call Kim Shin hyung. If, by some chance, he starts to waver, I’ll be the one to stop him. Got it?”
After saying everything he wanted to say, Lee Jong-yeop walked out of the office.
He wondered if he had been too harsh on Han Chae-won, who was once Kim Shin’s wife, but he couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief.
“Let’s go. To America!”
He sorted out his affairs in Korea and sent a message to prepare for his move to the US.
- Lee Jong-yeop: Hyung. I’m all ready to go to the US.
- Kim Shin: You haven’t booked a ticket, right? I’ll get you a plane ticket.
- Lee Jong-yeop: Hey, I have enough money to buy my own ticket.
He didn’t want to be a burden to Kim Shin from the start.
He was determined to pull his own weight one way or another when he got to the US.
- Kim Shin: It’s first class, so you can stretch your legs.
- Lee Jong-yeop: In that case, thank you.
* * *
I had a lot of thoughts about crypto.
‘A world where foolish money gathers.’
I didn’t know if I could make money by hyping up a coin through the media or famous investors and then selling it at a high price.
Even so, I had no intention of tarnishing the passion, hard work, and honor of the employees who had gathered to work with me.
‘And I don’t want to do it myself.’
Looking closely at the crypto scene, it was a total mess.
Almost no coins were proceeding as planned, and there were problems with the structure of Roona and Tay, the coins Kwon Do-jin had issued.
‘Pegging 1 coin to 1 dollar?’
A stablecoin created to facilitate smooth transactions with other coins in the virtual currency market.
The purpose and intention were admirable.
It’s just…
‘There’s no collateral.’
If you’re going to peg it to 1 dollar, shouldn’t there naturally be corresponding real-world assets?
Even Source Coin was designed not to be issued beyond the assets held by Earth Resource.
But Tay’s collateral was another virtual currency, Roona.
‘What is this?’
It was linked to Roona, which could be issued indefinitely.
When the price of Tay falls, Roona is issued to buy up Tay.
Conversely, if the price of Tay rises, Tay is used to buy Roona.
‘So a system like this can be maintained.’
It was a rather surprising idea.
A structure where the company issuing the cryptocurrency incurs no loss either way.
‘But is this sustainable?’
Is it possible to maintain a coin’s price by infinitely issuing another coin without any real assets or deposits?
They said they pay interest because Tay can’t be issued indefinitely.
In the financial market, 20% was an absurdly high interest rate.
‘This 20% is also paid by issuing virtual currency, but there must be a huge number of people who invested because of the high interest. What if Tayform Labs pulls a fast one and goes bankrupt?’
I concluded that it was more dangerous than I thought.
Products with this kind of structure were being sold, and there were buyers all over the world.
People who either didn’t properly understand the business structure or whose greed clouded their judgment.
In a way, I could understand.
Even in the stock market, retail investors don’t invest with a perfect understanding of the company.
Technology, manufacturing facilities, employee skill level, management.
How difficult would it be to properly assess all of these things before investing?
Even a CEO probably doesn’t know what their company’s stock price will be in a year.
‘Even if the world is a mess, I should try to run a proper coin business.’
Since I made a fortune with crypto, I wanted to build an amazing business with Source Coin.
In the past, $100 million was my last resort.
I thought that no matter what I did with my investments, even if I lost my fortune, I could still have a wonderful retirement if I just left that final $100 million.
These days, as my assets have grown, that number has increased to $500 million.
I had already stashed away assets in a paper company early on.
‘Let’s just run the business as I please. They say a rich family’s wealth lasts three generations, right? If I go broke after setting aside $500 million, well… what’s there to worry about?’
I could try all sorts of things and fail at all of them.
If that happened, I could just buy a nice villa in Hawaii and live a leisurely life, as if I were on vacation every day.
“Shin. How about we partner with the gaming industry?”
“The gaming industry?”
“We’re getting a lot of calls from Korean game companies.”
Thanks to the YouTube channel, apparently there weren’t many people in their teens, twenties, and thirties who didn’t know who I was.
Game companies took note of that and contacted us, hoping for a promotional effect.
“They want to register Source Coin as a referrer and then give two Source Coins as a reward to people who install their game.”
“What do we get out of it?”
“We’d get $2 per user.”
“Hmm…”
We were in an era where the promotional costs for a major mobile game easily exceeded 20 or 30 billion won.
From the game company’s perspective, they would want to secure as many users as possible.
‘If a million people download it, 2 million coins will be released into the market.’
From Earth Resource’s perspective, having Source Coin out in the market was welcome.
The percentage of people who would actually request to exchange it for cash would be less than 5%, so we could make a profit from the advertising money we receive.
Moreover, the more Source Coin was circulated, the more stable its price would become.
‘It’s not good if the coin’s price gets too high, either.’
Unless I was planning a pump-and-dump, it was better for the coin price to be maintained at a reasonable level.
“Let’s do it.”
“Really? You agreed so easily.”
“It’s a way to make money. And… Myeong-woo. Make a list of the game companies you think are decent.”
“Why?”
“So I can acquire them.”
With a secure retirement guaranteed, I had become fearless in making money work for me.