“......!”
The ZeroChain kid coughed, apparently choking. Only after gulping down cola did he seem to settle.
“A billion......?”
“Yes. In cash.”
The look in his eyes changed. They were no longer the eyes of someone regarding a sucker buying him a meal. They were the eyes of someone regarding a great backer — no, a savior.
“What’s your name? Not ZeroChain. Your real name.”
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and held out a hand.
“Cheon Jaehae.”
“Cheon Jaehae? That’s an unusual name.”
“My father named me hoping I’d be a genius — jaejae — and I turned out a disaster — jaehae. Fitting, since my life right now is a disaster in the pit.”
Cheon Jaehae laughed at his own expense.
“Anyway, I thought traders like you, mister, made your money on incentives and salary. And honestly you don’t look all that... old either. How did you make that kind of money? Let me see it.”
“Fine, let’s do that. Showing you will be faster than telling you.”
In the internet café’s air, thick with cigarette smoke and the smell of cup noodles, Cheon Jaehae’s pupils fixed not on his monitor but on the screen of Taeseong’s smartphone.
Jaehae’s pupils trembled finely, as if an earthquake had hit them.
Taeseong deliberately made a show of indifference as he swiped the screen sideways.
They were the records of victory he had taken in the battlefield of the stock market these past months.
“This...... is this even possible?”
Cheon Jaehae dropped the wooden chopsticks he was holding in his mouth.
“EcoFree Materials, DS Danseok...... and even these little scalps. The buy points, fine. Anyone can catch a bottom. But the sell points......”
He snatched Taeseong’s wrist and enlarged the screen. There was grease on his fingertips, but he did not care.
“Every one at the absolute top, and at the tip of the wick at that? The margin of error isn’t even 1%. Wow...... mister, is this algorithmic trading? How does a person sell at the peak this precisely? Do you not have emotions?”
An ordinary investor sells early out of fear or misses the moment, blinded by greed.
But Taeseong’s trading log had that human anguish omitted.
Naturally.
Because Wopora, which showed him the future, had given him the answers. But there was no reason to tell anyone that secret.
“I just happen to have good instincts.”
Taeseong answered with deliberate arrogance.
“Instincts? You’ve got a sense of humor for a guy your age.”
Cheon Jaehae snorted and looked at the phone again.
“There is no way this belongs to any realm explainable by human intuition or ‘instinct’. It’s quant, right? Where do you get your data source? Or is it an algorithm you wrote yourself? What’s the logic? Momentum? Or flow analysis?”
His eyes sparkled with curiosity. The eyes of a hyena that had starved for days finding prey.
Taeseong liked that look.
A man mad for data. A man who would stake his life on analysis.
Exactly the talent Taeseong would need to invest outside the company’s fence.
“It’s a secret. A trade secret.”
Taeseong retrieved the phone and put it in his pocket.
“But if you come over to my side, I can share part of the process with you.”
“Share? The quant logic?”
“No. Where I’m looking, which names I’m targeting. And you verify the soundness of it with data.”
Taeseong leaned back in his chair and looked down at him.
“Be my dedicated analyst. I’ll pay you well. More than you’re imagining right now.”
“......”
“There’s one condition. Every piece of on-chain data you analyze, and every market scenario. Report it to me first. Don’t post it in other Telegram rooms or communities — only to me.”
An exclusive contract.
Cheon Jaehae seemed to think for a moment, then picked up his chopsticks again and slurped the cold broth from the cup noodles.
“Deal.”
The answer came faster than expected.
“But I’ve got one more condition.”
“What is it?”
“Get me a workspace. This internet café has good specs but it’s too loud to concentrate. I feel like I’ll get neurotic listening to grade schoolers screaming. And I need somewhere to wash, too.”
He scratched his greasy hair. Taeseong chuckled.
“That much is nothing. Go pack.”
***
The next week, Taeseong signed a lease on a high-end officetel right beside Yeouido Park.
Because he had picked the unit among the vacancies with the fastest possible move-in, the price was considerable.
But he also intended to split it as Cheon Jaehae’s workspace and, in time, his own private office.
An 80,000,000-won deposit and about 1,200,000 won a month seemed a necessary investment for what was coming.
When the door opened, a panoramic view took in the whole Han River at a glance.
Cheon Jaehae’s mouth fell open the instant he stepped inside.
“Whoa, the view is insane. Boss, you really are rich, aren’t you?”
At some point the address had changed from ‘mister’ to ‘boss’.
And his manner of speech had turned 180 degrees as well.
A very fast and very definite pecking order, produced by capitalism.
“Your way of speaking has changed a lot in one day.”
“Come on, once I decide to get under someone I like the hierarchy clear.”
“Good, you’ve got a defined character. So, do you like the place?”
“Like isn’t the word. I could live here and die here with no regrets, boss.”
He bowed at a full ninety degrees and began unpacking what he had brought.
His luggage amounted to a few items of clothing in one worn backpack, a laptop he treated like a treasure, and a few external hard drives.
Taeseong set him up with the two top-spec desktops and six monitors he had ordered in advance.
Once ultra-high-speed internet was connected, the empty officetel transformed in a flash into something resembling a Wall Street trading room.
“Good. Now earn your keep.”
Taeseong said it. Cheon Jaehae sat down at once and began working the keyboard. His hands moved as naturally as flowing water.
Six monitors filled with different charts and data. A one-minute Bitcoin candle chart, Ethereum dominance, U.S. Treasury yields, and screens of on-chain data listing numbers Taeseong could not read.
“Boss, take a look at this.”
Cheon Jaehae pointed at one monitor and spoke politely.
“Bitcoin’s hash rate is at an all-time high right now. It means the miners are running their machines at full capacity. And yet the volume flowing into exchanges is decreasing.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the miners are holding instead of selling. The halving is coming, and with the expectation of ETF approval they think the price goes higher. Supply falling while demand rises. A textbook precursor to a surge.”
His explanation was clear. But what came next was a warning.
“The problem, though, is here. Grayscale.”
He switched the screen and showed a red graph.
“The volume of Bitcoin these people hold is enormous. They couldn’t sell until now because of the lockup, but the instant the conversion to an ETF is approved, that lockup comes off.”
“So a sell bomb pours out?”
“Correct. The institutions holding GBTC are highly likely to take profits, or to dump first in order to switch into another ETF with lower fees. Which means it could print a short-term top the moment the approval news lands and then nosedive.”
Goosebumps rose.
If Wopora told him the result, Cheon Jaehae was proving the process and the reasons that led to that result with data.
Of course, in the stock market Taeseong could do this level of information analysis himself.
But coins were an entirely different board, and Taeseong himself could not help feeling uneasy.
And here was analysis, grounded in evidence, on a par with a professional trader’s — so the flow of the coin market, hidden in fog until now, was drawn as clearly as the palm of his hand.
Taeseong came back over and clapped Cheon Jaehae on the shoulder.
“Jaehae. Your analysis looks accurate.”
“Naturally. Who am I? I’m ZeroChain.”
“Then let’s build the strategy.”
Taeseong picked up a marker and started writing on the whiteboard.
[Operation: Bitcoin ETF]
- Until D-Day
Aggressively accumulate Bitcoin-related stocks (Woori Technology Investment, Wizit) and spot Bitcoin.
- Day of the approval announcement
Sell 50% of the holdings on the surge right after the announcement. (Profit taking)
Correction phase (Grayscale supply released)
- On a -10% to -20% decline, re-buy with the funds from the sale.
Long-term hold
- Hold to the halving.
Taeseong rapped the whiteboard with the marker and grinned.
“A swing strategy, so to speak. We ride the wave.”
Cheon Jaehae whistled.
“So instead of stupidly diamond-handing it, you’re going to carve it up and down?”
“Obviously. Did I come here to make money or to pray?”
Cheon Jaehae tapped away at the keyboard and drew lines on the chart.
“Boss, look at this chart. This zone at 48,000 dollars. This is the first resistance line. The whales have their mouths open. See the waiting volume they’ve stacked so they can catch it the second the ants get shaken out?”
The order book data on screen showed an enormous buy wall around 48K.
“Let’s open our mouths alongside them. When the ants panic-sell, we swallow every bit of that volume.”
“Right. Let’s open wider. Wide enough to chew it up whole.”
Taeseong clenched his fist.
1.2 billion won of capital. If this money caught this wave, it could become 2 billion — or 3.
From that day the two of them entered a training camp of sorts.
By day Taeseong went to the office and did his job with a perfectly straight face; by night he commuted to the officetel and analyzed charts and news with Cheon Jaehae until dawn.
Department Head Park was still going around declaring “Bitcoin is a scam”, but by now the sound of it struck Taeseong as almost endearing.
‘Sir, I’m going to put up a building in that scam pit.’
***
A few days later, one late night in mid-January.
Leaving the officetel, Taeseong headed for the gym to work the stiffness out of his body. However important money was, he now knew that money traded for health is meaningless.
And more than anything, there was a Wopora mission.
[First mission of the new year!]
[Lose a further 10kg within three months, then get a health checkup!]
[Reward: the confirmed date of the coin halving]
‘Uncanny thing, honestly.’
They say smartphones these days have eavesdropping functions, which is why your everyday conversations show up in the YouTube algorithm.
However it knew, Wopora put up exactly the sweet information that would hook Taeseong, at exactly the right moment.
‘I should keep training without a break too.’
Losing weight was getting harder as he went, but it had given him three full months, and 10kg no longer felt like an impossible number.
‘Training with Trainer Kang, it’s more than doable.’
It was nearly 11 p.m., so the gym was quiet.
A few members were running on treadmills, and only the occasional clang of iron came from the weight zone.
Taeseong went into the locker room out of habit. As he was about to change, he heard someone’s voice from the inner corner by the cleaning-supply cabinet.
“......Sir, please...... just a week...... no, just give me three days.”
A voice thoroughly shrunken and thick with tears.
Trainer Kang Pilgeun.
The booming, confident voice was nowhere to be found. Taeseong held his breath and hid behind the lockers. He had not meant to eavesdrop, but the atmosphere was so grave that he could not bring himself to step out.
“I’ll...... I’ll come up with it somehow. Yes? The equipment? No! Not the equipment, it absolutely cannot be seized!”
It was closer to a wail.
“The members have to train. So please...... just don’t take the equipment. Please......”
Shouting seemed to be coming through the other end of the line. Trainer Kang kept repeating I’m sorry, please spare me.
‘Loan sharks?!’
He knew instinctively. Bank loan collectors do not behave like that. Threatening to slap seizure notices on things, talk about wrecking the place today — that was the idiom of the underworld.
Taeseong clenched his fist.
Trainer Kang Pilgeun.
The only trainer who had treated him — a morbidly obese man over 160kg — like a human being.
The man who had worried about him sincerely, and who had appeared like a ghost to kick him in the backside every time he was about to give up.
Eight-tenths of his diet’s success was thanks to that man’s nagging.
And that man was now driven to the edge of a cliff.
‘What on earth happened?’
The gym did not seem to be doing badly. It had a good number of members, and he was not the type to live extravagantly.
He was a man who wore nothing but cheap no-brand performance tees and training pants.
The sound of the call ending came. And then a stifled sobbing, khh, khh, filled the silent locker room.
Kang Pilgeun, the iron man, was crying.
Sitting on the cold locker-room floor, swallowing his tears so the sound of his sobbing would not escape.
Taeseong slipped quietly out of the locker room without making a sound.
Somehow he felt that if he acknowledged it right now, the man’s pride would keep him from leaning on him.
‘To a member, a trainer is a pillar you can lean on at any time — that is how you should think of it!’
That was the man’s habitual line.
And more than anything, being a man himself, he understood.
No man in the world wants his most wretched bottom to be seen.
On the way home his steps were heavy.
He had no way to guess how large the debt was, but it might be money Taeseong could settle with a few clicks.
But was simply throwing money at it really the right way?
He called Cheon Jaehae.
“Ah, boss. What is it? Something urgent?”
Cheon Jaehae’s newly respectful voice came through the receiver.
“Jaehae. Besides Bitcoin, can you do things like background checks on people?”
“Background checks? Well...... I’m not a private detective, but I know some people on Telegram who do that kind of work. I’m not personally friendly with them, but with money it’s doable.”
“Then look into one person for me. I’ll cover whatever it costs. He’s the owner of a gym called Dye-Gym — Kang Pilgeun. Born in 1990, and......”
Taeseong recited the information he had about him.
“Find out why this man went into debt, where he borrowed the money. And exactly what his situation is right now.”
“Hmm...... out of nowhere. Understood. You’re asking, so I’ll do it.”
“Right. I’m counting on you.”
He hung up and looked up at the night sky.
The city lights were brilliant, but countless stories hid in their shadows.
‘A world of zeroes and ones.’
If Bitcoin and the stock market were a cold virtual world made of numbers, the gym was the most primal real world, where blood, sweat, and flesh collided.
Taeseong was winning in that virtual world, but he could not turn his back on a benefactor from the real one.
“Hold on, Trainer.”
Taeseong murmured inwardly.
“I’ll repay what I received, with interest.”