The economy toppled; people lost their jobs, homes, and savings; this was how Bitcoin came into existence.

Money is changing. Cash was already becoming antiquated, but now it could all but disappear. Those numbers in your account will soon mean nothing. They have always been open to interpretation, which leads to recessions and inflation, relying on a central authority to manage the fiat supply. Governments print and burn money when the economy needs control. The past has seen some crises because of this system.

Tulip mania in Holland was the first example in history of market manipulation culminating in a crash. The Dutch were buying the flower at increasing prices, until the price of a single bulb went all the way up to the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars in today’s money (thanks to our friend inflation). Speculators lost money and the Dutch economy suffered a massive recession.

The markets in America saw this on a grand scale in the late 1920’s. The Stock Market Crash ushered in the Great Depression, affecting the whole world. Government spending was cut, banks were forced to close, stock brokers committed suicide. It took our country decades to recovery.

During this time, Germany was recovering from its massive debt that it was forced to pay after the Great War. It printed millions of marks to feed its people, but this led to the largest rate of inflation ever recorded in history. A loaf of bread was worth ten-thousand marks. It was in this environment that fascists stomped into and took over.

Money is changing. Bitcoin is decentralized, the supply is set at twenty-one-million, and it is controlled by anyone who wants to plug their computing power into the system and record transactions. Satoshi Nakamoto created a potentially revolutionary technology. It will not only change currency, it will change the way we do business, run elections, and even govern the masses. The future will be blockchain.

One day, we will all be using Bitcoin. Imagine what it will be worth then and remember where it once was.

Arnold Brown (Arnie to friends and family) was a programmer, cryptographer, and business-owner. Before 2008, he had the biggest IT firm in Phoenix. Mainly, his clients were real estate agents, looking to code their files. Some, he knew, were hiding something, but this was not any of his business. His concern was delivering cryptographic services to his clients at a reasonable price. Business was booming for a while; but when the housing market crashed, he had a sharp decline in clientele.

His parents lost all of their savings. They were lucky enough to have paid off their mortgage, but they were relying on his dad’s social security alone, which made for tough living. They asked him to move in with them, help by paying rent. Since he could no longer afford his apartment in Scottsdale, this made for a perfect arrangement. Work was slow but constant.

He started reading about money. He wanted to find out what happened, to make everything fail. He read about the banks, the mortgage brokers, the Federal Reserve. He was sickened by it all.

In school, Arnie did not have many friends. His life was almost entirely online. Friends existed in forums, on chat threads, in game messaging. The kids in high school thought he was weird. A computer nerd. They were right; but he knew staying focused on the future would pay off. While the rest chased girls and played sports, he studied coding, programming, and cryptography.

So, when he checked a cryptography forum that discussed a new form of currency (cryptocurrency), he felt exited.

There was a research paper by a man named Satoshi Nakamoto. It was called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” It was about the new money. The future of money. It was about how people would use their own computers to become the new banks. A DIY credit union, allowing the people to wrest power from the same institutions that caused all the problems and got bailed out by tax money. It was libertarian by political definition, but Arnie saw it as revolutionary in an economy based on centuries old practices.

Banks relied on a form of monetary depositing created in Medieval Europe, during the Crusades. The Lords and Ladies would deposit money in London, Paris, or Rome, receive a promissory note, go to Jerusalem, and withdraw their money with the note. Computers made this practice antiquated, but the banks still had all the power. So, this model remained, until Bitcoin made it possible to remove this power from the banks.

Arnie was excited about this. He read, reread, and read again the Nakamoto paper. He was intrigued by the technology (blockchain) that would power the Bitcoin network. He knew this would change the world.

At the start of 2009, Bitcoin was available for mining and purchase. Arnie thought he should buy some, as opposed to mining, as he wanted to focus his spare time on getting his IT firm back to its previous splendor. He met some people on a Bitcoin forum that were willing to sell some of their mined Bitcoins: one US dollar for 1,350 Bitcoins. He bought 135,000 BTC for one-hundred USD.

Life progressed for the Brown family. Years passed, his parents were putting his rent money back in their savings, his firm was picking up more clients, and he had met a woman. She was living in Mexico, well-educated, and loved practicing her English with Arnie. Her name was Luz. They Skyped each other every day, until early 2011, when her work Visa was approved. She moved to Mesa, with her brother and his family. Arnie was nervous about meeting her. But their real first date was a success. He met her family, they liked him. They went to the movie theater, saw The Lincoln Lawyer, which he liked but she did not (maybe it was too confusing for a non-native English speaker). They had a lovely Mexican dinner in Mesa. He kissed her at the end, a cute little peck on the cheek. She was a very conservative girl. He wanted more, but respected her values.

They got serious over the next month. He invited her to go to his sister’s wedding in Atlanta, which would be their first chance to make love. He was excited for his prospects. She was reserved, but he could tell she was excited for the trip too. Not just the next step in their relationship, but because she would be able to see another part of her new home country.

Money was tight. His parents had been able to get their tickets with their frequent flier miles. He got a cheap, but modest, hotel for them. He was in the wedding party, so he did not need to get them a gift, but he wanted to. He got them one of the cheapest things on their registry (a set of plates from Crate & Barrell). He wanted some spending cash for the trip, so the Monday before the trip he visited the bank.

In line, waiting for the teller, he remembered Bitcoin. Why he forgot about it, he did not know. His disdain for the bank reminded him about the potentially revolutionary digital cash. The last he checked, the value of Bitcoin was still very low (hundreds for one dollar). He pulled out his Samsung, went to Google, and typed in Bitcoin price: 33 dollars.

He stood in line, mouth agape. At first, he thought it was one dollar for 33 bitcoins. This would have made his account worth just over four thousand dollars. But it was reversed: each Bitcoin was worth thirty-three dollars. When did this happen? He had forgotten about his investment from just two years ago. He was now a millionaire.

“Next.” The teller seemed ready for a break. Arnie looked up, he was next in line. His checking account had maybe three hundred dollars that he was about to clean out. “Next.” He hated banks because they were responsible for so many of the economic problems in this country. “Sir, can I help you? Or are you just in here for the air conditioner?”

Arnie looked this teller right in the eyes, and started laughing. He laughed hysterically. Everyone in the bank looked at him like he was crazy. He had to sit down in one of the Personal Bankers chairs, which confused the man at the desk. His face turned red. He kept laughing. Finally, he got back in line, waited, still laughing under his breath, got to the teller, and closed his account.

What can you buy with Bitcoin? In 2011, not much. You could buy drugs and fake ID’s on The Silk Road. You could trade things on forums. He cashed out 35,000 Bitcoins for 1.155 million dollars-worth of gold and silver on a forum, he then visited several pawn stores to sell the metals. He retained one-hundred-thousand Bitcoins.

His sister’s wedding was spectacular. Luz had been anxious about their big trip, but was relieved once they slept together. It was her first time. While he was not a virgin, sex was not a big part of his life. So, when they made love, it was truly special.

Arnie told everyone about Bitcoin. His family was amazed, but skeptical. They had all seen the woes of people affected by the crises of the past few years, feeling the crunch of the economic bail-outs. To them, Bitcoin seemed like a pyramid-scheme. Arnie tried to explain.

“Paper money—fiat—is a pyramid-scheme, so is the banking system. You give your money to a teller (sometimes a machine). That teller gives it to his manager. The manager gives it to the regional manager. The regional managers lend it to people, who don’t pay it back. And so, the Federal Reserve prints more, which makes that initial money you had worth less. That’s why gasoline prices go up, prices on houses go up, and the price of a Whopper goes up.”

No one quite understood. How can you make money off of something that does not truly exist? Arnie soon gave up trying to explain. He just enjoyed the rest of his weekend.

Arnie was lucky to cash out when he did. The price eventually went all the way down to two dollars a coin. While he had over a million dollars in cash, his one-hundred-thousand in Bitcoin was only worth two-hundred-thousand.

At the beginning of 2012, he proposed to Luz, which she gladly accepted. He bought a house in Chandler. To help his parents, he gave them two-hundred-thousand dollars for their retirement savings, which was about double what they lost in 2008.

Business was still pretty slow, so he decided to retire. He and Luz spent the next year driving around the US. They both enjoyed these road trips, soaking up the scenery of the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, East Coast, and Southern States. He sporadically checked the price of BTC, which was slowly rising.

In 2013, something magical happened: the price broke one-hundred per Bitcoin. His hundred-grand in BTC was worth over ten-million now. Where would it go from here? Arnie had heard all the warnings, articles about bubbles, Ponzi-schemes, and conspiracy theories about Satoshi Nakamoto being a con artist, who was just pocketing the billions that have been invested in his cryptocurrency. Arnie made a compromise with Luz. She wanted him to sell it all; he wanted to keep it all in Bitcoin. They decided to sell half when the price hit one-thousand a coin.

In November of 2013, the price went to a thousand USD per one BTC. They sold fifty-thousand bitcoins for fifty-million dollars. Shortly after, the price went up a couple hundred, and then it dropped dramatically. Mainly because of Mt. Gox.

Mt. Gox was a company that sold Magik the Gathering playing cards. When Bitcoin exploded onto the scene, they became an exchange, growing exponentially. In early 2014, they were hacked, losing billions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin. This caused the price to plummet, scaring most short-position investors. The market cap lost most of its value. It was fodder for all of the nay-sayers.

Arnie saw opportunity. He had cashed out, so he had capital to play with. The price was going down, almost every day was a new low (still much higher than the initial price). So, he talked to Luz about a plan that he had.

“I want to take the majority of cash that we have and put it back into Bitcoin, when the price goes low enough.”

“I don’t understand. We already sold it. Can’t we just keep the money we have?”

“This is a big opportunity for us. We can make even more money.”

“But we are already rich.”

There would be no compromise this time. Since they were not yet married, Arnie was in control of their money. He said if she would let him do this, he would spend over a million dollars on their wedding. They got married in June, at a country club in Scottsdale.

In March of 2015, the price went all the way down to two-hundred dollars a coin. He bought 200,000 BTC at 40,000,000 USD. He had 250,000 Bitcoins in a cold-storage account (an offline computer; impervious to hackers).

They still had a few million dollars in cash to play with. They visited her family in Mexico. One day, while they were driving to town, Chihuahua Police stopped them. They were looking for money from the gringo. He jokingly told Luz to translate: “Do you accept Bitcoin?” She translated, they did not get the joke. He laughed, and gave them each a hundred dollars. They escorted them to town and back.

They went to South America, Europe, Africa, Asia. They experienced so much culture. Arnie could not help but think of all the ways Bitcoin would change these countries. Greece was using it amidst their own fiscal crisis; Marrakesh had Bitcoin ATM’s all over town; Indonesia was going crazy for the digital cash. He did not check the price during all this, until 2017 saw a major bull run.

Eleven-hundred in January, almost thirteen-hundred in March, eighteen-hundred in April, thirty-two-hundred in June, August saw forty-five-hundred a coin. December…. Just under twenty-thousand. They were Billionaires.

Marquis sat at the computer in the store in South Central LA. He was trying to figure out how his money had increased to over seventy-thousand when he had only put two in initially. He had not made enough through sales to justify this increase. The owner of the store, Jon, noticed the look of confusion on Marquis’ face.

“What’s up, man?”

“My account has too much money in it.”

“We should all be so lucky.”

They both laughed. Jon looked at Marquis’ account on the Silk Road website, a place where “anything can be sold”, even illicit narcotics. Marquis had been selling weed, molly, and booger sugar to the thirsty fiends online. As a young man he had embraced this technology when he first heard about it, months before. Being a low-level dealer has its limits, but the Silk Road allowed for a great expansion in his distribution method. He had put only a couple thousand into it in January, but even though he had sold a lot of drugs his Bitcoin value was up by an incredible amount. Jon diagnosed the problem.

“There’s nothing wrong with your account. Your Bitcoin stash is solid, but the price has shot up over the last few months. The Bitcoin you had saved in your account has gone up 3000%. Lucky you.”

“What the fuck you talkin’ about?”

Jon explained that Silk Road uses only Bitcoin for its transactions (allowing for anonymous or encrypted accounts to be used; untraceable if used properly). Because of the development of the Silk Road, this had led to a substantial increase in price for the cryptocurrency. It started 2011 by reaching its all-time-high of a dollar (up from its previous ATH of eight cents). Now in March, the revolutionary electronic cash had gone all the way up to thirty-three dollars, making Marquis a hefty profit on top of net. Jon explained that because a lot of people are using Silk Road, a lot of people are buying Bitcoin, causing the price to skyrocket.

“Should I just cash all this out?”

“That’s up to you man. I would HODL.”

“HODL?”

“Hold on for dear life. It’s a term us Bitcoin enthusiasts use for saving your coins in a cold storage account. A lot of people think the price is going to go up even more in the future.”

“How much more?”

“I have no idea, and anyone who says they do are only speculating.”

Jon advised Marquis that if he put his 2500 BTC into a memory stick or offline laptop, which would be impervious to hackers (called “cold storage”), he could be a millionaire in about ten years. But Marquis wanted to do some spending. Jon convinced him to put half into cold storage and spend the rest. He did exactly this.

Marquis had about twenty-five grand to spend, after buying more product to sell of course. He had never had this much money in his who life. The amount was about what his mom made in a year. She had brought him and his wild brother up by herself. His brother was up in Taft on a weapons possession beef. Thinking about his family made him want to spend some money on them. He bought his mom a gold and diamond necklace, and he put five thousand on his brother’s books. He still had fifteen left. He decided to go to Vegas.

Marquis drove his lady’s Chrysler through the desert while she slept, thinking about how fortunate he was. He felt like he got away with a crime. Not just the crime of selling controlled substances, which had never really felt like a crime to him. But he felt like one of those white-collar white criminals, the kind you hear about in the news, making millions by embezzlement or insider trading and getting minor sentences at minimum security prisons. But he knew the man would fuck him if he had the opportunity. Luckily, he had the perfect teacher in Jon. Looking out at the empty landscape he remembered when they first met.

Marquis wandered into the computer store on MLK boulevard, wondering what it was. Jon approached. “Is this one of those video game cafes?” Jon looked puzzled. “You can play video games. But I mainly started this business to fuck the system up on a technical level.” Marquis laughed. “Are you one of those ‘Occupy’ mothafuckas?” Jon grimaced. “Hardly. I have found that you can do way more damage to corrupt organizations by acting instead of protesting.” From here the conversation turned to Bitcoin, then the Silk Road. Marquis was intrigued by the concept of selling online. He dove right in and immediately started making money.

They stayed in North Vegas, where the cheaper rooms are. They were less apt to be hassled by security or metro cops. Not that Marquis planned on committing any major crimes aside from sampling his product. He knew that cops focused on his kind, the young black man with relatively nice clothes on, flashing a wad like his. This is why he brought his lady (one of them) instead of his boys. A group of young black men is even more suspect.

They wandered the casinos of Fremont street as the molly and coke kicked in. Marquis fondled the young woman whenever he had the chance, turned on by the pure MDMA and turned up by the uncut cocaine. They hit a few slot machines, waiting for the complimentary alcohol, then moving on when the waitress delivered. Marquis had just over fifteen thousand in cash on him. He also had his 22 pistol and his lady hid his 25 in her purse. They came to craps table at Binion’s. He put down ten grand for chips.

“New shooter.” They tossed the dice his way. He put all his chips on pass. His lady gave him a look that could have cut a man’s heart out. “Wish me luck baby girl.”

She blew on the dice and he threw them. The dice came up three and four. Instant win. Marquis threw his hands up as the crowd cheered uproariously. His lady was even more excited, jumping up and down, attempting to hug him while doing this. She almost knocked Marquis over. He tipped the dealer and pit boss a hundred each and took the rest to the cashier. They went back to the hotel and fucked for hours.

Samantha Koo sat across the desk from her therapist. It had been months since she had started seeking psychiatric help, under the advisement of her fiancé. She had some depression issues, sleeping a lot, mood swings, general feelings of helplessness. But this was no simple case, and she was about to have an epiphany.

Dr. Oliphant was a hypnotherapist, the most sought after in his field in all of Ontario. Samantha would have searched all of Canada, perhaps even America, to solve the issues that had caused such a strain on her relationship. The truth was that she had always had these bouts with depression, but it meant nothing when she shared her life with no one. Now that she has a partner to go through life with, she understood that she needed help.

They prepared for another deep hypnosis session. She had been a “tough nut to crack”, as the French-Canadian Doctor put it. Her deepest session so far had yielded little. But the therapist felt there was more work to do concerning her twin brother who died shortly after birth. Otis succumbed to crib death at a month old. Her parents buried him and visited the grave every year on their birthday.

She closes her eyes, relaxing her mind and body. She knows the routine, feeling anxiety release, worries disappear, consciousness slipping. She breathes slowly, and at this point she wakes up an hour later not knowing what has been said.

“Did I talk about my brother again?”

“You could say this.” His accent making this sound comical; it was anything but. “Ms. Koo, have you ever heard of multiple-personality disorder?”

The shock showed on the young woman’s face, not knowing how to respond. Of course, she had heard of it. But Samantha always understood this to be a fake disorder, most likely part of a movie plot or spoiled rich girl’s ploy for attention. She was being diagnosed as a schizo?

“Please, Ms. Koo, schizophrenia and multiple-personality disorder are two completely different diseases of the mind.”

“Ok, understood. But are you sure about this?”

“I think you need many more sessions for us to be absolutely sure. When you were under, a new personality emerged. Your brother, Otis.”

Samantha politely thanked the Doctor for his opinion and left. She would never return. She went home and told no one. Otis was dead, over 25 years ago; she never even fully understood why they visited his grave until she was a teenager.

Because you were in another place, you weren’t there. The thought gave her chills. The feelings of cliché left with the thought that she could not even remember visiting her brothers grave before she was thirteen, when a friend of hers went with them. The objective observer made it impossible to disassociate. I could not be there.

Otis would have been her dad’s favorite; he clearly disliked that the daughter survived. Her mother was generally depressed after his death, constantly blaming herself. Samantha was never abused or neglected, but she lacked any sort of nurturing, she sought refuge in computers.

From an early age, computers were her life. Building consoles at eight years old, programming by twelve, mining Bitcoin by seventeen, and eventually becoming a White Hat for Canada’s biggest software company, Orion. It was at Orion where she met her fiancé, Oliver (Oli to his friends and family). She knows the world through numbers and sequences, seeing it differently than others. Perhaps her solitary upbringing was perfect for her profession, allowing her to focus on the tasks required as opposed to letting trivial feelings affect her.

This was also the perfect environment for her disorder to thrive, projects require long sleepless nights followed by days of slumber. Otis could have free reign over her during these short comas, creating a life of his own. There were times when she noticed some projects were finished while she slept, but dismissed it, rationalizing that her life was hectic and hard to keep track of.

She did not need to work, but she liked to. She had mined enough Bitcoin to retire by the age of twenty-one but elected to continue fighting the Black Hats who would prefer anarchy in a world that is crazy enough already. She was HODLing close to a hundred-thousand Bitcoins on a laptop she had locked in a safe in her parents’ cabin in BC, a nice retirement for whenever she chose to do so (even with the dip in price from 2017’s high, she was still a multi-millionaire).

She called Oli. “Are you at home?” He was. She asked if she could come over. She could. He was about to order food. “Japanese or Korean?” She was silent.

Would Otis be more Japanese or Korean? Oliver was asking if she was ok. Samantha had been quiet for a long time. He was concerned.

“Maybe I should go over there?”

“No, I’m fine. Don’t baby me.”

“I’m not babying you. I’m just concerned.”

“Shut up, faggot!” She hung up. She had heard the words come out. She was shocked. “What the fuck?!”

Was that Otis? This was getting very weird for her. She thought again about what Otis would look like now. Would he take more after their Japanese-American mother, or their Korean father? Would he have the eugenics of one race over the other or be complimentary of both. People in her family have always said she is a perfect blend of the two cultures, an ideal Asian-Canadian. But would Otis be similar?

Oliver kept calling back, but she did not answer. She wanted to hide. From what, she knew not. She sent him a text, apologizing and offering a bad explanation about a stress headache. Otis was creeping into her consciousness; that god damn French-Canadian Psychiatrist had fucked her mind up.

I used to listen to our parents, talking about how they missed me, how they loved me, but they never turned around and looked at me (you). They never realized I was here the whole time. We were both right here, but they never paid attention to either of us.

She remembered now, the visits to the grave. The adult Koos talking to their buried infant son. Samantha heard the love in their voices and wanted to escape. She was not Samantha then; she was Otis.

She remembered her dad looking at her and saying, “I wish you were Otis.” The bastard never knew love. He was born in the North, fled to the South and immigrated to Vancouver before he could be put in the military. When he was around, Otis was there absorbing these emotional blows.

She remembered her mother crying, every year around her birthday. She wanted so desperately to ease her suffering. Otis was there to watch the misery while Samantha went inside. This was their relationship. Samantha hides; Otis bears the pain.

Then she remembered something else. Something about Bitcoin. Otis was instrumental in her mining operation. She never understood why she had started mining in the first place. She had just sort of started on a whim. But now she understood that it was Otis all along.

Otis left Satoshi Nakamoto’s White Paper on her desktop in 2009; Otis built the mining rigs out of leftover gamer parts; Otis moved the cryptocurrency to cold storage before any hackers could attack; Otis made her rich.

But Otis did something else. Otis did something for other people too. Otis created the decentralized blockchain that Bitcoin runs on. He created the revolutionary concept known as Bitcoin. He programed it while Samantha slept. He used an anagram of their names as his alias (Samantha Otis Koo=Satoshi Nakamoto).

Otis sat across the room from Samantha, who was now aware that her brother’s ghost created a financial revolution through her unconscious mind. She saw what he would look like, had he survived. A little more like their dad, but also a perfect blend of cultures. She realized that she had not eaten since lunch, it being late in the evening she was feeling intense hunger pangs. Otis asked, “Shall we get some food?” Samantha gave Otis a coy look and asked, “Korean or Japanese?”

The characters in the stories you have just read are fictional, but their plots are based on real stories I have read or heard about. Samantha’s story was fun to write, but purely speculative. With his identity kept completely anonymous I doubt we will ever know the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. I honestly do not think he should come forward and let his legendary status remain so. Samantha Koo represents the dual nature of Bitcoin and blockchain. It can be good; it can be bad. Arnie is based on a few friends of mine. One from high school, another is a blockchain enthusiast I’ve recently met. He also represents the many investors out there who believe in the technology, like me, investing in a revolution. Marquis is based on a man interviewed in a documentary. He represents the illicit side of Bitcoin (an entrepreneur of the Silk Road days). Personally, I do not judge a man on how he makes money. I feel the dark web is a necessary evil that will always exist. In closing, I must confess how much I enjoyed writing these stories. It was not just a way to bring attention to this amazing new tech, it was also a way to express my own views on what this new digital world is all about.