Invisible Fortune: A Tale of Cryptocurrency

By J. Lee Porter and Ed Teja

Tropical heat, money, and lust
Henry Miller once said, "One's destination is never a place, but always a new way of seeing things." I think that's why, on an extended vacation from my programming job to Cartagena, Colombia, I let a rich and chatty American expat tell me his story. I wasn't impressed or even particularly interested — not until I met his beautiful assistant and heard rumors that the man had a dark secret. Even then I became intrigued mostly, I suspect, because learning the truth was a way to get to know her.

This is modern fiction, a story of high-tech vigilante justice. It was inspired by a steamy tropical atmosphere, cold drinks, and lithe, sweaty bodies. It's the story of how, ultimately, the temptation to deliver justice and satisfy my own desires (to possess both the tangible and intangible) overcame common sense and perhaps whatever common decency I once had. 

But then, betrayal for a worthy cause can taste mighty sweet. And even if its never quite clear, at the end, who seduced whom you can still have a happy ending.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nomadic Giant
• Release date: Feb 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781949063073

J. Lee Porter

J. Lee Porter is a former IT specialist, programmer and data analyst for banking, security, and government agencies. He left the IT world behind on July 4th, 2016, declaring it his personal independence day to travel the world full time in search of inspiration for his writing. @JLPorterAuthor on Twitter Ed Teja is a writer a poet, a musician, and boat bum. He writes about the places he knows, and the people who live in the margins of the world. After being friends with tech giants, pirates, fishermen, and a coterie of strange people for many years, he finds the world an amazing place filled with intriguing, if sometimes crazed characters. @ETeja on Twitter

Book preview

The whole point of Bitcoin is that you don’t trust anyone else to tell you what the truth is.

Andreas Antonopoulos

Author of Mastering Bitcoin

A Bad Man

Imet Daryl Saunders the way you often meet other compatriots when you are traveling. I’d gone to Cartagena, Colombia, taking a much-needed break from my job as a programmer in the states. It’s a comfortable place, enough like the US not to be unsettling and yet a universe away from what passed for my normal life.

I’d been staying in the old walled city for about a week—long enough to find a few favorite places and get to know a few people. One of the absolutely best places I found to enjoy the sunset was a bar called El Baluarte De San Francisco. It is perched on the wall; it used to be a restaurant and still serves some overpriced food, but mostly it’s an open-air bar with a great view.

The city is amazing. The Spaniards founded it 1533 but it took until 1796 to build its walls, which were for protection from pirates. It was, after all, a key port for the export of Peruvian silver to Spain and for the import of African slaves. Now the old city is one giant museum and tourist attraction.

Sitting there in the humid evening air, enjoying a glass of 18-year old Glenfiddich on the rocks and looking out over the city and the boats moored at docks is surreal. I could look down on 500-year-old Spanish buildings nearby, and with a small turn of my head see a new wall, one made of modern high-rise buildings. Right at sunset, the sun gleams off the metal and glass of new buildings gleam. Then, as the sky darkens rapidly, the lights come on. It’s a glorious transition from shimmering modernity to a wonderland where everything sparkles.

And through it all, in the city below me, a horde of tourists, both Colombian and foreigners, are taking it all in, swarmed by vendors and hustlers selling hats, food, all sorts of souvenirs and promises of tours to magnificent beaches the next day.

Beaches can be nice, but I was content in my chair and watching it all. Diego, my waiter, smiled and brought my second drink without me asking. He was good at his job – the ice he’d put in the glass was a single large sphere. That minimizes the surface area of the ice and manages to cool the precious single malt without watering it down too quickly. That’s important when you are outdoors in a heat that persists long after the sun sets.

As usual, I was drinking alone. Just as Diego had proven himself a good, no, an excellent, waiter, I had been an ideal customer. In appreciation of my generous tips, he made sure that I was seated well away from the speakers that would could, at times, crank out raucous music, with the volume increasing as it got later in the evening. Unlike many who came there, I wanted to relax and savor my drink. For now, the music was soft jazz and I felt as mellow as the saxophone solo I could hear in the night air.

This is a crowded area and the ebb of the flow of the crowd brings different people in and out of your circle, your awareness. Given that, it was no surprise when