$hitcoin.

By Haydn Wilks

Bears & Bulls make money. Pigs get slaughtered.

Three Dutch university students watch rap videos and dream of big yachts & banquets of sushi served on the naked bodies of supermodels. Could making millions of dollars be as easy as writing a few lines of computer code? How

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dead Bird Press
• Release date: Jul 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781838083113

Haydn Wilks

The Welsh Irvine Welsh. The ginger Jack Kerouac.The broke Bret Easton Ellis.The Sartre of the South Wales Valleys.A cynical millennial author from Wales whose immense literary talent is only outsized by his overwhelming sense of entitlement.

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$hitcoin.

HAYDN WILKS

Copyright © 2020 Haydn Wilks / Dead Bird Press.

deadbirdpress.com

All rights reserved.

ISBN (PB): 978-1-8380831-0-6

ISBN (E): 978-1-8380831-1-3

LEGAL DISCLAIMER

SHITCOIN is a work of satirical fiction written by Haydn Wilks. All names and situations within the novel that follows are purely imaginative, except in cases when real public figures have been used in a satirical manner. Nothing any public figure or celebrity does in this novel is any way intended to reflect on their real life character or any real actions or events. All such events within this novel are so obviously not based on reality than no one with intellect enough to read a book could possibly be stupid enough to confuse what happens within these pages with things that have happened or could possibly happen in real life. So please don’t sue me. Or do – I guess I could use the publicity.

$HITCOIN.

Extract from Graham Jones, THE DEATH OF A SHITCOIN BILLIONAIRE (FletcherWilliams, 2022):

Guus van Hooijdink’s body was discovered in his Hillsborough, California home on June 29, 2020. It is believed he may have died sometime in April or May. The only other living being thought to have been in Guus van Hooijdink’s home at the time of his death was his pet chimpanzee, Raskolnikoff.

Raskolnikoff escaped from the home after Guus van Hooijdink’s death. Several of Hillsborough’s affluent residents reported seeing the chimpanzee on their property while living under a stay at home order made by the state’s governor in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic. The chimpanzee was captured and identified after breaking into a locked down restaurant on Primrose Road in the neighboring community of Burlingame.

Guus van Hooijdink’s body was cremated at a ceremony in the Silicon Valley community of Mountain View on July 6, 2020. His parents and elder brother were unable to travel to the funeral due to sweeping travel restrictions enacted in response to the pandemic. Leading figures from the cryptocurrency community posted truncated tributes to various social media platforms, generally fitting within the confines of a 140 character tweet or Instagram image overlay. The home in which van Dooijdink died was purchased in February 2018 for a reported $50 million. At the time of his death, Guus van Hooijdink was worth somewhere in the region of $500 million.

Conspiracy theories filled internet forums in the immediate aftermath of the discovery of Guus van Hooijdink’s body. Many focused on the seemingly insincere nature of an R.I.P. tweet sent by actor Olly Tulip, who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Guus van Hooijdink in the 2019 film Moon Boys. Others looked to the various shady underworld characters with whom Guus van Hooijdink is believed to have interacted, or his one-time girlfriend Alicia Huang, who is believed to have left Guus van Hooijdink to begin a relationship with Tulip. Many theories pointed to one or both of the two co-founders of the cryptocurrency coin which provided Guus van Hooijdink with his tremendous wealth. This is the story of that coin.

August 2017.

London, England.

12 years. 2005 to 2017 = 12 years. And a 6 hour bus. £35, Liverpool to London Victoria. Departing bleary-eyed 7.30am, arriving half-past 1. 7:30 to 13:30 = 6 hours. A train - Liverpool Lime Street to London Euston - would’ve been £235 & taken 2 hours. But they wouldn’t reimburse Graham for that. Nor pay for a hotel. No – after 12 years, all Dead Bird Press were willing to give Graham was £50 in travel expenses.

Your fault for living up North! Terrance Kant, Editor-in-Chief at Dead Bird Press, had said when Graham suggested Dead Bird cover the cost of his rail fare.

Twelve years, and they make you to take a fucking bus?! Graham’s wife Melina had snapped in an explosion of stereotypical Latina temperament.

As Graham disembarks the bus & moves through Victoria Coach Station to the flow of foot traffic on the street outside, the London rush hits him like cocaine inflaming the brain of a City Boy; the buzz & bluster of Britain’s great asset: a city like no other.

No place to raise a kid though, Graham reminds himself, thinking of little Luis as he ignores the tourists waiting for a green light & crosses the street to Victoria rail station.

Even if he & Melina could afford to live in London, there are compelling reasons for them to carry on living in Liverpool.

Graham moves through the manic station, business-suited blokes in immense hurries side-stepping bewildered tourists trundling suitcases, flashing back through his London years as he moves towards the Underground.

2002/03 – the big move, King’s College, studying English & Film, big dreams of being a filmmaker/journalist; Halls at Denmark Hill, constant evading of security staff to smoke weed in the rooms & rob from the fully-stocked refrigerators of the international students’ pantries; the buzzing London music scene, the long boozy evenings of Fresher’s Week soon blossoming into wild city-wide exploratory odysseys: taking his first E in Central after being refused entry to a club, he & Joe & Sadiq dancing circles around the roundabout Monument outside Buckingham Palace, bloated black pupils swelling up & swallowing the iris as they came up, then on through the city, Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Bridge, London Eye, sitting on swings at the base of it, swinging up & toward it, the big Eye bloating bigger, reflected in the blacks of their own bloated eyes, & Joe’s comical use of the adjective ‘ethereal’ to describe it, & the endless quoting of that phrase throughout the entirety of their 3 years at uni…

Graham reaches the Tube as he reminisces, descending into the city’s bowels, that old familiar sense of all that makes London London: a city of sprawl & imperial grandeur, now set in stone, literally carved into the Earth, so that while new skyscrapers pop-up & high-money luxury apartment complexes appear as investment vehicles for Arab & Chinese & Russian billionaires, & gentrification rampages through the city’s periphery, torching long-worn communities with a kindling that starts with artists & hipster cafes & cool cocktail lounges & students, burning until all sense of danger has been eradicated from the area, & rents rise, & the cool escapes into ethereal London expansion with it, &

Graham reaches the Victoria Line platform & awaits his train & thinks of the million-strong march that moved through the city in 2003, protesting the Iraq War, the wild hedonism & abandon that captured the spirit of a nation united long into the night, & that first rush of real journalistic intent he’d felt, inebriated on the zeitgeist of the times – Libertines, New Labour, London: sprawling, manic London;

& as Graham boards the train, he thinks of the endless East London gigs & clubs & squat parties, of Bloc Party, Foals, & the ascension of dubstep;

& as he boards the Walthamstow-bound Victoria Line train, he thinks of all the clubs & venues lost to the city’s evolution into a money pit for the jet-set international elite: Herbal, Passing Clouds, Plastic People, & The End.

& the first thing he got accepted into Dead Bird, a gig review for a band poised on the cusp of cool called Crystal Castles, & how he quickly got into the wild-night write-up business throughout his last year of uni, barely managing to get a 2:1 for a shite dissertation written on the treatment of gender in the works of Charles Bukowski & Jack Kerouac;

remembering, as he changes trains & makes the long walk between platforms at King’s Cross St. Pancras, how the grading professor had furiously underlined a paragraph that said Kerouac couldn’t be a homophobe as he had gay friends like Allen Ginsberg;

& the Northern Line, to Old Street, old memories flooding back ever-quicker as the stops pass by the window, flickers of a thousand recollections racing to reach him before he runs out of opening doors & accompanying ‘Mind the Gap’ announcements;

& he reaches Old Street, & lets old thoughts fall away, leaving himself with Melina: meeting her at The Roxy, 2009, they both a little too old for the studenty crowd; falling in love, travelling South America, keeping the Dead Bird job long-distance, constantly finding something interesting of the world to keep the word-count up;

proposing in Bangalore;

a double wedding, Medellin & Liverpool;

a year in Bonn, to bypass ludicrous British visa regulations;

& then Liverpool, & the birth of Luis, & the scope for articles falling away, & no other publication seeming open to him, he having spent too long in the studenty atmosphere of Dead Bird Press, he becoming progressively less hip as all he knew of London & the cool night spots of the world beyond crumbling as life revolved around the little one.

Graham reaches the Dead Bird Press offices as all thoughts reach their natural conclusion: that he should’ve branched out & left this place years ago, but didn’t, while his global gallivanting let others push ahead of him into Editorial positions, then move on to more respectable publications, he & Terrance Kant the only two left from the mid-2000s Hoxton glory days.

Graham takes a breath before pushing the button for the intercom, then he’s buzzed straight in.

An unknown attractive black girl on reception tells him that Terrance is expecting him, & will be with him in a minute, & has barely got her sentence out before Terrance is out, all slaps of hands & ‘mate!’s & his usual bullshit routine of camaraderie, until he leads Graham into his office, sits Graham down across the desk from him, takes his own seat, & lets the pretence fall away & the inner Kunt take control.

So, yeah, mate, been a while since we touched base, yeah? How’s life in Liverpool?

It’s good, yeah. Y’know, keeping busy.

With the little one?

Yeah.

What was it, Hugh?

No. Luis.

Luis? Not Hugh?

Yeah. Luis.

Maybe I’m thinking of Hugh Laurie… y’know, Fry & Laurie, House, that guy… you reckon that might be it?

Yeah, maybe.

And little Laurie’s how old now?

Four.

Fucking hell, mate! It’s been that long? He’ll be on staff with us ‘fore we know it! Yeah, so, look, I ain’t got long, busy man, doing busy man t’ings, and what I’d suggest is for you to just give it to me straight, like a cider that’s made with 100% pear: what’s in the pipeline? What you got for us? What’s Liverpool Graham got to offer Big City London?

Well, I was thinking, what with the trouble with the government and Brexit and all that, it might be neat to do a bit on Boris Johnson, and how he pissed off all Liverpool, and the general—

Nah, mate. Absolutely not. You know Murdoch’s media enterprise owns us now, yeah? And they’d have my head stuck on a pike on Tower Bridge if I went after Bo Jo. Nah, mate, absolutely not happening. Next.

Well, apart from that, there’s a general state-of-the-nation thing that I think we could go for, y’know, post-Brexit vote, I think there’s a lot of mileage in looking at how people feel a year on from the Referendum.

Terrance sighs dramatically. He’s developed more stubble than he had in his early-20s, when they would sink pints together in The Macbeth or Old Blue Last, but otherwise is still chasing the same East London hipster look, today wearing a grey beret & red-and-white striped shirt.

Fucking Brexit, mate? Jesus. I’ve literally just commissioned six articles on it this week. C’mon. Give me something a bit juicier than that.

Well… I was thinking I could maybe go over to Berlin, or somewhere like that, and take a look at Brexit from the European point-of-view?

Graham’s waited as long as possible to pitch something based on Berlin. His younger brother Robbie is currently living there, doing his Master’s in Psychology, & Graham’s been hoping for a long while to go out & see him, but with money tight, he’s had no chance yet; a Dead Bird-sponsored trip would be the magic bullet.

He sees the cogs whirring in Terrance’s tiny hipster monkey brain; Graham decides to pile on while he’s primed.

And I was thinking of a few more things I could do while I’m over there, squeeze a few articles out of it, maybe do something about the Berlin club scene, and I know you’ve commissioned a lot on that, but I could maybe do a piece on Berghain, how its atmosphere’s changed since becoming a tourist attraction, or maybe something on the Berlin fashion scene, whatever’s trend-setting and new, or maybe a tour of chic boutique hotels, I heard there’s a lot of real creative ones, or maybe a piece on how they’re feeling in the lead-up to next year’s World Cup, y’know, especially after Brexit, because Germans are typically not that nationalistic, especially in Berlin, and you’ll tend to see more European Union flags flying there than German tricolours, or I could maybe do something on Syrian refugees, their day-to-day plight, how they’re struggling to survive out there—

Graham. Mate. Please. Shut the fuck up a minute. That’s a thousand fucking ideas there, mate, and let me just run back through and unpick them one-by-one. Syrian refugees? Fuck that. No-one’s interested. That’s something The Guardian would write about. Not for us. And then the nationalism… football… thing… nah, not for me, man, I think I’ll hold off on all that bollocks til next spring when the World Cup’s coming up. And what did you say before that, boutique hotels? Boutique fucking hotels, mate? I’d be more likely to send you to do a piece on fucking youth hostels. But I think you’re a bit beyond the age limit of them nowadays! Haha, just kidding, just fucking with you, bro. But that’s a shit idea. And the fashion scene? The fucking fashion scene? You want me to fly you out to Berlin to write about the fucking fashion scene? When you’re sitting across from me today dressed like Alan Partridge’s grandad? Fucking jog on, mate. Ha! That’s a joke, that. And what was before that? Berghain? Mate, dressed like that? No chance of you getting in fucking Berghain. And at your advanced years, you’re the last staff writer I’d sent to do a piece on the non-stop 24-hour Berlin party scene. And… what was the first thing you said?

About Brexit. Looking at it from different perspectives—

Nah, yeah, that’s shit as well, but I have had an idea though. You spreken a bit of Deutsche, right?

Yeah. I was in Bonn for—

There’s actually something I was just thinking about this morning that I’d like to get someone over to Berlin for. We’ve got a few peeps over there, of course, but one lad’s on holiday, and the other girl’s exclusively doing articles on Berlin drug experiences these days, so I didn’t think she’d be right for it… but you… nah, yeah, you’d be fucking perfect.

What is it?

Cryptocurrency.

Graham pauses, processes the word, then nods: Right. Yeah. Cryptocurrency.

What do you know about cryptocurrency?

Well… I mean… yeah… it’s… I dunno, it’s a bit of a weird one to explain, innit? I mean…

It’s, like, fucking Bitcoin and that. You know what Bitcoin is, yeah?

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Bitcoin. Digital money.

Precisely.

Graham’s heard of it in passing before, but ‘digital money’ about covers everything he knows on the topic.

We’re starting to see mad click-through rates on anything we publish which is cryptocurrency-related. And Berlin is always a big click driver. Next month there’s a big crypto meetup over there. And since you speak German, and since you know what Bitcoin is…

Graham spends the coach ride back to Liverpool reading all he can on cryptocurrency, beginning with wikipedia.org/bitcoin: Bitcoin – created 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym of an otherwise anonymous individual/group, largely in response to the 2007~2008 global financial meltdown stemming from the American subprime mortgage crisis, conceptualised as a global digital currency beyond the control of any central bank, transactions completed peer-to-peer & verified by a decentralised network of nodes…

Graham re-reads the last part, struggling to understand it: verified by a decentralised network of nodes; stored cryptographically in a decentralised distributed ledger: this distributed ledger = blockchain.

He looks away from the phone screen & out the window, at the flat fields of England flanking the motorway. He thinks of Berlin, its dense squat-chic Gothic architecture, a chance to meet his younger brother, to get away from England…

Keep reading, he implores himself. You’ll understand at least some of this shit eventually.

Bitcoins are created by computers solving complex mathematical problems, a process known as ‘mining.’ In the early days, any idiot with a laptop could mine Bitcoin, but it was designed to become progressively harder, so that today, giant farms of Bitcoin mining rigs exist. The process is massively energy-intensive, and is consequently focused on countries where electricity is cheap, like China.

No chance of profitably mining Bitcoin here in Britain, then, Graham thinks, recalling his & Melina’s extortionate EDF energy bill.

Bitcoins were initially worth pennies, but with a limited number of 21 million ever to be produced, and the production of these coins becoming progressively more difficult, the price of each Bitcoin inevitably rose. In 2013, the price of a single Bitcoin soared above $1000. Then came a massive hack of the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, Japan’s Mt. Gox: 850,000 Bitcoin were stolen, the price plummeted, & it didn’t hit $1000 again until this January. The price has been climbing steadily since the start of the year & is currently edging towards $3000, with no sign of slowing down.

So that’s why Terrance is suddenly interested in it.

Bitcoin’s growth inspired other cryptocurrencies. Initially these were novelties, with names like Dogecoin, KanyeCoin, & PutinCoin. Over the past two years, these ‘alt-coins’ have become more serious. The most successful alt-coin, Ethereum, was launched in 2015 by a programmer using his real name, Vitalik Buterin. Buterin was a Bitcoin enthusiast who was frustrated by the inflexibility of Bitcoin. Ethereum allows for the execution of scripts on a Turing decentralized virtual machine operating across the Ethereum network of public nodes.

Graham re-reads that last sentence a dozen times & still has no clue what-the-fuck it means, even after poring over the linked Wikipedia page on Turing virtual machines. After scanning back & forth between the Ethereum Wikipedia page & several online articles, the best he can understand is that Ethereum is a kind of app platform, a bit like the software that’s used as an operating system on a computer or mobile phone; & this platform allows for all new kinds of crazy technology to be implemented over ‘the blockchain’; & whatever the fuck all of that means, companies like IBM, Microsoft, & Samsung are currently developing Ethereum-related things, & the price of a single Ethereum has risen from less than $0.01 at launch to just under $10 at the start of the year, & is today at over $250 & still increasing.

Fuck me, Graham whispers.

He reads until the battery’s almost drained, then plugs in the charger & reads more, delving ever deeper into this subterranean world of unknown fortune, familiarising himself with names like Litecoin – like Bitcoin, but 4x faster – & NEO – like Ethereum, but Chinese – & then the crazy burgeoning money pit of ICOs – Initial Coin Offerings: new coins promising to utilise blockchain tech to revolutionise everything from air travel to real estate, generating tens of millions in funding, promising investors huge near-term Return on Investment (ROI).

He doesn’t stop reading until Liverpool, even staying on the bus during the service stop, & once he’s home & reunited with Melina & Luis, he continues reading on long into the night.

chptr 02.00 : GENESIS.

@location: Groningen, Netherlands.

02.01.

NEO?

It’s like the Chinese Ethereum. Except it isn’t really anything like Ethereum.

Wesley enters & interrupts: What the fuck, guys?

Guus & Aart are sitting together on the middle of the huge quad sofas in the kitchen/living room’s corner-nook, Guus on his laptop & Aart tapping at his phone screen. A Honey Badger music video is playing on the 60-plus inch plasma screen affixed to the nook’s dark green wall.

Aart: Then how is it the Chinese Ethereum?

Guus: It’s a Chinese dApps platform.

Aart: What’s the price at?

Guys! Guus & Aart turn from the ever-fluctuating prices on CoinMarketCap to look at Wesley, who’s standing beside the huge table that takes up half of the spacious room’s kitchen area. Look at this place.

Aart scans a room decorated with clusters of bottles & cans – debris from the previous night’s party: What’s wrong with it?

The girl is gonna be here in, like, twenty minutes, Wesley says, sweeping bottles from the table into a black plastic bin liner. You said you’d clean up.

We did clean up, Aart protests. This place was really fucked up when you left us.

What girl? Guus asks.

The girl who’s here to take on Rick’s room, Wesley says, moving about the room and hurrying bottles & cans into the bin liner.

Guus: No girl’s gonna wanna live in a frat house. I don’t know why you don’t just get a guy in.

Nah, man, Aart says, standing up & moving to the kitchen area, he can’t join the fraternity, and you know he’ll want to.

But what kind of girl’s gonna wanna live in this place? Guus says, returning his attention to the laptop.

Where’s Federico? Wesley asks, bin liner fully loaded.

I don’t know, Guus says. I think he’s still in bed. Yo, Aart, the price is at twenty dollars right now. It was, like, thirty dollars less than a week ago.

Wesley: He’s sleeping? It’s almost 15:00.

Aart unrolls a bin liner: He’s Italian, what do you expect? Guus, what price did you buy at?

Wesley moves to the hallway: Federico!

Guus: I got in before it rebranded from AntShares. It’s up about 600% on then. But now’s the time to get in, man, this dip won’t last. A year from now, it’ll be two hundred dollars, minimum.

Wesley: FREDDY!

Federico groans inside his bedroom: What?

I don’t know, man, Aart says, slowly picking up & crushing Hertog Jan cans & placing them in his bin liner. I think Bitcoin’s about done dropping. It’ll probably be worth like six thousand dollars in a couple of months.

It’ll be back to zero before the semester’s finished, Wesley snaps, returning to the room. Guus! Get the fuck off the sofa and grab a bin liner.

Guus sighs dramatically & closes his laptop.

I thought you said Bitcoin was already six thousand dollars, Wesley says, unrolling another bin liner.

Aart casually smooths out the crinkles in a Hertog Jan can before bagging it: I said I had six thousand dollars’ worth of Bitcoin. But that’s before the price dropped.

Wesley side-steps Guus to tackle an accumulation of bottles surrounding the quad sofa: So how many Bitcoin do you have now?

Aart: I’ve still got 1.5 bitcoins, but the price dropped.

Wesley: So what’s that in real money?

Guus stops at the door to the hallway, intrigued by the sound of Federico conversing with a female: Is that the girl you’re talking about?

I don’t know, Aart says, picking up an ash-covered Hertog Jan bottle that’s stuffed half-full of cigarettes, contemplating whether such a thing is fit to be thrown in with the recycling. Today, it’s a little less than five thousand.

Wesley: Five thousand Euros?

Aart: Five thousand dollars.

Guus: Wes, I think the girl’s here.

Fuck. Wesley drops the bin liner at the side of the sofa & moves to the doorway, turning back briefly to admonish Aart: Why do you measure everything in dollars? You’re not fucking American. Wesley stares down the hallway, where Federico has just turned away from a closed front door: Did she leave?

Federico: Yeah.

Wesley: What the fuck?! Why?

Federico stares at Wesley, Federico’s handsome Italian features as befuddled as his tousled just-out-of-bed black hair. She had to go home.

They stare at each other for a moment before Wesley speaks: Ciara?

Federico: Who’s Ciara?

Wesley: The girl.

Federico: What girl?

Wesley: The girl who’s looking at Rick’s room.

There’s a long pause before Federico makes sense of things: Oh, that girl. No, that was Lina.

Wesley: Who’s Lina?

Federico: The German girl.

Wesley: What German girl?

The German girl I fucked last night. Federico opens the bathroom door & flicks a light switch; Honey Badger’s hit ‘Fuck Me (Like a Badger in Heat)’ plays automatically as the cupboard-small bathroom’s walls covered with pics of big-titted blonde models are illuminated.

02.02.

Ciara locks her bicycle among the scores of similar bicycles lining the pavement outside the JUMBO supermarket on Oosterstraat, a bustling single-lane street lined with bars, shops, & restaurants running up to the medieval Dutch city’s Grote Markt central square. She looks up at the apartments above the street’s businesses, wondering which is the place, & whether she has enough time to smoke a cigarette before heading inside. She takes her phone from her pocket: 14:57. She taps at Google Maps and then starts walking towards her destination.

02.03.

Hey, Wesley says, smiling as he opens the door to her. You must be Ciara.

She’s as pretty as he’d hoped: fair hair, pale freckled complexion, a very London beige overcoat underscoring her Britishness.

Ciara smiles back at Wesley: he’s equally all that she’d expected of a Dutch frat bro – tall, blonde, with a baggy Rijksuniversiteit Groningen sweatshirt hanging off his sports-honed frame.

Introductions are exchanged and Wesley leads Ciara through the hallway, pointing out the bathroom door & hoping that Federico doesn’t open it & potentially scare her away with the garish array of big tits inside. He stops along the hallway at Rick’s room: she looks at the cosy desk & double-bed & nods approvingly: Yeah, this looks alright.

It would have to be pretty bad to stop her accepting the place. She’s spent the summer travelling the continent – Munich, Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Zagreb, Split, Sarajevo – & returned to Groningen just a day before the semester started, expecting no problem finding a place to stay in a city that must be 50% short-term student accommodation. But she hadn’t reckoned on the scores of students doing the same as her, and with a few perfect places being snatched away when on the cusp of signing a contract, and having spent the past two weeks on her friend Jurate’s sofa, she’s more than willing to take on the wild novelty of a year as the sole girl in a frat house.

The tour continues through to the kitchen/living room, Wesley explaining that Rick’s spending a year’s exchange in Pittsburgh, & stopping to introduce Ciara to Guus & Aart: Ciara, this is Guus— – a slightly-pimpled and awkwardly skinny guy with an oddly intense demeanour & almost-shaved short hair that protrudes into a ridiculous ‘90s-style gelled spiked fringe – and Aart. – a far more attractive though equally odd frat member, with hair matted into dreadlocks along the centre of an otherwise completely shaved head.

Aart: Nice to meet you.

Ciara looks around approvingly at the bar-style central living space, with dartboards & beer advertisements & basketball hoops & other paraphernalia covering almost every inch of wall space, more than a dozen framed photographs of past iterations of the fraternity being the most intriguing item.

And this is the patio, Wesley says, leading Ciara outside.

What do you think of her? Aart asks Guus in hushed conspiratorial tones upon the sofa.

Yeah, she seems okay, Guus says, fully engrossed by his laptop. This project sounds really interesting. They want to create a bridge between blockchains, a kind of go-between interface for interconnecting pre-existing cryptocurrencies. It’s $3.51, down from $4.10 yesterday, with a four-hundred-million-dollar market cap. It might be worth buying a few hundred bucks worth.

Aart: I don’t know why you screw around with all these alt-coins, man. You know Bitcoin is gonna outperform all of them.

How much money do you think I made on Ethereum?

Yeah, but there’s a limit, man. No way all these coins can survive long-term.

They don’t have to. They just need to survive long enough for me to make Lamborghini money.

If you want a Lambo, bro, buy more Bitcoin. It’ll be ten thousand dollars by next spring, man, I’m telling you.

Yeah, which is like a 350% return on investment. The stuff I’m looking at is like a 10,000% return on investment.

But anyone can make a coin, man. Slap some code together, get it listed on an exchange – boom. Make a quick buck off idiots looking to get rich quick, and disappear forever to an island somewhere.

That’s why you’ve gotta do your own research.

But, like, me and you could probably make a coin.

I probably could. You couldn’t even set your own wallet up.

Well why don’t you then?

Maybe I should.

Aart stares at the television screen. Honey Badger is in some tropical island paradise, dancing at the poolside in a suit, surrounded by big-titted bikini babes and chimpanzee butlers. Still a little stoned from his hangover-staving wake-up spliff, Aart is mesmerised by the jiggling girl bits and chimps in bowties for a few moments before speaking: How much money do you think Honey Badger’s worth?

Probably a few million dollars.

A few million dollars, Aart mutters, a thought forming. And how much did you say that coin you’re looking at’s market cap is?

Four hundred million dollars.

Four hundred million dollars… Honey Badger is on the deck of a yacht now, at night, pouring what looks like an extremely expensive bottle of alcohol over some woman’s cleavage. And the people who made that coin probably kept a couple for themselves, right?

Probably.

They probably kept a lot for themselves, right?

Probably.

And right now they don’t even have a working product or anything, do they?

This one does… I think. But a lot of them don’t.

And you think you could probably code your own cryptocurrency?

Probably. Guus looks up from the laptop at the television; Honey Badger is in the yacht’s master bedroom, fanning himself with a wad of hundred-dollar bills as two girls in lingerie dry-hump his legs.

We should do it, man.

Honey Badger is now in the yacht’s dining hall, using diamond-encrusted platinum chopsticks to delicately remove a piece of sushi from the crotch of a fully-naked big-titted blonde who lays splayed upon the tablecloth.

Maybe we should, man. Maybe we should.

Wesley leads Ciara back into the kitchen area: What do you think?

She struggles not to gush too much enthusiasm: Yeah, it’s great.

02.04.

The cycle back to Jurate’s place is blissful, the beauty of canal-bisected Groningen’s centuries-old buildings & crispness of Dutch autumn overwhelming all Ciara’s earlier fear, uncertainty & doubt. As her bike flows with the thousands of other cyclists traversing the city’s narrow streets, she knows that all is right & well in her life, & that this year will be even better than the last.

When she enters Jurate’s house, Jurate is drinking coffee at the kitchen table with her housemate Vallya, who is considerably less blissful: …and so I cannot work without the Dutch citizen number, this BSN, and they cannot process this without the official document from the university in Moscow, and the university in Moscow only can give this in Russian, and the City Hall here will only accept this in Dutch or in English, unless that I get a legalised translation, which it has to be legalised by the Russian Consulate, which is wanting to charge maybe one hundred Euros, and maybe taking more than three weeks, which is time I cannot do working during…

Jurate briefly disengages to greet Ciara: Hey.

Hey.

The interlude leads a frustrated Vallya to bring her story to its end: "…and it’s just nyet, nyet, nyet from every direction, and my parents say it is now too much to send me more money, and I do not even know what in the fuck I should do about everything."

Hearing Vallya’s bureaucratically-inflicted agony, & being reminded similar pain may yet await her whenever Britain finally leaves the European Union, Ciara again dampens her enthusiasm when Jurate asks her how the place was: Yeah, it was great – well, the best I’ll get at this point, & she answers Jurate’s follow-up question about how the guys were with an emphasis on Wesley’s tall Dutch jockishness, & Jurate says, You’ll have to invite us to one of their frat parties, & asks Ciara what she’s doing tonight, with Vallya & Jurate having plans to go out; I’m working at Mountain at nine.

Vallya: "Oy! All I want is to work while I study. I do not know why must it be so difficult."

02.05.

The overnight shift at Mountain Bar isn’t something Ciara would recommend to anyone, though €7 per hour & free alcohol through the night is enough to make it bearable. She parks her bicycle among the ever-expanding sea of bicycles beside the Grote Markt, the streets beginning to fill up with the first of the student-city’s night-time revellers. Ciara walks the narrow bar-lined side street to Mountain. Inside, Ibrahim is at the counter & a few young Dutch guys are knocking back 1 Euro Heinekens. A few others trickle in to order 1 Euro beers & shots during the first hour, European EDM blaring & echoing off the walls of the almost-empty room. The population swells at 10pm & gets bigger as the night progresses, Ciara becoming busier & busier behind the bar. By 11, she’s in constant movement, racking up beers & Jaeger Bombs & tequila shots, knocking back the few that are bought for her by drunk guys trying to hit on her. Every hour, she slips into the crowded smoking room at the back of the bar to roll & smoke a cigarette. As the time creeps closer to midnight, more & more groups are asking for NOS-filled balloons to huff, falling into dizzy drunken laughing fits after each bout of inhalation. When Ciara next enters the smoking area, a clearly-underaged guy is stumbling about, annoying everyone. Ciara ignores his presence, a stance she regrets fifteen minutes later when an irritated German student comes to the bar and says: Somebody has been sicked up all over in the smoking area.

Ibrahim is conveniently dealing with a large drinks order: Do you mind cleaning it up?

With a sigh & a shrug, Ciara takes a mop to the smoking area, where the idiot teenager is slumped in a chair. Where are your friends? she asks him, sloshing his vomit over the floor with the mop.

I think they left already, says a Dutch guy smoking a joint. You want some of this?

She accepts the spliff & after a few tokes continues mopping, the strong Dutch high-grade inoculating her to the grossness of her task.

And then the lads from the frat enter.

Wesley: Oh, hey, Ciara!

Fuck.

She laughs & talks with them, fully preoccupied with trying to overcome her stoned inoculation & the embarrassment of her puke-mopping predicament.

Ciara then returns to the bar, FMLing, as Wesley, Guus, & Aart re-join Federico & their other friends Jako, Wander, & Max on the packed dancefloor.

The Honey Badger & Cheap Ho song ‘All Fucked Up from Fucking You’ hits & the lads spill Heineken as they raise their glasses & shout along to the lyrics. Guus is deep in the throes of inebriation, having huffed a NOS balloon just before the song hit. He closes his eyes as he sings & sways & spills beer, picturing Honey Badger in the dining hall of the yacht in his music video, eating sushi off the genitals of a beautiful big-titted blonde with diamond-encrusted platinum chopsticks.

We gotta make the coin, man, Guus says, spilling beer onto Aart’s shirt as he leans toward him.

WHAT?!

We gotta make the coin, Guus shouts over the booming music. We can be richer than Honey Badger.

Aart: Fucking A!

The ratio of guys to girls on the dancefloor at Mountain Bar is decidedly harming the lads’ chances, so after bidding adieu to Ciara & having a final Jaeger Bomb for the road, they’re out onto narrow student-swarmed streets, weaving between Wednesday-night revellers, Wesley & Federico & Jako arguing over whether they should go to Twister or Kokomo or Ocean 41. Wesley wins the debate & the gang take a right at De Negende Cirkel & enter the small bar-rammed square containing Twister.

That’s Nguyen! Guus shouts, the Vietnamese name sounding garbled & incomprehensible to Aart, who follows Guus to the bemused Asian guy standing in the street swigging from a bottle of premium Belgian beer, as the rest of the gang continue on into Twister.

This man’s a genius, Guus gushes. Nguyen, I was telling you about the coin, right? We have to make the coin, man. We can be richer than Honey Badger, man. Yachts and boats and chimpanzees and eating sushi from model’s pussies with fucking diamond-encrusted chopsticks, man. Helicopters and big piles of cocaine and fucking everything, man. Lamborghinis. Two Lamborghinis, man. Guus is rambling & swaying, eyes focused on nothing, the intensity of his slurred speech being met with a confused & slightly nervous smile from his Asian classmate. Hey, Nguyen, where are you going tonight?

Nguyen: I don’t know, I was just—

Guus: Come to Twister with us!

Minutes later they’re inside, the trio shoving their way through the densely packed crowd in search of the rest of the frat lads.

Jurate & Vallya are at the bar awaiting service. Federico leads Jako & Welsey toward them: Hey. Federico leans in to Jurate, talking quickly, his Italian charm producing schoolgirl giggles, as Wesley & Jako stand either side of Vallya, trying & failing to say something to bring a smile to her unmoved Russian face.

Once drinks have been served, all five move into the swell of the dancefloor. Federico’s hands are at Jurate’s waist as ‘Despacito’ blasts through the club, the many Spanish students dotted throughout the crowd belting the lyrics out. As the second chorus hits, Federico leans his face towards Jurate, who closes her eyes and thrusts her lips at his, & their tongues cascade in & out of each other’s mouths while Wesley & Jako jerk their bodies to the song at either side of Vallya, who’s looking alternately at the floor & ceiling & rest of the crowd, trying to focus her eyes anywhere but on her potential Dutch suitors.

Guus, Aart & Nguyen push their way past another group to reach Wesley, shouting something about having been looking for him, creating a distraction that Jako seizes upon to offer a hand to Vallya, which she reluctantly accepts.

When Wesley turns back to face them, Jako & Vallya are dancing an awkward semi-tango. He turns to Guus & Aart, irritated, though he smiles on seeing two girls approach who were at the previous night’s party – a German & a Spanish girl, Lina & something – Lina – and as Wesley greets them both, he realises Lina is the girl Federico fucked, & when Federico pulls his lips free of Jurate’s & gazes dreamily into her eyes, Lina spots him, & her mouth drops open, & Federico glances at her, & instinctively thrusts his hands away from Jurate’s waist, &

02.06.

Sometime later, Guus, Aart, Nguyen, & Wesley are in the smoke-filled Dees coffee shop, on a narrow alleyway running between the bar-filled backstreets and Oosterstraat.

I don’t know how he does it, man, Aart says, forming his words slowly, bloodshot eyes staring into the middle-distance.

He’s Italian, Guus says, the words bubbling up from his throat in a way that renders them incomprehensible.

Aart: What?

He’s Italian, Guus repeats, with force; the force tickles his cannabinoid-coated respiratory tract & sends him into a coughing fit.

Wesley’s watching Nguyen toke on the spliff with great interest. Their short & unthreatening Asian companion sucks deeply upon the spliff for as long as ten seconds at a time, filling his lungs completely with smoke. Nguyen then half-chokes on the smoke & half-swallows it, turning his head to the side & lifting his right arm across his mouth to block the cough. Then he returns the spliff to his mouth with his left hand & repeats the entire process.

Hey, Bogart, Wesley says, you wanna share some of that joint?

Nguyen stares at Wesley for a few moments, face completely red, understanding none of what was just said to him. The silence & stares of Guus & Aart fill Nguyen with dread. Smoke rises from the joint & wafts across his field of vision, & it suddenly clicks. He hands Wesley the spliff, then turns his head & returns his right arm to his mouth & coughs & coughs & coughs.

Bogart, Guus repeats, toying with a frayed piece of roach material on the tobacco-strewn tabletop. That’s an old reference.

It’s a classic, Wesley says, before inhaling deeply.

All are silent for a moment. Then Aart speaks: Do you think Federico’s fucking that girl right now?

Wesley: Of course.

Guus: Which girl even went home with him?

Wesley: The German one, I think.

Guus: Which was the German one?

Wesley: The one from last night.

Guus: Where was the other girl from?

Aart carefully ponders all the memories & knowledge of Federico he can summon as Guus & Wesley speak. He thinks of the shape of Federico’s nose – prominent, Romanesque; the tan complexion of his skin; his height – reasonable, but unremarkable, particularly here in the Netherlands; his easy-going personality, which is surely a factor in Federico’s seeming irresistibility to women. Aart then begins wondering how he could be more like Federico. Each point seems an impossibility: a nose job is possible, but might make him uglier than before; fake tan and sunbeds exist, but they might make him look ridiculous; Aart’s tall enough already – he might even have a few centimetres over Federico; and the personality… he ponders for a moment, & concludes he’s already reasonably easy-going…

Aart: Do you think I should try a different hairstyle?

Guus & Wesley stop speaking and stare at Aart. They’re struck first by the question’s weirdness, then they both take the time to really examine his odd shaved-sides & dreads-on-top look.

I think it looks cool, Wesley concludes.

Guus: It’s distinctive.

Thanks, Aart says, accepting the spliff from Guus.

Wesley: I think your friend’s passed out.

Guus looks at Nguyen, who’s hunched over the table, resting his heads on top of folded arms.

Guus: Hey, Nguyen, you okay man?

…yeah…

You want a Coke or something?

…imalright…

Nguyen’s condition is quickly forgotten as the others fall back into conversation about Federico’s effectiveness with women.

He talks to girls, Wesley says, sweeping aside Guus & Aart’s focus on the superficial. It’s that simple.

You talk to girls, Guus says. I don’t see you fucking anyone.

Wesley: I got a phone number.

Guus: You think it’s a real one?

Yeah, Wesley says, tapping at his phone & thrusting it in front of Guus’s face. I got her on WhatsApp.

Guus looks at the profile pic of the smiling brunette: She looks okay.

But Nguyen was approaching everyone, Aart says, confident Nguyen’s too inebriated to hear him. He must’ve talked to six different girls, and every time they just laughed at him, or told him to go away.

That’s because they’re racist, Guus says, scowling. Dutch bitches are the worst for that.

You’re Dutch, Wesley laughs.

I’m Friesian, Guus says. And that’s all the more reason to know what Dutch bitches are like. They’re the most superficial cunts in Europe.

Woah, Aart laughs. Fucking chill on the red pill, man.

I’m just being serious, Guus says. Real talk. They want a tall man first, a white man second, maybe a black dude if they think no-one’s watching. Asian guys fall pretty far down their list. Unless they’re rich. If you’re rich, you can be a 90 year-old Chinese midget, and every 20 year-old blonde in Twister’s gonna suck your cock.

Fuck, man, Aart says, choking on smoke as he falls into a laughing fit.

See, this is why you don’t get women, Wesley says, taking the spliff off Aart.

Guus: Because I’m honest?

Wesley: Because you’re a fucking sociopath.

It takes Aart a while to calm down, while Guus sits & stews over Wesley’s appraisal of him. Once Aart’s stopped laughing, Wesley holds the nub of a spliff that remains up for the group: Anyone want BLTs?

Guus snatches the nub of spliff from him & sucks on its scorching end.

Come on, let’s wake Nguyen up and go to Warhol, Wesley says, standing up.

Hey, Nguyen, Aart says, shaking Nguyen’s arm.

Nguyen doesn’t respond.

Aart shakes his arm harder.

Come on, wake up.

Nguyen meekly raises his reddened face, eyes lolling in their sockets: Ithinkimgonnathrowup.

You’re alright, man, Aart says, almost at the exact moment Nguyen throws his head to the side & cascades vomit all over himself.

02.07.

Goodnight.

Ciara lights her rollie as she walks away from Ibrahim & Mountain Bar, the previously busy bar-lined streets eerily quiet in the gently rising early morning light. The only person in the street is some junky in a tracksuit, who immediately stops fiddling with some random bicycle & eyes Ciara suspiciously as she passes. The scent of long-roasting meat hits Ciara as she passes a kebab shop at the end of the street. She thinks of ending her night/starting her day with some greasy sustenance. She pauses & watches the hacked-at lamb spin slowly against the grill through the window & decides to hold on for home & something healthier. She drops her rollie to the floor & continues on to the huge bike parking area at the edge of the Grote Markt, with about a dozen bikes now dotted around it. She heads to the spot she left her bike at, but doesn’t see it. She walks slowly around the parking area, scanning each bicycle carefully. When she’s finished, she circles around back to the start. She does this three times, each time suppressing a growing fear, a developing sinking feeling in her stomach. After the third search, she admits defeat.

FUCK’S SAKE! Ciara