Bitcoin Heist by Nic Saint

CHAPTER 1

TOM KELLY
“SO LET’S RECAP, folks. Are cryptocurrencies the greatest and most
promising wealth-creation machine the world has ever seen or just another
scam?”
Tom let his gaze drift across the auditorium rows packed with students.
Eager faces stared back at him, hands shooting up. It was the question they
all wanted answered.
He took a seat at the edge of his desk, on the auditorium stage, and
pointed at the most eager beaver of them all. “Miss Markham. Please
enlighten us.”
“I think it’s just a scam, Professor Kelly,” the young woman said.
It didn’t escape Tom’s attention that Megan had unbuttoned the top two
buttons of her black form-fitting blouse, and was now leaning forward,
allowing him a peek at her assets.
He cleared his throat. “Interesting. Anyone else want to chime in?”
A student with beet-red hair announced, “I think it’s just another way to
drain the downtrodden masses of their hard-earned cash, sir. Only the latest
sign that capitalism is on its way out. And good riddance, too.”
“Stalin,” a student behind him coughed into his fist, to loud jeers.
The face of the Stalin in question turned the same color as his hair.
“Repeat that to my face, will you, Parker? Or are you too chicken?”
“Me? I didn’t say anything,” said the student, feigning innocence.
“Is it true that you’re a bitcoin millionaire yourself, Professor Kelly?”
another voice piped up. This one belonged to a raven-haired beauty in the
first row. Her question drew an openly vicious look from Miss Markham.
Tom smiled what he hoped was an enigmatic smile. “That’s for me to
know and for you to find out, Miss Jackson.”
“I’ve heard you’re not just a millionaire but an actual billionaire,” said
another student. “That you got in when the getting was good and that you
sold when Bitcoin peaked.”
The question set off a barrage of others.
“Is it true you owned one of the first Bitcoin mining computers?”
“Did you invent Bitcoin? Are you the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto?”
“Is it too late to get into Bitcoin, or can I still become filthy rich?”
Tom held out his hands, palms up, and laughed. “Easy now, dudes and
dudettes. For one thing, I’m not a Bitcoin millionaire. Not by a long shot. I
wish I were. Do you really think I’d bust my ass teaching a bunch of
animals like you guys if I had a couple of million in the bank? No way!”
This drew laughter from the stands, and a loud, “Those who can’t do,
teach!” from the kid with the Stalin comment.
“Look, I’m not here to teach you how to invest in cryptocurrencies, all
right? This is a class on economic trends, not investment 101.”
“So what’s the answer, professor?” asked the future revolutionary. “Is
Bitcoin a scam or not? A clever way to steal from the poor to feed the
rich?”
“Well, it is true that in Bitcoin’s heyday a lot of people got outrageously
rich in an outrageously short amount of time,” he conceded. “But once past
its prime that extreme volatility quickly waned and some of the early
adopters lost big time—if they held on to their cryptocurrency.” He slipped
from the desk and pointed to a slide up on the screen behind him. “As you
can see, Bitcoin, at its height, traded at a volume of over five billion dollars
a day—“
Just then, a loud clanging sound interrupted his words. The moment it
did, the noise from students packing up their kit—their laptops, their
iPhones and their iPads—drowned out his voice and he smiled. As much as
these kids were intrigued by the cryptocurrency phenomenon, nothing he
said could curb their eagerness to get out of this stuffy theater to go and
grab some grub. It was like trying to stop a tornado by releasing liquid
nitrogen at its center.
Soon the only ones left were Miss Markham, Miss Jackson and some of
the other young women his wife liked to call the Thomas Kelly groupies:

Bitcoin Heist by Nic Saint