Chapter 137: <Power>

After returning home, Woosung turned on his computer and went through his accounts as usual.

Stocks.

Bonds.

Dividends.

Salary.

He had over a billion dollars.

An unbelievable amount of money.

And this was only one part of his wealth.

Bitcoins.

Other future cryptocurrencies.

Without a doubt, he would be one of the richest men in the world.

Woosung remembered Seo Eunsol’s words. He murmured, “It is true I now live in a different world than them…”

He knew this, but he wanted to meet with his old friends and acted like everything was the way it used to be.

“Well, I have to admit, she is very smart. Confident too. That must be why she works at Daeyang’s strategic information department.”

Only those graduating from the best universities had the chance to work in that department.

She was definitely different.

“It sounded like she dealt with a lot of information. If I get a chance, I should…”

He could scout her to KND.

After thinking for a few minutes, Woosung searched on the internet.

“Grand Open 7.21”

July 21st.

It was the day Mt Gox opened. Mt Gox was a company involved in bitcoin exchange. Eventually, it will handle over 70% of all bitcoin transactions in the world.

Bitcoin will explode in December of 2017.

“I will open Bitmain on July 1st. I will deposit all my bitcoins into it and start rotation transactions to gain people’s interest. I will then approach Choi Gichul and get him to invest at the peak.”

After organizing his thoughts out loud, Woosung checked his emails.

China.

America.

He had several emails from Alex and Wu Jirin. He first checked the ones from Wu Jirin.

“Mining system prototype completed.”

“Tentative name: Whale Miner S1.”

“ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) type.”

“Specification.”

“Hash Rate: 100,000 Mhash/s”

This meant 100,000 calculations could be done every second to earn bitcoin. The higher the hash rate was, the faster the bitcoins could be mined.

“Wow…that’s 10 times faster than the server I’m using now. One of it could replace 20 GPU.”

Every server had 2 GPU cards.

“I guess it makes sense. In the future, there will be systems thousand times faster than this.” Woosung grinned. “Haha, this is amazing!”

Woosung was certain, he had the best system in the world at the moment. No other miners could compare to him at this point.

Woosung checked Alex’s emails next.

“DNK shares sold: 650 million dollars.”

“If I combine the money from Coconut IPO, it should be more than enough. Just you wait, Choi Gichul.”

Woosung’s eyes looked crazy. From many other sources such as stocks, algorithm trading, and options, he was making unbelievable amount of money every second. He also owned buildings where he received rents.

Money made more money.

A convenient store in Zhongguancun city center.

A man purchased a bag of chips and a can of drink.

Beep.

Beep.

The man took out his phone and pay with the app LetPay.

“Please enter the business number.”

After a few seconds, the number was filled automatically. The man checked the number and pressed the confirmation button.

“Please enter the password.”

When he entered the 6-digit number, it beeped once again.

“Transaction completed.”

The whole process took about the same time as if he used a credit card.

Liu He said to Mahwacin as he watched the transaction.

“It’s that easy, eh? He made it convenient and also lowered the fee.”

“The savings in the fee is rewarded to the customer in the form of Let Coin, which can be used to buy anything at Let Mall, or exchange for cash at Bitmain store.”

“How is the test going in Zhongguancun?”

“Every store has given an A grade for it. The customers are also loving it. Even the smallest stores are using LetPay.”

“It’s amazing.”

“The system is also very stable and secure. We tried to hack it a few times, but we failed every time.”

“Hmm.”

“As you know, the only one we failed to hack so far was Google. Kang Woosung’s system could be even better than that.”

“So Google decided to withdraw from China completely?”

“Yes, it refused to accept our censorship rule.”

“…But LetPay accepted it.”

“That’s correct.”

“…And Kang Woosung is also currently profiting from Coconut Pay in Korea… On top of that, his Blue S2 is being sold fast too. He is doing very well.”

“He also sent us an additional gift of a million dollars.”

Liu He nodded, but he looked worried. Mahwacin noticed and tried to assure him.

“We need to use him as a source of money until we don’t need him anymore. We can drop him then, so you don’t need to worry.”

“Drop him? I think we took too much from him to do that. Besides, how can we know for sure that he is helping just us?”

“We just need to keep going until we take over the government.”

Liu He shook his head in frustration.

“This is China, not North Korea. We aren’t built on dictatorship. We believe in communism. You need to remember that or else, there is no future for China.”

Mahwacin looked confused.

‘Isn’t that pretty much the same thing?’

Lie He saw Mahwacin’s expression and became cold.

‘It’s time to let him go.’

Their goals weren’t the same anymore.

Tencent’s headquarter.

CEO Ma Huateng was unhappy with the report his assistant gave him.

“We got an order to cooperate with LetPay?”

“Yes, sir. The security department has approved it.”

“We spent so much money on bribing them to be on our side, yet this is what happens!?”

“The rumor is that Kang Woosung has spent over 10 million dollars in bribery.”

Ma Huateng bit his lips and asked, “And how much do we give them?”

“We don’t give a regular payment, but we gave a lump sum of 50,000 dollars several times.”

Ma Huateng swallowed. It couldn’t compare to what Kang Woosung gave to the officials.

“Start paying them 100,000 dollars every month. Make sure to spread it to as many important figures as possible.”

“But…” The assistant hesitated before continuing. “So far, our sales for WhoChat is minimal, and we are spending so much money on marketing. The previous version of messenger is also not performing as expected. It is getting worrisome. It isn’t hard to increase the bribe, but I think you know how it looks if we ever decrease it.”

Decreasing bribe.

That could mean the end of the relationship. Ma Huateng couldn’t answer right away.

“Alright. I will meet with them in person first.”

There was now only one option for him.

Patriotism.

He had to convince them about the importance of Chinese government supporting Chinese companies.