Author: Samantha Mullett
Excerpt from (WIP) Crypto Crime Novel “Prime Interest”
Category: Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense
GREENWICH VILLAGE
Stevie craned her neck towards the window, spotting Conor and his two friends emerging from the subway, with a special type of swagger that follows people who spend their daylight hours behind a screen. Stevie shouted at her driver while opening the car door, “Ooh, Alfie, this is good!” Stevie glides across Washington Square North, slinging her Minkoff tote across her shoulder and waving Conor’s direction.
Conor looks up, a half-second delay before he recognizes her. “Stevie,” He pauses, “Hi. I, uhm, are you here for the crypto lecture?”
“Oh she has arriiiived,” Stevie waved her arms above her head, “Wouldn’t miss this money talk for anything.”
“Even the girls’ wellness night at Soho House?”
“This is a different kind of wellness, Con Con.”
Conor broke a smile. “Do you remember Ollie and Andrew from last night? My 2-bit idiots?”
Stevie smirked, “I wasn’t that drunk, okay. And yes, of course.” She turned to face Ollie, his endearing gap tooth welcoming her in. His curls bounced as he raised his arms to give her a wrap-around hug, “Stevie, darling, lovely to see you again.” His shoulder hair tickled her ear.
Andrew reached out a hairless arm in contrast, giving her a curt nod and clammy hand, “Miss Stevie.” His rimless glasses looked like they were bought at a drug store as an afterthought to a pack of sour gummies and Diet Coke. Stevie guessed he carried a briefcase in college.
Conor waved them on, “let’s go inside, I think this thing is going to be packed. It’s a small space, and it’s Dr. Waterhouse.” Conor led them down a hallway, leading to the small amphitheater. Stevie adjusted her bracelet and wondered why it was only men so far. Ollie turned to her, “Do you know Dr. Waterhouse?”
“Uhm, I know Dr. Phil. Who’s Waterhouse?”
Ollie shook back his hair, “Ugh, girl. Steven Waterhouse, so fit - an absolute DILF. He’s this South African expert on privacy and censorship, has a big bag of degrees and patents in engineering and distribution networks.” The to put nametags on before entering. Andrew added, “And white hat hacker-enthusiast. White hat meaning he basically hacks for good. He breaks into things like Sony or PG&E for fun, just to tell them about their vulnerabilities.”
Conor turned to comment, “Badass.”
Stevie tried not to laugh.
Ollie continued, “Right. He’s is also a fellow Cambridge gent. I took a class from him on Distributed Idenities before and he blew my mind. His body is also drippy, hippy, dippy hot. Like for a 50-something year old man, I’d do unspeakable things to—” Andrew interrupted, “my lanta.”
The small amphitheater opened up to a mass of people, crowded so tight that you could practically lift up your legs and be carried to the other side of the room. Chatter bounced off the brick walls and echoed up to the skylight 20-feet above, creating one big pit of discussion, growing louder in the waning daylight. The front stage sat empty, a blank chalkboard, projector and a few chairs chalkboard, projector, and a few empty chairs posing for no one, yet.
Stevie rubbed her neck. No host, no direction, no space to breathe —pandemonium. This bustled harder than anything she had witnessed at Columbia. It wasn’t just the sheer number of people packed into the 200-person room but the energy brimming from every discussion.
Stevie fanned herself. Conor steered her shoulders left, “this way. You can lead the charge, there’s an open spot over there,” he pointed to a high top table off to the side, his hand close to her face.
The crowd magically parted to let her through, quieting and doing double-takes as she walked past. Conor, Ollie, and Andrew glanced at each other, following her trail. Stevie thought she spotted a guy open-mouthed, she smiled. As they reached the table the room became mute. She began to whisper to Conor, “am I really that big of a deal?” when she turned to see that the chairs onstage were now occupied.
--
An Indian girl with a neck badge sashayed onto the stage with a microphone.
“Hiii everyone,” she breathed too closely. “Thanks for coming to the sixth debate night in our Cryptocurrency Series. Tonight we have three incredible experts from the field speaking on various topics. First up - please welcome, Dr. Waterhouse.”
A man rose up slowly from one of the chairs, in jeans too tight for someone over 40 but with a walk too confident for a man under 30. An ivy vine tattoo spiraled down his arm reaching three rings he wore on his left hand. The vine rippeled over his bicep as he turned to scribble on the chalkboard, “The yardstick measures the distance...but what measures the yardstick?”
He turned on his heel to the crowd, “Can anyone answer this?”
A student in the first row blurted out too quick, “Distance.” He swallowed, “The yard is measured by distance itself...sir.”
Warehouse smiled, “Good. Now...another for you: how do we measure money?” He surveyed the crowd. The buzz from before evaporated leaving a tundra of frozen faces.
Waterhouse answered himself, “By goods. We desire money because we desire what it can get us. Efforts are made to obtain money not for its own sake, but for the goods it can purchase.” He walked to the other side of the stage now.
“The value of money is purchasing power. But we give it that, do we not?” The crowd sat silent, some lost, some hanging on to the coattails of his words.
“Let’s take a step back.” He projected a slide onto the adjacent wall.
“We struggle to define money, but let’s look at these three definitions.”
“The real significance of money is that it is a claim which can be used by its owner to buy anything.” – A.C.L.Day
“Anything that is, commonly used and generally accepted as a medium of exchange or as a standard of value”. – Raymond P. Kent
“Thing which possess general acceptability”. – Seligman
“What are some key words here?”
Hands flicker up above the crowd. Someone yells out, “Claim,”
Another shouts, “commonly used,”
Finally, “General acceptaility.”
Waterhouse pointed to the crowd, “Exactly.”
“It’s a commonly used, generally accepted claim. We all agree that a piece of paper with a 5 and a dead guy on it on it represents $5 US dollars. And that I can exchange that piece of paper for something worth that amount.”
“Money is created by a kind of a perpetual interaction between real, tangible things, our desire for them, and our abstract faith in what has value.” He began pointing to various parts of the audience, imitating Oprah, “You want a car and you want a car and you want a car,” he relaxed, “Or a boat. Or a house... Or a case of Cubans.” He shrugged his shoulders, “Who cares. What’s important here is that we all desire different things and that creates demand.”
“Let’s take a real life example. This morning I woke up and felt like crap. I craved a wheat grass shot so I went to a cafe in the Lower East Side that sells it for $5. I whip out my wallet and pay $5 with my credit card, which means the $5 I pay down will switch hands a few times between the payment processor, the credit card company and my bank - but I don’t really give a damn about how all that works out over time because I get my shot right then and there. That delicious earthy liquid rolling down my throat was worth $5 USD to me.”
Ollie whispered, “I’d like his earthy liquid to roll down my—”
Waterhouse continued, “Now - let’s say I’m in Tokyo and I wake up feeling the same way. Jet lag is a bitch. Airplane food is basically a block of salt. I go to a cafe there and low and behold, they also sell wheat grass shots. It’s 550 yen, also equal to about $5 USD. I don’t think twice about it. I exchange my $5 USD for 550 yen, which a little bit of time and effort to switch around, but I eventually hand over the yen to a very polite Japanese cashier who delivers my shot and badda bing badda boom, earthy liquid rolling down my throat again....”
Ollie let out a small squeal.
“So you see, money is valuable because we want it, but we want it only because it can get us a desired product or service.”
An Scottish guy in the front corner piped up, “Money makes the world go round, eh.”
Giggles.
Waterhouse gently challenged him, “or perhaps, the world decides what money will move. Money doesn’t spin us but we spin money. We choose what has purchasing power, use it to buy things, and then go on our merry way,” he paused, “but that demand, that collective decision to rely on something for these exchanges is determined by us.”
“So I want to pose one question to you all” - he flicked off the projector, leaving only the skylight to naturally cast shadows amongst the stage and crowd alike - “what happens when we decide to give something else purchasing power? Something besides the US dollar?”
“Today, we live in a digital world. The Internet changed it all. We can communicate instantaneously. We can book a flight to Mumbai from the palm of our hands while in a car that we ordered moments ago, to take us to our next destination. But why can’t we move that quickly with money? Why is it that we still have to rely on banks, transfers, delays, and fees if we want to spend money overseas or send money to a loved one in a different country? Why are we still jumping through laborious hoops in the financial sector when everything else has streamlined for the digital age?”
Stevie found herself crouched forward now. She remembered how annoying it was to hold a few rooms in the Loire Valley for Annie’s birthday last year, or how long it took just for her credit card to go through for a round of drinks in Cannes. She couldn’t even tip the bartender so she sent him kind thoughts instead.
Waterhouse continued further, flicking the projector back on with a slew of images from 2008. “A few years ago you may have remembered the Great Recession. Some banks and financial folks were irresponsible. They wanted to make money and did so at the expense of the American people.”
Stevie shifted in her seat.
“What happened? Most of these guys got a little slap on the wrist and got bailed out. The financial system as we know it continued to rumble on, but someone, or some group of people, saw that our system was actually broken and sought to create an alternative. Some other type of money that we could use that couldn’t be manipulated by a central authority who had all the power behind closed doors. Instead of a small wizard behind a curtain deciding when to create more US dollars or raise interest rates or pull different levers to steer the economy,” Waterhouse paused to scan the audience, “this alternative system removed the need for a central person altogether.”
He clicked the projector on to reveal a big B-coin on screen. “This was Bitcoin.”
Conor’s neck turteled forward. Andrew didn’t blink. “Bitcoin is type of money, a currency, that is not controlled by a centralized authority. It functions on math, not people, so you don’t need to trust an institution in order to use it. It operates on set rules that cannot be changed because they are coded into the system. There is no pencil and paper or debits and credits. There is no copy and paste in a spreadsheet. This type of system is built using blockchain.”
A hand shot up from an overweight guy in his 30s, “Excuse me. How can a currency be real if it’s not tangible? Can’t hold it in your hand?”
“Of course being digital means you can’t hold it in your hand like you could a $5 bill, but who today carries around $5 bills?” Waterhouse pointed to the Sottish guy jokingly, “Him, perhaps.”
He continued, “Cash, coins, and even plastic as we know it are going out of fashion. We’re moving, buying, communicating quicker than ever so the way we transact has to keep up as well.”
“Now let’s think of money in terms of cars for a second. People scoffed at the first cars ever invented. They were high on their horses saying, ‘those will never work! We only have trails and dirt roads for wagons. Those are noisy and dangerous.’ But what happened next? We paved roads for cars. We created infrastructure with street lights and signs that allowed us to move faster with this new technology. Cars evolved with us and we evolved with cars because the need was there. The technology was there.”
“Now let’s turn to present day. We may still be creating the infrastructure for a currency like Bitcoin to thrive, figuring out the rules and regulations that will act as guiderails for us, ensuring that we can transact with it safely—but the need for something like Bitcoin is there. The technology is there. It’s a type of money that can move at our speed.”
“Now before I leave you today I want you to think about this. The poet Auden once said that ‘Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table’. So instead of doing the same thing in the same system with the same people controlling it” he looked around, “let’s challenge this and embrace the new, the different…let us not be afraid of something like Bitcoin, but the ones that want to control it.” He bowed to the crowd with his hands in a prayer, “Thank you.”
As applause detonated over the crowd. Stevie looked at Conor, an impenetrable density between them, “Teach me everything you know.”