God of Money

Chapter 58:

Jang Gwanchul and Hong Soobum chatted at their new office. Hong Soobum quit his job at Nexter a few weeks prior.

“When is he coming back?”

“He said he’ll be here soon, so we just need to be patient.”

“What did he say?”

“The last time I heard, he said he was about to leave New York.” Jang Gwangchul sighed. “The financial world is dying, yet he is traveling? He is our CEO, so he should act like one.”

“Well, he bought a significant portion of the company from you, so I assume he is really serious about this company.”

“I wondered about that. Where did he get the money? What was he doing in New York in the middle of the global financial crisis?”

Jang Gwangchul sighed again. Hong Soobum was interested in the answer too. Woosung had been in America for the past four months. US stock market went through hell during that time and the world was in an uproar.

“I am curious too. He also asked me to find a factory that could generate and use a lot of electricity.”

“I heard too. I assume he plans to manufacture the smartphones there…But didn’t he say we should use OEM for the actual production? I don’t understand him at all.” As Jang Gwangchul continued, he started to get even more frustrated. “And the company he created in Silicone Valley, that cost a lot of money. Why did he do that?”

Hong Soobum murmured.

“I have to admit that Jonathan Logan is a true expert at hardware development. I don’t know much about it but when I looked at the PoC he sent, it looked great.”

“Well, he better be damn good. Do you know how much I’m paying him?”

Woosung promised an excellent salary and scouted Jonathan. The monthly wage was currently being paid by Jang Gwangchul. He asked Hong Soobum.

“How about that girl Amelia?”

“She is a genius. I realize they cost a lot of money, but they are definitely worth it. I don’t know how our CEO found and hired these great people.”

“I am curious too…”

Today was November 1st.

It was the 5th month since Woosung left to go to America.

In the plane to San Francisco, Woosung read the paper on Bitcoin.

“1. Introduction

Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust-based model. Non-reversible transactions are not really possible since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions. There is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non-reversible services.

The site address is ‘http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf'”

In his previous life, he had to read the translated version of this report, but that was not necessary anymore. Woosung could understand English well now.

“2. Transactions

…

The only way to confirm the absence of a transaction is to be aware of all transactions. In the mint-based model, the mint was aware of all transactions and decided which arrived first.

…”

Woosung already knew how Bitcoins transaction worked, but reading it again was a good refresher. It was believed that the more Bitcoins were mined, the slower it was because of transactions.

The confirmation of every transaction.

Mining implied that transaction has occurred. It was a transaction in a sense that when coin A was mined, it was sent to the miner B. The problem was that it took time to confirm the legitimacy of every transaction.

…

…

“6. Incentive

By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned by the creator of the block.”

Woosung read on with interest.

The act of mining equaled calculation.

Participants who contributed to this calculation was rewarded with Bitcoin. Woosung also read the core code for “Block Chain” towards the end of this section.

"11. Calculations

The race between the honest chain and an attacker chain can be characterized as a Binomial Random Walk. The success event is the honest chain being extended by one block, increasing its lead by +1, and the failure event is the attacker’s chain being extended by one block, reducing the gap by -1.

The probability of an attacker catching up from a given deficit is analogous to a Gambler’s Ruin problem. Suppose a gambler with unlimited credit starts at a deficit and plays potentially an infinite number of trials to try to reach breakeven. We can calculate the probability he ever reaches breakeven, or that an attacker ever catches up with the honest chain, as follows.”

Satoshi Nakamoto also included detailed codes. Woosung knew these but re-examined them anyway.

Woosung felt the need to know everything about Bitcoin because it was the reason why he was murdered and re-born. If there was no such a thing as Bitcoin, Choi Gichul wouldn’t have created a trading company. They would’ve never met, and Woosung wouldn’t have been murdered. It also meant that Woosung would’ve never made this much money.

Bitcoin was the end of his life, but it also was a new beginning for him.

Woosung finally read the last section.

“12. Conclusion

We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust. We started with the usual framework of coins made from digital signatures, which provides strong control of ownership, but is incomplete without a way to prevent double-spending. To solve this, we proposed a peer-to-peer network using proof-of-work to record a public history of transactions that quickly becomes computationally impractical for an attacker to change if honest nodes control a majority of CPU power.”

Online P2P transaction.

With the peer-to-peer networking, it eliminated any bank fees and therefore distributed the power to everyone else. It was an incredible system. Woosung wondered how Satoshi Nakamoto came up with the idea.

Even in 2018, Satoshi Nakamoto was still a mystery. The reason behind the invention of Bitcoin was never revealed. Woosung hoped that he would get a chance to meet him someday.

It was a 6-hour flight, but Woosung found it easy because he took the first class. As soon as he arrived, he took the cab to the office downtown.

In the office Jonathan Logan and other developers were present, working as hard as they can.

It was November.

The Android operating system was already released in September. In Korea, Woosung’s people were focusing on the development of Coconut app. Jonathan Logan saw Woosung and approached him.

“Aaron, you’re here.”

“Long time no see. It has already been 2 months.”

“I thought you forgot about us!” Jonathan joked.

“How could I? You guys are working on an amazing product that will beat iPhone.”

Jonathan grabbed his chest and replied. “Wow, so much pressure! I better work harder.”

“No worries. I know you are already doing your best.”

When in New York, Woosung received regular reports from Jonathan, but he hadn’t had the chance to examine them carefully.

“I found a factory you asked for. It’s situated about an hour from here. It was easy to find, and the price dropped because of the financial crisis. Should we go now?”

“Can I talk to Amelia for a second before we leave?”

Woosung looked around. He saw her, but she was so focused on the screen that she didn’t notice him approaching her.

cd ~/bitcoin/

./autogen.sh

/user/local/include/boost/multiprecision/detail/functions/constants.hpp:246:47: error: initializer

For thread-local variable must be a constant expression

In file included from src/utility/random.cpp:28:

Error messages appeared on the screen. Amelia was asked to build a Bitcoin development source, but it seemed like she was having a hard time. She was frowning.

“Did you install Ubuntu (open-source Linux distribution) 8.04LTS version? Or did you end up with the most recent version 8.10?”

Woosung asked but there was no answer. It seemed like Amelia was in her own little world. Woosung put his hand on her shoulder.

“Amelia.”

“Oh, Aaron! Hi!” Amelia finally turned around.

“You installed the latest version, didn’t you? It’s not working because of that. Check it.”

Amelia checked Ubuntu version. As Woosung suggested, it was the 8.10. Amelia’s eyes widened.

“You’re right! How did you know?”

“I had a look at it on my way here. Have you looked at the report and the codes yet?”

Amelia nodded.

“Do you think you can optimize it to GPU?”

The mining of Bitcoin started with CPU and later improved to GPU. In Woosung’s previous life, ASIC was being used by 2018. GPU was better and faster than CPU, while ASIC was better than the other two. Woosung asked Amelia to convert the program to use GPU.

Amelia nodded with an empathetic expression.

“I think so.”

“Great. I need to go check out the factory, but I’ll be back to talk to you later.”