Chapter Six: A Future Multiplied by 480,000

Song Han, panting heavily, rushed back to his rented apartment and immediately rummaged through his school bag for paper and pen, starting to calculate feverishly on the notebook.

He had savings of 2,800 yuan, plus the 1,000 yuan from his homeroom teacher and the living expenses his parents would transfer in a few days, he could scrape together more than 4,000 yuan. If he gritted his teeth, 5,000 yuan was possible!

At most, he would have to survive on steamed buns for a month.

But what could this 5,000 yuan bring?

Thirteen years, a 147-fold increase! 5,000 yuan turning into 750,000 yuan!

As he flipped through the flashes of memories in his mind, Song Han realized that there was actually such a way to make money in this world!

Looking at the results of his calculations, Song Han's hands and feet trembled with excitement.

This is the allure of finance!

Is there anything more profitable in this world than this?

Gah!!!!!

Song Han's excited expression suddenly froze as another memory fragment began to surface in his mind.

BTC, distributed computing, one cent, sixty thousand! US dollars!!

Scrutinizing the memories flashing through his mind, Song Han's jaw dropped in astonishment. Could money really be made this way?

Without a moment's delay, Song Han sprang into action, knowing that even a second's hesitation would be a grave disrespect to the potential wealth!

He immediately dashed towards the internet café.

Powering on the computer, bypassing the firewall, and setting up a VPN were done in one fluid motion. A semester's work at the internet café had transformed Song Han from a novice who only knew how to watch adult content into someone much more savvy.

However, after toiling for hours, no matter how he searched the internet, both domestically and internationally, there was no trace of the BTC he remembered!

Song Han looked as if he had seen a ghost.

Had it not been born yet, or was there a discrepancy between the information in his memory palace and reality?

Could he still invest in the Moutai technology he remembered?

What was real?

And what was illusory?

What exactly was distributed computing? Why did it sound so familiar?

Sitting in front of the computer, Song Han pondered deeply, but the more he tried to recall, the more his mind seemed to go blank.

A profit of 480,000 times!

Even a hundred percent profit could drive people to risk their lives, and now it was a profit of 480,000 times!!

After a moment, Song Han's bloodshot eyes gradually filled with determination.

He looked at the related web pages he had opened while searching for distributed computing, slowly perusing their contents, using his limited vocabulary and search results to read word by word.

When the content he read once again triggered his memories, combined with his understanding, a stumbling, fragmented, purely English phishing post appeared on this overseas open-source website:

"Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System."

According to the first netizen who browsed this post:

"This article reminds me of the pain of communicating with Japanese people in English!

If it weren't for the refreshing idea of peer-to-peer distributed computing, I would have immediately deleted this post with its incomprehensible and nauseating grammar!"

...

After leaving the internet café and returning home, Song Han knew that buying a computer had to be put on the agenda as soon as possible.

Strange, it seemed like he had forgotten something?

The next day at school, as soon as Song Han stepped into the classroom, a figure pounced on him.

"Song Han, prepare to die!"

"Mouse, what are you doing!"

Pinning Song Han down, Li Hao lamented with grief and indignation:

"Do you know how many dishes I washed yesterday? You said you would treat me, but you ran faster than I did!

I want to break up with you!"

Struggling to pull out the cash from his pocket, Song Han quickly shouted:

"One hundred yuan! Let me go!"

"This is not about money!"

"One hundred and fifty?"

Li Hao lamented with grief and indignation:

"You actually measure our friendship with money! Is our friendship only worth one hundred and fifty yuan?"

Pinned underneath, Song Han, feeling guilty, dared not argue:

"Then how much do you want?"

Li Hao shouted at the top of his lungs:

"At least two hundred! Otherwise, we're breaking up!!"

...

As spring turned to autumn, the year 2009 arrived as scheduled.

Since November 2008, Song Han had been tirelessly studying software engineering and related algorithmic knowledge, constantly cross-referencing with the memories in his mind.

With clear references and the extension of technological development, Song Han's learning could be said to have progressed by leaps and bounds.

However, it's hard to say whether this learning efficiency was due to the help of his memories or the stimulation of the 480,000-fold BTC profit.

Even the netizens who frequently communicated with him on the internet, and the community partners on the open-source website where he first published the BTC whitepaper, regarded him as a scholar or professor in the field of artificial intelligence and software algorithms.

Compared to the progress in software and algorithms, Song Han's academic performance in reality inevitably suffered.

Originally ranked first in his class and fifth in his grade, Song Han's academic performance began to steadily decline. Eventually, after frequent consultations with his teachers, he allocated some of his energy to focus on his studies, stabilizing his rank within the top twenty of his class. Although still considered above average within his class, he had essentially become just another face in the crowd.

Meanwhile, the bait posts he had scattered on foreign open-source forums remained unnoticed. Two months passed, and the complete absence of any trace of BTC left Song Han unable to sit still. He was baffled by the situation—why did reality not align with the memories in his mind? Could he still trust those memories?

Driven by the allure of a potential 480,000-fold profit, Song Han gritted his teeth and spent over a month learning, communicating with online communities, and referencing various materials. From scratch, he designed and developed a reward software based on a distributed computing algorithm. At his simple desk, Song Han nibbled on his fingers while continuously debugging the program. When the software finally passed the test on his computer, his furrowed brow remained tense. A strange feeling lingered in his heart, suggesting that the software's utility extended beyond just serving as a digital currency.

Reopening the program's source code and examining its algorithmic logic, Song Han, almost as if possessed, decided to incorporate a piece of information he had retrieved from his memory palace for the first time—a logical function based on the LaMDA neural network architecture. However, while adding it was satisfying, the barrage of bug errors during the test runs made him feel like jumping into a crematorium. By the time the software could run smoothly and began automatically calculating residual points, another month had slipped by.

After Song Han saw that the software he had written finally passed the tests, he immediately began extensive modifications and encapsulation. He embedded the neural network with distributed computing, achieving not only the same results but also enabling dynamic protection for personal wallets. By the time the large-scale GPU mining farms from his memories started to emerge, this client and wallet would become virtually unbreakable. To outsiders, its operation would be a true black box.

After releasing the software on open-source platforms and within the community, Song Han started mining furiously on his own computer. As for the 480,000-fold future he had envisioned, he could only leave it to fate.