CHAPTER 139: A CONVERSATION WITH RÜMEYSA

"Mom, do you have time to talk today?" Fatih asked the moment he arrived home from school, after the initial pleasantries.

"Yes, but what is it about?" Rümeysa asked. She was free most evenings unless something urgent happened, but she knew Fatih’s behavior. The moment he asked about her availability, it was likely a matter requiring a long discussion, not one of their usual short evening conversations.

"It’s about Bitcoin and the website company," Fatih said directly.

"Sure, how about after dinner?" Rümeysa suggested, knowing she needed to refresh her memory and prepare the data regarding those two topics so the conversation could go as smoothly as possible.

"Fine for me, since I need to double-check a few things as well," Fatih said before bidding her farewell and rushing to his room to finish his preparations.

..........

That evening, after dinner and cleanup were completed, Rümeysa and Fatih stayed in the dining room, ready to start. Before they could begin, his grandma brought them glasses of mango juice before she retreated to resume her schedule of watching Turkish TV series.

"I’m all ears now," Rümeysa said, opening the conversation. She was fully focused; although it was a talk with her son, in this meeting, it was between her and the company’s owner.

"Last time I checked, the price of Bitcoin had already risen to $637.54. I think it’s time we start selling a small portion of what we have," Fatih said, getting straight to the point.

Rümeysa had been watching Bitcoin’s price swings anxiously ever since Fatih had come clean about his holdings. She had often tried to convince him to cash out, worried he would lose everything, but he always refused. So, hearing him finally suggest selling, she was curious. "How much are you planning to sell?"

"About five thousand of them by the end of the year," Fatih answered calmly, making it obvious he had already calculated the amount.

"Only five thousand?" she asked, wondering where this arbitrary number came from.

"That is the maximum we can sell without crashing the small market Bitcoin currently has. If we brute-force it, it’s no different than killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Who’s to say that prices won’t rise higher in the future? Then we’ll regret cashing out. Plus, it’s literally free money if we consider how much I purchased all of them for," Fatih explained, despite knowing she most likely already knew all of it.

Instead of answering, a smile bloomed on Rümeysa’s face. She was happy her son had considered all those variables and come up with a number that would allow him to profit while keeping the market stable. She was getting used to Fatih’s uncanny predictions in F1, but the same couldn’t be said for Bitcoin. He had purchased hundreds of thousands of them when they were worthless, waiting for the tokens to turn to gold. It sometimes made her wonder if he was wasting his talent in finance, but she always dismissed the thought. He was already making money doing what he loved, and that was enough for her. There was no benefit in being a billionaire if he was unhappy.

"Do you have a use for the money from cashing out, or do you just plan to have it stay in the bank account for expenses and investments?" she asked, curious if his two topics were linked.

"Yes, I do," Fatih said, walking to the cupboard and pulling out an envelope. He handed it to his mother. "I need the money to improve the news company."

"I’m pretty sure the company is doing very well and is on its way to profitability, so I’m curious what will improve it even further," Rümeysa said as she took the envelope and opened it, removing the nearly fifty pages of documents inside and raising an eyebrow.

"We’re not planning on keeping the company forever, are we? We need to improve it as much as possible so that when a buyer comes, we get the best price," Fatih said as he sat back down, facing his mother, who was now looking at him with surprise.

"What? You are thinking of selling the company?" she asked, dropping the documents on the table.

"Not now, but in the future, when a good offer comes. After all, me being the owner is bound to get out one way or another in a few years, and it would be a conflict of interest to have the most famous F1 news site owned by me while I’m competing in the same sport. People will wonder if I include bias or favoritism," Fatih said. In his mind, he planned to fatten up the company so that Liberty Media, which would buy the Formula 1 group in 2017 and usher in a radical digital transformation, would see it as a no-brainer acquisition to accelerate its plans.

"Good," she said. Though not fully satisfied, the idea that her son was already thinking about the company’s future was enough for her. She finally looked down at the document she had dropped on the table. In massive bold letters, it read: [AUDIENCE GROWTH AND CONSOLIDATION PLAN].

"Give me a summary of it before I go through it in detail tomorrow," Rümeysa said, knowing that if she started reading it now, she wouldn’t get a moment of rest.

"My idea is to launch a docuseries similar to the one I’m running on my personal channel, but instead of focusing on a single driver, we focus on a few of them in a category throughout the season. Then we edit it into a fun, informative docutainment series to be released after the season ends. We will follow the selected drivers, have interviews with them, their parents, team members, and experts. After the season ends, we stitch together the interesting stories in an episodic format.

"Ultimately, I want to have a similar series starting from karting and going all the way to F1. Starting small, I think we should begin with karting for the next few seasons, then move to F4, then European F3 and GP3, then GP2 by 2019 at the latest, and finally F1. This timeline should allow us to have a deep repository of drivers who gain fame through our series. As their fans come wanting to check their history, they’ll find a well-organized collection, increasing its value and bringing us new users over the years. Since this sort of sports documentary has never been done in motorsport, we will have the first-mover advantage. With the promise of exposure and potential sponsors, we shouldn’t have difficulty getting drivers to participate. We can also simultaneously make docuseries focused on certain drivers if they are doing something historic.

"For the starting season, I have a few drivers we can focus on for both the joint and individual docuseries, so please go through them. As for where the money will be spent, I’m sure you can guess: hiring the entire documentary team, buying equipment, travel, accommodations, licensing fees for race footage, and everything else for just the first season alone."

When he was done with his summary, he stopped rambling and looked at his mother, who had been listening silently without interruption. His plan was basically a mixture of Drive to Survive and Formula 1’s Inside Story, taking what made both of them good to create a better product.

After a very long moment of silence as she digested what she had just heard, she finally spoke. "The idea seems very plausible, but I need to go through it in detail and do additional research before I approve it. As for the Bitcoin matter, we can start selling them tomorrow. It looks like we will be selling a maximum of a hundred bitcoin per day to reach our goal by the end of the year." Although she sounded calm, her mind was nowhere near it.

"Understood," Fatih said before standing and walking back to his room, planning to watch a few videos before going to sleep.

As Fatih left, Rümeysa followed him with her eyes, finding herself once again asking, "Is it really fine for a ten-year-old to have to think about all of these things?" She imagined Fatih shouldering too much when he should be enjoying his childhood, but he had genuinely looked like he was having fun while giving his summary. It reminded her that maybe her idea of fun was different from his. She returned her focus to the document, looked at it for a moment, and added, "Looks like there is no sleep for me today," before she opened it and started going through it.

She knew if she didn’t read it, she wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Her curiosity would keep her awake, wondering how detailed Fatih had gone in the documents, so if she was going to stay up all night, she might as well do it while satiating her curiosity.

From the first page, she found herself fully absorbed in the contents of the plan. A smile blossomed on her face as she moved to the second page, then the next, and the next. One after another, she absorbed the information her son had prepared for his company to produce and for her to supervise.