CHAPTER 68: DAILY LIFE

[FINAL CALCULATION]

Base Weekend Earnings: 117 SP

TOTAL SP GAINED: +117 SP

[Current System Points: 1073 → 1190 SP

]

Closing the system window, his eyes returned to the desktop screen that displayed his spreadsheet with details about all of his Bitcoin accounts and holdings.

With rumors spreading about him being someone who keeps his promises and pays out the agreed amount, more and more people with large amounts of Bitcoin reached out to him to sell. This allowed him to reach his goal in just a month, resulting in him ending any additional purchases of Bitcoin.

Looking at the total Bitcoin amount at the bottom of the spreadsheet, it showed that there were 290,243 Bitcoins in one thousand different wallets.

That was more than one percent of the total lifetime Bitcoin that will ever be mined, which was also a limit he had set for himself. He didn’t want to risk changing the future of Bitcoin too drastically, something he was determined to avoid. However, even with the current amount he held, he had already influenced Bitcoin’s trajectory. His actions had led to more people trying to mine Bitcoin in hopes of gathering enough to cash out, which, thankfully, was a positive change.

"So, how long do you plan to hold onto them?" Apollo, someone who had seen the amount being accumulated, asked, curious if he was going to hold onto it until it reached its highest valuation or not.

"I won’t be able to fully cash it out if I wait until it reaches it’s highest value because the market size won’t be large enough to absorb the saleoff without crushing. So, I’ll be cashing out at every peak of each year once it starts being traded, to accumulate cash for future investments or use it as my personal fund. But I’ll leave at least fifty thousand of them for future holding, in case the value continues rising beyond what I remember about it."

As he answered, he navigated to OmniPay and finally found an unread notification.

"Looks like we finally have some good news," Fatih said, reading the notification with a smile on his face.

It was a notification informing him that his conversion had gone through and all of the E-gold he had wanted to exchange had been successfully processed. The money was now deposited in his PayPal account.

At this moment, it was still possible to open a PayPal account without needing a bank account for withdrawals or phone number verification.

So, the moment he created an account and it was verified, he immediately started withdrawing and exchanging his E-gold. He also began the process of changing his subscriber payments to PayPal, which led to an increase in the number of subscribers because it was easier for them to join through PayPal rather than E-gold. Following that, he started phasing out E-gold payments, not wanting to risk the platform crashing and his money being locked up. This gave him peace of mind, knowing the money was on a platform that he knew would still exist in later years.

Even with the expenditure of buying two hundred and ninety thousand Bitcoins, he still had twelve thousand dollars, which had now been sent to his PayPal account following the exchange.

The biggest surprise to him was how fast his forum was growing every day. Thanks to the high-quality and technical articles he was writing and posting daily, a fanbase of people coming to read new articles was slowly forming. This created a following for his username, leading to an increase in followers on his two social media accounts.

It had been just over a month since he launched the forum, but it had already reached a point where it was starting to overwhelm him. He had to run the forum, moderate it to ensure it didn’t lose its reputation due to bad comments, and deal with various problems, all while trying to keep it hidden from his mother. This left him with a very short window to do all the work if he wanted to continue his daily exercises, drive his used kart, play with his friends, or attend the academy on practice days. It was becoming clear that he needed help, or the forum would deteriorate.

"But first, let’s buy the domain before someone else cybersquats," he said, immediately starting the process now that he had a PayPal account with cash in it.

........

"Smile for me," chack! "Good, shift your head slightly to the left. Yes, just like that." Chack!

Fatih was currently having his biometric photo taken for the paperwork required for the school year that would be starting in September after the final race.

"Okay, we’re done here. Please wait for the picture to be ready," the photographer said, letting the camera strap fall to his chest.

"Thanks," Rümeysa said as she waved for Fatih to come to her. She handed him a candy to eat while they waited.

"Do you want a camera like that?" she asked, lifting him onto her lap and pointing at one of the cameras in the photo studio.

"Yes," Fatih said, nodding with a smile.

"Remember the promise, you have to win to get it, so try your best," Rümeysa said with a teasing smile.

"But you told me I didn’t have to worry about the camera and that you’d buy it for me even if we withdrew from the competition," Fatih replied, surprised that his mother seemed to be going back on her words.

"No, no, no, I’m not going back on my words. I said, ’If it’s because you’re worried about not winning and me not buying you the camera I promised, you don’t have to worry about that. I will buy it for you no matter what.’ But we didn’t clarify when I would do that. However, if you win the championship as per the initial agreement, I’ll use the championship money to buy it, which would be even faster. Make sure your promises cover everything, or else they can be used against you," she said with a teasing smile, enjoying the look of semi-betrayal on Fatih’s face. She added shortly after, "So, make sure you do your best and win the final race and the championship, okay?"

"Yes, I will win it no matter what," Fatih said with a smile, his expression already returning to normal as he finally understood what she was trying to do.

Although he had enough money to buy the camera and other equipment himself, he would have to explain where everything came from, which would be a very difficult task. His mother would find it hard to suspend her disbelief if she were to see the articles her son was writing in a language she had never seen him speak.

Another reason was that, due to the continual increase in the number of new readers, he had recently posted a recruitment notice on his forum to hire moderators. Not stopping there, he was already looking for a professional developer to start building his website. He wanted to shift it from a forum space to its own independent website, which was going to cost an arm and a leg if it included all the features he had in mind.

"Good," Rümeysa said as she started playing with his hair.

.......

"Come on, man, this is excessive," Fatih complained as he struggled to move while being upside down in a kart.

"You need to keep in mind that you have no control over what I’m doing, only over what you can do. So there are really no limitations on what I can do," Apollo said as he teleported with his kart next to Fatih.

"This is a black-flag level offense. What benefit does the one doing it even have in a race?" Fatih asked as he got up, thanks to Apollo removing his kart and healing his wounds.

"What’s to stop a driver who has nothing to lose from taking out someone like you, who has everything to gain by winning the race?" Apollo said, subtly hinting that there was a chance Selçuk could do this in the next race to end Fatih’s championship hopes. "You need to be ready and watch out for things like this. So get in the kart and continue trying to defend and avoid my attacks," he added as he teleported both of them to the start-finish straight.

"Mhhh... Whoooooo," Fatih, knowing he had no counterargument to Apollo’s response, took a deep breath before once again getting into the kart and starting to race again.

The moment he got off the line, Apollo immediately swerved in his direction, fully intent on hitting him on the sidepod. This forced Fatih to immediately turn and head toward the same direction to try and keep the distance before correcting his steering back to straight as they gathered speed for the first corner.

Fatih was immediately forced to brake heavily to avoid Apollo spearing him once again with an impossible-to-make divebomb attempt, saving his front from being collected just in the nick of time as Apollo went through, missing his corner, allowing Fatih to keep the lead as he pushed nearly seventy percent of his focus into trying to guess where Apollo was, what he was trying to do, and how to avoid it.

Apollo was driving as if he could only survive by taking Fatih out, forcing Fatih to adapt his driving for his safety while at the same time maintaining a delta lap time he had to keep for each lap.