Although Chen Qiao had written novels about rebirth, studied a lot of materials, and read about wealth-building, he was not just a theoretician.
He had been a working warrior, struggling at the grassroots level in various industries.
In 2009, an seemingly ordinary year, a virtual currency called Bitcoin was quietly born.
Its initial value was so low that it was almost negligible.
The price of 5,000 bitcoins was about 25 US dollars, which is equivalent to 170 yuan according to the current exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the US dollar.
In May of this year, Bitcoin began to enter the public trading market with very low trading volume.
It did not attract much attention from the general public.
As the decentralized characteristics and security of Bitcoin gradually gained recognition, more people began to participate in trading.
By the end of the year, the price of Bitcoin started to rise and would break through the $10,000 mark next year.
Buying a large amount of Bitcoin in a short time would quickly drive up the price and attract the attention of those who are interested.
There are always smart people in this world.
As soon as there is any movement, some people will come sniffing around.
In addition to gradually buying Bitcoin, Chen Qiao also planned to mine it himself.
At the beginning of the Bitcoin network, the initial Bitcoin reward was 50 bitcoins per block.
After that, the issuance reward of Bitcoin would be halved every four years, which is called the Halving period.
When Bitcoin was first born, the mining difficulty coefficient was almost zero.
Ordinary home computer CPUs could easily complete the hash calculation and find the correct answer needed for the block reward.
There was no need for expensive professional mining machines.
However, running the computer continuously for high-intensity calculations would still lead to a sharp increase in electricity bills, especially in the current situation where there is a lack of energy-saving awareness and technology.
Chen Qiao planned to mine in the Three Gorges Reservoir area, where the electricity was the cheapest and the cost-performance ratio was high.
However, Bitcoin had to be held until 2017 when it broke through the $20,000 mark before it could be sold.
After that, the price fluctuated up and down.
Due to the United States’ massive money printing, it continued to soar and broke through the $60,000 mark, but there were huge bubbles in it.
From 2005 to 2007, there had just been a big bull market.
Many investors were fantasizing about the next fortune.
However, this was the last song of the big A.
Between 2000 and 2015, for ordinary people, whether to buy a house or not was the most capable behavior to change class status, without exception.
Now it is possible to catch the last bus of real estate.
Finally, there were various Internet startups and the mobile Internet revolution.
Android smartphones had not yet been popularized, and it was necessary to get the admission ticket quickly.
A grand blueprint was spread out in front of Chen Qiao.
However, when it came to doing something, he found that it was difficult to do something without capital.
There was only seven yuan left in his pocket.
Age was also a limitation.
Chen Qiao’s small body and low status meant that he could only stay behind the scenes before he became an adult.
He needed to find an agent.
Unfortunately, his relatives were all a bit like mud that couldn’t be propped up.
There was also a prerequisite: they had to trust him unconditionally and not run away with the money.
The former was still acceptable, but the latter was too difficult.
His sister was a candidate, but she was only a junior high school student.
Moreover, Chen Qiao hoped that his sister would have a happy childhood.
It would be a bit of an inversion of priorities to let her take on too much.
However, he still needed his sister’s help with some small things.
That’s right.
In Chen Qiao’s eyes, his second-year junior high school sister was still a child.
It is not known whether this can be considered a younger sister.
It is a kind of inversion of priorities.
His cousin’s wife, this poor person, might be an option.
His cousin died in a mine last year.
He met his cousin’s wife, Zhang Haixia, through a matchmaker.
She is only nineteen years old and works in the laboratory of a cement factory nearby.
She graduated from the high school department of Lanhe Town Middle School.
There are only two more sessions left in the high school department before it is completely cancelled.
Her grades could have got her into a junior college or a third-tier university.
However, her family obviously would not waste money to support her to continue her education.
After graduating, she went to Pengcheng to work for half a year, but she came back to her hometown due to the incompatibility of the environment.
Just at that time, the cement factory was recruiting, and she got in through some connections.
But her father, Zhang Dafu, was eager to get her married.
He arranged blind dates for her just to get the bride price.
He set the bride price at 88,000 yuan, which was considered a lucky number and was the highest bride price at that time.
Although his cousin’s wife had just become an adult, there were also people in Chen Qiao’s class who got married after graduating from junior high school.
However, compared with the previous era, there were much fewer.
His cousin was three years older than his cousin’s wife.
They got engaged after just one meeting.
They didn’t even have a second meeting before they were separated by life and death.
However, half of the bride price had already been taken by Zhang Dafu and sent into the casino.
Zhang Dafu was a man in town who could even gamble with his house.
He was burdened with a lot of debts.
His wife couldn’t bear it and committed suicide by drinking pesticide in the vegetable field a few years ago.
Zhang Dafu still wanted the remaining bride price.
Otherwise, he would force his cousin’s wife to remarry.
His uncle’s family was already very sad because of his cousin’s accident.
They also had such in-laws and wanted Zhang Dafu to return the money.
Where could Zhang Dafu get the money?
His cousin’s wife, who was caught in the middle, was in a difficult position.
Finally, she chose to drink pesticide on the vegetable field where her mother committed suicide.
This happened during this summer vacation.
It was just when Chen Qiao and his sister went to that area to pick mulberry leaves to raise silkworms.
Raising silkworms is also one of the hobbies of many primary and middle school students.
They are raised in pencil cases.
During the break, they are taken out to have a look and to scare the girls.
When they reach the pupa stage, they can be sold to the restaurants on the street for money.
His sister liked the stage of the plump silkworms the most.
However, when they spun cocoons and turned into moths, she felt disgusted.
She also made the pencil case very dirty.
In the end, it was Chen Qiao who threw away the pencil case.
Chen Qiao and his sister were puzzled why his cousin’s wife was on the remote mountain.
When they called her and got no response, his sister saw the pesticide bottle on the ground and knew something was wrong.
She quickly carried her down the mountain, and Chen Qiao helped from behind to lighten his sister’s burden.
After inducing vomiting, his cousin’s wife was sent to the Twelfth People’s Hospital in Yangcheng for rescue.
This is a professional chemical poisoning rescue center.
Fortunately, the initial diagnosis and treatment were timely, and there was strong and standardized treatment later.
His cousin’s wife successfully got out of danger and was transferred to post-sequelae rehabilitation treatment half a month later.
When Chen Qiao and his sister visited his cousin’s wife, she lay on the hospital bed, weak and emaciated, clutching the white bed sheet, and murmured with a hollow look in her eyes:
“Why did you save me?”
Why…………………..His cousin’s wife’s eyes had already died.
Did he and his sister really save his cousin-in-law?
Or did they just save a walking corpse?
They just let her live in pain.
After that, his cousin’s wife stayed in Yangcheng to find a job.
She contacted Chen Qiao’s family again when his family had an accident.
She paid back some money and said she would slowly pay back the rest.
The medical expenses for hospitalization were all prepaid by his mother.
Not only did she pay back the money she owed them, but she also returned the bride price to his uncle’s family.
No one has seen her since then.
It’s as if she had vanished from the world.
This time, he must Before he knew it, Chen Qiao had arrived at the entrance of the black internet cafe, next to which was a Star ice cabinet.
The young female owner still looked languid, as if she hadn’t slept well every day.
Her daughter was lying on the transparent glass counter doing her homework, with a cute twin-tail hairstyle.
She glanced at Chen Qiao and then continued with her homework.
“Kid, why are you here alone tonight?”
“I’ve finished my homework.”
Chen Qiao was a regular here and could be said to be the first person to discover that this shop was a black internet cafe.
When this grocery store had just opened, Chen Qiao liked to visit such new stores to see if there were any new products, snacks, toys, and cards.
He could then become the coolest kid in the village.
He didn’t expect that next door, there was a pile of computers casually placed like junk, and they were not the old CRT monitors but LCD screens.
“Boss, are these computers in good condition? Can they connect to the internet?”
Chen Qiao asked curiously.
“Probably.”
“Let me turn one on and see.”
Chen Qiao chose one, plugged in the power cord, and it successfully turned on.
Unfortunately, there was no internet connection.
Chen Qiao had brought some computer game discs to play, including Beach Landing and a version of One Piece Monopoly that he didn’t know how to play.
The one that left the deepest impression on him was the first installment of the Chinese role-playing game “Xianjian.”
Although Chen Qiao also liked the TV series and had even bought the complete set of DVDs to watch, he realized that the game had a different storyline.
Later, the female owner set up a computer desk, and Chen Qiao would bring his friends over to play single-player games.
They didn’t need to pay for internet usage; they just had to buy some snacks.
The relationships among Chen Qiao and his friends were good at that time, but as they were separated into different classes due to school upgrades, they gradually lost contact.
By the time they graduated from university and got in touch again, it was already for their weddings, asking Chen Qiao for “gold coins.”
Chen Qiao’s current mindset made it difficult for him to play with his old friends.
He just wanted to act like a child in front of his sister.
At other times, he had his own things he wanted to do and didn’t want many people to know about them.
The period without internet lasted for about a month.
When the internet was finally connected, the charging standard also changed to two yuan per hour, which was the normal price for black internet cafes.
Single-player games were no longer popular. Instead, games like Need for Speed, Dungeon & Fighter, and 4399 started to gain popularity.
Chen Qiao could be said to have contributed to the establishment of this black internet cafe.
Every time he came here, the female owner would give him a small can of soda that cost fifty cents, which made his friends exclaim that it was unfair.
However, this situation didn’t last long.
The female owner of the shop transferred it to someone else after running it for only about a year.
Judging by her accent, she was clearly from another place.
The mother and daughter seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.
“Play for two hours.”
Chen Qiao took out four yuan and skillfully opened the ice cabinet to grab a bottle of cola.
“So long? Aren’t you afraid your parents will look for you?”
The female owner raised her eyebrows as she took the money and asked, “Don’t go smashing the computers in my shop.”
“No way, I’ll sneak out through the back door.”
The partitioned area was kept very clean, unlike the usual messy state of black internet cafes.
This was partly due to the female owner’s regular cleaning, despite her seemingly lazy appearance.
The only legitimate internet cafe in town was the dirtiest and smelliest place, full of cigarette smoke.
This place, on the other hand, remained relatively untouched because not many people had discovered it.
The female owner didn’t advertise aggressively.
Once parents and teachers found out, students would be less likely to come, and smashing computers was not out of the question.
Moreover, it seemed that the female owner wasn’t very concerned about whether she was making a profit or not.