They didn’t believe it until they saw it for themselves.
Eddie, Mark and Ben stared at the Bitcoin desktop wallet. The cursor was blinking in anticipation.
Holy shit this Bitcoin private key actually works. These were the Bitcoin that belong to Satoshi Nakamoto. There was so much of them left unmoved people thought he had lost the key to it.
And now this money is under their control, they can send it to whoever they want.
They succeeded. They didn't expect to crack the puzzle but they did it anyway.
This is the first moment they realize them fooling around with silly mathematical puzzles actually amounted to something.
The immediate question in the room right now isn't what to do the money. Or even where to send the money to.
It did occur to Eddie and Ben that moving even a tiny bit of this money will have the world market react in ways they can't anticipate. If even half the people think they've got Bitcoin compromised, what will happen to the price?
Rather, what if someone impersonate Nakamoto in public and then only move the Bitcoin? At least there's some sense of legitimacy.
No these are all secondary concern. The immediate question is what are each of them gonna do the next minute.
Are they still best friends? With this much at stake, would their relationship stay pure?
It's seems fair to split the loot three ways. All of them can stop worrying about their student debt. And whatever their parents owe to anybody else.
This may be the last time they had this much fun working together. With this much money they would have new people problems that are way outside their circle of competence. At least they have some sense of self-awareness about it.
Mark stood up. Is he gonna memorize the key, pretend to use the bathroom and send all the Bitcoin to himself from the phone?
Mark: "OK this has been fun. I'm hungry, who's up for a burger?"
Ben: "Yeah me too. Let's delete this before we go?"
Eddie: "Yeah let's do that."
And off they went to their favorite burger joint.
Author's note
The lore of Satoshi intrigue me, it's full of creative potential for running a Holy Grail kind of story. This short is a tiny attempt at it.
But above all I wanna explore friendship. Relationships get tested when there exist a treasure. This treatment vastly over simplified it but it's a fantasy of how I wish things would pan out.
This story was originally published here