Hook, stamina, oats.

The joys of an eToro party. I host them every Friday evening, while my wife is out visiting my brother Eduard. Hers is a dalliance of mutual consent, as I am both unable and unwilling to give her what she needs. I invite my good friend Bertrand over, plug my secretion-stained laptop into the television, and log into the trading platform. We start drinking, hard and fast. I am mainly on neat spirits – my personal favourite is a voluminous glass of aged Scotch, sweetened with a splash of Zeppelin. Bertrand, of the landed gentry, prefers champagne. He can easily clear three bottles of stuff in a night. He’s seemingly content with the fact that it will pass through his system faster than you can say “Vocal challenge time!”, leaving his body and ending up on the floor, no more or less similar to urine than when it entered his mouth, in my honest opinion.

Once suitably and heavily refreshed, we add substantial funds to our account (it’s in my name but there is considerable legal apparatus in place to demonstrate shared ownership, lest we go our separate ways) and begin trading. Most of our effort focuses on fast-moving crypto-assets, which in terms of investing, are no better than blind gambling or paying for the care costs of an incontinent and senile relative: basically money down the drain, with little hope of reward or return. For us, the thrill of a successful eToro party – where, by the time we withdraw our earnings, we can be up by a few thousand dollars – is equal to the thrill of a loss-making evening, which acts as catharsis to our forbidden lust.

Our eToro party of last Friday, the fifth evening of February, ended badly, as we squandered a good ten thousand dollars on the mighty BTC. As we lay on the wooden floor, filthily tangled together in our limbs and musk, conversation turned to where this all began. I told the sweaty, panting Bertrand about the Bitcoin challenge on Vocal, that – despite it clearly being a conniving and deceitful way for the website’s editors to boost its S.E.O by farming a ton of hastily-written articles referencing cryptocurrency and other content guaranteed to drive clicks and traffic, exploiting the cash-hungry and gullible Vocal community to handle the grunt work – it raised a good point. Where – and how – Bitcoin begin? Bertrand was getting heavy-eyed, but agreed that further investigation could be interesting .

I rang the bell for my valet, Pepe, asking him to fetch a towel, some moisturiser, a triple sambuca and my abominable iPhone. Once the latter had been delivered, I opened my anagram app, typing in “Satoshi Nakamoto”, the name of the elusive or merely allegorical creator or founder or miner or father of Bitcoin. Quite a few results came back. I focused on those which contained only three words, systematically loading each set of three words – and their idiosyncratic variables – into another app, the geocode system, What3words. Each combination of three words came back with a water-based location. Apart from one.

“hook.stamina.oats”.

The location pointed to a suspiciously empty patch of desert in Oman. I copied the location over the more detailed Google maps. I was astonished to see a lone trail reading off Route 31, straight towards the coordinates. Here, the dirt track passed two circular pans, forked apart for a short while, before coming together once more, then continuing north for a short distance, slowly disappearing into the sand and obscurity. I cast my eyes back to the patch of desert which was encircled by the forked path. Here, in the sand, seemed to be a faint ‘X’.

My blood ran cold. The hairs on my neck sizzled. Pepe, who had been looking over my should while he had been massaging moisturiser into Bertrand’s groinal area and orifices, also realised that this discovery could be something big. Pepe, being a long-time member of Les Clefs d'Or, had stayed in contact with some sex workers that he had procured for us on a trip to Salalah in 2016. He wasted no time in calling one of them up, asking it if it knew anyone living or working in Thumrait, a township about forty minutes’ drive to where the dirt track joins Route 31 (it looked to be a further hours’ drive along the track to get to hook.stamina.oats). The hooker was more interested in arguing over some money that we apparently owed it, but after a rather incendiary interaction and a plump bank transfer in its favour, it gave us the contact information of two petroleum workers based in Thumrait.

These gentlemen, named Howard (from New Zealand) and Miguel (from somewhere Hispanic) answered the phone on the first ring. They were both very helpful, even if Miguel was difficult to understand and we had to get him to slow down and speak louder. Despite it being around three in the morning their side, they offered to drive out to hook.stamina.oats that very second, allowing us to track their progress via Glympse.

Off they went. After about thirty-five minutes they reached the beginning of the dirt track, turning east onto it, then continuing for another twenty minutes into the desert. Then, all of a sudden, they stopped. The phone rang. It was Howard.

“We’ve reached some kind of checkpoint. There’s a man with a rifle here and he says we’re entering a restricted area. He’s wearing a cap emblazoned with the Bitcoin logo. He says that we can pass if we pay him twenty thousand dollars. I don’t have that kind of cash, mate”.

Of course, Iwasted no time in wiring over the amount. I hear Howard asking someone if everything is in order, then Miguel saying something in Hispanic, before the two of them start sniggering. We assume the joviality is a sign that all has gone well at the checkpoint. A moment later, Howard and Miguel are on the move once more, heading west at high speed through the desert.

Just before the duo reached the two circular pans, they stop again. Another phone call confirmed the worst, as another roadblock blocked their odyssey unless another twenty thousand dollars is paid. Once this is wired over to Howard, who also seems amused by whatever he can see ahead of him, they continue towards the X. Moon-eyed, I stare at the screen. They have stopped dead on the X. The phone rang once more.

“It’s a hut, mate”, Howard exclaimed excitedly. “There’s a man here, sitting alone, with a laptop. Will I talk to him?”

“Yes you must, speak to him and drink in whatever knowledge he has to share”. I slouched, drooling, the thick strings of pickled phlegm landing on Bertrand’s left nipple.

“He’s introduced himself as Satoshi”

“I didn’t hear him say anything”, I questioned.

“He speaks very quietly. He’s got sand in his throat”.

Miguel started to snigger again. I asked Howard to inform his Hispanic friend that this – both what is at stake, and the sand – is no laughing matter.

“You’re not going to believe this Arthur. Satoshi stands guard over the original Bitcoin mine. He draws it from the ground at a fixed price of one dollar per Bitcoin”.

I was absolutely speechless. Without so much as a heartbeat, I asked Howard to see if Satoshi would mine some of this fixed-price Bitcoin for me.

“He says that he isn’t sure, as it’s very special and selling such undervalued Bitcoin on the open market could lead to someone acquiring sudden and wealth beyond their wildest dreams or financial acumen. Put simply, Satoshi is telling me that his special Bitcoin is too much power for any one man to wield”.

Drunk on dreams, as well as sambuca, I pressed Howard to soften up Satoshi. Howard promised to call me back in a moment. Ten minutes’ later, he’s back on the phone.

“Satoshi was very reluctant, but I’ve told him you’re a good guy. He’s willing to allow you a small order of two hundred thousand Bitcoins for two hundred thousand dollars. But you have to pay him right now”.

“How?”, I ask.

“Send it to us as before, we will take care of it our end”.

I removed the funds from the eToro wallet and wired it over to my intrepid intermediaries.

“Thanks”, Howard excitedly exclaimed. “Satoshi says that he will email you tomorrow with details on how to access your two hundred thousand Bitcoins”.

“He doesn’t have my email – ”

The phone clicked off. Not to worry. I knew that if Satoshi could build his venerable commodity into something so valuable and cultish, he would be able to source my email address with ease. I trembled in excitement, looking down at Bertrand, who was now dosing in my arms as we led nude on the floor. I pondered awakening him, eager to share the rather good news that we had made – as of Bitcoin’s price there and then – around seven and a half billion dollars. He looked so peaceful though. A stream of foul-smelling Cristal-infused piss trickled from between his legs, disappearing between the floorboards down to the wine cellar below. I considered the urine.

“Thus completing its circle of life”.

Pepe took away my phone and went to grab the sponge.