I may or may not have had lunch with Satoshi Nakamoto recently.
Ladies and gentlemen, behold:
Wait, a little back story.
I'm a flight attendant and was on a layover in New Orleans a couple weeks ago. It was my first time to the city and let me just say to all those who know and love the city: oh hell yes.
Obviously, I beignet'd
and clearly, I delighted in some jazz.
The people watching was bar none
and the quirky, intricate, undeniably NOLA architecture left me fanning myself. (Although, in fairness, it might have been the beignet sugar rush...)
And it was right then, in the middle of Bourbon Street - when I was thinking I was well on my way to a diabetic coma - that I met him. Satoshi.
"Would you say that was about 19 inches?" he asked.
I stopped, sizing up the discarded satellite dish lying on the side of the road.
"Probably more like 24. But maybe less, yeah."
He took a drag of his cigarette, studying me.
"Great condition," he said, pointing to the microwave behind him on the curb. "You need it?"
"Thanks," I replied, "but I'm only in town for a few more hours."
"What do you know about cryptocurrency?"
I swear those were the next words out of his mouth. 45 seconds into meeting: satellite dish, microwave, Bitcoin. Naturally.
I smiled coyly. "I'm new to it but I know a little bit. Why? What do you know?"
The mischief in his grin trumped my coy.
But hold on. Let's go back about fifteen hours earlier.
I'm staring down the barrel of some alligator cheesecake and duck and andouille gumbo,
when I notice the man next to me at the bar has asked for a to-go box. He had fascinated me all night. Eating exactly two thirds of everything on his plate with scientific precision. Now, he was carefully placing the remaining thirds into the separated styrofoam container, closing it with an OCD flourish.
"I'll have the chocolate souffle, please," he said, adjusting his tortoise shell glasses.
Grey hair, a starched, white collar peeking out beneath decadent grey cashmere. He wiped his mouth with a monogrammed handkerchief.
"How was the fried chicken?" I asked.
He smiled, I got the full review, and the small talk continued.
Visiting from Connecticut, works in finance, here to see his daughter (a sophomore at Tulane, going through "some personal issues"). We chatted as his dessert arrived, two thirds of it disappearing immediately, the other third joining the rest of the leftovers.
Classic and clean, predictable and ordered. He was old money incarnate.
Somewhere in the middle of our discussion of where his career had taken him, his tone dropped and I barely discerned a
"...what, with cryptocurrency and all."
I cock my head.
"Are you active in that arena?"
He downs the last of his Scotch.
"I'm not sure it's responsible to be in finance these days and not be participating, in some way."
We discussed it a little more. He was vague. My impression being, his hesitation came from a lack of understanding. He hedged, he hemmed and hawed. He bemoaned the fact that unless you're an engineer too, jobs in finance were no longer a safe bet. His son was discovering that, apparently. The man angled his empty glass towards him, disappointed.
"I have to ask," I started, "what does that do to the psyche of those in your field? Knowing that, the industry you've spent your whole life working and gaining expertise in, is potentially on the verge of a seismic shift into territory that, like you said, unless you're well versed and skilled in those particular ways, you're, kinda, out of the game?"
I hadn't meant to be so blunt. Too much alligator, perhaps.
He smiled, avoiding my gaze, mulling over an answer. Finally, he shrugged.
That was all he had for me.
15 hours later on Bourbon Street, Richard had a bit more to say.
"I have over two million dollars worth of Bitcoin in a cold wallet."
What Richard did not have, though, was teeth. Just brilliant purple finger nails, a hand rolled cigarette, a 40 of beer, and a flash drive hanging from a chain around his neck.
"Last I checked, the exchange rate was around four thousand."
"Last I checked," I replied, "it was about seven."
"Bull s^^t."
I swiped around on my phone, turning the results towards him. He laughed.
"Well. Guess I'm richer than I thought."
I said I wanted a po' boy. He said he knew just the place. We walked to the hole in the wall joint and I ordered a sandwich. He pontificated on "the seven levels of math" and how he discussed it often with his email buddy Stephen Hawking ("He doesn't write back much, though"). I offered him a fry, he paused, evaluating, as it dangled from my finger tips. He refused that one ("structural imperfections") but helped himself to a more satisfactory one from the plate.
In the silence while he ate my fries, I considered this man. He was clearly drunk at noon on a Tuesday, clearly hadn't bathed in quite a while and clearly Stephen Hawking wasn't replying to his e-mails if you know what I mean.
My mind flashed to the well-heeled, musk scented, successful financier I ate with the night before.
"I know who Satoshi Nakamoto is," Richard interrupted my thought.
I smiled. "He's you. Isn't he?"
And that's when it hit me.
He wasn't Satoshi Nakamoto. C'mon. Clearly he wasn't.
But he could be.
Richard's pupils dilated. Silently, he popped a fry in his mouth, replacing the things he wasn't going to tell me.
"What's on the flash drive?" I ask.
His hand covered it protectively with a laugh. "Oh, absolutely not."
I laughed. I was amused. By him, yes.
But more so, by all the potential for this world held in the shifting nature of power.
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