CRYPTA-ROO

A short story about the single greatest crypto event that never happened.

Note: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

It was midday, my tongue was parched from the desert air and my shirt stuck to my body as I sloshed around in a herd of flamboyant characters. Crypta-roo 2020 had begun.

It’s not clear at what point things turned, but this was not the Utopia promised in the travel brochure. Quite the contrary. A claustrophobic sense of desperation permeated the recycled air inside the convention hall. Squeezing through the crowds of self-made crypto-celebrities, wearing sticky fragrances and fake silk ties, one could not help but wonder what siren-call summoned such specimens to appear. Was it the heat? Was it the gambling? What could possess people to make the pilgrimage to such a spectacle?

It was July 27th, 2020, Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, NV — the second day of Crypta-roo 2020, an event that promised to be “the single greatest international fintech event of the year”. As the clock struck 12:00 noon most visitors that remained sober enough to attend the second day made their way to the food truck area to chow down on some more affordable fare — today, very few would dine at the exotic restaurants that Vegas had to offer.

Outside the convention center, streaks of vomit could be seen slithering their way into the dusty curb as a kaleidoscope of rented lambos iddled nearby. These were the poignant flexes of self-proclaimed important people.

A parking lot attendant stood next to me smoking something, his reflection flashing on the candy colored sports cars as the sun baked his face; he seemed ambivalent to it all.

He told me all the lambos had been rented out of Vegas’ many exotic dealerships, an unprecedented feat. They even trucked in another 35 truckloads of lambos from California just to meet demand — it was still not enough.

We watched in awe as a who’s who of nobodies, crypto celebrities, buzzed through in a frenzy — each ego more rabid than the previous. Each their own carefully tailored brand.

“With every step, a dizzying vertigo — pulsating in rhythm with the throbbing in my left pocket. My phone…”

I walk on. With every step, a dizzying vertigo — pulsating in rhythm with the throbbing in my left pocket. My phone… alerts vibrated through repeatedly. Dopamine bursts were now replaced with panicked adrenaline. I was too scared to look.

I’m not sure how long I walked in terror but when I came to, the image of an iguana hyperventilating from the heat came into focus. It’s reptilian goatee moving slightly in the dusty hot breeze. It struck me as abnormal — even wildlife couldn’t handle the excess of Crypta-roo. I pretend not to stare and moved on as the iguana yelled out something about the FBI and CIA plotting to catch it due to tax evasion. I felt bad for the iguana, but this was every man for himself. There was no charity in this faux paradise.

At this point I was suspecting that dehydration was becoming a factor. The celebrations of the previous night seemed like a long distant memory yet parts of it still reverberated sharply inside my skull.

As I walked the strip, the unnatural swing of my arms forced my right hand to brush my back pocket every couple of strides; this was not an accident. It was instinct at this point. Paranoia ran so high I constantly feared someone picking my pocket and stealing whatever worthless currency was left in it, so I compulsively checked that my wallet was still there. “Trust no one” had become a fast rule at Crypta-roo.

All in all, it’s remarkable that I managed to keep my composure given what I had been through; others had not been so stoic about their situation.

It’s hard to believe that a mere 8 hours had passed since the market had grown by 1200%, only to correct itself 1 hour later. Some suspected the Vegas casinos’ overnight adoption of crypto for the volatility. Indeed the exclusive casino sponsorship tactic had been announced with great fanfare in the weeks leading up to the event. During the event, the Belaggio offered gambling with Ethereum, while the Circus Circus accepted Litecoin and other casinos had their own crypto sponsorship — some off-the-strip casinos even accepted XRP. It was madness.

I sat there trying to recall some interactions over the last 24hrs. There was the gentleman at breakfast who seemed quite insistent that I take a box of cannabis infused pralines with me back to New York — I politely refused, citing a number of very valid reasons. Then there was the girl who bragged about having an uncle that was apparently so famous he was tagged regularly in tweets from other famous crypto twitter accounts. These memories hung loosely in my psyche…

To calm my nerves I slowly made my way over to a meat bar run by an ex-pat from New Zealand named Tom. He was wiping down the granite counter now soaked in fresh emu blood. The bar was lined with dark turquoise leather raised stools set against dimmed lighting. Settling into the middle stool a plastic coated olive green jungle themed menu was swiftly dropped in front of me. “No Cash” BTC, BCH, LTC and ETH only, ETH wallets were offline due to a hardfork.

The entrees were an exotic mix, nothing was off limits, with the daily special of local grass fed beef, extra fat and bone marrow smoothies. The monitors lit up with the current presenter taking the stage. He was a starved Russian child with an enormous head. A large party soon joined us requesting a booth. I noticed their lifter builds with matching attire branded with their logo, a line through a cube, on their athletic fit black polyester shirts anyone would recognize, DAT token.

“They smelled of stale monster energy, bi-weekly buzz cuts, coffee enemas and looked strung out on coke.”

They smelled of stale monster energy, bi-weekly buzz cuts, coffee enemas and looked strung out on coke. Rumor had it they pulled off a $55 million raise in ETH last month in a multi-stage high pressure sale to private SAFTS. No one cared because they were running in L.A. circles with celebrities and a slew of has-beens. The money was handled by their advisor, “Sticky Rick”, sent to a private entity in the Caymans established with the strange mandate of equestrian services for the blind. It was said they were trying to patch up their relationship with the SEC after calling the SEC commissioner a loser on Twitter. They sat quietly at the bar ordering bone marrow, snickering over the Russian child. This was it. This was the future — crypto would change everything or nothing and I stood at that moment in the eye of the storm.

In the corner adjacent to the bar sat a small group of middle aged teenagers, passionately debating theoretical ways to interpret the menu — this was the Cardano crew in all their glory; the bartender, noticing my confusion, explained they had spent the last 7hrs debating without ordering anything; this had resulted in two of them fainting from low sugar levels.

Turning back to face the bar I slowly sipped my steamy cup of chinchilla soup. A few moments passed watching the bartender swiveling glasses back and fourth with his hand cleaning them. Silence was broken with footsteps and faint sound of heavy breathing as a large man entered the room, he was huge, and by huge I mean he was big.

Strutting up to the Cardano crew in a fresh pair of black alligator boots that widened to the top. The odd shape of his small ball like feet widened out into his large calves and curved feminine hips held together with a large brass “LONE STAR” buckle. The buckle glimmered but only half the letters were visible from the overhanging gut barely held together by a button-down shirt bursting at the seam like an overstuffed scarecrow with coke bottle glasses and soy laden beard. The irony I thought that he show up here. It was a nightmarish scene watching the cowboy attempt to socially interact with this group. I had enough.

I took one last sip of chinchilla, wiped my lips, swiveled my chair and turned to get up when it hit me. The fat Irish cowboy stood over me blocking my view — he crookedly smiled exposing his gold tooth, spit in his hand, then extended it while wheezing “Hiii, my name is Chaaarles”.

I knew then I had lingered too long; I was about to be courted by a used shoe salesman of the worst kind; the kind still stuck in a pre-2008 financial crisis state of mind with moves that would make Bernie Maddoff blush. Joke was on him though. The only value left in my wallet was the leather it was made of, and even that had sharply depreciated after vegan environmentalists paid Beyonce to Instagram against leather goods. Whatever he was selling, I wasn’t buying.

Sulking, he briskly sashayed back to his table, loudly greeting them with a boisterous “Hey kidssssss!” — there were no children present.

I decided perhaps I should return back to the Crypta-roo conference. My friend, a newly minted twitter celebrity, had promised to introduce me to her business partner who was a chocolatier from Zimbabwe. I had never had chocolate from Zimbabwe, so I was intrigued at the prospect. We planned to rendez-vous at the cafe outside of Central Hall, where Stellar Lumens had a prominent inflatable rocket and were giving away free copies of Keybase. Ironically, some hoodlums had broken in the night before and deflated the rocket to appear flaccid. Stellar Lumens fanbois hurried about searching for a pump to pump it back up while show attendees giggled and snapped selfies in front of the rocket.

I met up with my friend, who launched into an excited explanation of her latest podcast, while her friend Tatenda looked on in admiration. Tatenda was a diminutive character, very soft spoken and with a disturbing scar over his right eye that made him look villainous. He had apparently become extraordinarily wealthy during the infamous Zimbabwean inflation by investing in paper which would later be purchased by the government to print new trillion dollar bills. Instead of taking payment for his paper in fiat money, Tatenda had insisted on getting paid in goats and armadillos — the government tried to negotiate him into more standard payment options, but he would not budge. This ended up being a profitable decision for him as armadillos became a delicacy in Asia and the price for their meat soared. Though most of his armadillos were in fact tainted with leprosy, he was still able to offload them to a Malaysian trafficker at a healthy profit margin.

Tatenda had put every penny from his leper armadillos deal into his latest project — Cacao trees that were tokenized on the blockchain. I asked him what that meant; he coyly shrugged, said he didn’t know and gave me a piece of chocolate — it did not taste like chocolate.

Tatenda asked me aside for a moment looking to escape the public attention, away from the loud slurp of the chocolate swan fountain centerpiece. We spoke briefly of the regulatory challenges they faced as the Cacao trees being tokenized weren’t entirely clean. They were not only on a government preservation but the deed to the land was forged leaving the project in legal limbo. The ruling was challenged in a local appellate court of sorts. Turns out the judge overseeing the ruling was the cousin of a man named Cabo.

Cabo was the solicitor who sold them the plot of land who was currently serving 30 days for a rape conviction. There was no oversight to these types of transactions and the registry would allow people to sell the same plot several times over. When questioned about it, records were destroyed and the entire office experienced amnesia. Aside from their legal struggle the project’s development lead had recently attended a conference in Brazil but failed to turn up several months later and at the time we spoke their runway was down to three months. Their last move? The chocolate swan fountain centerpiece with a QR code, a classic move by the Glasshouse Marketing team.

Tatenda was a piece of shit who owed money to everyone with a pulse and was getting death threats daily. Why tell me this? Not sure. Tatenda had an ace in the sleeve though. My eyes glazing over I refocused “What are you going to do?” Tatenda whispered “STO”, winked, pressed a hand against my inner thigh then promptly left.

Suddenly I felt a strong urge to take a shower and skip town. Unfortunately for me, in an unusual act of charity and against my every instinct, I decided to share my large hotel room last night with a Bitcoin Cash fan who had proceeded to swiftly max out my card and changed the reservation to their name — I was, in effect, homeless for the duration. Such was the scarcity that earlier in the day I had no option but to sell some of my airline miles in the parking alleyway behind the Tropicana in exchange for some casino tokens to buy breakfast. Ironically, those same airline miles were now worth significantly more than most of the tokens being promoted at Crypta-roo.

My friend and Tatenda have faded into the crowd, which I seem to be swimming against as they rush to exit the event. I’ve never smelled such a combination of colognes before — like a Jackson Pollock of vain aromas just hitting me in the face.

Suddenly, the echo of a large crowd draws my attention. Defying the rushing crowds exiting the convention center was a growing circle of excited attendees yelling “Fight! Fight! Fight!”. I pushed past my highschool flashbacks and drew near the scene to witness @CryptoBabyJesus and @LilBitcoinz, two well known crypto celebrities standing in the middle. For months those two had dueled, trading barbs with each other on Twitter. Now they stood there awkwardly looking at their phones, insulting each other through tweets while not saying a word to each other in person. With each tweet, a loud gasp from the bystanders. I was too tired to stick around but later found out they decided who won by doing a Twitter poll; it was supposedly a close match.

I finally drummed up the courage to look at my phone… 87 price shift notifications from Coinbase, 23 of them just in the last 15 minutes. It seems the market had completely turned in my favor, and suddenly I found myself wealthier than some small nation states.

Paranoia set in — did anyone around me know how wealthy I had just become in the last 15 minutes? I rushed to the men’s bathroom and locked myself in one of the beige colored stalls. The unnecessarily minuscule stall was reminiscent of an airplane bathroom, with the walls butting up against the sides of the toilet in an impossible feat of geometry. Here I am, staring at a beige door with random token stickers and vulgarities written on it, trying to avoid eye contact through the stall door hinge gaps while impatient attendees stand a mere 5 inches from me. [DIIING] — panicked, I fumble to turn off notifications on my phone to avoid any suspicions from those around me. I quickly pull up my Blockfolio app and check my net worth — $132 Million. How? I have no idea.

In the stall next to me is a sobbing man, groaning with every ding notification from his phone. His pristine Louis Vuitton camel leather shoes squirmed anxiously next to a haphazardly thrown mini Louis Vuitton leather backpack. I thought to myself, what kind of grown man wears a mini Louis Vuitton backpack? He seemed to be having a rough time.

[KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK] — my stall door, the only barrier between me and the outside world, rattles with the clacking sound of the loose metal hinges holding it in place.

“You almost done there? I need to take a shit man.”

One look at their shoes and instantly I recognized the blue socks with bright red gavel icons on them; it was that crypto twitter lawyer who freelanced as a writer for The Block. It was rumored he had been disbarred after helping an Australian lamb herder forge legal documents to sell his lamb as the more premium New Zealand lamb when in fact it was the lower-tier Australian. This had caused a lot of controversy in the tokenized New Zealand lamb industry and resulted in $LAMB crashing overnight; a lot of lamb farmers lost their farms the following months.

I needed to get out of there quickly. With one swift motion I threw on my sunglasses, flushed the toilet and bolted out of the stall before anyone could recognize me.

The floor felt like jello, there was a general feeling of being sucked into it as I walked down the wide hallways. For whatever reason I felt more panicked now as a newly minted member of the wealthy crypto elite than when i was broke minutes ago. I clutched my phone in my pocket — I needed to get back to the hotel and plan out my next move.

Away from the buzz of the Crypta-roo conference the world felt eerily peaceful — like skipping school on exam day. This peace was broken upon entering the hotel — I felt instantly uneasy. I hoped the security cameras were too distracted to spot me, but still I worried; earlier in the day I had received a call from the front desk warning me they would confiscate my belongings and hold them until I paid my room bill — I had tried in vain to explain that a Bitcoin Cash fan had been squatting in my room running up my bill but rather than help the receptionist at the front desk just rolled her eyes at me and called me a crypto-loser. I didn’t exactly care much for my luggage except my friend Sergio, anticipating the potential danger of Crypta-roo, had given me a token that I could use to get out of Vegas on a charter flight from the small Henderson airport. It was only to be used in an apocalyptic type of last resort measure. That token would come in handy at this time.

I made my way to the Chandelier bar in the casino, hoping to be lost in the midst of the gaggle of prostitutes working that afternoon. Unfortunately due to the recent pandemic which had been unleashed in China and spreading fast, Vegas now frowned upon prostitution so only the homeless locals stuck around. A sneeze, a cough, heck even clearing your throat in public usually resulted in some dirty glances from the surrounding herd.

The pandemic was thought to have originated from a traveler who managed to stuff 23 baby turtles, 6 baby platypuses, 4 kilos of refined Guano (bat shit), 3 bags of Nepalese tangerines and 1 box of Cheerios in his suitcase as he set off on a flight to Singapore from Shanghai. The exotic cocktail that stewed in the duct taped suitcase would eventually give rise to a novel form of virus that migrated from platypus to human, a first of its kind on record. While most of the world had shut down public gatherings and chosen to self quarantine, the Crypto-roo event team and the crypto community had, against every government mandate, boldly chosen to continue with the event and gather in the hot climate of Las Vegas.

I ordered a mojito and got to work. Almost immediately and without warning a man with heavy stubble and shaved eyebrows joined me. Though i’ve never met this man, he lingered with a blinkless stare and convulsing smile — in the corners of his mouth was visible drool. Taking a slice of lime from a leftover drink at the bar he began chewing on it, rind and all — he pointed at my phone and asked “Having a good day?”

Ignoring him, I slowly shifted my body to signal my disinterest in engaging. Unfazed, he launched into a diatribe recanting how he was the original crypto-pimp, who had managed to get VC investment from bored casino owners to combine prostitution with blockchain.

At a glance it seemed brilliant — the world’s oldest profession now on the latest fintech platform — crypto. He had learned about crypto at a local meetup in Reno held by a Komodo community leader named Randy who also happened to be a freelance developer for an Australian crypto exchange, though his LinkedIn read “Buffalo Wild Wings — HotWings Engineer”.

After wiring $250,000 of his pimp savings to an offshore account in Malta, Randy, his connection, was found dead of a botulism-paralysis asphyxiation in a booth at an all-you-can-eat buffet off the strip. Turned out Randy had been scamming entrepreneurs by promising to tokenize projects using the Komodo platform while in reality syphoning the money to feed his Botox habit. After so many years of getting Botox, Randy had decided it would be more cost effective to buy 100% pure Botox from a smuggler, DIY the proper dilution and self-inject by watching youtube videos on the topic — a simple miscalculation resulted in him paralyzing his diaphragm and asphyxiating to death halfway through his lunch buffet run.

“The paramedics found him collapsed on a plate of king crab legs and jumbo shrimp — his skin was perfectly silky smooth and wrinkle free.”

The paramedics found him collapsed on a plate of king crab legs and jumbo shrimp — his skin was perfectly silky smooth and wrinkle free. Without recourse, the pimp had been left broke and the whole project fell apart.

Who were these nobodies? What were they doing here? I wasn’t entirely sure why he insisted on telling me any of this, but I suspected he wanted charity. At the end of the day it’s all about the benjamins. The situation had suddenly soured and I felt my impromptu networking encounter had devolved into a test of the human psyche in both patience and tolerance — I was done tip-toeing around these freaks.

The mojito, now warm but still inviting, had taken a turn for the worse. My head was pounding — oscillating with every heartbeat. Still sipping the mojito I lowered my head, pressing fingers against my temple in a slow rubbing motion only to hear a sharp high pitched voice “You in busin..”, “What?” opening an eye to see her black leather flats with subtle bows pointing directly at me. Raising my head there stood a middle-aged Chinese woman with glasses, she suddenly spoke again, but too quickly, “What did you say?” I stated while slowly raising my head to make eye contact. “mmmhrmm I’m an accountant something something .. LinkedIn” she ripped my unlocked phone from my hands and *BEEP* then suddenly handed it back with LinkedIn open and my account QR code nakedly exposed. She turned and stated “I don’t work with dirty money.” and then promptly walked away. It still isn’t clear what happened in that moment but her profile request was ignored.

I wondered how or why these people kept approaching me — did they just hang around the bar all day pitching their decrepit blockchain projects to anyone with a pulse or was there something more? Did they somehow know I had $132M in newly acquired crypto wealth? Had they cross-referenced cookies across the websites I was visiting? Or worse? Was the wireless network compromised? Why was my phone now connected to wi-fi? I was strictly on 5G this entire time with wire guard enabled to protect the connection.

Fearing that other pitches from the straggling local crowd were sure to follow, it was time to decide if I should stick it out or head for the sunlight. From a distance the entrance suddenly dimmed, people began screaming, and my heart started to race. Men in full hazmat gear rushed from the entrance, “shit”. They were grabbing people, in the distance a man began sobbing, the mojito was bailed on as the glass splintered across the floor. Swiftly turning I leaned my weight to begin running but in regaining balance pushed too hard on my left foot leaving me to a painful limp. Fear turned to panic — it sounded like someone was being killed in the background. Over the last week there had been rumors of the government taking extreme actions to control the spread of the pandemic, but this seemed straight out of a sci-fi movie flick.

“His elbow crushed into the back of my spine leaving me twitching, curled up in a ball.”

“Halt” was the last I heard before a 250lb male using a stool to build momentum dropped down on top of me. Gripping my shoulder and twisting my body until the impact was imminent, and then another. His elbow crushed into the back of my spine leaving me twitching, curled up in a ball. The lumbering giant used a broken stool leg to turn me over before straddling my stomach, raising my hands while I whimpered — he said nothing. He took out tactical zip handcuffs and pulled them until my hands went numb. I said nothing, trapped like an animal, before he yelled “CLEAR”.

Looking up I could only make out the body suit, N754-K anti-viral anti-bacterial anti-anthrax military grade mask, and the lifeless mirror reflection of his visor, a dystopian nightmare come to life. He started to roll me up in bubble wrap and sprayed my eyes with hand sanitizer, I screamed like a child, he grunted breathing through the respirator “DO NOT RESIST”. From the corner of my eye I could see an envoy of hazmat suits slyly making a beeline for the bathrooms, carting out rolls of toilet paper as though it were precious cargo; I wondered who or what required that much toilet paper.

As I lay there in a semi-catatonic state, face slathered with hand sanitizer and vision blurred from the sting of the denatured alcohol, I thought of the black card token I had shoved in my shoe, still in my luggage which had been confiscated by the front desk due to my delinquency in paying the bill. That token could have me on a charter flight tonight no questions asked. Instead, there I was, laying on a prostitute-filthy floor, $132M in my front left pocket, two clicks away from being able to buy a small island off the coast of Morocco and escaping this dystopian nightmare, yet totally powerless to act. I needed to find a way out of this forced quarantine.

To my left was a man in his 40s, scars on his arms and neck and with a serious look on his face. He had been sitting quietly at the far side of the bar, whiskey neat in his left hand while his right hand twitched nervously. Barely visible on his shirt was a faded Tezos logo. Now he stood firmly, with a sawed-off shotgun drawn and pointed at the head of one of the quarantine squad rogue virus officers who tried quarantining him, threatening to blow his brains out.

Using this distraction, I managed to slither and roll closer to the back entrance and find a mojito glass shard that I could use to cut apart the bubble wrap that restricted my movement. While the room I was in was surrounded by hanging plastic sheets meant to contain the virus within, I could still see the flashing lights and hear the lively 8-bit music tracks from the nearby slot machines as casino goers went about their day as though nothing was happening. Slowly crawling through the dozens of cocooned quarantined people I managed to release myself from the plastic enclosure, popping out of the other side drenched in a sludge of sanitizer agent.

I’m sure the sight of me was odd at that moment — I was entirely too drenched and handcuffed to seem normal, though the casino floor staff seemed oblivious enough to still ask me if I wanted to play blackjack as I passed their tables. At that moment I did not have an appetite for gambling.

Buzzzz, buzzz, buzzz. My phone was getting lit up in another relentless rapid fire. The monitors lining the casino switched between the Crypta-roo conference stage 1 broadcast, live updates from tradingview and horse racing. The top ten crypto list was about to shake up, and then it happened. Latency delay between the Coinbase notifications -10%.. -50%.. then it rebounded. I howled but the floor staff went about their business as if this were a normal day in their book. I was desperate and needed to sell fast,-80%. With some dexterity I twisted my handcuffed hands deep into my left pocket and grabbed my phone, unlocking it with a glance.. -96%. What happened?

Opening Twitter it became apparent this was an unprecedented level of fuckery. The headline read “Justin Moon Holds Token Hostage” the run up was likely whales colluding building enough volume to liquidate their positions. Apparently Justin Moon had gained control of a majority stake through the slow accumulation of network share while Zombie witness nodes were deployed to fake consensus and attempt to fork the network. It was all over once trust was broken.

My portfolio imploded, essentially worthless, now -98.5%. Like sand slipping through my fingers $132M burned before my eyes. Why didn’t I sell?

My spirit broken, I walked toward the sunlight — I felt a rush of warm desert air fill my lungs and dry the mint-scented sanitizer sludge that covered most of my body. In the skies above echoed the thunderous sounds of numerous Sikorsky Super Stallion military helicopters heading straight for the Las Vegas convention center — straight for Crypta-roo. I imagined the chaos that would take place as this massive military convoy forcefully quarantined the flamboyant and exuberant crypto crowd of attendees. The sudden dismay on their faces as they were caged and packaged like exotic animals — the dopamine withdrawal bends they would endure as they laid there, soaked in sanitizer and twitter-less.

In all of my years attending conferences I had never encountered such a combination of extremes. Crypta-roo was legendary for all the wrong reasons — yet despite all of this there was a nagging certainty that should it happen again next year, I would find my way to it, like an automaton craving chaos.

I was exhausted, burnt out and broke — for now, it seemed, Crypta-roo 2020 was over for me...

[THE END]