Chapter 7 - Bitcoin Strategy

Vince can take advantage of his years of experience honing his software development and hardware infrastructure craft, but his very eager friends do not have the same luxury.

Kyle and Jessica were free to explore the basics of programming using their regular school-issued laptops. Still, Rick and Sarah struggle to practice 3D modeling and visual effects on Blender without hardware.

They were excited when Vince recommended Blender, a free and open-source 3D graphics toolset. But, unfortunately, performance on the laptops was less than ideal. Even Vince's computer didn't have a graphics card to facilitate the 3D processing. 

[I need some cash to support my friends quickly. Waiting for the first payout a month from now will be too long, and I want them to succeed based on their motivation. The addition of regular microtransactions in Wingin' Chicken will eventually come, but that doesn't fix my cash flow issues currently,] he thought.

Vince sank deeply in thought, attempting to figure out a solution.

He was in his element and knew an idea would pop up sooner than later. Then he was compelled to open a new tab in the browser, and Google searched for Bitcoin Market.

Vince remembered that the first cryptocurrency exchange should have gone live in 2010 and planned to open an account. However, he was surprised to find how easy setting up an account on the platform was, probably because Bitcoin was still in its infancy stage.

The price of Bitcoin currently in 2011 was hovering around $1 = 1 BTC. An incredibly low exchange rate compared to its value in 2021 averaged $55,000 = 1 BTC with some intense volatility.

After installation, Vince downloaded the current version of the Bitcoin SDK (software developer kit) and immediately created his own personal Bitcoin wallet.

He knew the safest way to store Bitcoin was to save them within the blockchain itself and not trust the public cryptocurrency exchanges.

He connected his Satoshi wallet to the Bitcoin Market Exchange with a separate key and stored the primary key (a string of numbers and letters) within a flash drive as a document file.

Vince will store the flash drive in his mom's safe with a printed version in case the document file becomes corrupted.

Vince worked on adding the cash shop to Wingin' Chicken which was technically challenging but not impossible. He used the Satoshi wallet deposit key as the account that will accept the payment and wrote the additional scripts to ensure the validation of the payment process.

He opted to use a subscription model like World of Warcraft for the premium access payment structure. 

An account can avail premium status that removes all ads and provides 50% more coins earned while playing to allow users to buy the in-game items.

These coins can also be bought using Bitcoin and are perfect for consumer whales that love buying all the available upgrades and in-game items with real money.

Bitcoin was technically a commodity instead of currency; therefore, it was not protected and scrutinized like dollars and securities were.

Cryptocurrency hasn't made a big splash yet, and the latest news of a person buying something with Bitcoin was for two Papa John's pizzas for 10,000 BTC.

Nobody cared enough yet, and this was the perfect opportunity to make some quick cash by selling some BTC on the Bitcoin Market Exchange and hoarding most of it for use in the future.

[This update will be huge, and though I am pretty good, it may take a week to finalize version 1.1 of Wingin' Chicken,] he thought.

It took him two days to finish the update, surprisingly. After that, Sarah and Rick provided more work to add to the cash shop and even designed the new menus, which freed Vince to focus on the payment processing implementation.

He appreciated his friends' work and assured them they would be compensated handsomely, which surprised them. 

[Based on their reaction, it seems they only want their art to be used and admired by people and players.] So Vince pondered while working on the update.

This mobile game will expose millions of people to their art and be proud of it. They will still get compensation, though, and the same with Kyle.

[Jessica has been too busy with her own personal project and hadn't helped much with Wingin' Chicken. I wonder what it would be,] he thought. 

The update was submitted on Tuesday night for review and would most likely take a day or two.

The game now had a premium subscription for only 2 BTC per month. In addition, players can buy all the upgrades for a total of 100 BTC worth of in-game coins.

Many new avatars and backgrounds were made available. Vince didn't expect the game to be prevalent forever, but the past week's popularity was enough to get started.

Kyle mentioned creating a simple game during his free time to Vince on the way to school after thanking him for the free account upgrade in Wingin' Chicken. It was mostly for bragging rights because I added a unique frame around his avatar.

Vince did the same for his other friends, including Tom. Unfortunately, the update just went live when Vince woke up for school, so most people haven't had the chance to buy the in-game items yet.

He currently has millions of users and is estimated to make at least a few hundred thousand BTC by the end month.

The new premium subscription will reduce the ad revenue by a large margin. Still, it was worth it especially considering Vince won't have to pay taxes for the entire sum of Bitcoin he collects. Only the transactions on the Exchange will be subject to taxation when the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) decides to knock on Vince's door.

[The ad money will still be handy for liquidity and the considerable expenses my new business incurs such as legal fees,] he thought. 

Vince notified Ms. Kemp of the changes, including the Bitcoin functionality.

He asked her team to check the legal ramifications of this addition to the app, but he knew it was technically bartering instead of a typical transaction.

It was a regular day at the Bitcoin Market Exchange headquarters led by its' creator, DWDollar. It was a relatively small team of five people working out of a Silicon Valley house in the suburbs.

The exchange didn't facilitate too many transactions to be busy often, but suddenly their website went down. The lead security manager of the team was stunned. He was frantically checking the various real-time logging tools available to him.

[It didn't go down because of a DDOS attack (direct denial of service) because there are too many unique IP addresses attempting to connect to the website. It seems like the sheer amount of users connecting was the cause of this,] he thought.

"Boss, we need more servers to facilitate all this web traffic," he said to DWDollar. 

"It's going to be expensive, but I believe we'll make more money than ever before," Dollar replied confidently.

"How can you be so sure, boss?" the security lead asked. 

"I was just on Reddit before the site went down. The top post is about that popular game Wingin' Chicken adding a cash shop. But, fortunately for us, the game only accepts Bitcoin instead of the typical payment methods." he replied with a grin.

The company reached out to local service providers to improve their networking capabilities. It took about an hour for the website to go live again, but it can now handle all the incoming requests from avid mobile gamers.

EDITED

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