Chapter [6]: [COUNTERPARTY RISK]
The diner was louder at night.
Different crowd. Fewer students, more people coming off late shifts, shoulders slumped, voices pitched just a little too high. The fluorescent lights flattened everything, stripped color from faces, made everyone look more tired than they probably were.
Maya arrived a few minutes late, apologetic but unflustered. She'd changed out of her blazer into a simple sweater and jeans, hair loose around her shoulders. The effort felt deliberate without being performative.
Ethan noticed. He always noticed.
They ordered quickly, defaulting to comfort food neither of them pretended was healthy. For a while, they talked about nothing important—the weather, a professor she disliked, a customer at the copy shop who'd tried to pay in loose change and righteous indignation.
It was easier than he expected.
"Can I ask you something?" Maya said midway through her meal.
"You're going to anyway," Ethan replied.
She smiled. "Fair. Why are you here?"
"At this diner?"
"In this city. In this… moment." She gestured vaguely. "You talk like someone passing through."
Ethan took a sip of water, buying time. "I didn't plan on staying forever."
"Most people don't," she said. "But they act like they did."
"And you?"
She shrugged. "I'm here because it's where the data is. Policy doesn't get made in abstractions—it gets made where things break."
That answer told him more than a dozen casual dates ever could.
After dinner, they walked for a while, the city cooling as night settled in. The conversation drifted—books, music, the strange optimism of people who still believed they could outwork structural problems.
At a corner near her apartment, they stopped.
"This was nice," she said.
"It was."
She hesitated, then leaned in and kissed him—brief, exploratory, the kind of kiss that asked a question rather than answered one.
Ethan felt it ripple through him, sharper than he'd expected. Not desire alone, but something more dangerous: presence.
When she pulled back, she searched his face. "You don't disappear," she said lightly. "That's a compliment."
"I won't," he said. And meant it.
Walking home alone, he cataloged the evening like a trade. Inputs. Outputs. Risk exposure.
And then he stopped himself.
This isn't a position size, he thought. It's a person.
The next morning, his email inbox held another message from the careful forum user. They'd set up a small group chat—three people total—focused on security practices. No hype. No price talk.
Ethan joined without using his real name.
They discussed cold storage, multisig concepts still more theoretical than practical, the human element of failure. Someone shared a story about losing coins to a corrupted drive. The casual devastation in the message made Ethan's jaw tighten.
Counterparty risk wasn't just about exchanges. It was about trust. About how much of yourself you handed over to systems that couldn't care less if you survived.
Later that week, he watched Mt. Gox's volume creep upward. Nothing dramatic. Just enough to matter.
He didn't deposit anything.
At the copy shop, Carl announced another meeting. Rent was late for several customers. Businesses were delaying payments. The stress in the room thickened.
Ethan updated his spreadsheet again that night, cutting deeper. He sold a few things—old electronics, books he could do without. Liquidity mattered more than sentiment.
Maya texted him a photo of a highlighted paragraph from a paper she was reading. Moral hazard doesn't require immorality. Only insulation.
He stared at the words for a long time before replying.
Insulation always fails eventually, he typed.
The careful forum user messaged him later that night.
"I'm thinking of using Mt. Gox," the message read. "Just temporarily. Liquidity's better there."
Ethan's fingers hovered over the keyboard.
He could warn them. He could hint. He could push.
He did none of those things.
Instead, he replied: Understand the trade-offs. Temporary has a way of becoming permanent.
It was the most he could do without becoming a prophet—and prophets, he knew, were rarely trusted.
He closed the laptop and lay back on the bed, staring into the dark.
Every system required trust.
Every trust carried risk.
And every risk, sooner or later, demanded payment.