Chapter 1: An Innocent Investment (2010)

The passenger train car rocked gently on the tracks while green hills and forests flashed quickly past the windows. Sunlight filtered through the curtains, drawing golden stripes across the worn floor, and the occasional shadows of trees danced in rhythm with the ride on Jakub’s laptop. A few seats away, an elderly lady with a bouquet of lilacs on her lap sleepily chewed on a roll, while across the aisle a young mother soothed a restless boy who kept peering out the window, announcing every cow he spotted.

Jakub, a young programmer with messy hair and a stretched-out T-shirt that read “Hello World”, leaned back in his seat and turned his laptop screen toward Anna. “Look, this is the future,” he said enthusiastically, pointing at a graph with a strange curve. “Bitcoin. Instead of banks dictating the terms, you can have money under your own control. No middlemen.”

Anna, an economics student with a neatly tied bun and a skeptical gaze, sighed. “Jakub, please. Those are just numbers somewhere in a computer. You can’t touch them, they have no backing. If the internet shuts down tomorrow, your ‘wealth’ disappears.”

From the next compartment came a soft cough and the squeak of doors. A conductor in a faded uniform, ticket punch hanging around his neck, stepped in. Without much interest, he greeted them: “Tickets, please.”

Jakub looked momentarily embarrassed, but quickly pulled a crumpled ticket from his pocket. The conductor clipped it, glanced briefly at Anna—who offered her neatly folded ticket—and without a word continued down the car.

“That’s exactly the revolution!” Jakub’s eyes lit up. “Bitcoin isn’t just a number. It’s like digital gold, except instead of a vault it’s guarded by mathematics. Every transaction is recorded in a giant ledger called the blockchain. And that ledger is spread across thousands of computers around the world. Nobody can just erase or alter it.”

“And who actually runs it?” Anna asked.

“No one. That’s the genius of it. It works on trust between people—not between people and banks. When you send someone bitcoin, the network verifies it, writes it into a block, and that block is forever linked to the chain of previous transactions. Nobody can steal it, forge it, or tax it without your consent.”

From the corridor came the sound of a tin cabinet opening. An old man in a brown suit was quietly peeling the label from a plastic bottle and stirring yogurt with a spoon. Meanwhile, the boy across the aisle had stopped counting cows and was now staring with interest at Jakub’s laptop.

Anna shook her head. “People will never accept something so abstract. Money needs trust, not algorithms.”

Jakub smirked. “They once said the same thing about paying with pieces of paper instead of gold.”

He pulled out an old book—Fundamentals of Cryptography—and on a blank page wrote down a string of letters and numbers: his private key to the wallet.

“What are you doing?” Anna asked.

“I’m buying Bitcoin for a hundred dollars. Just so you’ll see that I’m right.”

He quickly placed an order on an exchange. At that time, the rate was unbelievable: 10,000 BTC for $100.

“That’s insane,” Anna said. “You just turned real money into something you can’t even hold in your hand.”

“But I can control it,” Jakub replied, tucking the paper with the key into the book. “And one day I’ll prove to you that it’s worth more than you think.”

The train screeched to a halt at a station, doors hissed open, and the bustle of the platform flooded in: the clatter of suitcases, distant announcements from the loudspeaker, and the smell of fried cheese from a nearby bistro. Anna stood up, still shaking her head in disbelief. “I just hope you saved some real money for a ticket home.”

Jakub only smiled and closed the book. He had no idea that he had just made one of the greatest investments of his life—and that this small piece of paper would one day change the fate of many.

Chapter 2: The First Boom (2013)

The same commuter carriage rocked on the rails, and Jakub — the young programmer with untidy hair — remembered, with a childlike thrill, the day he bought a digital currency he barely understood. That moment stayed etched in his memory: the argument with Anna, the scrap of paper with the private key carefully hidden inside an old book, and that sweet, heady feeling that he had just done something big, perhaps even revolutionary.

Years had passed since then. Jakub had moved several times, changed jobs, even his wardrobe — the stretched “Hello World” T-shirt had been replaced by a shirt his sister once bought him as a joke. But one evening, sitting alone in his Prague sublet, a notification from an exchange blinked into life: Bitcoin had crossed one thousand dollars.

Jakub sat frozen, staring at the chart as it shot upward like a rocket, his hands beginning to tremble. “Fuck,” he breathed. “Where’s that book?”

He sprang up and began to rummage frantically through boxes he hadn’t unpacked after the last move. He pulled out programming textbooks, notebooks, old cables and USB sticks — but Fundamentals of Cryptography was nowhere to be found. He searched under the bed, behind the wardrobe, even in the fridge — all in vain.

Then it hit him. It was only a hazy memory, a blurred picture of an afternoon when he’d decided to stop hoarding useless things. He saw himself on a hot summer day carrying a bag of old books to a second-hand shop on Vinohrady. The book had been among them.

“It’s okay…” he said aloud, trying to steady himself. “I backed the key up in—”

He froze.

He hadn’t backed it up.

As his legs went weak and a cold shock ran through him, somewhere else, behind a screen in a dark room, Viktor watched the price climb.

Chapter 3: The Shadow Hacker

Viktor never went to cafés. He didn’t need friends, love, or recognition. He saw the world as an endless web of weaknesses and holes waiting to be discovered. Once, he had been an admin on a Russian hacking forum, but he disappeared after rivals exposed him and doxxed him to the police. From that day on, he was no longer a man — he was a shadow in the network. He worked through proxies, TOR, his own scripts. No logins under his real name, no movement without encryption.

His specialty was database leaks. Exchanges, social networks, cloud backups — anywhere people stored data under the illusion it was safe. And in 2011, buried in a forgotten Mt. Gox backup, he stumbled across a list of private keys. Not all of them worked, many were empty, but a few had potential. One address in particular stood out: 10,000 bitcoins, a transaction from 2010.

“People are idiots,” he muttered, zooming in on the record. “They store keys like vacation photos.”

He didn’t want to risk it. He knew that once old, dormant wallets moved, the entire blockchain community would start watching. So for the time being he simply observed. He waited. In the meantime, he sold crumbs from other wallets — a fraction of a bitcoin here, a fraction there. Through mixers, untraceable. Months, years, patiently.

The address with ten thousand bitcoins hadn’t moved since the day it was created. Viktor stared at it and smiled. “I’ve been waiting longer than you, comrade,” he said into the silence.

Meanwhile, Jakub sat in his rented Prague apartment, his face lit only by the cold glow of the monitor. On his lap lay an empty notebook where he once jotted down ideas, and in his head hammered a simple equation:

10,000 BTC. Ten million dollars.

And someone else had the key.

Or did they?

Chapter 4: A Mother’s Hope (2017)

A bleak November morning settled over the Prague housing estate. A low gray haze drifted between the concrete towers, the wind chased yellowed leaves across the sidewalks, and in the distance a tram screeched as it turned uphill. Alena, a thirty-eight-year-old woman with tired eyes and a stretched-out sweater, sat at the kitchen table in her two-room flat, unheated since the night before, and for the third time counted her sixty thousand crowns. The stack of banknotes lay beside a bank statement and a paper cup of cold tea.

It was the sum she had gotten from selling her old Škoda Fabia — the car that once reliably took her son Tomáš to school and her to night shifts at the reception desk of a nearby hotel. Now it belonged to someone else. The money was her last safety net — for repairing the bathroom that had been leaking into the neighbor’s flat for years, or for Tomáš’s future school expenses.

“You should put it into stocks,” her friend Hana had advised during a work break. They sat together in the back room of the hotel reception, watching fine rain slide down the window in crooked streams. Hana scrolled on her phone, proudly showing a chart climbing steeply upward. “I put in fifty thousand, and within a week I’m up six percent. Easy money!”

“Or try Bitcoin,” chimed in Jana, returning from the kitchenette with a paper cup of coffee. Jana always knew things before anyone else. “Petr from the other department made so much in a month he bought himself a new iPhone!”

Alena stayed silent. Her face unchanged, though she clutched the bank statement tighter to her chest. Thoughts whirled in her head: was it right to risk it? Or should she stay grounded, hoping everything would last just a few months longer? But what if this was her chance?

It was a long night. The block of flats was quiet, only the occasional groan of pipes or a barking dog somewhere in the distance. Alena sat at the table with her old laptop, scrolling through forum after forum. She read stories of people who had grown rich practically overnight. Her bleary eyes skimmed across numbers and graphs that shifted every second. Bitcoin was climbing toward the ten-thousand-dollar mark.

It was absurd. And yet—when she saw Hana and Jana at work the next morning, laughing together as they compared profits over a vending-machine breakfast, while her own bank account showed the same unchanged numbers, she felt something inside her give way.

“I’m doing it,” she whispered to herself during her lunch break, downloading an investment app and sending the payment. Sixty thousand crowns. Roughly twenty-five hundred dollars. Her entire safety net.

For a brief moment, she felt powerful. As if, for the first time in her life, she had bet on herself. As if she had finally stopped merely surviving.

The first days were filled with tension. Alena checked the price several times a day, often secretly at work under the desk while hotel guests had breakfast and her colleague answered phone calls. Then it happened. The graph began to drop.

At first, slowly. From ten thousand to nine. Then more sharply. Eight and a half. Seven. On the forums, they reassured her — “It’s just a correction, hold! HODL!” — but inside she felt panic creeping in.

Each morning the alarm rang before she had even fallen asleep. Her first move was to grab her phone and check the balance. Every day, less. Every day, less hope.

When the price fell to six thousand dollars, fear set in. Nightmares of Tomáš not being able to go on the school trip. Of having to explain that there wouldn’t be money for new shoes. Of eating pasta with ketchup again, just as they had years ago after her husband had left.

One afternoon at work her hands shook so badly she dropped a cup of coffee. Colleagues noticed, but no one said a word.

And then she understood what was happening.

It was no longer about the money. Not about the numbers jumping up and down on her phone screen. She was selling off her peace. Her sleep. Her future. And with it, perhaps the last shred of hope she had been saving for her son.

Outside, dusk was falling. The estate sank into a misty twilight, and from afar came the sound of firecrackers — perhaps another evening celebration of something unknown. Alena closed her eyes and exhaled slowly.

Chapter 5: The Politician’s Game

The December wind swept through the old lanes of Malá Strana, rattling the windows of historic houses and stirring dust from the cobblestones, as if trying to erase the traces of something about to happen. On the front pages of economic portals and printed newspapers appeared a simple message: “China bans Bitcoin.” Words so clear, so final, that within hours they sparked panic on par with a bank collapse. Charts on exchanges plunged as if struck by an invisible finger of fate.

But that finger had a name. And it belonged to a man who loved to toy with fate.

In a luxurious apartment in the very heart of Prague, not far from Charles Bridge, Member of Parliament Robert Marek sat in his leather chair. On the mahogany desk stood a half-finished glass of cognac, a wireless mouse, and four monitors displaying the red candles of falling prices.

Robert’s expression was cold, calm. Like that of a chess player who has just sacrificed a rook to capture the king. He drummed his fingers on the desk, keeping one eye on his phone where Telegram notifications multiplied with news of the Chinese ban. The reality was different — China had merely tightened rules on local exchanges. But no one cared about the truth. People wanted a sensation. And Robert served it to them with all the shine.

“Mr. Marek, Binance just recorded a massive sell-off,” said a calm voice behind him. His personal analyst, a young man in a perfectly tailored suit, held a tablet. “The market’s collapsing. If it continues, Bitcoin could lose up to thirty percent of its value.”

Robert slowly turned and smiled. His smile was sinister — not relief, but satisfaction at a perfectly timed catastrophe.

Across town, in a housing estate bathed in the orange haze of streetlights and fog, Alena sat in her living room wrapped in a blanket, phone in hand. The smell of forgotten cold coffee drifted from the kitchen. She stared at the plunging numbers, each new drop clenching her stomach like an icy fist.

$8,000. $7,500. $7,000.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” asked eleven-year-old Tomáš, stumbling out of his room, sleepy and confused.

Alena froze. She looked at her son and forced a difficult smile, hiding the phone. “Nothing, sweetheart. I was just thinking.”

In truth, she was wondering how to tell her child that their safety net was vanishing. That maybe there wouldn’t be a new jacket, maybe not even the school trip. But worse than that was the feeling — that she didn’t understand why it was happening. She had no idea her personal collapse was the result of a carefully planned game.

The game of a politician.

Robert remembered how, four years earlier, they had laughed at him in a TV studio when he dismissed Bitcoin as “a hacker’s toy.” In 2017, when the price soared past ten thousand dollars, those words echoed in his mind like mockery. While others made fortunes, he had merely watched.

That was about to change.

“We’ll buy the bottom,” he said to his analyst when the chart hit $6,500. “And once the market bounces, we’ll spread the word that the EU is considering strict crypto regulations.”

The analyst hesitated. “But… that’s not true.”

Robert turned slowly, his voice turning to ice. “Truth is what people believe. And I know exactly what they’ll believe tomorrow.”

While the city drifted into sleep, Alena twisted between exhaustion and despair. Her phone buzzed in her hand with each new alert. The price slid below $5,000. Memories flashed before her eyes — Hana and Jana high-fiving over their profits, their words echoing again and again:

We warned you.

But it wasn’t them pulling the strings. They had simply left early, while Alena remained trapped. Trapped in a snare set by a man with a golden tie clip and a name printed on election posters.

On one side of the city, a woman who risked everything because she had nothing left to lose. On the other, a man who never risked anything but controlled it all. Between them, a silent, merciless game where truth was not a value but a weapon.

Outside, the wind picked up. Firecrackers burst somewhere in the distance, heralding the year’s end. Alena pulled the blanket tighter around her and stared out into the darkness. Snow began to fall. White flakes drifted over the city — quiet, light, innocent.

Just like her faith.

Chapter 6: The Hacker’s Trap (2021)

Kyiv, February 2021 – a windowless apartment.

Viktor’s monitor lit the dark room with a bluish glow. On the screen, the Bitcoin chart surged — $50,000. In the corner, an open file listed a thousand private keys, including the wallet from 2010. Ten thousand BTC. Half a billion dollars.

And yet his fingers hovered motionless above the keyboard. “Move it? Risk being traced?”

He knew the blockchain was public. If such a hoard moved, the entire community would notice instantly. And Viktor had the experience — he knew how fast Chainalysis analysts could link transactions to IP addresses, exchanges, people…

He trembled. For the first time in years, he felt fear.

On the desk beside his keyboard lay a newspaper clipping: “Czech government seeks cyber experts to investigate crypto-terrorism.”

Viktor smiled darkly.

He opened an encrypted email and began to type:

“I possess a database of 47,000 stolen Bitcoin wallets. Some belong to hackers, others to ordinary people. In exchange for immunity and a new identity, I will hand them over.”

Recipient: Ministry of the Interior, Czech Republic.

In Prague, inside the government offices, a team of experts gathered. Among them was Captain Hruška, head of the cybercrime division.

“This is a trap,” he said, pointing at Viktor’s email. “That man is most likely the thief himself. He’s offering us loot he already holds.”

“But if those wallets belong to victims of Mt. Gox or other hacks…” a younger colleague objected.

Hruška nodded. “That’s exactly why we’ll pretend to be interested. And once he surfaces, we’ll arrest him.”

What they didn’t know was that Viktor was already monitoring their internal communication — waiting for their reply.

Meanwhile, Alena, still clinging to her remaining Bitcoins (now worth barely a third of her original investment), read the news that the government was “negotiating with hackers.”

“That’s disgusting,” she said aloud to her son. “People like us lose everything while criminals bargain for immunity.”

Tomáš, browsing blockchain explorers, suddenly froze. “Mom… you know some of those stolen wallets could belong to people like you?”

Alena didn’t answer.

Chapter 7: The Second Peak (2021)

March 2021 crept into Prague with the first signs of spring. On the housing estate where Alena had lived for more than a decade, the first snowdrops appeared between the concrete blocks. Children returned to the playgrounds, still bundled in jackets. The sun finally climbed higher, drawing warm shadows across the walls of buildings, luring the elderly onto benches. It felt as though, after an endless winter, change was coming. And not just outside.

That day, Alena’s phone lit up with a notification.

Bitcoin had crossed $60,000.

She stared at the screen as if it were a dream. The remaining Bitcoins she had held through years of fear and regret had suddenly swelled to a value she no longer dared to hope for. From an investment that had once nearly halved, she now had nearly twice as much.

She sat at her kitchen table while outside a bus honked and the neighbor once again hung laundry on the balcony. The kettle hissed, and Tomáš was telling her about what he had learned at school about renewable energy. But Alena only half-listened. Thoughts tumbled in her mind: Sell? Hold? Secure the future? Or could it go higher still?

She opened the investment app. Her finger hovered over the “sell” button — but she didn’t press it. Something held her back. Fear of a mistake? Greed? Faith?

Across the city, in an office with a view of the Malá Strana skyline, MP Robert Marek sat at his mahogany desk as always. His suite was bright, elegant, scented of wood and coffee. A copy of a Kupka painting hung on the wall, a humidifier hummed softly in the corner. On his desk lay an open laptop, notes, and a gilt-edged notebook.

“It’s happening again,” he murmured, watching the rising curve. Bitcoin had reached its peak. Everyone was talking about a new golden age of crypto. Media were raving, influencers shouting about a new standard.

But Robert didn’t smile.

He already knew what was coming.

“Time to cool the herd,” he said, more to himself than to the analyst who had just entered with a tablet in hand. “People are like sheep. When they’re scared, they run.”

“Shall we release the first article?” the analyst asked.

Robert nodded. “Start with the SEC considering restrictions. Then spread rumors about taxation of all EU transactions. And tonight, circulate the story that Amazon has canceled its plan to accept crypto.”

“That last part isn’t true,” the analyst muttered, his conscience still pricking.

Robert fixed him with that familiar detached gaze. “It doesn’t matter. Truth is what people share. And tomorrow they’ll share fear.”

That same evening the headlines began to roll in:

“Regulation on the horizon.” “Big companies back away.” “Crypto bubble? Experts warn.”

Social media exploded. Charts began to wobble.

Alena watched the red numbers flash on her screen. $60,000. $59,500. $58,000. With each drop her jaw tightened. Again she swiped to the “sell” button, but hesitated. What if it rebounded? What if it was just a dip? She couldn’t miss out again…

“Mom?” Tomáš asked from the table. “You should call the bank. Or buy that new boiler. Don’t wait for it to crash again.”

But Alena only nodded, her eyes glued to the screen.

By then it was already too late.

The price fell below $55,000, panic spreading like wildfire in a paper warehouse. The rumors Robert Marek had seeded worked perfectly. Those who had bought high now sold in fear. And he — just as four years earlier — already had accounts and intermediaries ready.

On a chart tumbling downward, there’s no place for regret. Only the question of who sat closest to the switch.

That night, Alena once again couldn’t sleep. She watched her wealth vanish, minute by minute. She was left alone with the silence filling the apartment while outside a gentle rain fell.

Spring had just begun in Prague. And yet for Alena, it felt as though everything had frozen again.

Chapter 8: The Lost Key Found

In the evening, the streets of Prague’s Old Town were bathed in the soft light of the setting sun, reflected in the peeling shop windows of little stores and cafés. Tourists slowly trickled away, and the city reclaimed its calm. The cobblestones were dark and glossy after the rain, and the air smelled of books, old paper, and damp wood.

Tomáš walked with his head down, a backpack slung over one shoulder, earphones in. After school he wandered aimlessly through the city — eighteen years old, free but without direction. He passed antiquarian bookshops that felt to him like pockets of the past, places where anything could be found — if you searched the right way. Or by chance.

He stopped before one of them — Antiquarian Bookshop by the Old Lamp. A small, inconspicuous store tucked between a record shop and a greengrocer. A hand-painted sign hung on the door, and behind the window books lay piled without order. Something made him go inside.

Inside, it smelled like a memory. Dust, paper, old wood, silence. The owner — a hunched man with glasses on a string — didn’t even look up from his book, only nodded.

Tomáš headed for the back shelf. He had no intention of buying anything, just browsing, searching for titles he recognized from the internet or from his mother’s old boxes. Then his eyes fell on a thick, coverless volume, its spine yellowed, its boards scuffed. Introduction to Encryption – Principles of Cryptography for Advanced Users.

He pulled it from the shelf and ran his fingers across the cover. The book felt like it belonged to another century, yet something about it drew him in — maybe its worn appearance, maybe a subconscious curiosity. Without a word he carried it to the counter.

“Three hundred crowns,” murmured the antiquarian without lifting his eyes from his teacup.

Tomáš paid, thanked him, and stepped back out into the damp evening. The sky was overcast, the streets slick with rain, and drops still fell from the gutters now and then. The city pulsed with its own rhythm — trams clanged in the distance, cars splashed through puddles, and from a café across the street drifted the smell of coffee and muffled laughter.

He stopped beneath a streetlamp where the light was at least somewhat warm. He opened the book at random — and at that moment, a folded slip of paper slid out, fluttering lazily to the wet pavement.

Tomáš bent down, picked it up, and carefully unfolded it. The paper was yellowed, torn in places, covered in shaky lines of blue ink. And in the middle… a string of characters. Long, incomprehensible — but Tomáš knew instantly what he was holding.

A private key.

It was handwritten — simple, yet extraordinary:

Private key (BTC wallet): 1A1zP1eP5... Created: 2010 – confirmed. Keep offline. Note: Purchase $100 – approx. 10,000 BTC. Don’t forget!

He stared at it, breathless.

He knew the format. He knew the meaning.

A private key. An address. A date. Ten thousand BTC. An unimaginable fortune. All written down like a grocery list.

He pulled out his phone and, without thinking, opened a blockchain explorer. Entered the address. The wallet was there. The old balance. Untouched since 2010. The account showed… nearly 300 million dollars.

He looked again at the key. He held it. Physically. For real. A buzzing filled his head, not joy but the crackling tension of overloaded wires. Something lit up inside him. And at the same time, something broke.

He thought of his mother. Of the years of fear, silence, saving. Of every moment they had weighed whether they could afford an extra stick of butter. Of the Bitcoin she had bought, held, and sold at a loss. And now, here was the key — a lost treasure the whole world had searched for — resting by chance in his hand.

Outside, darkness thickened. A tram screeched on the rails, the sky turned leaden, and a fine drizzle began. Tomáš pulled up his hood and ran home. One thought buzzed in his mind: What now?

He had no idea that in the depths of the internet, a second wave was already rising.

On a monitor in Kyiv, a notification flashed:

“Address 1A1zP1eP5… just accessed by a user in Prague.”

Viktor went pale. No! That address was supposed to be his. He had watched it, guarded it, kept it on his list of “untouchables.” But someone — someone else — had just activated it.

And at that very moment, in a modern government office, MP Robert Marek received an encrypted message. A single sentence:

“Old key moved. Confirmed. Prague.”

Robert picked up the phone. “We have a problem,” he said into the receiver. “Contact the network. Find out who has it.”

Back in the housing estate, Alena calmly prepared dinner, unaware that her son carried in his pocket a scrap of paper for which many would soon be willing to lie, spy — even kill.

Chapter 9: The Hunt for the Treasure

The message arrived in Robert’s secure inbox at half past three in the morning. At first glance, it should have been just another of the daily dispatches his assistant forwarded — press clippings, economic forecasts, market sentiment. But this email carried only two words in the subject line: “Wallet Activation.”

The attachment contained a blockchain record — a wallet with ten thousand bitcoins, dormant since 2010, had suddenly come alive. Robert froze. He remembered that address. It was one of those long thought lost — a legendary relic of the crypto world. And it was in the very database once offered to him, unsuccessfully, by that Ukrainian hacker. Viktor.

“This is impossible,” he whispered. “That wallet was supposed to be dead.” But it wasn’t. And that meant only one thing — someone had found the key.

Within half an hour he was sitting in his house near Říčany, in a dark study lit by three glowing monitors, issuing orders. His voice was calm, but forged of steel.

“I want the name of whoever accessed that address. Immediately. Use Chainalysis, Glassnode, whatever it takes. And contact the firm in Brno — HackCore. Offer them double their usual rate. I don’t care. Have them break into anything where that key might have surfaced. Forum, email, chat, IP logs. Everything.”

The assistant on the other end of the line only nodded silently. Robert was not a man accustomed to waiting.

Moments later, he dialed another number — a detective agency he had kept on an informal retainer for years. These people didn’t waste time on paperwork. They delivered results.

“Focus on Prague. Antiquarian bookshops, technical literature, cryptography. Someone found something they weren’t supposed to. I want a name, address, school, mother, dog. And I want it fast.”

Meanwhile, in a dim basement on the outskirts of Kyiv, Viktor slammed his fist on the table so hard that empty energy drink cans scattered across the floor.

On his screen he saw the same thing — the activation of an address he had considered his for eight long years. It had been in his database. Which meant someone had found the key to his treasure.

“No… It’s not theirs. It’s mine.”

His chest rose and fell sharply, sweat running down his back. The lethargy that had cocooned him over the years was gone. Now only pure, raw fury spoke through him. He had mastered the internet, databases, wallets. He had access to everything — except the one thing he wanted most.

“If they think they can take it from me…” he muttered, and began to type.

He started tracing movements. IP addresses, visits to blockchain explorers, forum posts. He knew how to cover tracks — but he also knew how to find the ones that weren’t perfectly erased.

And deep within him, a plan began to take shape.

On the other side of Prague, Tomáš was just trying to fall asleep. The book lay on the shelf beside his bed, and the slip of paper was carefully folded inside an old tea tin. He had no idea that, just one floor above, someone had logged his latest access to the blockchain explorer.

Nor did he realize that, in the dark, lights were already converging on him — one from the East and one from the West. And that, dozens of kilometers away, two powerful men were already deciding how to take what he held in his hands.

Chapter 10: Echo of the Past

Tomáš sat at the table with his hands folded beneath his chin. Beside him lay the book he had bought at the antiquarian shop, and inside, in a tea tin, still rested the yellowed slip of paper with its string of numbers and letters. A private key. The code to ten thousand bitcoins.

On the screen before him, the current price glowed: 29,876 USD. Numbers danced in his head. Nearly three hundred million dollars.

And yet he hadn’t touched it. Not a single click on the wallet. Not once.

There was something inside him. Perhaps his upbringing. Perhaps his mother’s voice, which in childhood had instilled in him that the most valuable things are not held in your hands but in your conscience.

A few days later he returned to the antiquarian shop. The bell above the door jingled just as softly as the last time.

“Good afternoon,” Tomáš began, pulling the book from his bag. “I bought this here a few days ago. I wanted to ask if you happen to know who you acquired it from?”

The old bookseller put on his glasses, peered into his records, and silently flipped through the worn ledger.

“Yes… this one came in a batch we received from the estate of a bookseller in Nusle. A Mr. František Richter, I believe. He died last year. Everything came here; the heirs weren’t interested in the books.”

Tomáš felt something tighten in his chest. Richter. He didn’t know the name; it meant nothing to him. On the slip there was nothing that made the pieces fit together — no signature, no clue, just a string of characters that suddenly felt foreign and distant. The man was dead. And with him, it seemed, any chance of doing something right with the find.

“Thank you,” he nodded, and left into the evening dusk.

The next days he spent at the computer. He scoured forums, social networks, old databases. Tried to find anything about the owner. He found an old blog, discussion posts about Bitcoin from 2010, photos of bloggers with friends, mentions of experiments with cryptography. The more he read, the more certain he was — the wallet had belonged to one of them. The key had been lost, not stolen.

But during that search he stumbled on something else. By chance. In the comments under one thread analyzing movements of old Bitcoin addresses, someone had posted a recording. A compressed audio file, anonymously uploaded to a decentralized platform.

Tomáš downloaded it and pressed play.

At first static, then two voices.

One of them was Robert’s. Without a doubt. Precise, arrogant, self-assured.

“…all it takes is for the information to look official enough. China, regulation, terrorism. They’ll swallow it. Then we’ll buy back.”

“And if someone finds out it’s fake?” asked the second voice.

“Who will care once the market is in ruins?”

Tomáš froze. He held in his hand something more than just a key. He held proof.

A day later, journalist Kateřina Benešová sat in her small office in Holešovice when an unsigned email landed in her inbox, with the subject line: “Something you should hear.”

She opened the attachment. Played the recording twice. On the third run she was already taking notes. When it ended, she looked around the room.

Outside, dusk was falling. The light fractured against the monitor glass. The air was heavy, like before a storm.

She sensed that this was the beginning of something big. And that whoever had sent it had just stepped onto a path with no way back.

Chapter 11: Media Storm

News spread faster than flames in summer underbrush. Headlines on websites, television, and in print competed in explosiveness: “Bitcoin Manipulator in Parliament?”, “Robert Marek under Pressure – Anonymous Sources Reveal Backroom Deals with Exchanges”, “The Politician Who Pulled the Strings of the Crypto Market.”

Around the Chamber of Deputies building in Prague, journalists gathered. Cameramen, sound technicians, reporters with microphones — all waited to see if Marek would finally appear. Inside the chamber tension reigned. Some colleagues avoided his gaze, others whispered about what they had just read on Twitter. Robert Marek sat in the back bench, outwardly indifferent, but crushing his phone in his palm so tightly his knuckles turned white.

It was too late.

The recording, handed to journalist Kateřina Vondrová by an anonymous whistleblower, contained not only audio of phone calls in which Robert orchestrated media panic over a “Chinese ban,” but also emails urging specific influential journalists to spread fake news. It was no longer just market manipulation — it was abuse of office, conflict of interest, blatant corruption.

The public was furious. In comment sections on social media, calls alternated between “Immediate resignation!”, “Marek to jail!” and cynical remarks like: “At least now we know why Bitcoin swung so wildly.”

Robert’s press secretary canceled all scheduled interviews. No one had been seen leaving his office on Malostranské náměstí for two days. Everyone awaited his response.

On television debates, former colleagues, political commentators, economists, and lawyers appeared. Some defended him as “an expert who got carried away,” others branded him a criminal in a suit with a diplomatic passport. Kateřina, who had published the documents first, received hundreds of messages daily — from thank-yous to threats. But she stood firm.

“The public has a right to know,” she declared in a live broadcast, as behind her ran a montage of Marek’s past interviews where he had confidently said: “Regulation? I believe in the market. And in truth.”

Truth was catching up with him now. And it was merciless.

On the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, word spread through parliamentary corridors that Marek was preparing a press conference. The exact time was unknown, but expectations were clear: a head would roll.

And Tomáš, watching it all from his mother’s living room, realized that what he had found in that old book had unleashed more than a hunt for lost treasure.

It had started an avalanche.

Chapter 12: The Fall of the Powerful

It was a gray March day when journalists gathered in the foyer of the Chamber of Deputies like a flock of vultures circling wounded prey. Amid the flashes of cameras and the whispers of live broadcasts, a man clambered onto the podium — a man who, only weeks before, had ruled the backstage of financial politics with untouchable arrogance. Robert Marek. Suit immaculate, voice steady, eyes devoid of shine.

“After careful consideration, and with regard to the public interest, I have decided to resign from my position as a Member of Parliament,” he declared, as if speaking about someone else. “I consider all my activities legitimate and will fully cooperate with the investigating authorities.”

Before he could finish his last sentence, the chamber exploded with questions. But he gave no answers. He turned and disappeared backstage, accompanied only by his lawyer and two parliamentary aides who dared not say a word.

Yet behind the spectacle of the press conference, another plan was already in motion.

In his private study, in an apartment overlooking the Vltava, Robert powered on his computer and opened access to several hardware wallets. Years of scattered bitcoins, anonymous transactions, silent purchases through proxy accounts… now the time had come to consolidate it all. He had transfers prepared, aimed at an exchange in Panama where a contact had promised discreet conversion into stablecoins and subsequent transfers into Caribbean structures.

But by then, every move he made was already being tracked by a special team from the National Center against Organized Crime. Overnight, his IP addresses had been traced, transactions intercepted, and — based on testimony from several insiders at exchange platforms — data had been obtained on the wallets tied to his identity. The blockchain might not answer to any state — but its fingerprint is eternal. And continuous.

At six in the morning, the doorbell rang.

The door creaked open slowly. Robert, still in his suit, weary and defeated, stood in the entryway. In his hand he held a cup of coffee that trembled faintly.

A man in a gray coat stepped into the room, his face unreadable yet calm. Commissioner Petr Hruška, head of the cybercrime unit.

“Mr. Marek,” he began, without raising his voice, “you need to come with us.”

Robert wanted to protest, to speak, to rattle on about media hysteria — but the commissioner motioned for silence. On the table lay exchange statements, transfer records, a trail leading to a Bitcoin address linked to the stolen 2013 database.

“Market manipulation,” Hruška said, “is, unfortunately, still only unethical. We don’t yet have laws for that. But…” he raised an eyebrow, “…theft is another matter. Theft is already a crime.”

Robert lowered his head. It was the first time he truly stayed silent.

Chapter 13: Words on Paper

The street smelled of rain, and summer dust still clung to the cracks in the pavement when Tomáš arrived at the newsroom. Kateřina Benešová welcomed him in a small glass meeting room, surrounded by stacks of printed notes and empty mugs bearing the radio’s logo.

Tomáš pulled out the folded slip — the same one that had fallen from the book. The paper still had the same yellowed corners and faint scent of old parchment, but now it carried a new meaning — and perhaps a new direction.

“I found it in a book from an antiquarian shop. Introduction to Encryption, no dust jacket, worn binding. I didn’t realize what I was holding until I started verifying the address on the blockchain,” Tomáš explained, while Kateřina studied the numbers on the slip and compared them with her notes.

“The Antiquarian Lost Time?”

“Yeah. I spoke with the bookseller. He said the books were bought around 2018 or 2019 from the estate of a certain František Richter. He doesn’t know more.”

Kateřina nodded and, without another word, began drafting an article.

The Lost Key from the Past: Forgotten Wallet Found in an Antiquarian Shop

by Kateřina Benešová

Sometimes the past makes itself heard at the moment we least expect.

A young programmer from Prague stumbled, during a chance visit to an antiquarian shop, upon a technical book on cryptography. Inside, he discovered a handwritten slip with an old Bitcoin address and a set of key details matching blockchain records from 2010.

For more than a decade, the wallet had been considered lost. It is not known who it belonged to, but its contents remain untouched. According to the information found, the book originated from a long-sold private collection.

The editorial team has already contacted security experts and lawyers specializing in digital assets. At the same time, it calls on the original owner to come forward and substantiate their claim.

While the article filled the front pages of online media, in a modern apartment in Prague’s Vinohrady — in a study with two monitors, a shelf full of IT literature, and a coffee machine whispering its regular call for another dose of caffeine — sat Jakub. Wearing a gray hoodie, enveloped in a silence that pressed heavily.

After reading the article, his heart pounded harder than during a night of debugging. He didn’t even need to check the blockchain address. He knew it. That string of characters was etched into his memory, even if he had once forgotten where he had stored it.

He opened his email inbox and began to type:

Subject: Response to the article on the discovered wallet

Message:

Good afternoon,

I read your article and it is very likely that you have found the wallet I created in the spring of 2010. At that time, I bought a novelty — 10,000 BTC.

I recorded the key by hand along with the wallet’s name on a slip of paper and placed it inside the book “Introduction to Encryption – Principles of Cryptography for Advanced Users,” which I must have sold along with several other technical volumes when I cleared out my old flat.

I am willing to provide further information and will cooperate with anyone who handles the find fairly.

Sincerely, Jakub

The silence of the room was broken only by the faint beep of the sent message. Jakub leaned back and exhaled. After so many years, a piece of his past had finally surfaced from the fog — and he was ready to find out where it would lead.

Chapter 14: The Hacker’s Failure

It was a quiet evening on the outskirts of Kyiv. The dull glow of TV screens flickered in the windows of concrete apartment blocks, while in one gray building the fate of a man who thought he had won was ticking away.

Viktor sat in his dark, windowless flat, lit only by the bluish glow of three monitors. On one of them an encrypted chat was open — a window with an offer to sell an old database of Bitcoin wallets. 47,000 records, some inactive, others stolen, a few still full. He had a buyer. The offer was absurdly favorable. Too favorable.

But Viktor didn’t notice. Or rather — he didn’t want to see it.

He checked the rerouting through several proxy servers and activated the final layer of his encryption tool. He uploaded the data to a private server in Estonia and waited. The last transaction was supposed to arrive within minutes. It was almost done. Soon he would disappear. Maybe to Turkey. Or Thailand.

Then came a faint sound. Not from the computer. From the door.

A jolt of the handle. A crash. Wood splintered under the force.

Men in plain clothes burst inside, one flashing the badge of the Ukrainian SBU, another accompanied by a Czech interpreter with prepared extradition papers.

“Viktor Semenko? You are under arrest for attempted illegal sale of data, digital fraud, and cyberattacks. At the request of the Czech police.”

Viktor froze. He wanted to run, to grab the flash drive, to yank out the ethernet cable, something — but it was too late. His world, built of darkness, rerouting, and paranoia, collapsed the moment reliance on anonymity turned into smugness.

Two days later, at a press conference in Prague:

“Thanks to cooperation with our Ukrainian colleagues, we have succeeded in detaining an individual who has long operated on the fringes of the digital underworld. On his devices, we found a database of thousands of wallets from compromised exchanges between 2012 and 2014,” announced Captain Hruška. “The investigation is ongoing.”

In a cell in Ukraine, without monitors or a keyboard, Viktor sat in silence, staring at the wall. Everything he had was gone. And those he had sought to outsmart were now slowly beginning to count his records. One by one.

Chapter 15: Return to the Beginning

It was an autumn day when the world in Prague seemed to slow down. The air smelled of wet leaves and coffee from nearby cafés, the streets were lined with trees in golden dress, and trams rolled along Nerudova Street with a soft chime, as if they somehow sensed that today something different was happening.

In the courtyard of a monastic garden — a place where the modern world ends and the old still breathes — three people sat on a wooden bench, people who otherwise would have had nothing in common. Journalist Kateřina Brožová watched from a few steps away as two parts of a story, which had waited for years for resolution, quietly met.

Jakub, now graying but still calm and almost ascetic in his presence, arrived with a single bag. He brought no technology, no lawyers. Only a handshake and a smile that concealed more gratitude than words could ever carry.

Tomáš was nervous. In his hands he quietly held his laptop — the one that contained the wallet he had found, and which he had never once used. Alena sat beside him, her eyes moist though she tried to remain composed. She was not accustomed to such moments — direct, genuine ones.

“You’re Jakub?” Tomáš asked softly.

Jakub nodded.

“I found it by chance. The book… it was in an antiquarian shop. I had no idea what it meant.”

Jakub smiled.

“And yet you didn’t sell it. Didn’t transfer it. Instead, you tried to find the owner. Do you know how many people would have…” He didn’t finish. Gratitude shimmered in his eyes. “I’m glad there are still people like you.”

Tomáš opened the laptop, entered access, and handed Jakub the hardware wallet into which, with Kateřina’s help, they had transferred everything — cleanly, transparently, securely. After so many years, the lost value was back where it belonged.

There was no need for fanfare. Just a handshake, gratitude in their eyes, and a quiet gesture worth more than ten thousand digital coins.

When the transfer was complete, Jakub looked at them with a gentle smile. “For your honesty and integrity, you deserve a reward,” he said calmly, without pride, only with sincerity that could not be doubted.

Alena wanted to protest, but Jakub simply raised a hand.

“I am no longer the young man who bought something worthless for a hundred dollars. But I still believe in what it stands for. Freedom. Independence. Trust without intermediaries.”

A week later, international tech media carried the story: An anonymous donor had given a foundation for the development of open, decentralized protocols a sum equivalent to hundreds of millions of crowns. With no conditions. Only a note: “For a future that belongs to no one — and therefore belongs to everyone.”

And Kateřina Brožová, who had witnessed it all, wrote just one sentence in her diary:

“Sometimes the blockchain isn’t counted in blocks. Sometimes it’s counted in people.”

Chapter 16: A New Beginning

The autumn sun bathed Prague's Letná park in a golden light that glided over the benches, leaves, and faces of people who were enjoying the warm day one last time before winter. In one of the small cafés, Alena sat with Tomáš. A fragrant coffee sat on the table, next to an open laptop, and between them stretched a silence—not an awkward one, but a focused one, filled with thoughts and the future.

"It's not about us anymore," Alena said quietly, looking at the monitor. "How many people like me were fooled back then? How many families lost everything just because they didn't understand what they were buying?"

Tomáš nodded. "People need tools. They need to understand what a key is, what an exchange is, what volatility means… and most importantly—what's behind it all. Not just the price."

And so, the platform KryptoKompas was born.

It wasn't about investment tips or ads for exchanges. It was a place where anyone could learn the basics of blockchain, security rules, the history of digital currencies, and the ethical questions of decentralization—all for free. Learning modules, interviews with experts, interactive simulations. And also stories—including their own. Not as a heroic legend, but as both a warning and an inspiration.

Under the banner of KryptoKompas, they began organizing workshops at schools, writing articles, and participating in discussions. They discovered that when you give people knowledge, they give you trust in return—and that was something that could no longer be converted into bitcoin.

In December of that year, an email arrived from one of their online course participants:

"Thanks to you, I understood why I lost money last time. And now I know it's not just about getting rich. Thank you for teaching me how to think."

Alena printed it out and pinned it above her desk.

A new beginning didn't mean forgetting the past. It meant growing from it—and helping others so they wouldn't fall into the same trap.

Chapter 17: Bitcoin as a Symbol

The year 2025. Fifteen years had passed since the moment when Jakub, in a small apartment, bought a digital currency for a few dollars—a currency that no one back then could have guessed would change the world. Back then, it was about curiosity, perhaps an ideal. Today? Today, Bitcoin was more than just code, more than a number on an exchange. It was a symbol.

At an international conference on digital sovereignty held in Geneva, Switzerland, developers, economists, activists, and former regulators had gathered. They discussed the future of currencies, decentralization, what will remain after the banks, and what role trust plays in a world of algorithms. In the midst of it all, a panel appeared on the main stage titled: Bitcoin Is Not Just an Investment.

One of the speakers was Jakub. Still quiet, uncompromisingly precise, but this time with a story that captivated the audience. Not about money. About people.

He told them about how he lost the key to his wallet and how he found it years later—not because of technology, but because of human decency. He spoke about Alena, who believed an investment would secure her future and ended up finding so much more. About Tomáš, who understood that a true legacy isn't money, but understanding.

At the same time, thousands of kilometers away, a workshop under the banner of KryptoKompas was being held at a school in Ostrava. A teacher was showing students how cryptographic keys work, why digital independence is important, and what happens when a state—or a bank—fails. The goal wasn't to convince them to buy Bitcoin. It was for them to understand why someone once created a currency without a central authority.

In 2025, Bitcoin was not at its peak. Nor was it at its lowest. Its price was no longer the main question. People were using it as a hedge against inflation in crumbling economies, as a tool for donations in countries with censorship, as a means for digital citizenship.

In the hall of the Geneva conference center, the final words of Jakub's speech rang out:

"Bitcoin is not the answer to all the world's problems. But it is a reminder that freedom is not a given. And that technology can be a tool of trust—if we don't betray it ourselves."

The applause was not thunderous. It was calm, strong, moving. Like when you finally understand that the story hasn't ended—it has just changed.

And so Bitcoin endured. Not as a golden egg. But as a symbol of what can emerge when an idea, courage, and integrity come together.

EPILOGUE

A sunny afternoon in a community center on the outskirts of the city. In a room filled with beanbags and posters with slogans like "Your Keys, Your Money" or "It's Not About the Price, It's About Freedom," a crypto workshop for kids had just ended. Tomáš was packing his laptop into his backpack when an eleven-year-old boy with tousled hair and a determined expression quietly crept up to him.

"Mr. Tomáš?" he began shyly. "I've been saving all year... I have almost three hundred. And I want to buy bitcoin with it. But... will someone steal it from me?"

Tomáš smiled. He knelt down to be at eye level with the boy.

"That's a great question," he said seriously. "You know, Bitcoin is like a magical book that everyone can look at, but no one can rewrite a single word in it without the right key."

The boy blinked. "What do you mean, a book?"

Tomáš reached for a white marker and started drawing on the whiteboard: "Imagine that everyone who wants to send money writes on a piece of paper: I, Pepa, am sending 5 crowns to Anička. And then they lock that paper in a little box and add it to a big pile of other locked boxes—that's a block."

"And who unlocks it?"

"No one. It's just verified that the key Pepa used to lock it fits—and that Pepa really had those 5 crowns. And because each new block builds on the previous one, none can be forged or swapped. It's like stacking Lego bricks—if you try to pull one out from the middle, the whole thing falls apart."

The boy smiled. "So if I don't tell anyone the key... I'm safe?"

"Exactly. But even though it's safe, you should talk to your mom or dad about it first. Bitcoin isn't just a toy. It's a responsibility."

"Yeah. I'll tell them. But... if I buy some one day, can I give it to someone as a gift too?"

Tomáš smiled, his eyes calm and proud. "You can. And maybe one day you'll give more than you can even imagine right now."

Outside, the sun was slowly setting. The room fell quiet, interrupted only by the sound of the marker scratching on the whiteboard, where a simple drawing was taking shape—a chain of blocks, interconnected, solid... and full of stories.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: An Innocent Investment (2010)

Chapter 2: The First Boom (2013)

Chapter 3: The Shadow Hacker

Chapter 4: A Mother’s Hope (2017)

Chapter 5: The Politician’s Game

Chapter 6: The Hacker’s Trap (2021)

Chapter 7: The Second Peak (2021)

Chapter 8: The Lost Key Found

Chapter 9: The Hunt for the Treasure

Chapter 10: Echo of the Past

Chapter 11: Media Storm

Chapter 12: The Fall of the Powerful

Chapter 13: Words on Paper

Chapter 14: The Hacker’s Failure

Chapter 15: Return to the Beginning

Chapter 16: A New Beginning

Chapter 17: Bitcoin as a Symbol

EPILOGUE