Bitcoin Billionaire: I Regressed to Invest in the First Bitcoin!

Everyone exchanged glances, curious and worried ones.

"Playing fair?" Sandy voiced out.

"What exactly are we doing here, sir?" Rachel asked.

Darren gestured back to Lilian's image. "Do you guys think she's just a woman who diligently wants to serve her nation by finding scum in the world of finance? Everyone is driven by something, you all know that."

"But Miss Greaves here. Her obsession? She wants to pull every corrupt digital financial establishment from its root. In fact, if it was up to her, digital finance would never grow because of her irrational concern of scams and theft increasing."

Darren downturned his lips. "I saw all of this and I did what any smart person would do. I tugged on her own roots."

Kara side-eyed Amelia.

"Her fixation on Navarro and Talmor? That wasn't an accident. It was simply bait. I saw Kara's error days ago, but I left the Talmor thread dangling because it actually was a genuine error. It felt authentic. And I realized that it was the perfect lure for someone like Greaves. Think about it; it's a seemingly insignificant anomaly that her pattern-recognition brain latches onto, especially when fueled by personal fury."

"We all know Navarro is clean. Amelia, your records show that, and I trust you well not to make errors."

Kara pouted, feeling attacked.

"But it was still the perfect decoy. A shiny object for her to chase with all her formidable, government-backed might."

Vance looked at Daisy. "So you planned this whole thing?"

Darren chortled. "No. Not this whole thing. I never expected they would notice it that fast or even show up at our doorstep without any notification. But... being caught off guard still helped with giving all of this some authenticity."

Amelia clicked her pen. "But was it the decoy for, sir? What's the real play?"

Darren zoomed out the picture. The image of Lilian shrank, replaced by a sprawling global map. Three points pulsed brightly: Grand Cayman, Zurich, Lagos. Lines connected them to a complex web of smaller nodes, culminating back at Steele Investments.

"The real play," Darren said, his voice dropping to a strategic murmur, "is Black Cipher Ltd. in the Caymans. Voltaire Holdings in Zurich. Nalu Stream Enterprises in Lagos. And a dozen other shells like them, meticulously established over the last month."

"The global diversification you did weeks ago," Rachel murmured, surprised. "You really did know this was going to happen."

Darren scoffed proudly. "Of course I did."

He pointed to the Cayman node. "Black Cipher isn't hiding illicit gains. It's holding strategic liquidity reserves, diversified into stablecoins and gold-backed tokens, entirely legal under Cayman law. Voltaire in Zurich?" He gestured to Switzerland. "It's a conduit for rapid, low-fee Euro settlements for our European partners, bypassing slower traditional banks – again, fully compliant, leveraging Switzerland's crypto-friendly regulations."

He tapped Lagos. "Nalu Stream? It's a joint venture seed fund for African blockchain startups, registered and transparent. Global diversification, risk mitigation, operational efficiency – standard corporate treasury management for the digital age. R. Talmor was just one small part of an older, defunct structure. These," he swept his hand over the new network, "all have one thing in common. They hold my Bitcoins, and hence, they're the future. And they are clean"

Confusion rippled through the team. Vance frowned. "I know it's all legal. You've told me. But the thread is very thin, Darren. Why the cloak-and-dagger? Why antagonize Greaves into tearing us apart looking for something that isn't there?"

"Because," Darren said, his eyes glinting with cold purpose, "she's not just looking at us. To get to Steele Investments, to follow the 'stench' she thinks she smells, she needs warrants. Deep warrants. She needs to peel back layers not just on our shells, but on everyone connected to the financial ecosystem she's investigating. Including the government's own oversight mechanisms."

He zoomed in on the map again, overlaying it with a new layer – a schematic of the Department of Financial Integrity's internal hierarchy. A specific name glowed red:

Deputy Director Warren Caldridge.

"Greaves operates under Caldridge, executive chairman of the DFI. He's also," Darren's voice turned icy, "a far more insidious ghost than his former colleagues ever was. My present research on him paints a different picture. Caldridge isn't just a zealous regulator. He's compromised. Deeply."

The image shifted, and a new one came, displaying fragments of encrypted financial flows, offshore account numbers (blurred but identifiable as non-Steele entities), and property records in Belize and Monaco under aliases linked to Caldridge's known associates.

"He's been using his position for years," Darren continued. "Shaking down mid-tier digital dollar exchanges for 'compliance fees,' turning a blind eye to certain operations for substantial offshore deposits, even facilitating the laundering of funds for oligarchs through complex, DFI-sanctioned 'sting operations' that somehow never quite recover the bulk of the assets. He's the rot within the system Greaves worships. And he's very, very good at covering his tracks."

Understanding dawned on Rachel's face. "You want Greaves to find him."

"Exactly," Darren affirmed. "But Caldridge is insulated. His tracks are buried deep within legitimate DFI operations, protected by layers of bureaucracy and his own carefully cultivated reputation."

He sunk his hands in his pockets yet again. "To expose him, we need someone with Greaves's skill, her tenacity, and crucially, her federal authority. We need someone who can demand the records we can't legally access, subpoena the banks we can't touch, and follow the money trails that vanish for private entities."

He pointed back to Lilian's image. "And we need her to be so focused on proving my guilt, my malfeasance, that she tears through everything in her path. Including Caldridge's carefully constructed firewall. Her investigation into Navarro, into Talmor, into our entire financial history – it's the battering ram.

"You guys just watch. She'll demand records from banks Caldridge uses. She'll subpoena communication logs that might show his backchannel deals. She'll scrutinize every DFI action related to crypto, potentially uncovering his pattern of selective enforcement and hidden payoffs. Her very obsession, fueled by my provocation, becomes the tool to expose the real corruption."

Kara grinned, a feral light in her eyes. "We're using the government's attack dog to hunt the government's fox. That's… diabolical. I love it."

Rachel gritted her teeth, eyes narrowed in angry thought. "But that really doesn't make sense. Like why do it? Why is it our business if Caldridge gets caught? We're putting ourselves in danger and government scrutiny just so some corrupt guy goes to prison? Why?"

Darren paused for a moment, looking at her deeply. She was still mad at him, but for now, this was not about her.

"It'll all make sense if you just thought about it," he said, almost in a cinematic villainous manner. "Do you know what happens when it becomes public knowledge that the executive chairman of Financial Integrity is involved in the very thing he's supposed to fight against?"

Everyone's eyes widened.

"Chaos." Darren said the word like it was thunder. "Who would trust the government? Who would care about what they have to say? Who would believe them when they disparage Bitcoin or create rules to stop cryptocurrency's growth. Commotion and disorderliness will take over the government. And stopping Bitcoin will become even more difficult."

"Losing the people's trust and even their employee's trust such as Lilian Greaves herself, they'll take actions and back away from cryptocurrency. Focusing more on themselves and their unit. It'll be an unforgettable time."

"And while this happens, Bitcoin rises, gaining from the traction. And I get richer."

Everyone was left speechless now, staring at Darren's face while he gazed back at them, shoulders broad, face gallant.