Moonshot: A Short Story [Part 1]

Cryptocurrency is Deek’s last chance to succeed in life, and he will not stop, no matter what.

“Desire for status and prominence is one of the diseases of the heart.” – Al-Ghazali

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” – Seneca (Roman Stoic)

Moonshots and Degen Trades

Deek had two computers and three monitors running at once as he checked his cryptocurrency investments, tracking a different trade on each monitor. His office, if you could call it that, was crammed into the walk-in closet of the master bedroom of his home, which made for a isolating and stifling work experience. He had two fans going, which still barely managed to keep him and the two computers from overheating.

He wiped his face with his t-shirt sleeve, and snagged a potato chip out of a family-sized bag. He owned over sixty different cryptocurrencies, most with a total value less than $100, but only actively tracked two or three at a time. Some were moonshots, which were extreme longshot trades that could potentially make him rich, or could decline to zero. A hundred bucks here, two hundred there. Others were long-term positions, meaning he would hold them until this bull run hit its peak, at which point he would convert them to stable coins and hold for the next cycle.

Still others were major short-term trades into which he dropped between one thousand and three thousand dollars. These were meant to be held for less than an hour, or even just fifteen minutes. They were degen trades, for that was what traders like him were called – degenerates. Extreme risk takers. And that was fine with him, he could live with the label.

In fact he loved it, he was proud of it. He went where other traders were afraid to go, took the risks they would not take, and that’s why he would be rich one day when others were crawling in the dust praying for airdrops, like dogs waiting for digital scraps to fall into their mouths.

Not him. He would make his own future, inshaAllah. He always remembered to ask Allah, and trust in Allah, for though Allah had denied him success thus far, he knew he could never achieve it without the will and permission of his Creator.

Prove Them All Wrong

He’d been doing this for five years and he knew full well that no one believed in him. Most people couldn’t tell a crypto from a corncob, but even so, in the beginning, a few people had found what he was doing interesting, and had encouraged him. His wife, for one. His friend Marco. Zaid Karim, that dynamic young private detective who was his wife’s cousin’s husband. And… Well, that was about it.

As for everyone else – the mosque community, his wife’s friends, and his own two sisters – he knew how they spoke about him, what they thought of him. He was a deadbeat husband, staying at home pursuing a fool’s errand while his wife supported the family. His two children had to attend community college because he couldn’t pay for a state university. He was a slob and a wreck, and had let himself go. He was running the family into the ground, and would bankrupt the household in the end. He was almost sixty years old, and had accomplished nothing of note in this life.

All those superior doctors and engineers at the masjid, with their hundred thousand dollar donations to the Islamic center, their Mercedes SUVs and big houses in north Clovis. One brother even came to Jum’ah in a white Lamborghini, which Deek found disgusting considering all the Muslims around the world who were starving and suffering.

These people all looked down on him, they thought he was a nobody. They discounted him. He could attend an event at the center, walk in and out, without anyone talking to him. As if he were invisible. He was a joke to them. But he would show them who Deek Saghir really was, and what he was capable of.

For the last five years he’d poured everything he had into crypto. He ate crypto for breakfast, he sweated it through his pores, he breathed it in at night when he slept. He studied and traded every day, and every day he learned something new.

He could break down for any listener the difference between proof-of-work and proof-of-stake, he could explain DeFi, layer 1’s, layer 2’s, Solana meme coins vs Ethereum meme coins, why XRP was doomed to fail, why Solana would succeed while Cardano and Avalanche would not, which was the best software or hardware wallet, tokenization of real-world assets using NFTs, and even lesser known crypto technologies like ZK rollups and oracles.

In five years he’d made small fortunes three times, and three times had lost them all. The biggest of these fortunes had been two hundred thousand dollars. The first time it happened, the first time he lost it all, as he saw it crashing in real time, he’d been on his knees, begging Allah, sobbing and saying, “Why are you doing this to me, Allah? Why? What have I done?”

Go The Distance

But Zaid Karim, whose wife Safaa was Deek’s wife’s cousin, and who Deek admired tremendously, had told him, “Allah does not hate you, Deek. He wants good for you. He gave you that sharp intellect and steel-trap memory. Life is waves, it’s peaks and troughs. Prove you can persist, show that you can go the distance, and you will succeed, inshaAllah.”

So Deek had dusted himself off, telling himself, “Go the distance… Go the distance.” And the second fortune had come more easily, and the third – the big one – more easily still, though he’d lost them as well. But he had not despaired. He knew now that he could do it, and do it again, and so he would.

Crypto was his life, and if he did not succeed it would be his death, emotionally at least. But he would succeed. He would prove them all wrong! And it would happen soon, he could sense it. He was a hungry dog who can smell food nearby. His day was coming. He only had to keep going.

His wife Rania peeked around the corner. “Dinner’s ready, baby.”

She was a gorgeous Iraqi-American woman, petite and darker skinned than most Iraqis, which Deek found exotic and lovely. Her hair was cut into a pixie bob and dyed red. Deek preferred the natural black color, but she was lovely nonetheless. She’d put on weight in the twenty years they’d been married, but Deek didn’t mind. It made her more of a real woman.

And of course Deek himself had put on weight too. Quite a lot of it, actually, to the point where it was embarrassing to take his shirt off. He felt uncomfortable in his own body. His torso felt heavy and unwieldy, and his knees rickety. He could barely tie his own shoes. He felt like a stranger in his body. He no longer exercised, or painted, or even read books. He rarely prayed. All he did anymore was obsess over crypto. He used to play racquetball but hadn’t done it in years. And he ate too much junk food, sitting here in front of the monitors.

Lonely

“I made roasted chicken,” Rania added. “With gorgonzola potatoes and green beans. Your favorite.”

Deek’s mouth began watering, but… “I can’t,” he said regretfully. He glanced from the computer screen to his wife’s face, then back at the screen. “I’m waiting on a token that’s about to bond. I have $2.5K riding on it, I literally can’t take my eyes off it.”

Rania remained looking at him, only her head in the closet. “Baby…”

Deek gritted his teeth, steeling himself for the inevitable criticism disguised as loving advice: You’ve taken this crypto thing as far as it can go, I’m the only one bringing in money, we’re behind on the bills, the kids never see you, you’re not taking care of yourself, why don’t you register as a substitute teacher, you could try graphic design, or even apply for a state job. It’s time to live in the real world – and on and on.

But Rania didn’t say any of those things. She only said, “I’m lonely.”

Deek felt like he’d been stabbed in the chest. He wanted to cry for shame for letting his wife down, not only tonight but for the last twenty years. But he could not abandon this trade, it was critical.

“What about the kids?” he asked.

“Amira is studying at her friend’s house, and Sanaya is working a late shift at the store.”

It embarrassed Deek that Sanaya, who was 19 and a sophomore at city college, had to work full time to have enough money to pay for her own expenses, like car insurance, gas, clothing and even textbooks. He loved his two girls like the trees loved the sun. But he had never been financially successful, even before he started trading crypto. When the girls had been young they had wanted to go to Disneyland and Great America, but he hadn’t had the money to take them. One year they’d wanted to go to ISNA to see their Islamic studies teacher speak. Another year they’d wanted to take ice skating classes. And so on. And every time the answer had been no, he couldn’t afford it.

Now they rarely asked for anything anymore. In fact they hardly spoke to him at all.

“I’m sorry honey,” he said. “I have to watch this trade.”

Rania sighed, and it was a heavy sound, like an anchor tumbling down into the deepest ocean trench in the world. She left to eat alone.

Rug Pull

Deek turned back to the monitor just in time to see that the biggest trade he’d been monitoring, a $2,500 purchase of a meme coin called Hippo Fairy Dust, had just been rug pulled. The chart showed a steady green climb to about $75K market cap, then a vertical red plunge to nothing. The owner of the token, or one of the primary investors, had pulled the liquidity, panicking the remaining buyers and causing an instantaneous crash.

Instantly Deek hit the sell button, hoping to salvage whatever he could. A notice came up: SLIPPAGE EXCEEDED. Dammit! The trade had failed because the price was falling too fast. He increased the slippage to 25%, ignoring the warning that popped up, and hit SELL again. The trade went through… He received $90 He’d just lost $2,410, which was over 50% of his entire crypto net worth.

His hands balled into fists as he suppressed a scream. It wasn’t fair. He’d checked this token for any vulnerability. No one owned more than 3.5% of the token, and a portion of the liquidity was locked. It was supposed to be rug-proof. But he knew full well that experienced scammers could find ways around these things.

He pushed his chair back from the computer and ran into the wall behind him. His heart felt like a jagged chunk of dry ice. If someone struck him with a hammer his body would shatter and fall into pieces. He felt a pressure in his chest, and thought he might be having a heart attack. The pressure and pain increased, rising toward his throat, and he realized it was an acid attack.

He rushed to the bathroom, making sure to close the door so Rania wouldn’t hear, and vomited half-digested potato chips into the sink. The pressure in his chest abated but did not disappear, so he stuck two fingers down his throat and vomited again, then again once more. At that, the pain was gone.

Patience Is At The First Blow

He returned to his computer station and sat. There was a part of him that wanted to curse and demand answers from Allah, but a bigger part of him knew that there was still a chance for success, and for that he needed Allah. He had to stay on Allah’s good side.

Imam Saleh had said something during a khutbah that had always stuck with him. He’d said, “Patience is at the first blow. That first moment when you’re hit with terrible and even devastating news, that is the moment of the test. That is the moment when you say, ‘Qaddar Allahu ma-sha’ fa’al. This is Allah’s decree and He does what He wills.’ Or, ‘Laa hawla wa laa quwwata illa billah. There is no striving and no strength except in Allah.’”

So that was what Deek did. He dropped his head into his hands and ran his fingers through his curly hair, and said, “Qaddar Allahu ma-sha’ fa’al. Laa hawla wa laa quwwata illa billah. Alhamdulillah for everything.”

He lifted his head and for a long time sat like a lizard watching for an insect to eat. His eyes moved blankly from one monitor to the next, his mind empty. Something would come to him. Some idea would bubble up out of his brain like a subterranean creature rising to the surface. He reached into the potato chip bag and popped a few chips into his mouth. There was no thought of giving up. That concept did not exist in his world. Crypto was his last gasp, his life’s moonshot.

A Mistake or A Scam?

A thought occurred. He had not checked his SolFlare wallet lately. His primary wallet was Phantom, but he’d also created a few others, not wanting to keep all his funds in one place. He’d downloaded and tried the SolFlare wallet for the first time recently, but found it unwieldy, and had stopped using it. Nevertheless there was some money in it, including a few moonshots he’d put money into a few weeks ago.

Unlike the Phantom wallet, which he used on his computer as a Chrome extension, the SolFlare wallet was on his phone. He dug the phone out of his pocket, and used his thumbprint to open the wallet.

The total dollar value balance of the wallet showed at the top.

$1,769,251.02

One point seven million dollars.

Deek stared, uncomprehending. He gaped at the number with wide eyes, then glanced around the closet at the hanging clothes and white stucco ceiling, as if confirming that he was awake and not dreaming. He looked back at the wallet. His chest felt heavy, and he realized that he had stopped breathing. He took a deep breath, and let it out. His lower lip began to tremble and his eyes grew wet.

Was it possible that this was a mistake? Or a joke? Or a scam? Yes, it must be a scam, that was the answer. He’d seen scams like this before.

Nearly the entire $1.7 million was due to a meme token called New York Zilla. He’d purchased $300 worth of it two weeks ago on a crypto launchpad called Pump fun. The token had just launched, and he’d been one of the first buyers. Because of this, his $300 had gotten him a full 10% of the supply. Now, according to SolFlare, the token had risen to a total market cap of over $17 million.

He must try to sell the token. That would be the proof, one way or another. But how much should he sell? If he tried to sell it all, it would crash the price of the token and he would receive considerably less than the listed value.

He would sell 10% of his holdings, which would be only 1% of the total supply. Not enough to start a panic. He laughed softly at his own foolishness. This was a scam. The token would turn out to be frozen, or there would be no liquidity, so he would be unable to sell. Something incredible like this could not happen to him. Good things did not gravitate to him. He was a failure and would always be so. This was definitely a scam.

With a mouth as dry as Mojave desert dust, licking his cracked lips, he set up a trade of 10% of his holdings, and hit the sell button.

Part 2 will be published next week inshaAllah

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

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