Maybe if we could take down Altus, we could have all of that. People would remain free to continue the beautifully stupid endeavor of humanity, and I would just be a person again. Well, maybe not just a person, but close enough anyway.
The point is, if you want to be happy, let go of your wants. If you want to be effective, harness them. I think either strategy is OK, but I’ve made my choice. Sorry, Mom.
—
“I think I figured it out,” I said to Maya, knowing Carl would hear me.
“What?” Maya asked.
“Where the money is going to come from.”
“The billions of dollars?” Maya asked.
“Yeah, yeah . . .” And then I told her.
She looked back at me with a slight curl of disgust in her lip. “I mean, if that works, then I guess it was all worth it.”
ANDY
It was time. I went on the Altus exchange and started selling AltaCoin for cash. I couldn’t do it all at once because there simply weren’t enough people buying. Every time I sold a hunk, the price would drop. But eventually, a few million dollars at a time, it all flowed out of my account and, instead of cryptocurrency, my bank account had billions of actual dollars in it.
I apologize for interrupting a fairly intense moment with a bunch of stuff about . . . fucking finance, but it’s important.
Remember Stewart Patrick, the guy who ran the private equity conference in Cannes and who gave me his business card? Well, I’d looked him up and, guess what, he was born before Star Trek: The Next Generation came out, so he probably wasn’t named after Patrick Stewart. It was the kind of lie that really didn’t matter except it let you know that a guy didn’t mind lying for no reason.
I called him at seven o’clock at night, assuming I would leave a message, but he answered his phone.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry for calling so late,” I said, surprised and unprepared.
“Who is this?” He sounded a little agitated.
“It’s . . . Andy Skampt, we met in Cannes. You told me to call you if I knew anything that might be useful.”
“Oh, well, in that case, hold on a moment.” I heard him talking to someone in the background.
“Andy, you have my attention.” Not long into the conversation, I felt way out of my depth, and I handed the phone to Bex. They had been talking for a solid thirty minutes when they finally got to the point.
“I’m going to have to ask you to stop talking about this like you’re saving the world,” Stewart told us, exasperated. “I don’t know any of what you know, and also I don’t care. The only thing I’m worried about is whether there’s money to be made here. If there’s a transaction that is going to occur, I can charge you for that. If it’s a large transaction, I will make a lot of money. If you know that the value of Altus is going to plunge, that’s all that matters. We put together a trade, I call every single person invested in Altus, I scare the shit out of them, and then, when the bad thing happens, you buy the stock when they’re willing to sell at a low price. I don’t care why we’re doing it. It’s great if it’s a good cause, but if there’s money for me to make, why are you trying to convince me it’s good? Who cares. I’ll do it.”
Jason, Bex, and I looked at each other. I mean, I guess he was right. If you’re going to pay someone a bunch of money, you don’t also need to convince them that it’s the right thing to do.
“And how much money do you have to buy Altus shares?” he asked.
“Right now, like five billion?”
“That is not enough,” Stewart said.
“We think we can get more together soon.”
“Very soon?”
“Very soon.”
We hung up, and then Bex turned to me and said, “I think we’re doing this right.”
“I’m glad. I have never done a hostile takeover.”
“No, I mean the whole thing, because a book told me to give you this after ‘an important conversation about buying a company.’” I looked down. She was holding out a book to me.
“Goddamn it, Carl,” I said under my breath and then began to read it out loud.
This is the last time I’ll be in touch. After today, I will no longer be able to communicate with you. I hope you have learned things from our correspondence.
I also want to say, of all the people I have communicated with in this way, you have had the worst time. I wanted to make people’s lives better while I did this, but yours has gotten worse. This is a function of our working together toward a particular outcome.
So, I’m sorry this has been a rough time. Remember that music brings you joy, that making a podcast with Jason brings you joy, that playing games with friends brings you joy.
You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce. It is not the only thing you will make, nor should it be, but it is something valuable and beautiful.
The last round of fundraising Altus did valued the company at over $500 billion. But we didn’t need to buy all of Altus, we needed to buy over 50 percent, so we just needed to convince a few very, very rich people that they were holding on to a deeply toxic asset and they would be lucky to get even 2 percent of their money back.
Anyhow,
