Lindsay watched a sleeping Steve caress the laptop. Silly guy. He didn't know anything. The 

laptop

itself didn't contain the 

BTC

. That's not how it worked. But to a normie like Steve, how could he understand how it did. To him that 

computer

was like a briefcase full of

money

.

Regular people struggled with the idea of how

cryptocurrency

worked. It clicked immediately for Lindsay. From a young age she understood how money worked. Her parents had fled Bosnia during the war. They had been wealthy back then. She couldn't understand why her parents -- who had usually been obsessed with money -- didn't care to stuff some of their cash into a suitcase. Or at least stop by the 

bank

to get some. Wouldn't we need it wherever we were going?

They said there was no time. That made sense to her. But what didn't make sense to her at the time was another comment her dad had made. He had said that even if they were to bring all of their money, it would be worth nothing wherever they were headed.

A year later, when she was adjusting to life in the states, that comment made sense. Money wasn't about hte literal object. It was about who had the identity that was connected to the money. This is precisely how crypto worked. A certain amount of funds, was associated with an address. Whoever had the private key to prove that they owned that address, owned the funds. The computer that held the private key held no funds itself. Instead, all of the funds were tracked in a distributed network. The data all there in public for anyone to examine.

The two had promised not to look at the computer until morning. It was morning now. But Steve was still asleep. Soon he would be awake.