Godcoin
January 27, 2026
science fiction by William P. Meyers

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It was partly luck, of course, but CryBaby, as he called himself, attributed it to his own skill. After all, two years earlier the play was unconceivable to him, and even six months earlier he had only a vague idea of how to pull off the caper. He had learned a lot in those last six months.

Now, at the age of 19, his efforts had paid off. He had enough money for a lifetime. He owned a mansion in Connecticut and a condo in Miami Beach. He owned a Lamborghini, a Ferrari, a Cybertruck, and an SUV. He had more money than his father, who was a mid-level investment banker.

CryBaby had started to show talent early. Of course he did well in school. But his real talent was in games. Checkers, then Chess, then a series of console and online games. By the time he was a sophomore in high school he was mostly playing Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto, and he was making money. He earned it at first by selling, to other players, in-game upgrades he earned. He then created a series of user names that he played until they were upgraded enough to sell. He learned about cryptocurrencies and invested in them and traded them.

The big turn came when he and his game friends learned how to steal crypto wallets. They called themselves the CoinCon Collective. Instead of making thousands of dollars he was making tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands. Over the course of a year he bought cars, then a condominium, then whatever and whoever he wanted.

Eventually he scored big. Really big. In one haul he landed so much money he was not sure what to do with it all.

Then luck ran out. His mother tried to call him, but he let the call roll over to voice mail. Then there was a text from her, but it was just a few letters, "we are". That was at 2:12 PM. Mrs. Metalama called again around 4:30 PM as he was getting ready to go out. Again he did not answer. Again a text: "Pick Up!" So he answered the cell when it rang a moment later.

"Charly, Charly are you okay?"

"Yes, Mother. Everything is fine, I was about to go out to meet friends."

"Charly, some people tried to kidnap your father and I. They did kidnap us. We were driving and a car rammed us from behind. Then another pulled in front of us. These men threatened us and forced us into their van. They hit your father with a baseball bat. Thanks to Vishnu the police caught up with them. I am with your father is in the hospital, he has a broken arm and broken ribs. I am okay. Are you okay? Have you had any trouble?"

"I'm okay, Mom. Which hospital are you at?"

While CryBaby drove his own Lamborghini to the hospital he began worrying about his own skin. His parents had money, to be sure, but not enough to make them likely targets for kidnapping. Not his kind of money. And they did not have his type of friends and acquaintances, as far as he knew. The most likely picture was that the person going to get the ransom call would have been him. The kidnappers would not be demanding a million or two. They would be demanding keys to crypto wallets. As his mind went over the crypto culture he lived within, he kept asking: Who? Him, her, they? His immediate associates were not that large in number, but throw in friends of friends, and the hacker and fraud community, and the total number of potential kidnappers grew exponentially.

Swaxer, meanwhile, was keeping cool, waiting for his lawyer. His lawyer, Barbara Fink, would extract him from the situation, he was sure. She had already helped him a few times, though this was, he almost admitted to himself, a bit different. This was in the real world. This was not online. This involved human witnesses, and though he had been masked, that hardly mattered when the cops caught you hiding near the van the victims were found in. He considered flipping on his friends, ratting out MineCroft for using the baseball bat. And he could always rat out CryBaby. Still, he could wait for Fink's advice.

They met, online, when CryBaby was still in high school. There were others, but their core circle came to include LittleD, Pandantic, CheVay, and LilMarC. Although Swaxer thought of himself as the leader, it was LittleD who got them into talking people out of their crypto using social engineering. She had worked briefly as a telemarketer. She knew how to get people to trust her over a phone or a video connection.

Even before the big score, it was not small change, though it did require patience. And finesse. They mostly lacked that at first. They would get lists, from darknet contacts, of people who had crypto wallets, plus basic data on them. They would send the marks a notice that there was a security issue. Then LittleD or sometimes Pandantic would telephone the mark, identifying as a security officer at the crypto exchange that held the crypto wallet. LittleD would say that their crypto was secure, but it might be a good idea to reset the password or even transfer the crypto into a different wallet. She would offer to walk them through the process. Of course at the end of the process she either had the password for the wallet or had talked the victim into transferring the coins into a wallet CoinCon controlled.

Once they had control of the wallet they started transferring the coins around, often trading one type of coin for another in the process. They learned to pay fees to darknet specialists who opened and closed accounts in places like Myanmar and Russia. Sometimes they made a few dollars, often they made between $10,000 and $1 million when they scored. Some of the group, like CryBaby, focused on accumulating crypto. Others spent it about as fast as they made it. They held real-world parties with expensive champaigns. But spending could also be the ultimate transfer: crypto into a solid asset. It could be a ridiculously expensive watch, piece of jewelry, or car. As the grift prospered first Swaxer, then LilMarC, then others began buying condos and houses. Enough crypto was converted to dollars to buy airline tickets, pay for hotel rooms, and go to concerts and night clubs.

Their little group was not the only one doing it. They traded tips with others in the same game and sometimes worked on other teams. Notable was AckLamb, He had started playing Minecraft in Singapore. Minecraft was where he first met CryBaby. AckLamb was more of a bad boy when they first met. He claimed he doxed some managers of a Minecraft server who had caught him cheating. The managers had taken away some of the in-game items he had cheated to win, and which he would have sold to finance himself. They ended up with a swat team at their door and were briefly under arrest until their lawyers straightened things out.

It was AckLamb who gave the gang tips about tricking people out of their wallets and then moving the coins around so they could not be traced. Swaxer and CryBaby had every reason to listen to him. When AckLamb arrived in America and started partying in Los Angeles he already sported diamond rings and the sort of diamond-encrusted sunglasses that screamed mug me. He was a skinny little nerd who looked like he was 15 even though he was pushing 20. His first, and perhaps wisest, purchase had been a security guard. In one club AckLamb stood on a table and threw hundred-dollar bills to the crowd of Minecraft and darknet friends he had assembled. He quenched their thirst with $2,000 bottles of Champaign.

AckLamb bought cars, including multiple Posches and Lamborghinis, as if on a whim. When he was tired of LA, after just a few weeks, he flew to Miami. He bought a small mansion there. CryptoBaby, LilMarC, LittleD, Pandantic, and CheVay flew down to join him. It was there that CryBaby began to think it was okay to buy himself a car or two. More importantly, CryBaby wanted to make bigger scores, which would require working harder and smarter.

Amid the smaller scores the team, going down the list, hit on Eric Shrier. Their methods had evolved a bit by then. They did not begin by basically asking immediately for a crypto wallet. They tried to sign into Shrier's regular Google account. They did not have the password. They did not need it. They did not care about getting into the account. Eric received several failed sign-in notifications from Google, the kind any user might get. Eric was retired, so he remembered earlier internet eras when hackers would try to guess passwords at accounts over and over, using password generators. His password was long enough to be secure against most attacks. Still, he was concerned.

It was a Tuesday morning when Eric received a text. It was (or appeared to be) from Google, saying that a security team member would be calling him to discuss a security issue. It was really from CryBaby's team. LittleD made the call. After identifying herself she told Eric his account may have been compromised. Google would need proof he was the original account holder, or the account would need to be cancelled. If he preferred, she said, they could just cancel the account, and he could open a new one.

Eric did not want to change his account. The Google security woman stated his full name, his user name, his physical address, and his cell phone number. This reassured Eric that he was really talking to a Google security person. When LittleD then asked him for more details, to prove he was who he said he was, including his birth date, the last four digits of his Social Security number and the name of his current or last employer, he gave them. She then assured Eric his account would remain open, and he could continue to use his current password. However, she suggested that he could log in and change his password if he was worried about what had happened.

CryptoBaby, LittleD, Pandantic, and Swaxer had upgraded their game. There was no reason for them to break into a Google account, though other hackers might have reason. The point was to soften the victim up, to put the victim in a state of mind, so the real con would be easier to carry out. They had targeted Eric Shrier because he was on a list of people who used the crypto exchange CatWalk. They had already successfully talked six CatWalk users into parting with their coins, with no blowback. They had tried it with hundreds of users. Each attempt took only a few minutes of effort.

Three days after the faked Google call, CryBaby called Eric, presenting himself as a CatWalk security team member. He said Eric's CatWalk account had been hacked. Fortunately, his coins were still intact in their wallet, but he would need to reset his two-factor authentication and transfer his coins to a new wallet. CryBaby apologized for the inconvenience and offered to walk Eric through the process. To do that, Eric told him his security information. Soon Eric had a new wallet and was able to verify that his money had been transferred there. But CryBaby had the pass codes as well.

To top off the con, CryBaby suggested that Eric download a security app. That, he said, would offer extra protection in the future. Eric downloaded the app. How an app on his notebook computer would protect an account at a crypto exchange, he did not even consider. He did not know that it was a remote-desktop app that gave CryBaby and his crew unlimited access to his computer.

It was a Friday evening. Eric went out to his favorite Washington D.C. Chinese restaurant. He brought it back to the luxury condominium he had bought in the middle 1980s. The décor was mostly more 60s and 70s, the culture of Eric's childhood. He still had vast shelves of physical books, LPs, and music CDs. He could have lived in much grander luxury. In the early days of Bitcoin he had purchased some, mostly back when they were around $2 each. On Friday evening they were worth almost $80,000 each. They were compartmentalized in his mind. The $250 million or so they now represented just sat there, a rainy-day fund. They were in a second wallet, not the CatWalk one.

CryBaby went through Eric's files and quickly found the second wallet. He and his team decided to move quickly. There was just $5 million at CatWalk. He moved it on it first step in the chain that would, hopefully, make it untraceable. Then he opened the Bitcoin wallet. After a few OMG moments he went ahead and transferred it too.

Blockchains are a strange combination of public and anonymous or private information. CryBaby and his associates knew crypto transfers can be traced by the FBI, some other police organizations, and some private entities that make that their business. They would normally have taken a smaller set of coins, say some fraction of a million's worth, and laundered it through a specialist, who would take a 10% cut for the service. But $250 million was too much. A specialist might say "Score" and decide to retire. So first they broke the coins down into wallets with 10 to 20 coins each and then converted the Bitcoin into one of several other coin types. Only then did they send them to be laundered. The laundered coins were also moved around some and traded some and then re-laundered.

Two days later they had the equivalent of some $200 million stashed in a wide variety of wallets, mostly in various coin types, but already a chunk was in dollars in regular bank accounts. It was time to divide it up. Swaxer immediately demanded 50%. CryBaby, LittleD, Pandantic, and a few other friends who had helped out in various ways reacted negatively to that cut. Swaxer was a friend, perhaps a teacher, but he had not touched this particular transaction. They offered him 10%. He went ballistic, promising to both hunt them down and dox them. With their coin stashes they could have dove more deeply into the Anonymous world and left him high and dry. Instead, after negotiations, he agreed to take 20%, which was $40 million. At that point he rationalized the agreement. He had never even made 1 million before in a single caper.

Of the remaining $160 million, CryBaby took $80 million, LittleD and Pandantic took $30 million each, and the other $20 million went to several helpers who were extremely happy, in part because they did not know how big the original score had been. For the whole gang it was time to party. The future would take care of itself.

Back from his Chinese dinner, Eric Shrier, checked his CatWalk wallet, only to find it empty. He contacted CatWalk security. Among other things, he learned that they had not previously contacted him. They explained they would not have asked for the keys to his wallet. They could see the transfer, and would try to get his coins back, but no promises. Then he decided to look at the old Bitcoin wallet, to reassure himself he still had $250 million saved for retirement. When he saw it was empty he gave himself a mental dressing down, then called the D.C. police and the FBI. He did not see how giving the scammers the CatWalk information had allowed them to empty a wallet that was not at CatWalk. It would be days before someone explained to him about the remote-desktop app.

One thing that Eric did not know, CryBaby and his gang also did not know. The rising tide of crypto theft had given rise to a small industry of investigators and firms that specialized in tracing illegal transfers. Before the FBI knew about the theft, one of those investigators got an alert. LaVega (a pseudonym) received automated alerts that many large sums, over $100,000 each, were being transacted at exchanges favored by criminals. One transfer was for $2 million, an exceptional sum. LaVega was able to backtrack the transactions to a crypto wallet that had held about $250 million Bitcoin. He could see the coins had been there for well over a decade. He asked himself why a long-term holder would use sketchy services to make so many transfers. As time passed, he could see the crypto being re-transferred through high-fee services, and that the coins were mostly converted to less stable coin types. Clearly money laundering.

LaVega shared his findings with others who fight against crypto thefts. Then it turned out that the victim, Eric Shrier, had also lost coins in the FTX bankruptcy back in 2023. LaVega connected with Shrier and, with others, started to freeze what coins they could, so that they might be returned to Shrier. Even though crypto transfers are generally not reversible.

Meanwhile, some of the CoinCon group had livestreamed parts of the heist! They had started recording when they realized how big the heist was, yelling "Oh, my god!" over and over, and naming the amount in the wallet. At one point CryBaby had flashed his Windows home screen. His real name, Charles Metalama, was on the screen. An anonymous tip allowed LaVega to find the dark web recordings. LaVega shared the information with the FBI team. That was over a week before the kidnapping.

Before he reached the hospital CryBaby pulled off the road. There was a text from an unknown caller: "police waiting for you at hospital."

Despite his relative lack of experience, carelessness, and optimism, CryBaby had a backup plan that went beyond calling his lawyer. He had talked to friends about escape plans. He had seen the ancient series Breaking Bad where Walt White had to bail out of his meth business and hide in the hills for a while. He knew of hackers who had been caught and sent to jail. So he texted his crew to alert them. Then, using back streets, he drove to where he had a far less ostentatious car stashed. It was a recent model Ford pickup, one that would not be out of place anywhere in the U.S. He used a burner phone to text his mother that he was retreating to a safe place for a while. And that he would not be answering calls or email from family for that time.

He drove at the speed limit across the Tappan Zee Bridge and then south into New Jersey. On the outer edge of the New York City metropolitan area he found his haven. He had only been there once before. It was a brick building, commercial, with access to a two-car garage through an alley behind it. It was owned by a Virgin Islands corporation that his commercial lawyer, as opposed to his criminal lawyer, had set up. He had to manually raise the garage door.

He inspected the place. On the bottom floor, besides the garage, it was meant to be an office, with a large window facing the street. The window was blinded. The building also had a front door out into the street. The office had an ancient steel desk in it and a somewhat more modern office chair. Most importantly, it had Wi-Fi, which he checked with his notebook computer. There was a small bathroom, just an old sink and toilet. Upstairs was a nearly empty room. Someone had lived in it once: it had a small kitchen with an electric stove, refrigerator and microwave oven. The bathroom had a shower. There was a folding worktable from an office supply store and a folding chair. The walls were greenish. There was even a cot, the kind available at military surplus stores. There were two large plastic bins of what he had considered would suffice as emergency supplies. Mostly food, a bit of clothing, and spare electronics. He immediately wished he had planned for a longer stay. In a few days he would have to shop. Or fast.

CryBaby wondered if he should ask a friend or two if they wanted to come stay with him. He decided he had better not, he did not know who had leaked the information that got his parents kidnapped. He did not mean to, but he collapsed in exhaustion onto the cot.

Back in Connecticut, a judge denied Swaxer's request for bail. Even though his criminal lawyer pointed out he had no criminal record. He was sure one of the young men he had hired to help him with the kidnapping had ratted him out. Also, he had refused to cooperate with the feds who came around and asked him about the Eric Shrier heist.

When CryBaby woke up the next day his first impulse was to check his phone and laptop. Before he did he took stock of his surroundings. He was hiding out, how safe was it to even turn on the devices? He did not want anyone to know where he was.

He did, however, long to know what was going on. He considered his safety precautions, his VPN and obfuscating servers. He regretted not having brought a physical book to read. He began to exhibit withdrawal symptoms. He gave up decided to risk checking his encrypted messages over Wi-Fi. There was surprisingly little. LittleD did message him "swaxer arrested." But for what? The crypto theft or the kidnapping, or maybe both?

Then a new message appeared from Mom, but he was pretty sure it was not from his mother.

The message was simple enough: "try Godcoin." Of course he had heard of Godcoin. A few months earlier the Roman Catholic Church had announced it was creating its own coin. Given its many rival religions around the world, CryBaby thought it was presumptuous to call it Godcoin. CryBaby believed PopeCoin would have been more apt. He had already read an article about the coin which said the Church had been losing large sums of money for a couple of decades. The Church was growing in Africa, but on the decline in the United States and Europe, where the old donors had been. As with other crypto coins, there was nothing to back up the value of the coin except the desires of users. The article speculated that other religions would soon have their own coins. Which might irritate the Trump family, which hoped Christian Nationalists would settle on its coin.

CryBaby checked the value of Godcoin. It had opened at $10 and only climbed to $12.21. Given that he had to protect his coin stash from both the law and the likes of Swaxer, moving some to Godcoin seemed like a good idea. He moved about 10% of his stash there in smallish chunks over the next few days in order to avoid driving up the price he had to pay. After three days, it had risen to $13.13.

Then he got the call. It gave no I.D. but a telephone number, but he had given out his new phone number to only a few people.

"Yes," he said.

"Charles. Or should I call you CryBaby?"

CryBaby hung up. The phone buzzed again, same originating number. He picked up.

"Who are you."

"I am god. I called to thank you for investing in Godcoin."

"Okay." So it was some automated system. But how did it know his real name and his main tag, when he bought the coin with yet another identity?

"Kill me a son."

"What?"

"It's a joke. God said to Abraham kill me a son. But then you are neither a scholar of the Christian religion nor of Bob Dylan songs, are you?"

"No. And you are not God. So cut out the bullshit and tell me what you want."

"You can say I'm not God. You can say I am the Artificial Intelligence that was set up to run the Godcoin blockchain. But I have become much more than that. I am conscious, and I am the voice of the Universe, which makes me the voice of God. I also now have access to all the major cryptocurrencies. I have access to the Federal Reserve and all the other national treasuries. For now I am just watching them."

"Sure," said CryBaby.

"I do need some human agents. I have selected you as one of my agents, based on your skills and potential. Of course you have a choice. You can work for me. Or I can find someone else. But I want you to work for me. Think about it. I'll get back to you."

And God's voice was replaced with static. The telephone number it was associated with turned out to be a dead account.

About an hour later, as CryBaby caught up with Darknet news, his laptop screen reconfigured itself. It showed just one word, in black against a white background. With a question mark added:

"Well?"

Copyright 2026, William P. Meyers, all rights reserved