Follow

The cold wind of the Baltic Sea sweeps through the old town of Riga, where 14-year-old Maris squats in front of an old book stall, using his last two coins to buy a Russian version of 'Game Theory.' No one expected that this boy, gnawing on black bread and studying the 'Prisoner's Dilemma,' would strike the gong at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in Shenzhen a decade later.

In the crystal ashtray on the CEO's desk, thick ashes have accumulated. Maris pulls out his Switch, playing Zelda while talking: 'You Asian investors always love to ask about the secrets of user growth. What big data magic is there?' The golden rupees jingle on the screen, and a grin suddenly appears on his face: 'World of Warcraft players want the thrill of crushing their opponents when buying equipment; in the metaverse, the enjoyment is the gambler's heartbeat. I put humanity's most primitive desire for conquest into code; that’s the real server that never goes offline.'

At the live streaming base in Hangzhou, Chinese female streamers are using AI voice to sell limited edition wings to Middle Eastern buyers. 'See this?' he suddenly flips the camera, 'Persian princes think they are buying digital assets, but what they are actually paying with is social currency.' Behind this precise capture of human nature is the ultimate formula he discovered while reselling virtual real estate in 'Second Life' during middle school: Virtual asset value = scarcity x ostentation factor / moral constraints.

While peers are generating AI NFT art, Maris’s company goes against the trend by hiring 300 emotional analysts. 'Algorithms cannot calculate the dopamine peak when players renew their couple accounts'—this judgment comes from his experience working in Germany at the age of 18. At that time, he was a professional miner in 'EVE Online' and discovered that guild members would rather dig into their own pockets to fill the warehouse gap than sacrifice collective honor.

At the IPO celebration banquet, a Hong Kong investment tycoon leans in with champagne: 'Which economic model does the godfather-level trader actually use?' Maris spins the titanium ring on his ring finger—crafted from the first pot of gold melted down from Bitcoin mining cards, the starlight of the Baltic Sea flashes in his eyes: 'When you spend $500 in a game to buy a dragon-slaying sword, what you’re actually buying is respect that cannot be obtained in the real world.'

At 3 a.m. in Shenzhen Bay, this young man with a Slavic face sends an encrypted email to an old friend back home: 'Do you remember the Horadric Cube in Diablo 2? I now truly understand the synthesis formula—putting humanity's seven deadly sins into the digital furnace, what’s refined is the hardest currency.'