Cryptic

Cryptic

Humping boxes out of my late father’s flat to a deadline imposed by the condo management, I clumsily knock a large vase with my elbow. It smashes. Damn, that could have been worth a few cents. Glancing down at the shards I spot a palm-sized black Moleskine and a kind of USB stick in the mess. I pick them up and leaf through the notebook. Strings of words written in his recognisably neat, bold hand:

Recovery phrase: baby cushion glass charger thought assume endeavour ricochet keen lorry bassoon candle juggle cream spare filing string plate running appear curtain adorn bunny brown

Some kind of code? Passwords? A hidden message? Poetry? I turn the techy-looking thing over on my hands. It has LEDGER printed on it and a tiny screen. Also written in the notebook: www.kraken.com; 60 BTC; 01/19/2016; $20,000. I have no idea what this means, if anything. Maybe it’s a bank account. Maybe he had, after all, squirrelled something away. Something that escaped the gambling addiction that stole almost everything else, including our closeness. Also written: google authenticator. Google! Now that is something I get. I google ‘authenticator’, as instructed, on my laptop:

Google Authenticator generates 2-Step Verification codes on your phone

Oh I see! Google authenticator is some kind of digital access to something. An account with some actual money in it? I hardly dare to hope that maybe there is some kind of nest egg after all. But what if it is a gambling account – with debt? That would be more true to character than savings…I look at his old Nokia amongst the empty beer bottles on the coffee table – not a smart enough phone to warrant all these techy sounding mysteries. I glance briefly at the chair where the stroke got him. Sudden, unexpected and instant – I try not to think about it. I am also desperately trying not to feel disrespectfully greedy, but to get something tangible out of such a difficult relationship would be some consolation. $20k upon which to build an actual life, since my college fund ends up in the Vegas slots 😬😩 and call centre drudgery became my fate.

Frustrated that my father is as clandestine and secretive in death as in life, I enter the URL www.kraken.com into Safari on my phone:

Welcome to Kraken.

We put the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital currency.

Digital Currency? So, this may be savings… I am not getting my hopes up – the $20,000 mentioned in the notebook was dated five years ago and he had clearly forgotten about it. Besides, my father could empty a bank account in five minutes of online poker so I doubt there is anything left.

I know nothing of digital currency but I do know someone who might. I call Danny and explain to him the link I have found. He asks what tech my Dad has, I explain that he has never had a smartphone and his laptop packed up last Christmas and was dumped never to be replaced. ‘Try to log in to Kraken’ he says. I need a user name and password. I try his email address and the password he used for everything: Gerald1ne – my Mum’s name, the love of his life, now married happily to Charlie; steady, fiscally responsible; boring, sure, but safe. Now it’s asking 2 factor authorisation: an email has been sent to his email account with a link to click. I grab my laptop, sign in to his email. Thank God I still have access! I click the link - I am in. ‘It’s a trading exchange – for digital currency’ explains Danny. ‘If there is any money in there you can see it – top left’. ‘$0’ I say familiarly disappointed in the man who sired me. ‘Look, if he bought 60 Bitcoin in 2016 with $20k and hodled it will be worth a flippin’ fortune now’, ‘Hodled?’, ‘Held on to it, didn’t sell. It would have been a gamble at the time but worth it with hindsight. Although, if it was on his computer hard drive then its long gone.’ That would be typical. ‘Maybe he was sensible and put it in a wallet…?’. ‘Doesn’t sound sensible, any cash my Dad ever had was gone in an instant’. ‘Sorry, no, I mean a digital wallet. It’s a bit like a data stick’. I pick up the thing marked LEDGER. ‘How much of a fortune?’ I ask Danny, ‘and what do I do with a Ledger?’ I can hear Danny’s excited intake of breath down the line.

He talks me through how to use the device. I have to plug it into my laptop, download the Ledger app. Sign up, log in, enter passcodes. I can’t find the numerical pin code to get into the device. It’s nowhere in the damn book. Surely the lack of a little 4 digit code can’t stump the process. Danny assures me there will be some back-up code ‘Like a long string of random words,’ he says. Bingo! I turn to that first page of the book. The process seems to take hours, and is boggling my tiny crypto-newb mind, but I enter specific words from the word list when requested. Word number 5 ‘thought’, word number 7 ‘endeavour’, word number 15 ‘spare’ and so on . This is all jargon, and codes and terminology that makes no sense, instructions that make no sense, but then, I’m in and it is poetry. I click on Accounts, and then select the one titled CARL’S BITCOIN (Legacy), and there it is: 59.9876301 BTC or $2,421,429.21. An unfathomable sum snuggled away in this small hunk of plastic and diodes.

I am crying and laughing, laughter of relief, tears of grief. Addiction is a cruel disease whatever the poison. In the grip of addiction my father gambled a large sum of money in the latest craze – cryptocurrency. This time the house didn’t win but neither did he. I did.