The cursor blinks. It knows what’s in the PDF before I do. It’s a smug little line of light, pulsing patiently on the ‘Download’ button. My heart does a funny little rhythm against my ribs, a sort of hiccup-thump that I remember from a presentation I gave last week. It’s the feeling of knowing you’re about to see something you can’t unsee. You click. The file opens.
There are numbers on the page. Specifically, one big number next to a dollar sign. It’s a number so comical, so utterly detached from your perceived reality, that you laugh. It’s not a happy laugh. It’s the kind of sound a cornered animal makes. You must have received the bill for the entire block. A clerical error. You scan the document for the address, your finger tracing a line across the screen. There it is. Your name. Your address. The number is correct.
The number is $473.
An undeniable truth.
Reality vs. Illusion: The Cost of the Digital Dream
All the dashboards in the world can’t prepare you for this moment. All the green-tinted charts showing hashrate climbing like a rocket, all the profit calculators promising a daily return of $13, all the forum posts from anonymous gurus showing off their sprawling farms-they all evaporate. They become smoke in the face of this single, brutal, legally binding document. This piece of paper,