Chapter 3: Blockchain in the Chips
Part 1: Blockchain in the Chips
Marina Bay Sands Casino's glass dome glittered in the daylight, refracting bands of seven-colored light. It was like a giant distributed ledger, mapping money, desire, and computing power into discrete packets of data. The air was thick with the heavy odor of cigarette smoke mingled with sweat. Electronic screens on the walls flashed nonstop, and throngs of gamblers pressed in around the betting tables.
Lin Shen stood by a VIP table, recalling the data his father had left on that cobalt-blue USB drive. This casino was not unfamiliar to him. In the past, he and his father had discussed the complexities of finance, sharing long conversations about energy and power. And now, those once-theoretical discussions seemed to have become real-life enigmas, waiting for him to unravel.
"What are you looking for?" asked Chen Yongnian, who stood beside him. He spoke in an unhurried drawl as he tapped a purple casino chip on the tabletop with his fingertip. The tapping was steady and precise—like some encrypted signal being transmitted.
Lin Shen blinked, his gaze drifting to the pile of chips on the table. Casinos never truly intoxicate people with winning money, but with the illusion that "just one more bet and I'll win it back." Everyone wants to turn the tide in that one next moment, but in the end they only find themselves buried in debt.
"Probability?" Lin Shen ventured.
"Probability is only part of it." A slight smile tugged at the corner of Chen Yongnian's mouth. He flipped a chip into the air and caught it between his fingers as it fell, letting out a soft chuckle. "The real con is that the casino doesn't need to beat you—it only needs to keep you betting."
Lin Shen fell silent. He understood the deeper implication behind those words — casinos were a paradise for laundering money. Funds moved through them at high speed, transforming from dirty cash into "legitimate" income that could then be channeled out through lawful avenues, completing the cycle of cleaning the money.
Part 2: The Flow of Chips
The doors of the VIP lounge swung open slowly. A middle-aged man sporting a Vacheron Constantin watch stepped out of the room, absently rolling a ten-carat pink diamond between his fingers. His eyes were cold and emotionless. He cast a glance at Lin Shen, then shifted his gaze to Chen Yongnian. "This is the new blood you brought?" he asked.
"He's clever enough," Chen Yongnian replied with a smile.
The man gave a slight nod. He placed the pink diamond under a microscope on the table and adjusted the focus, revealing minuscule laser-etched characters—a string of offshore company registration numbers, their encoding following the Fibonacci sequence. "Sihanoukville, northern Myanmar, Yunrang," he muttered under his breath. Each name was a key node in Southeast Asia's money laundering network. He tossed the diamond back onto the table and fixed Lin Shen with a sharp stare. "Do you know how we use the casino to move funds around?" he asked.
Lin Shen shook his head.
"Gambling is just a façade. Our real weapon is a crypto mixer," the man said, casually unlocking an encrypted smartphone. On its screen, a constantly updating log of transactions glowed.
A crypto mixer… Lin Shen knew what that meant: a cryptocurrency service that continuously splits and merges funds from various sources, making the money flow nearly impossible to trace — essentially a decentralized form of money laundering.
"We don't actually launder money through the casino directly," the man continued. "Instead, we leverage the casino's cash pool to generate what look like random transactions." He gestured at the flickering screen. "The money gamblers wager gets automatically broken down into multiple anonymous transactions and funneled into different mixers. By the time those funds leave the casino, they've completely shed any connection to their original source."
Lin Shen's heart sank. This was more than ordinary money laundering — it was a method of concealing funds in a decentralized fashion. If executed properly, even the most advanced financial regulators wouldn't be able to trace where the money ultimately went. He suddenly realized that he was now standing at the very edge of an abyss.
Part 3: Secrets in the Freezer
"Let's go. It's time I showed you the real thing," Chen Yongnian said as he stood up, patting Lin Shen on the shoulder.
The two of them passed through a staff-only corridor inside the casino and entered a storage room kept at an unusually low temperature. A white incandescent lamp swayed gently from the ceiling, and metal refrigeration cabinets lined the walls, each one labeled with a series of numbers.
Chen Yongnian walked to the cabinet at the very back and pulled its door open. A metal case lay inside. He input a passcode, and the lid slowly sprang up to reveal rows of neatly arranged glass test tubes. Each tube was filled with a pale blue liquid. Lin Shen's brow furrowed. "What is this?" he asked.
Chen Yongnian's lips curved in a slight grin. "Bio-synthesized cryptocurrency," he said.
"What?" Lin Shen was momentarily at a loss.
Chen picked up one of the test tubes and held it up to the light. The liquid inside shimmered with a faint golden hue. "We've developed a kind of gene-encrypted cold storage technology," he explained. "It allows us to seal cryptocurrency keys inside DNA structures. With a specialized decoding device, this biological data can be parsed back into digital currency keys."
Lin Shen was stunned. For the first time, he realized that the world he had stepped into had already expanded far beyond the bounds of traditional finance. What he was witnessing was essentially a form of bio-cryptographic storage — an experimental method of using biological molecules like DNA to store data with astonishing density and longevity. The idea of hiding cryptocurrency keys in genetic material sounded like science fiction, yet here it was before his eyes.
"Now do you understand?" Chen Yongnian asked, watching Lin Shen with an even, calm gaze. "This casino isn't just a casino; it's a part of the global financial system."
Lin Shen did not reply. He simply lowered his head and gazed at the chip in his palm, feeling it grow slightly warm in his hand — like some cryptic stone harboring countless secrets. In the distance, the casino's roulette wheel continued to spin; as red and black alternated, wealth and sin were exchanging hands in silence.