God of Technology: Creating the Internet in Another World-Chapter 429: Still Gotta Let Them Go Public

Days passed one after another.

The war north of the watch wall continued.

On top of that, every day brought news of countless new projects and factory construction fitting the new era.

Steel futures prices kept climbing.

As time went on, it wasn’t just Foster Iron Mine—other small iron mines started seeing their order books explode too.

Even with practically every iron mine across the entire continent running at full capacity, constantly ramping up output, they still couldn’t seem to meet market demand.

More and more people were buying up steel futures now.

Watching those who’d gotten in early make bank, new players just kept flooding in.

Originally steel cost less than two silver coins per pound. Now it had skyrocketed to about seven silver.

Heck, people weren’t just eyeing new steel anymore—the steel recycling market had gotten insanely busy too.

These recyclers would buy at prices slightly below market rate. Like when futures were trading at 7 silver coins, they’d buy at 6, then turn around and list a contract on the futures market for 9 silver coins with delivery a month out.

It was like they were printing money out of thin air.

"They’ve lost it. Really lost it. Everyone’s gone crazy."

Viscount Roster watched the market get more and more insane, muttering: "Human greed is terrifying!"

Originally he figured even if these people went nuts, they’d at least focus on mega mines like Foster Iron Mine—no matter what happened, they’d definitely end up with actual steel in the end.

But now?

These people didn’t seem to care at all whether they’d actually get delivery. They only cared about one thing—could they list an order on the futures market!

In this crazy atmosphere, some other well-known mining companies gradually emerged.

Soon, a company called Enron Mining burst onto the scene.

Rumor had it this company had stumbled onto a massive open-pit mine. The scale was huge, so they bought tons of mining equipment and started frantically digging up iron ore.

And they kept hiring workers and slaves.

Production ramped up daily.

In no time, they’d become the world’s second-largest mining company. There were even hints they might surpass Foster Iron Mine.

More importantly, this company was willing to accept absolutely ridiculous orders.

Like, say current monthly production was 10,000 pounds and next month’s projected production was 20,000 pounds—they’d straight-up sign contracts to deliver 20,000 pounds next month.

With the snowball effect helping them along, this naturally became incredibly scary.

And as orders piled up more and more, Enron Mining submitted an application to list on the Dragon Stock Exchange.

"Something feels off to me." When Nidhogg brought this up with Viscount Roster, he seemed helpless: "Should we let this company go public?"

"Don’t need to feel it out—this Enron Mining is totally a shell company." Viscount Roster said with a smile: "But we still gotta let them go public."

"Why?" Nidhogg was suddenly stunned.

"Because this will be our perfect opportunity to launch credit currency. When this Enron Mining gets exposed as a fraud at just the right moment, it can totally become the straw that breaks the camel’s back."

Viscount Roster was supremely confident: "Of course, we still need to do some prep work."

"What?" Nidhogg felt like his brain wasn’t keeping up.

He really couldn’t follow Viscount Roster’s train of thought.

"Nothing much, just some strict management regarding the chaos in the stock market. We need to get ready to make the financial market’s disorderly expansion become orderly." Viscount Roster said with a smile.

In the stock market, there were actually tons of illegal trades, or rather, people making money through shady means.

Like insider trading, or multiple people teaming up to manipulate stock prices, or other methods.

The stock exchange had been established for a while now. For ordinary people, this stuff didn’t matter much.

But for nobles and big merchants? They’d long since found countless loopholes and made fortunes.

Viscount Roster and the dragons had always treated the stock and bond exchanges as tools to absorb the gold and silver piled up in these rich people’s castle vaults.

Naturally they didn’t care how these people played dirty in the stock market. Under these circumstances, quite a few ordinary middle-class folks got screwed over, but there was nothing they could do about it.

Now, since these funds had a better place to go, naturally the stock market needed to become reasonable and compliant.

"The stock market’s biggest purpose has always been providing funds to merchants who genuinely need to expand their operations. But now tons of nobles and merchants with terrible track records are making money through despicable, shameless methods."

Viscount Roster said cheerfully: "We should establish some rules and refuse these kinds of trades."

After saying that, he directly sent a document he’d prepared long ago to Nidhogg.

"You had this ready ahead of time?"

Nidhogg looked at the document Viscount Roster sent over and couldn’t help being stunned. It had rule after rule, who knows how many, each one targeting a specific bad behavior.

"Naturally. When the stock exchange was first established, I already started constantly refining these rules. It just wasn’t the right time before."

Viscount Roster was very confident: "These rules for the first version can totally correct most of the bad behaviors that appeared before."

"When these people realize making money in the stock market has gotten difficult, and their traditional investment methods make money way too slowly—no, their traditional investment methods can’t make money anymore, then their most likely move will be to throw..."

Nidhogg already understood what Viscount Roster meant.

This move was meant to force these crooked investors to dump all their funds into the futures market.

Then harvest them all together.

He could even imagine that once these rules started operating, countless funds would pour into the steel market and steel futures prices would skyrocket.

Nidhogg was even wondering if the dragons should also get in on this trade.

They could totally add fuel to the fire and make some money.

When exactly should Enron Mining be exposed as problematic?

"Let them go public before enforcing these rules. The first wave of investigations will target those investors’ violations, not the companies themselves. This’ll let them expand safely on the market for a while."