God of Technology: Creating the Internet in Another World-Chapter 439: This Can Make Steel Prices Rise Too?

It seemed like for the nobles trading in the steel futures market, no matter what happened, as long as it had even the tiniest connection to steel, it was good news.

Without a doubt, the farm incident caused steel futures to skyrocket again.

Of course, it wasn’t just steel futures prices that shot up—Johnny the actuary’s Futures Trading Report also saw a huge spike in attention.

For these people, Viscount Roster had become this love-hate kind of figure. They loved him because every now and then he’d come up with some weird new thing, and most of these things needed steel.

You could say he was the biggest driving force supporting the steel market.

But the annoying part? This guy wasn’t on their team. They all wanted steel prices to explode because they were holding steel.

But Viscount Roster was different—he actually needed steel.

So in these nobles’ eyes, Viscount Roster always hoped steel prices would be lower, and on top of that, he wanted them to put their money into his own ventures.

Sure, Viscount Roster had plenty of businesses, and every single one of them was profitable, but how much could they make buying his stocks?

They’d already missed the highest profit stage.

A while back, they finally decided to buy some Southern Development Corporation stock, and what happened?

At first it was skyrocketing, doing great. Then for some reason, it suddenly crashed.

Dropped to an absolutely outrageous level.

And it still hasn’t recovered much.

A bunch of them still had their money trapped in there. Of course, many had already chosen to cut their losses, selling those stocks at a loss and then throwing their money into steel futures instead.

Now every time they saw Viscount Roster, they felt disgusted. But the Futures Trading Report? Totally different. That thing was genuinely satisfying.

No matter how you looked at it, it felt good.

The dragons had been pretty busy lately too.

Every time Viscount Roster and Johnny the actuary got into it, Dragon Bank would get swamped with customers.

These customers weren’t coming to deposit money—they were only there to get loans.

The dragons pretty much accepted anyone.

As long as you had collateral—land, castles, mines, magical items... basically anything they could confirm had value—they were willing to loan you money.

They were handing out loans worth 30% to 50% of the collateral value like crazy.

A long time ago, when someone didn’t have enough cash, they’d turned their attention to the bank. Their actions quickly spread throughout the steel futures trading circle.

So one by one, people started copying them.

As for the dragons, they’d already discussed this with Viscount Roster ages ago. The steel futures prices would crash eventually, and tons of money would just evaporate into thin air when that happened.

So they might as well loan out that money—which was definitely going to be issued anyway—to these nobles now.

After all, they’d definitely throw it all into steel futures trading, which could perfectly serve as the first step in promoting credit currency.

The only downside was that Viscount Roster told the dragons not to do small loans lately, unless someone wanted to buy a house.

Right now, basically, Dragon Bank wouldn’t issue loans under 100 gold coins.

If you wanted to borrow 100 gold coins, you’d need to put up collateral worth over 300 gold coins.

No doubt about it—regular people couldn’t come up with that kind of collateral.

When Nidhogg the Dragon of Despair first learned about this, he’d thought, "How many people in this world can even get a loan with these terms?"

However, reality showed him he’d underestimated everyone.

Business was surprisingly good.

Among the nobles coming to Dragon Bank for massive loans, the one with the biggest appetite was the Western Grand Duke of the Kingdom of Dawn.

He straight-up brought out tons of land deeds and countless amounts of grain from his warehouses. Right off the bat, he wanted to mortgage everything for 10 million gold coins.

10 million gold coins!

Even Nidhogg the Dragon of Despair was shocked by that astronomical number. This was 10 million gold coins!

If you mortgaged the entire Western territory, based on current market analysis, it’d be worth at most fifty or sixty million, seventy or eighty million. If you mortgaged absolutely everything in the entire Western territory, you could only get somewhere between 15 million and 40 million.

He was literally betting his entire life on this!

To get 10 million gold coins, you’d need to put up collateral worth thirty or forty million gold coins.

Currently, in this entire world, the only person who’d gotten such a massive loan was Viscount Roster.

If other people wanted to raise that much money, they could only look to the bond exchange market.

Nidhogg the Dragon of Despair personally showed up.

"10 million gold coins is no small amount. You’d need to mortgage most of your wealth to get it. If you can’t pay this money back... that collateral will be confiscated."

"You should understand—we dragons have countless ways to recover that collateral."

"Of course." The Western Grand Duke was very confident. "We’ve looked into all of this very thoroughly. Everyone in the family agrees—this is an excellent business opportunity."

"Our interest rates aren’t low. It’s 10% per year. That means if we loan you 10 million gold coins, we’ll be collecting 11 million gold coins back in a year."

Nidhogg the Dragon of Despair didn’t immediately agree. Instead, he kept explaining the details.

The Western Grand Duke just kept nodding. "We’re already aware of all this. It’s just that we really need the money right now, so... Anyway, we hope Dragon Bank can help us out."

"In that case, I’ll have someone process the paperwork for you. But since it’s 10 million gold coins, it’ll take some time. I’m sure you understand—we need to assess everything based on the collateral value."

Seeing how determined the other party was, Nidhogg the Dragon of Despair didn’t waste more words.

"Of course, that’s completely reasonable." The Western Grand Duke nodded. "Naturally we need to follow the rules too."

"However, I’m hoping you can release the funds in batches. For example, if you finish appraising the collateral for 1 million gold coins today, then tomorrow you give us that 1 million gold coins first. Do it in stages."

"Looks like you’re really in a hurry, but that’s definitely no problem. We can split your 10 million loan into several separate transactions."

Nidhogg the Dragon of Despair had no objection to this small request.

These were minor details. As long as they were willing to take out loans, that’s all that mattered.

Thinking back to when Dragon Bank was first established, their biggest headache was that people deposited money but nobody took out loans. Plenty of dragons worried they’d lose money. But now?

The amounts these people were borrowing scared even him, a black dragon.

Fortunately, these people didn’t care about actual cash—they only cared about the balance on their bank cards, because those numbers would soon no longer belong to them anyway.

What they needed was to hold more steel in their hands!