Lu Fan's life was starting to regain a semblance of normalcy. At least, now he behaved more like a high schooler and was no longer running around doing… all that.
He spent more time in school and was no longer in a hurry to go home. Most of the time, it was either Fatty Tang or An Xing'er who hurried him.
Fatty Tang had really found his place in the gaming industry. While it did cause quite a bit of trouble with his parents, he easily solved it by showing him just how much money circulated in the industry. Lu Fan had even helped him draw a rather solid plan and his mother was convinced.
His father was not so pleased but what could he do? His son did not have many prospects to begin with. At least if he did this, there was something keeping him busy. Plus, it had been a long time since his son had smiled so genuinely.
His weight was a major problem that even doctors did not understand. Just maintaining that relatively chubby frame took a lot of work and maintenance. Should he slip, his weight would triple in a few days.
An Xing'er had become a small star already. While she had never shown her face, her voice and figure alone were enough to attract a lot of fans. Hidden underneath all that nerdy get-up was a very beautiful figure.
Lu Fan had made some videos of her training and used some of her songs for background music. He had even used the tools he developed to animate videos for her more professional releases and she had somehow managed to pool a decent following.
Her enthusiasm was increasing instead of decreasing. So was her rivalry with Xu Ling'er.
Xu Ling'er was free most of the time and she used that time to work for Lu Fan. Lu Fan had not told her to do so and even tried to talk her out of it, but that stubborn and dumb girl insisted on it. Something about repaying debts and favors.
Lu Fan could not be bothered with these two girls. They could fight all they wanted as long as they did not break anything.
One thing though was that neither An Xing'er nor Xu Ling'er could handle Li Lin. While she was busy most of the time, when she did get time to visit Lu Fan, they would both team up to at least keep up with that girl.
Li Lin was just that strong. Her grasp on the human heart was too frightening and she would use new tactics every time. The way she played them was too tragic and he had to rescue them when things were getting out of hand.
But that was that. He would not baby them too much.
Right now, he needed to start working on something else. META had stabilized and the statistics looked good. There was no rush to expand it and it was better to leave it for a while. The company should at least complete a financial year before any major changes happen.
Other things were of more importance. Bitcoins were going to hit the market in a month and he needed to prepare.
He had initially planned to just buy a couple and forget about it, but that was before he got proficient enough in programming.
His plan was simple actually. All he needed to do was be the middleman.
He was already trading on multiple accounts in the stock market and he could be considered a one-man firm at this point. His portfolio was already enough to make him a qualified expert. What he needed now was a platform to put his skills to greater use.
Being a minor trader had its advantages, but how much money could he make in one day? There were broker firms that handled the upward of 30 trillion dollars per day. Just imagining the amount of transactions per annum made his balls hurt.
Of course, that money was not theirs, but just the transaction fee for such mega-money moves was enough to beat META a thousand times over.
Lu Fan did not have any big ambition of competing with those giants. All he wanted was the meat that escaped through their teeth.
These big brokers did not put ordinary transactions in their eyes. But these ordinary transactions were the ones that made money the quickest. And if he somehow made his trading platform as beginner-friendly as those platforms in the 2030s, he would be set for a while.
But before he stepped into the world of E-Commerce and Cryptocurrency, he needed to have enough computational power.
It was easy to get a server or two, but getting a server firm in 2009 was a nightmare. The country was still on high alert against cyber attacks from the West and getting a powerful enough server firm required him to first prove that he was not working for the enemy.
His age was also not helping.
He could only change his approach and have someone else get him the proper channels. And what was better than Education in this aspect?
His brilliant idea was to take META's online presence to a whole other level.
Open Courses and Online Education Institutions were still getting their head in the game. MIT was still trying to figure it out, let alone other less advanced institutions.
That is where META would come in. His whole plan was to give these institutions a platform to centralize their resources.
He had already started by digitizing books and if he managed to get other institutes in on this, things were bound to get simpler.
Just the prospects of simplifying their execution were attractive enough, let alone developing a free and open community where students could interact on a global level. There were indeed platforms like this, but none of them incorporated big data and Machine Learning the way he was planning to.
Chatbots and generators were unfair that way.