Safeguarding your online interactions by empowering your search,

The Catfisher Project

The wait is over! - it’s time to celebrate the champion startups of the world. Shout out to all of the participants in our ! You did a wonderful job showcasing your incredible startups and powering through another year. 2023 Startups of the Year is a community-driven voting platform brought to you by HackerNoon that recognizes and celebrates tech startups changing technology and the world for the better. The award started on May 8th, 2023, where the internet nominated and voted for 30k startups around the world. The voting period remained open until December 31, 2023, and now we are here with the winner announcement after a comprehensive evaluation by the HackerNoon team. Startups of the Year 2023 To see the top 3 startups in each respective city, visit and pick a city. hackernoon.com/startups You’ll get a little surprise 😉 Here are the Startups of the Year Regional Announcements: North America Europe Asia Africa South America Oceania Misc/Remote From all of us at HackerNoon, thank YOU for your excellent campaign perseverance 🥺 This year has been awesome! Startups of the Year 2023 is concluded with 623k+ total votes, up from 215k+ votes in the inaugural startup competition. We look forward to seeing you again in the next campaign (stay tuned 😉)! Without further ado, let us kick off the announcement by celebrating the cities with top votes per region for 2023 🎉 North America (11,697 votes): Winner: Bloomfilter Cleveland, Ohio (8,835 votes) - Winner: SerpApi Austin, Texas , California (5,564 votes) - Winner: Finch San Francisco (4,258 votes) - Winner: RELAYTO SoMa, California - (3339 votes) Winner: Windscribe Toronto, Canada, North America (3304 votes) - Winner: Vouched Seattle (2716 votes) - Winner: Seccuri Palo Alto, CA, North America (2671 votes) - Winner: Salsa Valley Miami, FL, North America (2,613 votes) - Winner: Majhi Group Manhattan, New York (2423 votes) - Winner: Flieber, Inc. New York City, NY, North America See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, North America, here Europe (45,612 votes) - Winner: Algomo London, UK (2,344votes) - Winner: Data Lake Warsaw, Poland (1,955 votes) - Winner: Hoken Tech Bari, Italy (1716 votes) - Winner: Not8 Amsterdam, Netherlands (1657 votes) - Winner: KYVE Frankfurt Am Main, Germany (1566 votes) - Winner: BazaIT Kyiv, Ukraine (1496 votes) - Winner:  Unity Network Tallinn, Estonia (1,478 votes) - Winner: Volcaino Ghent, Belgium (1,288 votes) - Winner: Owl Me Dublin, Ireland (1198 votes) - Winner: Groover Paris, France See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, Europe, here Oceania (3,350 votes) - Winner: Sharepass Melbourne (2,107 votes) - Winner: The Catfisher Project Perth, Australia (220 votes) - Winner: Gemini AI Solutions Auckland, New Zealand, Oceania (213 votes) - Winner: Nexustorage Wellington, New Zealand, Oceania (138 votes) - Winner: Coviu Sydney (124 votes) - Winner: Bopple Brisbane, Australia, Oceania (124 votes) - Winner: Regional CFO New South Wales, Australia, Oceania (106 votes) - Winner: Edit on the Spot Gold Coast, Australia, Oceania (93 votes) - Winner: Knowledge Satnav Canbera, Australia, Oceania , Australia, Oceania (48 votes) - Winner: Peptalk360 North Melbourne, Melbourne See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, Oceania, here Asia (16,345 votes) - Winner: Serenity Shield Singapore (13,588 votes) - Winners: QUIXY Telangana, India (10,168 votes) - Winner: HealthySure Mumbai, India (3,865 votes) - Winner: InterviewBuddy Visakhapatnam, India (3,733 votes) - Winner: Omniflo Bengaluru, India (4589 votes) - Winner: MeNow Tel Aviv (3877 votes) - Winner: ForestVPN Dubai (2478 votes) - Winner: TechGraph Powai, Mumbai, India (1004 votes) - Winner: Reelo Ahmedabad, GJ, India (875 votes) - Winner: Debt Hunter Hong Kong, China See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, Asia, here Africa (8,179 votes) - Winner: GO PLATFORM Algiers, Algeria (767 votes) - Winner: Tudu Accra, Ghana (415 votes) - Winner: Treford Lagos, Nigeria (265 votes) - Winner: Phalconwise Ogbomosho, Nigeria (157 votes) - Winner: AbuErdan Cairo (151 votes) - Winner: Eazipay Lekki (144 votes) - Winner: KaziConnect Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (101 votes) - Winner: faceATT Gauteng, South Africa (79 votes) - Winner: Dimagi Cape Town (71 votes) - Winner: Sabi Addis Ababa See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, Africa, here South America (376 votes ) - Winner: UpGirl Santiago, Chile (217 votes) - Winner: Klever Sao Paulo, Brazil (191 votes) - Winner: Tributo Simple Buenos Aires, Argentina (127 votes) - Winner: Light-it Montevideo, Uruguay (87 votes) -Winner: Thousand Antioquia, Colombia (108 votes) - Winner: GetLavado Lima (101 votes) - Winner: Cogniflow Medellin (73 votes) - Winner: TPAGA Bogota (73 votes) - Winner: Reliv Quito (47 votes) - WInner: Quantex Cordoba See the complete announcement for the . Startups of the Year, South America, here Misc/Remote: Featured Startups (1500 votes) - Winner: CIC Chain Remote, Earth (1193 votes) - Winner: Reship Colony US Misc (146 Votes) - Winner: Partful UK, Misc (116 votes) - Winner: GoMining British Virgin Islands Misc (283 Votes) - Winner: tomorrowSpace Germany Misc (225 votes) - Winner: Dtravel Cayman Islands See the complete announcement for Misc/Remote startups . here Once again, HUGE CONGRATULATIONS and BIG PROPS to all of the top Startups of each region this year! The whole team at HackerNoon would like to thank you for your perseverance in the campaign, and we look forward to seeing you in the next campaign. About HackerNoon’s Startups Of The Year Startups of The Year is HackerNoon’s Flagship community-driven event celebrating startups that survived and thrived in 2023. 30,000 startups across 4200+ cities and six continents participated this year to be crowned the best startup in their city. Visit our page to learn more. FAQ Companies that blog more get 67% more leads - Jumpstart your company’s blogging journey by purchasing our . Business Blogging Package The 2023 Startups Of The Year is sponsored by: . . The winners get a free .Tech Domain, a HackerNoon NFT, and a Tech Company News Page. TECH Domains

Stand Up for the Champion Startups of the Year! 

বছরের চ্যাম্পিয়ন স্টার্টআপের জন্য দাঁড়ান!

Setzen Sie sich für die Champion-Startups des Jahres ein!

¡Defiende a las startups campeonas del año!

Défendez les startups championnes de l’année !

वर्ष के चैंपियन स्टार्टअप के लिए खड़े रहें!

今年のチャンピオンスタートアップのために立ち上がろう!

올해의 챔피언 스타트업을 위해 일어서세요!

Defenda as startups campeãs do ano!

Встаньте на защиту стартапов-чемпионов года!

Yılın Şampiyon Startup'ları için Ayağa Kalkın!

Hãy ủng hộ các công ty khởi nghiệp vô địch của năm!

为年度冠军初创企业挺身而出！

1. What do you currently do, and what’s your favorite part about it? I run the Investigator 515 blog, which posts educational and analysis content. In the background, we are also developing a scam-busting website that’s designed to put search and tracking tools into the hands of the people that need them at a reasonable price. And, because I love being busy, I also have an ongoing development of AV, an embedded platform that’s designed from the ground up to perform electronic counter surveillance as well as detect and classify devices of interest. I should probably mention here that I’m a career investigator who’s spent my life before this working in the field. I love working in tech because there are so many smart brains working on many different things. It’s fascinating to see projects coming to life and people troubleshooting development issues to achieve their success. 2. How did you get started with your Tech Career? I left college before completing my Electrical Engineering degree because even though I enjoyed what I did, I didn‘t feel the spark or passion toward it that made me think I’d enjoy it after graduation. After facing a life crisis, I decided to put my Open Source Intelligence skills on steroids as a distraction. During this time, I came across the TryHackMe website and found myself on a road into Bug Bounty programs, and the rest is history. By the way, I probably should blame a huge chunk of this on amateur radio. Using Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone boards gave me my introduction to Linux, APRS on an old router was my first general introduction to hardware hacking, and SDR/Spectrum Analysis showed me how to detect and identify signals of interest around me. It’s not all you need, but it sure is a good start. 3. If Utopia were a color what color do you think it’d be and why? Blue. Because the ocean is blue, and that’s as close as we’ll get to utopia on Earth as far as I’m concerned. 4. If everything about HackerNoon changed drastically, what is one detail you’d like to keep exactly the same?  OR What’s your favorite thing to do with HackerNoon and why? Browsing user-developed and submitted content. I like reading submitted pieces for the writing competitions and learning about new tools and developments. There are a lot of smart contributors writing articles for HackerNoon, and it’s a great place to find both info about technology and the latest up-and-coming hackers and creators. It also never ceases to amaze me, the ingenuity of the hacking community. There’s a niche for everyone if you’re that way inclined. 5. Tell us more about the things you write/make/manage/build! We write about open-source intelligence, investigative tools, and also provide training content that pairs with our search website. We also love showing others how to use the terminal and command line effectively, so much so we are writing another book about it! And we also spoke before about AV, our electronic counter surveillance toy we are developing. He’s been nicknamed “Snoopy” because he has the ability to see the unseen. Snoopy can be used to detect tracking devices and optical surveillance devices quickly, easily, and without fuss. As you can see, I like to be busy and working on things that interest me, and I’m not scared of being busy. We also appreciate and draw inspiration from the work of groups like Bellingcat and share similar goals in wanting to educate and enlighten people on how to follow where the facts go rather than pushing an agenda. 6. What’s your favorite thing about the internet? The fact that, as an OSINT investigator, I don’t need to know it all; I just need to know where to look for information. I love that I can post a picture of an unknown device and receive a breakdown of what it is and how it works. Or that if I simply have to have an answer for that fact, I can ask a history expert or make a community post. Or maybe I’m troubleshooting a device and need some assistance. And don’t even get me started talking about the impacts of AI and Machine Learning changing the way we view productivity and technology. Lastly, the internet is unique in the way it can both bring people together and divide them all at the same time. 7. It’s an apocalypse of ‘walking dead’ proportions and you can only own a singular piece of technology, what would it be? Solar Powered CyberDeck, of course. Something rugged and reliable with an offline copy of Wikipedia. And possibly all seasons of Walking Dead as my media for…survival tips. And some games because there is no life without games. 8. What is your least favorite thing about the internet? Sockpuppets and Propaganda. We get it, it’s as old as time itself, and the cyber realm is a cheap, effective way to push soft power if you’re that way inclined. Personally, we’d like the internet a lot more if people fact-checked things before they took them as true. 9. If you were given $10 million to invest in something today what would you invest in and why? Cryptocurrency and AI development. Both are much-needed tools for humanity. Crypto for a decentralized way of trading and using currency that isn’t linked to a traditional bank and has less of an ability to be controlled by a single person or entity. And AI because the impact this new tech will have on humanity at large is as yet undetermined. In the right hands, AI and LLM have the power to change humanity and how we engage with the world around us. 10. What’s something you’re currently learning or excited to learn? Without a doubt, AI. It’s exciting to watch AI tech be miniaturized and achieve the capacity to be run locally in a system similar to GPT that has legitimate network connectivity. The effect this will have on everything from web development to pen testing/bug bounty right through to military power I think is not yet fully understood, but the ramifications of it being in the everyday world will be huge. Cyber research and signals identification also get a nod; they are such broad fields that you could study them for years and never stop learning. 11. Would you rather travel 10 years into the past or 10 years into the future? Give reasons for your answer. 10 years into the past for sure. I think having future knowledge in 2013 would have been a wild ride. With everything that’s happened, I think anyone with that insight would have been amazed at what’s to come. Besides, bitcoin prices were good back then; I could have done with that knowledge sooner and kept mining. 12. Tell us a little about your website project. The website project came together after looking at two things. The seriously useful range of tools and software available, as well as a noticeable increase in generalized scams in the post covid era. Hiring an actual investigator can be a costly leap for some people, and we didn’t want people to have to accept a lower level of security because of that. So, Catfisher is under development. It’ll provide usable point and investigative tools streamlined for use, along with tutorials to use them where needed with the hopes it safeguards people against online scams and catfishing. We’d like people to have the option to do things themselves so they can make their own choices rather than having to hire someone, and Catfisher is the first step for us in providing the resources to make that happen.

Investigator515 - An Introduction

Craig Wright Is NOT Satoshi Nakamoto

ক্রেগ রাইট সাতোশি নাকামোতো নন

Craig Wright ist NICHT Satoshi Nakamoto

Craig Wright NO es Satoshi Nakamoto

Craig Wright n'est PAS Satoshi Nakamoto

क्रेग राइट सातोशी नाकामोटो नहीं हैं

クレイグ・ライトはサトシ・ナカモトではありません

크레이그 라이트는 나카모토 사토시가 아니다

Craig Wright NÃO é Satoshi Nakamoto

Крейг Райт НЕ Сатоши Накамото

Craig Wright Satoshi Nakamoto DEĞİLDİR

Craig Wright KHÔNG phải là Satoshi Nakamoto

克雷格·赖特不是中本聪

(Need feedback on your startup’s website or idea so that you’re more likely to succeed? Get on-demand feedback from your target demographic with userinput.io . You can certainly learn from failure but it’s still best to avoid it… now on with my story!) I’ve spent two and a half years trying to get my , , off the ground. I didn’t focus on it consistently at all, but it’s been a long and sordid relationship. Yesterday, I realized that one of the crucial features was broken (again) and I realized I just needed to take the whole project behind the barn and shoot it. startup Ignite Your Match It’s sad. I’m sad. This feels like dumping a girlfriend. You probably know the feeling: You realize that while the relationship isn’t outright shitty, there’s no future there, and it’s not that fun anymore, and just because you have a past doesn’t mean that you have a future. But sadness is of course an emotion, and if you step away from emotion and look at it rationally, with business eyes, you can see how obvious it is that this startup needs to fold: There is just okay PMF (product market fit) I’ve put $20k into the project and it’s only earned $2k I can’t warrant putting more money into it, but it needs it The LTV of customers sucks (more on this in a minute) Traction has been very difficult They say to fall in love with your problem, not your solution. (I didn’t know Lean philosophy when I started.) The problem I was trying to solve: Online dating is hard because writing a profile is hard. The solution I came up with: Private crowd-sourced feedback to find issues with your profile and learn how to improve it so that you get better results. I thought it was a good idea. Other people did too, including my mentor, who is known locally for ripping ideas apart and making grown men cry. He really liked the idea, so I thought it was good. I didn’t validate the idea when I had it. I just went for it, hiring an okay developer off e-lance and building out a crude MVP. I put about $3k into it, and I launched the first version. And for an idea that isn’t validated, the worst thing possible happened: Sales. People bought it. Not a ton, but people used it, and I thought I was onto something. Knowing what I know now, this would have been a perfect candidate for a Wizard of Oz MVP, and I could have gotten sales and run the company without a lick of real back end coding. I could have validated without investing anything other than my time and the cost of a template and a domain. But I didn’t know that stuff back then. It ran passively, but kept having problems. Fast forward a year, and I’m at a Startup Weekend talking to a dev company, and I tell them about Ignite Your Match (which had a stupider name then based on a Greek god) and they love the idea and we agree that they will rebuild it from scratch in exchange for a few grand and equity. I thought that surely it could finally take off if it were built well. I could never really push it hard before, because it was buggy. But with a bug free system, sky’s the limit, right???? That dev company said it should take two months to build out. Eight months and 9,000 excuses later, I fire them because it’s tremendously behind schedule, and I hire to finish it out. Toptal was awesome to work with and finished it up quickly. I could finally push it. So I did. Toptal Not that many people really wanted it, and there were still issues with the business model. I should have killed the project a year ago. Maybe a year and a half ago. But it’s like a relationship, and you say “Jesus, why did I stay with that woman for so long? She’s the worst.” But at the time, it seemed not that bad. Let’s talk about all the problems: The business model Since this is a service for online dating services, basically, it has all the problems that the online dating business models have. Lifetime Value of a customer is low, because if I do a great job helping them with their profile, they meet someone. Best case scenario with my service is that they get married and live happily ever after! No repeat business there! Because if their profile is really improved, why would they come back? I did have some customers do what I did when I used it, which is to get feedback then edit the profile then get feedback again to make sure you didn’t go overboard. So with a base price of $39 for a review, LTV at best is $78 if they do the service twice. I had one guy put his two dating profiles through the system twice, so that’s the record possible LTV, pretty much. I had to pay the reviewers to review the profiles, so my margin wasn’t that great. And a mediocre margin combined with a low LTV means you can’t spend much to try to acquire customers, so that makes everything more difficult. And I never saw a way to turn it into a recurring business model, either. Profiles are private So while I have a similar (but successful!) service , which is easy to do because websites are public, getting feedback on dating profiles is inherently difficult because dating profiles are usually private. So we built scrapers for OkCupid and Plenty of Fish. userinput.io that gives feedback on websites And every time OkCupid or POF changed their profile layout, the scraper broke. It was usually easy to repair, but since I have to hire out the backend work, a quick repair is still a few orders’ worth of net revenue. Match’s security was too tight and we couldn’t scrape it. There’s no web login for Tinder, so we couldn’t scrape that either. So those customers needed to cut and paste their info over, which is no big deal for Tinder, but it sucks for Match, because there’s so many individual bits of info to copy. In the first MVP, we had people make a PDF of their profile page and upload it, which is simpler for sure, and usually worked, but not always. You’d be amazed how hard it is for some people to make a PDF of their profile that was proper resolution. Traction I have other business ventures, like a and , so I didn’t give full time attention to this. Sometimes, I would devote a whole week to it, and sometimes a whole month. And I’d work to promote it and get it traction and get the ball rolling, but it was like sisyphus’s task, and it felt impossible. screen printing company userinput.io Paid ads were too expensive usually. Facebook doesn’t allow dating related ads, so that was impossible. Plenty of Fish has an interesting ad system, but those didn’t convert. Match and OkCupid’s ad network rejected me. I did a DIY PR campaign and got written about in the Huffington Post, SFgate, Boston Metro, etc, but that didn’t result in many orders. There aren’t major dating blogs, so guest blogging never worked out. I had interesting data to write about but content marketing never got traction. I even ran , and while that can get you a flood of traffic for super cheap, those guys never converted, because maybe they had their uh hands full? Porn Hub ads I took a call with a professional growth hacker from sohelpful.me and even he was like “man, this is hard” and couldn’t come up with ideas. Shame And word of mouth marketing didn’t happen, as far as I can tell. Because what are you gonna say? You’re at the bar with your bros and you say “hey guys my dating profile was shit so I hired a company to tell me why and they said I sounded obnoxious and now I’m not obnoxious sounding and girls respond to my messages at a better rate and you should totally try it too!” No. Online dating is getting way more common and people are getting more open with it, but there’s still shame involved. I ran surveys on this, and guys’ biggest fear with online dating was getting catfished or people finding out that they were doing online dating at all. (Just to show the difference, women’s biggest fear? Literally getting murdered). But people aren’t going to talk about online dating publicly in general, and they’re sure not going to talk about how they used a company to do it better because they were having trouble with it. I tended to get a fair amount of British customers, and one of them said the British especially would never admit needing help, so word of mouth would never happen there. Trust It’s a weird concept, and people had to be very trusting to hand over their super personal dating profile for us to review. They were concerned who the reviewers actually were (they came from Mechanical Turk). They were scared to give us their login information so that we could scrape and duplicate their profiles. Some obviously trusted us, but it was a sticking point for many. No market There is very little search volume for stuff like “dating profile improvement”, so I was having to educate and create a market for it, and creating a market is always difficult, perhaps even a fool’s errand. Getting feedback on a dating profile is a pretty unheard of idea, and while I still honestly believe it’s very helpful (I used it myself and saw results, just ask my lovely wife that I met on OkCupid!), people don’t know to seek it out, and it’s hard to get in front of them. It’s so personal Selling feedback on websites is one thing. Hearing stuff like “the blue you use at the top is too corporate” or “your popup is so annoying” or “I don’t really understand if this service is for individuals or businesses” when you order website reviews is WAY different than getting feedback on your dating profile and hearing “you sound pretty arrogant” or “you sound like you drink way too much” or other helpful but sharp criticisms that people might need to hear. Guys would ask “Am I attractive?” which is not a helpful question to ask, because it doesn’t lead to feedback that you can act upon. Sometimes they weren’t. It was cringe-inducing to review the feedback sometimes. That’s not a question that is easy to ask, or answer. False hope I want to write an entire piece on just this, but the only thing worse than no revenue for a startup is some revenue. Getting enough revenue to feel validated, like it can work. And I would get that. I would be on the verge of shutting it all down, and someone would order, and then tell me it helped them. I kept the project going for the foolishly altruistic desire to help people find love. I know that sounds corny as Lifetime movie network hell, but it’s true. That’s why I kept the project going. Because life sucks and meeting people and falling in love makes it tolerable. We offered profile rewriting, too, which was rarely ever ordered, but the last guy who ordered it, he wrote me back twice raving about his results, saying it was basically an epiphany for him, and how great everything was going now. That’s one of the greatest professional emails I’ve ever gotten in my life, and Robbie, if you’re reading this, I’m so glad we helped you. I wish I could have helped way more people but this business is fucked and I have to terminate it. No regrets Education is expensive. I went to Drexel University and got a degree in Information Science and I’m blessed that my wonderful parents paid for my college so that I don’t have crazy student loan debt like so many of my peers. And I feel okay about putting so much into Ignite Your Match because it was my startup education. It was my first startup, my first foray into online businesses other than my screen printing business and some drop ship muses that the Four Hour Work Week inspired (don’t bother, that’s a shit business model too). I learned a ton and I absolutely love the startup world. I feel like at 32 years old, when I started Ignite Your Match, I finally figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. There are obvious upsides to putting this startup in the ground. It’s off my plate, out of my mind, and I don’t have to think about it at all. I can focus on and , and give more attention to other worthwhile sites like . Vacord userinput.io startupresources.io But it still bums me out, honestly. I wanted this to work… Stuart Brent is a free range micropreneur, founder of Vacord Screen Printing (they want to make your custom t-shirts and hoodies), userinput.io (an easy way to get on demand feedback for your app, idea or website), and StartupResources.io (a list of the best tools for your Startup). When he’s not glued to his laptop, he enjoys traveling, eating sandwiches, and trying to find decent espresso throughout The South. Did you enjoy this stupid story? Do me a huge favor and click that heart icon below. is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising &sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories

Today I will kill my startup

For the current market, the most important thing is to survive to see the new moon after the crypto tide. This past October, 's monthly moving average briefly held around $20,000. It was also one of the quietest Octobers on record for Bitcoin. The whole cryptocurrency market has maintained a volatile trend for quite a long time. And the market created by this volatility is also vulnerable to unstable news, which can cause an upset to the balance. BTC At the end of October, however, there were signs that this equilibrium was breaking down. The rebound that the bulls have been craving looks likely to continue. But that possibility was dashed again with the FTX Black Swan event. The latest US CPI data fell back to the "7 range". Risk assets other than cryptocurrencies are rallying violently again. Under such a complex internal and external environment, how will BTC trend? The Allegory of the Catfish Effect and the philosophy of fluidity Spaniards love sardines, but sardines are expensive to transport and poorly adapted out of the sea. When the fishermen bring the freshly caught sardines back to the dock, it doesn't take long for them to die. And dead sardines could not be sold at all. In order to prolong the life of sardines, fishermen will try to keep the fish alive to till they reach the port. Then the fishermen figured out a way to put a few catfish in a transport pod. Since catfish are carnivorous, they swim around in search of small fish to eat. To avoid being eaten by predators, sardines are forced to swim faster, keeping them alive. Source: Coinpedia As a result, fresh sardines will come to market alive and well. This compulsion to be activated by your opponent is known in economics as the "catfish effect." Now the catfish effect has finally arrived in the cryptocurrency market. The FTX becomes the fat sardine being eaten by the giant catfish. A lot of people are pessimistic about what's going on right now, but in the long run, this is one of the positive things that will happen to the crypto industry. The collapse of FTX followed the withdrawal of institutions and the release of risks. The catfish effect can activate the remaining crypto-native projects, making these organizations completely rid themselves of superiority and dependence, and accelerating the transformation of the whole spectrum from concept transformation, legal structure, and team management to the token mechanism. This deep liquidity shift should not just be seen as a slowdown in growth but as a new source of demand. A liquidity crunch that continues to build up Let's review the cryptocurrency market over the past month. First of all, from the macro perspective, on October 22, the president of the San Francisco Fed mentioned in an interview that the current rate hike pace is a little faster, the Fed will consider slowing the rate hike pace, but not a pause, but a 25 or 50 basis point hike. Fed Governor Christopher Waller also said that as interest rates get higher, the stronger the case becomes for slowing the pace of increases while continuing to climb, to as low as 50bp. Perhaps the new data will show an even smaller climb of 25bp. Or it may take a series of 50bp hikes to keep rates rising for a while, eventually reaching a higher endpoint. The comments instantly boosted speculation that the Fed would cut interest rates in December. US stocks bottomed out and led to a rebound in the crypto market. In fact, expectations had been for a 75 basis point hike in December. But the Fed raised rates by 75 basis points for the fourth time in a row and the sixth time this year. Mortgage rates, meanwhile, are rising to a 15-year high of 7.5-9%. Mr Powell sounded a more hawkish note: Even if inflation falls, it will not stop raising rates, and the actual rate increases will be higher than the market expects. Is this suicidal rate hike by the Fed really dispelling the illusions of investors around the world? Investors still seem to be swinging back and forth, unwilling to accept the current monetary tone. Especially in the face of the economic freeze paradigm in the current high-inflation environment, investors are still repeatedly trying to create a dovish outlook through the illusion of recession suppression. Reflecting the performance of the market, investors have already priced in and predicted a 75 basis point increase, the overall risk market volatility remains in a small state. But expectations are made to be broken. It is still in the second phase of cumulative tightening. Although inflation is falling and interest rate rises are expected to be smaller, the Fed is determined to inflate American house prices and share prices, while harvesting other economies with dollars. So it is not ruled out that Powell will continue to play the big game after the midterm elections stabilize. Therefore, crypto investors cannot rely on the Fed to lift up and fall down gently. The ultimate landing point is still the risk aversion of funds on the floor. At present, under the FTX incident, the floor funds around Bitcoin show a positive and firm state. FUD or BUILD? Secondly, in terms of news, as Musk officially completed the acquisition of Twitter at the end of October, rumors spread that Twitter would carry out blockchain transformation and integrate crypto payment instantly, which made altcoins represented by DOGE soaring one after another and greatly improved the money-making effect of altcoins in the field. This also provides a good catalyst for the cryptocurrency rally. In addition, due to the deterioration of the overall international macro market, short sellers have been increasing their bets on the decline of the cryptocurrency group during the whole month of October. Futures long - short ratio maintained near 1 in the long - term. With the shorts heavily oversold, massive short liquidation has been the catalyst for the rally. Therefore, the market rise at the end of October also exists the main premeditated strangulation shorts may. Unfortunately, the rally was again blown away by the FTX Black Swan. Alameda Research, a sister company also founded by SBF, whose balance sheet is dominated by FTX-issued FTT tokens, holds about 140 million and controls 70 percent of the 200 million FTT tokens in circulation. According to a CoinDesk report on Wednesday, Nov. 3. Alameda had $5.8 billion in assets related to FTT, accounting for 88% of its net assets. The Revelations raised concerns among investors about Alameda's health and the potential for a liquidity crisis at FTT. Source: FORTUNE Binance, FTX's biggest rival, immediately questioned the issue on November 5th. On November 6, Alameda Research co-CEO Caroline Ellison finally responded on Twitter, saying that CoinDesk's disclosed balance sheet is only a portion of the company's assets, with more than $10 billion in assets not reflected. It says it has repaid most of the money. SBF also announced that operations were normal. But then there was a flood of FTT on the blockchain. Users began withdrawing money from FTX on November 8, and hardly anyone deposited any. FTX suffered a liquidity gap of about $8bn. The timing of the rally Unable to gain the help and trust of institutional funds, FTX officially went bankrupt. The black swan has finally arrived. The most important is the blow to confidence. Rebuilding lost trust will be the biggest challenge. The second is the arrival of more stringent crypto regulatory enforcement. The crypto market will leave behind the era of extensive development with superficial regulation. Crypto asset managers in each country will generally implement a set of strict risk control systems and complete audits. But incremental regulatory involvement is the way to cause the least friction and damage to the industry. It is conceivable that a vicious incident such as the FTX would invite regulation that is one-sided and malevolent. Once the correction is overdone, it will cause irreparable consequences to the industry. At the same time, continued rate hikes are extremely negative for the cryptocurrency market, which has seen a high positive correlation between stocks and risk assets such as cryptocurrencies since the beginning of 2022. The crypto market has been in "cold winter" mode for an extended period of time as investors have fled amid rising interest rates, soaring inflation and a potential recession. Source: glassnode The price of most of the tokens fell sharply. Most cryptocurrency traders are still waiting for further signals of a bottom. And as talk of a global recession grows, the focus has shifted to when the Fed will cut interest rates. Once the Fed starts to show any signs of easing policy, this will be a strong short-term positive for cryptocurrency assets. Inflation and Labour market data in the coming months and quarters are therefore crucial. If the 2 per cent target is not met, the cloud of a rate rise will continue to hang over the market. Combined with the current FTX debacle, the expected rebound may be delayed until the first quarter of next year. Of course, don't base your expectations on policy shifts; they should be based on technological innovations. The only thing we can expect is that the global spillover from higher interest rates is coming back to bite those fragile fiat units. Can only dollar pools carry liquidity? The answer is clearly no. Can the Bitcoin network's hematopoietic and blood-sucking abilities be tested more? The answer is clearly yes.

The Catfish Effect on Crypto Rally

Photo by on David M. Chambers Unsplash Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . here CHAPTER VII. “Git up! What you ’bout?” I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. It was after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over me looking sour and sick, too. He says: “What you doin’ with this gun?” I judged he didn’t know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says: “Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him.” “Why didn’t you roust me out?” “Well, I tried to, but I couldn’t; I couldn’t budge you.” “Well, all right. Don’t stand there palavering all day, but out with you and see if there’s a fish on the lines for breakfast. I’ll be along in a minute.” He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the river-bank. I noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of bark; so I knowed the river had begun to rise. I reckoned I would have great times now if I was over at the town. The June rise used to be always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins here comes cordwood floating down, and pieces of log rafts—sometimes a dozen logs together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood-yards and the sawmill. I went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and t’other one out for what the rise might fetch along. Well, all at once here comes a canoe; just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck. I shot head-first off of the bank like a frog, clothes and all on, and struck out for the canoe. I just expected there’d be somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they’d raise up and laugh at him. But it warn’t so this time. It was a drift-canoe sure enough, and I clumb in and paddled her ashore. Thinks I, the old man will be glad when he sees this—she’s worth ten dollars. But when I got to shore pap wasn’t in sight yet, and as I was running her into a little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, I struck another idea: I judged I’d hide her good, and then, ’stead of taking to the woods when I run off, I’d go down the river about fifty mile and camp in one place for good, and not have such a rough time tramping on foot. It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old man coming all the time; but I got her hid; and then I out and looked around a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just drawing a bead on a bird with his gun. So he hadn’t seen anything. When he got along I was hard at it taking up a “trot” line. He abused me a little for being so slow; but I told him I fell in the river, and that was what made me so long. I knowed he would see I was wet, and then he would be asking questions. We got five catfish off the lines and went home. While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being about wore out, I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep pap and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me; you see, all kinds of things might happen. Well, I didn’t see no way for a while, but by and by pap raised up a minute to drink another barrel of water, and he says: “Another time a man comes a-prowling round here you roust me out, you hear? That man warn’t here for no good. I’d a shot him. Next time you roust me out, you hear?” Then he dropped down and went to sleep again; but what he had been saying give me the very idea I wanted. I says to myself, I can fix it now so nobody won’t think of following me. About twelve o’clock we turned out and went along up the bank. The river was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise. By and by along comes part of a log raft—nine logs fast together. We went out with the skiff and towed it ashore. Then we had dinner. Anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch more stuff; but that warn’t pap’s style. Nine logs was enough for one time; he must shove right over to town and sell. So he locked me in and took the skiff, and started off towing the raft about half-past three. I judged he wouldn’t come back that night. I waited till I reckoned he had got a good start; then I out with my saw, and went to work on that log again. Before he was t’other side of the river I was out of the hole; him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder. I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done the same with the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug. I took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition; I took the wadding; I took the bucket and gourd; I took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot. I took fish-lines and matches and other things—everything that was worth a cent. I cleaned out the place. I wanted an axe, but there wasn’t any, only the one out at the woodpile, and I knowed why I was going to leave that. I fetched out the gun, and now I was done. I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging out so many things. So I fixed that as good as I could from the outside by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the sawdust. Then I fixed the piece of log back into its place, and put two rocks under it and one against it to hold it there, for it was bent up at that place and didn’t quite touch ground. If you stood four or five foot away and didn’t know it was sawed, you wouldn’t never notice it; and besides, this was the back of the cabin, and it warn’t likely anybody would go fooling around there. It was all grass clear to the canoe, so I hadn’t left a track. I followed around to see. I stood on the bank and looked out over the river. All safe. So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods, and was hunting around for some birds when I see a wild pig; hogs soon went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms. I shot this fellow and took him into camp. I took the axe and smashed in the door. I beat it and hacked it considerable a-doing it. I fetched the pig in, and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe, and laid him down on the ground to bleed; I say ground because it was ground—hard packed, and no boards. Well, next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks in it—all I could drag—and I started it from the pig, and dragged it to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and down it sunk, out of sight. You could easy see that something had been dragged over the ground. I did wish Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that. Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, and stuck it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner. Then I took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn’t drip) till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the river. Now I thought of something else. So I went and got the bag of meal and my old saw out of the canoe, and fetched them to the house. I took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw, for there warn’t no knives and forks on the place—pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking. Then I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and full of rushes—and ducks too, you might say, in the season. There was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles away, I don’t know where, but it didn’t go to the river. The meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake. I dropped pap’s whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it wouldn’t leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again. It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. I made fast to a willow; then I took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I says to myself, they’ll follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me. And they’ll follow that meal track to the lake and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers that killed me and took the things. They won’t ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. They’ll soon get tired of that, and won’t bother no more about me. All right; I can stop anywhere I want to. Jackson’s Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. And then I can paddle over to town nights, and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson’s Island’s the place. I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When I woke up I didn’t know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and smelt late. You know what I mean—I don’t know the words to put it in. I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in rowlocks when it’s a still night. I peeped out through the willow branches, and there it was—a skiff, away across the water. I couldn’t tell how many was in it. It kept a-coming, and when it was abreast of me I see there warn’t but one man in it. Think’s I, maybe it’s pap, though I warn’t expecting him. He dropped below me with the current, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water, and he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him. Well, it was pap, sure enough—and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars. I didn’t lose no time. The next minute I was a-spinning down stream soft but quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half, and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry landing, and people might see me and hail me. I got out amongst the driftwood, and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky; not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear on the water such nights! I heard people talking at the ferry landing. I heard what they said, too—every word of it. One man said it was getting towards the long days and the short nights now. T’other one said this warn’t one of the short ones, he reckoned—and then they laughed, and he said it over again, and they laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn’t laugh; he ripped out something brisk, and said let him alone. The first fellow said he ’lowed to tell it to his old woman—she would think it was pretty good; but he said that warn’t nothing to some things he had said in his time. I heard one man say it was nearly three o’clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn’t wait more than about a week longer. After that the talk got further and further away, and I couldn’t make out the words any more; but I could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off. I was away below the ferry now. I rose up, and there was Jackson’s Island, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat without any lights. There warn’t any signs of the bar at the head—it was all under water now. It didn’t take me long to get there. I shot past the head at a ripping rate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and landed on the side towards the Illinois shore. I run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that I knowed about; I had to part the willow branches to get in; and when I made fast nobody could a seen the canoe from the outside. I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked out on the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town, three mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling. A monstrous big lumber-raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down, with a lantern in the middle of it. I watched it come creeping down, and when it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, “Stern oars, there! heave her head to stabboard!” I heard that just as plain as if the man was by my side. There was a little gray in the sky now; so I stepped into the woods, and laid down for a nap before breakfast. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved April 2022 from Twain, Mark,1993. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/76/76-h/76-h.htm#c7 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter VII

Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February 1930, by Astounding Stories is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . The Beetle Horde - Chapter VII: Through the Inferno Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February1930: The Beetle Horde - Chapter VII By Victor Rousseau The hideous monsters leaped into the cockpits and began their abominable meal. CONCLUSION TOMMY TRAVERS and James Dodd, of the Travers Antarctic Expedition, crash in their plane somewhere near the South Pole, and are seized by a swarm of man-sized beetles. They are carried down to Submundia, a world under the earth's crust, where the beetles have developed their civilization to an amazing point, using a wretched race of degenerated humans, whom they breed as cattle, for food. Bullets, shrapnel, shell—nothing can stop the trillions of famished, man-sized beetles which, led by a madman, sweep down over the human race. The insect horde is ruled by a human from the outside world—a drug-doped madman. Dodd recognizes this man as Bram, the archaeologist who had been lost years before at the Pole and given up for dead by a world he had hated because it refused to accept his radical scientific theories. His fiendish mind now plans the horrible revenge of leading his unconquerable horde of monster insects forth to ravage the world, destroy the human race and establish a new era—the era of the insect. The world has to be warned of the impending doom. The two, with Haidia, a girl of Submundia, escape, and pass through menacing dangers to within two miles of the exit. There, suddenly, Tommy sees towering over him a creature that turns his blood cold—a gigantic praying mantis. Before he has time to act, the monster springs at them! CHAPTER VII. Through the Inferno FORTUNATELY, the monster miscalculated its leap. The huge legs, whirling through the air, came within a few inches of Tommy's head, but passed over him, and the mantis plunged into the stream. Instantly the water was alive with leaping things with faces of such grotesque horror that Tommy sat paralyzed in his rocking shell, unable to avert his eyes. Things no more than a foot or two in length, to judge from the slender, eel-like bodies that leaped into the air, but things with catfish heads and tentacles, and eyes waving on stalks; things with clawlike appendages to their ventral fins, and mouths that widened to fearful size, so that the whole head seemed to disappear above them, disclosing fangs like wolves'. Instantly the water was churned into phosphorescent fire as they precipitated themselves upon the struggling mantis, whose enormous form, extending halfway from shore to shore, was covered with the river monsters, gnawing, rending, tearing. Luckily the struggles of the dying monster carried it downstream instead of up. In a few moments the immediate danger was past. And suddenly Haidia awoke, sat up. "Where are we?" she cried. "Oh, I can see! I can see! Something has burned away from my eyes! I know this place. A wise man of my people once came here, and returned to tell of it. We must go on. Soon we shall be safe on the wide river. But there is another way that leads to here. We must go on! We must go on!" Even as she spoke they heard the distant rasping of the beetle-legs. And before the shells were well in mid-current they saw the beetle horde coming round the bend; in the front of them Bram, reclining on his shell couch, and drawn by the eight trained beetles. BRAM saw the fugitives, and a roar of ironic mirth broke from his lips, resounding high above the strident rasping of the beetle-legs, and roaring over the marshes. "I've got you, Dodd and Travers," he bellowed, as the trained beetles hovered above the shell canoes. "You thought you were clever, but you're at my mercy. Now's your last chance, Dodd. I'll save you still if you'll submit to me, if you'll admit that there were fossil monotremes before the pleistocene epoch. Come, it's so simple! Say it after me: 'The marsupial lion—'" "You go to hell!" yelled Dodd, nearly upsetting his shell as he shook his fist at his enemy. High above the rasping sound came Bram's shrill whistle. Just audible to human ears, though probably sounding like the roar of thunder to those of the beetles, there was no need to wonder what it was. It was the call to slaughter. Like a black cloud the beetles shot forward. A serried phalanx covered the two men and the girl, hovering a few feet overhead, the long legs dangling to within arm's reach. And a terrible cry of fear broke from Haidia's lips. Suddenly Tommy remembered Bram's cigarette-lighter. He pulled it from his pocket and ignited it. Small as the flame was, it was actinically much more powerful than the brighter phosphorescence of the fungi behind them. The beetle-cloud overhead parted. The strident sound was broken into a confused buzzing as the terrified, blinded beetles plopped into the stream. None of them, fortunately, fell into either of the three shells, but the mass of struggling monsters in the water was hardly less formidable to the safety of the occupants than that menacing cloud overhead. "Get clear!" Tommy yelled to Dodd, trying to help the shell along with his hands. HE heard Bram's cry of baffled rage, and, looking backward, could not refrain from a laugh of triumph. Bram's trained steeds had taken fright and overset him. Bram had fallen into the red mud beside the stream, from which he was struggling up, plastered from head to feet, and shaking his fists and evidently cursing, though his words could not be heard. "How about your marsupial lion now, Bram?" yelled Dodd. "No monotremes before the pleistocene! D'you get that? That's my slogan now and for ever more!" Bram shrieked and raved, and seemed to be inciting the beetles to a renewed assault. The air was still thick with them, but Tommy was waving the cigarette-lighter in a flaming arc, which cleared the way for them. Then suddenly came disaster. The flame went out! Tommy closed the lighter with a snap and opened it. In vain. In his excitement he must have spilled all the contents, for it would not catch. Bram saw and yelled derision. The beetle-cloud was thickening. Tommy, now abreast of his companions on the widening stream, saw the imminent end. AND then once more fate intervened. For, leaping through the air out of the places where they had lain concealed, six mantises launched themselves at their beetle prey. Those awful bounds of the long-legged monsters, the scourges of the insect world, carried them clear from one bank to the other—fortunately for the occupants of the shells. In an instant the beetle-cloud dissolved. And it had all happened in a few seconds. Before Dodd or Tommy had quite taken in the situation, the mantises, each carrying a victim in its grooved legs, had vanished like the beetles. There was no sign of Bram. The three were alone upon the face of the stream, which went swirling upward into renewed darkness. Tommy saw Dodd bend toward Haidia as she lay on her shell couch. He heard the sound of a noisy kiss. And he lay back in the hollow of his shell, with the feeling that nothing that could happen in the future could be worse than what they had passed through. DAYS went by, days when the sense of dawning freedom filled their hearts with hope. Haidia told Dodd and Tommy that, according to the legends of her people, the river ran into the world from which they had been driven by the floods, ages before. There had been no further signs of Bram or the beetle horde, and Dodd and Tommy surmised that it had been disorganized by the attack of the mantises, and that Bram was engaged in regaining his control over it. But neither of them believed that the respite would be a long one, and for that reason they rested ashore only for the briefest intervals, just long enough to snatch a little sleep, and to eat some of the shrimps that Haidia was adept at finding—or to pull some juicy fruit surreptitiously from a tree. Incidents there were, nevertheless, during those days. For hours their shells were followed by a school of the luminous river monsters, which, nevertheless, made no attempt to attack them. And once, hearing a cry from Haidia, as she was gathering shrimps, Dodd ran forward to see her battling furiously with a luminous scorpion, eight feet in length, that had sprung at her from its lurking place behind a pear shrub. DODD succeeded in stunning and dispatching the monster without suffering any injury from it, but the strain of the period was beginning to tell on all of them. Worst of all, they seemed to have left all the luminous vegetation behind them, and were entering a region of almost total darkness, in which Haidia had to be their eyes. SOMETHING had happened to the girl's sight in the journey over the petrol spring. As a matter of fact, the third, or nictitating membrane, which the humans of Submundia possessed, in common with birds, had been burned away. Haidia could see as well as ever in the dark, but she could bear more light than formerly as well. Unobtrusively she assumed command of the party. She anticipated their wants, dug shrimps in the darkness, and fed Tommy and Dodd with her own hands. "God, what a girl!" breathed Dodd to his friend. "I've always had the reputation of being a woman-hater, Tommy, but once I get that girl to civilization I'm going to take her to the nearest Little Church Around the Corner in record time." "I wish you luck, old man, I'm sure," answered Tommy. Dodd's words did not seem strange to him. Civilization was growing very remote to him, and Broadway seemed like a memory of some previous incarnation. The river was growing narrower again, and swifter, too. On the last day, or night, of their journey—though they did not know that it was to be their last—it swirled so fiercely that it threatened every moment to overset their beetle-shells. Suddenly Tommy began to feel giddy. He gripped the side of his shell with his hand. "Tommy, we're going round!" shouted Dodd in front of him. There was no longer any doubt of it. The shells were revolving in a vortex of rushing, foaming water. "Haidia!" they shouted. The girl's voice came back thickly across the roaring torrent. The circles grew smaller. Tommy knew that he was being sucked nearer and nearer to the edge of some terrific whirlpool in that inky blackness. Now he could no longer hear Dodd's shouts, and the shell was tipping so that he could feel the water rushing along the edge of it. But for the exercise of centrifugal force he would have been flung from his perilous seat, for he was leaning inward at an angle of forty-five degrees. THEN suddenly his progress was arrested. He felt the shell being drawn to the shore. He leaped out, and Haidia's strong hands dragged the shell out of the torrent, while Tommy sank down, gasping. "What's the matter?" he heard Dodd demanding. "There is no more river," said Haidia calmly. "It goes into a hole in the ground. So much I have heard from the wise men of my people. They say that it is near such a place that they fled from the flood in years gone by." "Then we're near safety," shouted Tommy. "That river must emerge as a stream somewhere in the upper world, Dodd. I wonder where the road lies." "There is a road here," came Haidia's calm voice. "Let us put on our shells again, since who knows whether there may not be beetles here." "Did you ever see such a girl as that?" demanded Dodd ecstatically. "First she saves our lives, and then she thinks of everything. Good lord, she'll remember my meals, and to wind my watch for me, and—and—" But Haidia's voice, some distance ahead, interrupted Dodd's soliloquy, and, hoisting the beetle-shells upon their backs, they started along the rough trail that they could feel with their feet over the stony ground. It was still as dark as pitch, but soon they found themselves traveling up a sunken way that was evidently a dry watercourse. And now and again Haidia's reassuring voice would come from in front of them. THE road grew steeper. There could no longer be any doubt that they were ascending toward the surface of the earth. But even the weight of the beetle-shells and the steepness could not account for the feeling of intense weakness that took possession of them. Time and again they stopped, panting. "We must be very near the surface, Dodd," said Tommy. "We've surely passed the center of gravity. That's what makes it so difficult." "Come on," Haidia said in her quiet voice, stretching out her hand through the darkness. And for very shame they had to follow her. On and on, hour after hour, up the steep ascent, resting only long enough to make them realize their utter fatigue. On because Haidia was leading them, and because in the belief that they were about to leave that awful land behind them their desires lent new strength to their limbs continuously. Suddenly Haidia uttered a fearful cry. Her ears had caught what became apparent to Dodd and Jimmy several seconds later. Far down in the hollow of the earth, increased by the echoes that came rumbling up, they heard the distant, strident rasp of the beetle swarm. Then it was Dodd's turn to support Haidia and whisper consolation in her ears. No thought of resting now. If they were to be overwhelmed at last by the monsters, they meant to be overwhelmed in the upper air. IT was growing insufferably hot. Blasts of air, as if from a furnace, began to rush up and down past them. And the trail was growing steeper still, and slippery as glass. "What is it, Jim?" Tommy panted, as Dodd, leaving Haidia for a moment, came back to him. "I'd say lava," Dodd answered. "If only one could see something! I don't know how she finds her way. My impression is that we are coming out through the interior of an extinct volcano." "But where are there volcanoes in the south polar regions?" inquired Tommy. "There are Mount Erebus and Mount Terror, in South Victoria Land, active volcanoes discovered by Sir James Ross in 1841, and again by Borchgrevink, in 1899. If that's where we're coming out—well, Tommy, we're doomed, because it's the heart of the polar continent. We might as well turn back." "But we won't turn back," said Tommy. "I'm damned if we do." "We're damned if we don't," said Dodd. "Come along please!" sang Haidia's voice high up the slope. They struggled on. And now a faint luminosity was beginning to penetrate that infernal darkness. The rasping of the beetle-legs, too, was no longer audible. Perhaps they had thrown Bram off their track! Perhaps in the darkness he had not known which way they had gone after leaving the whirlpool! That thought encouraged them to a last effort. They pushed their flagging limbs up, upward through an inferno of heated air. Suddenly Dodd uttered a yell and pointed upward. "God!" ejaculated Tommy. Then he seized Dodd in his arms and nearly crushed him. For high above them, a pin-point in the black void, they saw—a star! They were almost at the earth's surface! One more effort, and suddenly the ground seemed to give beneath them. They breathed the outer air, and went sliding down a chute of sand, and stopped, half buried, at the bottom. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Various. 2009. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February 1930. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29882/29882-h/29882-h.htm#Page_7 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

The Hideous Monsters Leaped into the Cockpits and Began their Abominable Meal

THE SECOND VOYAGE ATTEMPTED BY MASTER JOHN DAVIS

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