America: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 152 Door-to-Door Recycling

After driving back to the city, Zhang Ailun gave 2000 of his $12000 profit to Sieg, kept $10,000 for himself, and his total savings returned to $50809.

Sieg was told to get off the bus midway and find something to do on his own. During this time, he received a message from Dominic that someone had paid them to come and collect the goods.

Zhang Ailun inquired about Dominic's job duties and learned that the warehouse of apartment 1356 in the Flying Squirrel Community of the Fifth District needed to be tidied up, which was exactly the same as the intelligence report. He immediately drove over there.

Upon arriving at the agreed-upon location on Aitou Street, Zhang Ailun spotted Dominic standing at the intersection from afar. He parked his car next to Dominic and picked him up. The two then drove to the community again.

Upon arriving at the community, they discovered that there were security personnel at the entrance. When they saw the arrival of an unfamiliar vehicle with an unregistered license plate, they immediately came out to stop it and prevented them from entering the community directly.

Zhang Ailun could only ask Dominic to notify the homeowner.

They made a phone call to their employer from the entrance of the community. A mature female voice came through the phone, and she explained the situation to the security personnel. After understanding the reason, the staff allowed them to enter the community.

The construction of Flying Squirrel Community is also quite good. It has an independent park, sports facilities, and basic infrastructure. It is a mid-range community, much better than most poor neighborhood communities.

Zhang Ailun drove to apartment number 1356, where the owner, a woman who looked to be in her early forties, was already waiting outside. After getting out of the car, the two greeted each other warmly.

"Hello ma'am, we are staff from Alfred Recycling Station. My name is Dominic, and this is my colleague Juan King. Did you call to schedule the recycling job?" Dominic asked.

"That's right, my name is Daisy. I have a warehouse full of scrap that I need to get rid of. Didn't Old Karl always come to collect it?" Daisy asked, puzzled.

"Old Carl has retired and is no longer in business. We took over his recycling station, and we'll be handling the door-to-door collection from now on," Dominic explained with a smile.

"I see. Then please follow me." Daisy nodded and led the two to the other side of the apartment. She took out her key and opened the door to the storage room, which was filled with boxes, various crates, and discarded items.

Daisy explained, "These things were left by my ex-husband and are of no use to me. The property management prohibits placing electronic waste outside to avoid polluting the community environment, so I can't leave these things at the door for others to recycle. I can only ask you to come and take care of them. The last time I asked old Carl to come was half a year ago."

Who knows how you got divorced in just six months?

"Madam, may I ask what your ex-husband does for a living?" Zhang Ailun opened the box and asked, looking at the stacks of graphics card IC chips and discarded memory sticks inside.

"He was a programmer working in an electronics factory, but he quit for some reason. He used to bring home some broken electronic scraps from the factory, and he would usually repair them himself and sell them on the second-hand page of Opportunity Network. However, since my divorce from him, these things are no longer useful, and I can't deal with them myself," Daisy explained.

"Just get rid of these things for me at the agreed price of $50."

"Yes, no problem."

Zhang Ailun nodded in agreement. The market price for door-to-door recycling is generally around $40-$80, and that's the price Old Karl pays too.

They further advised, "Before we begin the collection process, I suggest you carefully check inside to see if there's anything you need. Once we've taken it away, it will be processed immediately and cannot be retrieved."

"No need. I've checked them many times. These are all old relics. Only one Apple computer from the last century can run, but it's long been obsolete and was designed specifically for gaming. I feel disgusted just looking at these electronic junk. Please dispose of these junk items as soon as possible. I will pay you. I have to go to work this afternoon." After saying that, Daisy turned and went into the room to attend to her own business.

Zhang Ailun and Dominic exchanged a glance, then rolled up their sleeves and began moving the goods.

These boxes of scrap circuit boards and chips contain precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum, tin, lead, and steel. They may not be of much use to ordinary people, but they are valuable items in the recycling industry.

However, the quantity is too small, and refining it yourself wouldn't even cover the cost. It's more appropriate to sell it to a resource recycling company, who will then earn the difference between the price and the cost of the product.

A kilogram of electronic waste costs only a few tens of dollars, but this is worth about two hundred dollars.

If it were a scale of 35000 mobile phones, it would be quite profitable to refine them yourself. But for this small quantity, forget it; the labor and material costs wouldn't even cover it.

They quickly finished disposing of the boxes and the electronic waste inside, and cleaned the warehouse as well. Zhang Ailun also loaded the Apple computer into the car, figuring it should be worth a few hundred dollars.

The most important thing is those solid-state drives. He doesn't know which ones are usable or which ones contain BTC. He can only go back and test them one by one.

Cracking the code requires more specialized personnel. Zhang Ailun is preparing to seek help from Blitzcrank, the godfather of Los Angeles hacking!

After Dominic and I finished processing the waste, we informed Daisy that we were done. She came out to inspect the warehouse, was very satisfied with our service, and settled the $50 recycling fee.

The two took the money and put it in the recycling station's general ledger. Today, Dominic had already recycled cans worth about one hundred dollars at the recycling station.

Zhang Ailun drove back to the recycling center with boxes of electronic waste, delivered them to Dominic, and then contacted Blitz by phone.

Upon learning that the other party was not at work today and was doing network maintenance work in Jason's basement, he simply brought a box of solid-state drives to the community to find them.

Upon arriving at the familiar neighborhood, Zhang Ailun saw the same black woman at the entrance again.

The other party recognized him at a glance, and before they could block his way, Zhang Ailun decisively notified Jason to come and pick him up.

Zhang Ailun: That black auntie who could sit on me and kill me is here to bother me again. Come out and get me right now!

Upon receiving the message, Jason immediately rushed out to help the leader out of the predicament and explained the situation to him.

The Black woman scoffed, "You think I didn't recognize this Asian kid? I was just curious to see where he got that car. You white guy, always so secretive, I wonder what you're up to. You better not let me catch you doing anything wrong!"

Zhang Ailun and Jason were somewhat speechless. This is the West Coast version of the Chaoyang residents.

But I didn't argue with them too much and drove to the rented house. I got out of the car and carried a box of solid-state drives to the basement.

Upon arriving here, Zhang Ailun saw large and small bags of sorghum seeds being processed and packaged in batches.

The two brothers with mohawks, whom I had met once before, were wearing masks, rubber gloves, and aprons. They were packing the sorghum seeds filtered from the machine into plastic bags in batches, while the exhaust fan above them hummed. The indoor environment wasn't stuffy, but it resembled a greenhouse facility.

Fitz sat next to her, operating a secondhand laptop. When someone placed an order, he would pack it into a box, attach a mailing label, and wait for the mail company to pick it up.

"Weren't you supposed to be selling sorghum seeds? You've really turned it into a leaf cultivation base."

Zhang Ailun was stunned.

"You have to be professional in everything you do! If we don't tell anyone, who will know what we actually do? People might think we're dealing drugs, but we actually sell sorghum seeds, so we're not afraid of being caught. We actually sell sorghum seeds, but many people who see these facilities online will definitely think we're selling castor beans!" Jason said smugly.

He waved and led Zhang Ailun into the cubicle. Zhang Ailun saw several second-hand computers running programs, with robot software automatically replying, generating positive reviews, and deleting posts.

Blitz was sitting next to the mainframe, writing program code.

Turning around, he saw Zhang Ailun smiling and greeting him, "Ailun, would you like me to take a look at your SSD?"

"That's right, Dominic and I collected these things from their homes. Some may be damaged, but some should still be usable. I have a feeling there might be some good stuff among them."

Zhang Ailun placed a box of solid-state drives next to him.

Blitz glanced at them, grabbed a handful and examined them closely. These hard drives had storage capacities ranging from 500GB to 1TB, with 2TB drives being relatively rare. Some of the solid-state drives had blackened gold contacts on their edges.

He asked疑惑地, "Why do I feel like these have all been used for mining?"

Without the intense computational demands of high-powered computing, the wear and tear on a graphics card during normal daily use wouldn't be this bad. The wear and tear on a graphics card that's been used normally for ten years is nowhere near that of a graphics card that's been used in a mining lab for six months.

"The graphics cards we received did indeed show signs of having been used for mining. It's clear that the previous owner had used them for mining for a while, but we don't know if he made any money. He was a programmer at an electronics factory who would bring home defective electronic waste every day," Zhang Ailun said.

"That's not surprising. Many programmers have side jobs, like collaborating with others to mine cryptocurrency. Hackers, on the other hand, set up trojans on websites, infiltrate and use other people's computers to mine cryptocurrency for themselves. There are also those who do secondhand repair work." Blitz nodded.

"In fact, most graphics cards and chips on the market are defective. The more complete graphics card chips are used to make the 4090 series, the defective ones are used to make the 3070, the even more defective ones are used to make the 3060, and so on, as well as lower-end graphics cards."

Blitz explained, "Most people buy graphics cards to play games, so the computing power is wasted. It's just a waste of resources. The production line produces so many chips at once, and only a very few relatively complete chips are qualified to be used in the military industry and the computing rooms of large enterprises. Ninety-nine percent of the ordinary graphics cards that ordinary people buy on the market are defective products."

"Can you help me decipher these solid-state drives? If there's anything good inside, I'll definitely share some of the profits with you!" Zhang Ailun said.

"No problem."

Blitz readily agreed, took some instruments from the nearby hangar, installed the solid-state drives one by one, connected them to the computer, opened his self-written program, and started using it. It could test the condition of thirty hard drives at the same time.

The software indicator light came on, and it quickly scanned a large area, showing that only three of the thirty SSDs were intact and usable.

Blitz removed the discarded hard drives and threw them into the nearby trash can. He then installed a new batch of solid-state drives and retested them. He kept the usable ones on the drives and removed the unusable ones to test with other hard drives.

This process repeated itself for almost half an hour, and in the end, only 64 of the solid-state drives in the box were usable.

However, even with these 64 solid-state drives, there is no guarantee that each one contains a complete operating system and stored valuable items.

Blitz continued testing, opening multiple system split-screen pages in succession. Some showed a black screen indicating system corruption, while others displayed distorted images. In the end, only a dozen or so solid-state drive systems and stored files were relatively intact.

Blitz kept refreshing the list, opening directory roots one after another, until he ran into a dead end in a folder with unknown code that was being encrypted.

Blitz was somewhat surprised. "This file has been encrypted with a key; I bet there's something good inside!"

Zhang Ailun and Jason also curiously came over, but even encrypted files couldn't stop Blitz from intruding. After trying for a few minutes, they quickly cracked the password.

Upon opening it, I found three stored data entries, which together amounted to approximately 0.15 bitcoins.

"Bitcoin!? Dude, you're rich!!" Jason shouted excitedly.

Zhang Ailun remained calm, looking at the remaining SSDs. "Is this the only SSD with Bitcoin? There should be some other encrypted files on the others, right?"

"I'll know once I find it." Blitz was also quite pleased, not expecting that these unwanted solid-state drives contained cryptocurrency.

Blitz tested several other SSDs and, as expected, encountered new barriers and encrypted files. He deciphered them in half an hour, glanced at the square root directory, and was somewhat speechless.

"This contains 200GB of private, intimate selfies..."

Zhang Ailun and Jason also took a look at the private selfie and discovered that the female protagonist was not Daisy, and the male protagonist was a tall, thin, white man wearing glasses. They wondered if he was Daisy's ex-husband.

Blitz continued deciphering other encrypted files and quickly found new stored data. He laughed and said, "Another 0.15 BTC, making a total of 0.3 Bitcoins!"

Jason immediately took out his phone and started searching for today's Bitcoin price: $63561.85. Compared to yesterday's price, it had dropped significantly. The price of 0.3 Bitcoins was $19068.555.

It has to be said that the market volatility is truly frightening, with prices changing every day. I wonder how many short-term leveraged traders have been fleeced and are now facing a red-hot market.

Blitz withdrew the Bitcoin, stored it on a USB drive, and reset the key. Functionally, it's essentially a cold wallet, except that secondary withdrawals require manual operation on a computer with an internet connection.

He asked, "Do you need me to help you sell it?"

"No need for offline sales?" Zhang Ailun asked in surprise. "Jennifer and I sold Bitcoin yesterday, and the other party required us to do the transaction offline."

"If you want cash, you do need to conduct the transaction offline. If you want to pay via online banking, you need to conduct the transaction online or directly exchange it for USDT," Blitz said. "But I don't recommend that you store USDT or hold Bitcoin, because I feel that it will continue to fluctuate for a while, and will at least continue to drop by 5 points."

"If you can help me find a reliable buyer, I certainly don't mind doing the transaction offline."

Zhang Ailun readily agreed. He hadn't originally planned to hold this virtual currency. If he hadn't sold it in time yesterday, he would have lost several hundred dollars when he woke up today. Who could bear that?

Blitz immediately logged into the website using Jason's account and began searching for buyers, eventually contacting them.

"It's settled. They're willing to pay $19000 for these Bitcoins, and we've agreed to meet in the underground parking lot of District 6."

(End of this chapter)