Age: 24
Gender: Male (He/Him)
Field of Study: Business Administration
Physical Description: Austin is a tall but slender figure, standing at 6’1” tall and weighing in at 152bs. His musculature is almost completely undeveloped, with thin, reedy limbs that carry little in the way of definition.
A mop of curly dark brown hair sits atop his head, the fringe drooping down just above his eyebrows, with the rest of it being at a roughly equal length and frizzy. This hair frames his pale white face, which is long, narrow and relatively bland – with shallow cheekbones, a weak, rounded chin and slightly pudgy, ruddy cheeks. The most defining feature is his relatively large nose, which has a slight crook to the left roughly two thirds down its length. His eyes are a lighter shade of brown, hidden behind a pair of black rectangular glasses which lack a lower rim.
Austin does not have a co-ordinated fashion style, typically wearing whatever clothes he has purchased from various influencer promoted brands. In this case he wore an outfit mostly purchased during his recent attendance of the Monerium convention in Iceland. A burgundy 66°North hooded jacket is layered over a bright yellow hoodie with black text reading “I’m A Ray Of Fucking Sunshine” emblazoned on the front, and his convention attendance t-shirt below. His light grey 5.11 Tactical Stryke cargo trousers are neatly tucked into a pair of black Yeezy Desert Boots. The only accessory he wears is a white faced Rolex Daytona watch, which is clamped tightly to his right wrist.
Background:
- Austin was born in 1998 to a working class family in Ellensburg, Washington. His mother, Genevieve, was a Seattle native who had moved to the town to start a family with her long term boyfriend Liam Stanton. Liam worked as a cashier at the local Kittitas County Historical Museum, and as soon as Genevieve was able to return to work, she did so – taking a part-time position as a bartender at one of the local microbrewery-pub combinations.
- When Austin was 4, his parents officially married in a relatively extravagant ceremony involving the majority of both of their families and friends at a local high-end hotel. Whilst some of the cost of this was paid for by Liam’s family, it was also partially financed by loans Liam had taken out, a fact which he hid from Genevieve for some time. When she found out 8 months later from a letter Liam had carelessly left on his place around the dining table, it led to the first of what would become many arguments about money that the two would have.
- As Austin began school, Genevieve was able to increase the hours at her job, and the loan was slowly paid off over the next few years as a result of her financial prudence as she took control over the budgeting of the household.
- He quickly showed an aptitude towards mathematics and computing as he progressed through the education system, being placed into a GATE program for the former upon entry into middle school, whilst pursuing his interest in the latter primarily outside of the classroom – making a basic JRPG in Scratch across the hours spent after class hours in the library whilst waiting for his mother to pick him up.
- As he entered Grade 7, the 2008 Financial Crisis took full hold, and Genevieve was let go from her position shortly before the holiday season. This put the family under greater financial stress, and resulted in Austin not receiving the games console his father had promised him as a reward for his scholastic achievements. Whilst Austin tried to understand as his parents explained the situation to him, he felt disappointed by the experience, and it deeply shook his trust in them.
- Austin’s general attitude towards formal education began to slip as he entered high school, especially with regards to subjects he saw little practical application for in his daily life such as mathematics, and he was not included in any accelerated learning or gifted classes. This was partially due to his tendency towards disruptive behaviour in the classroom, preferring to focus on talking with his classmates, or generally amusing himself by throwing erasers and paper aeroplanes rather than on the material at hand.
- His sense of humour developed into a rather crude, sarcastic – and at times mean – form during these early years of high school, as he would often join in mocking his less socially adept classmates with other more popular ones as a way of avoiding their attention. This behaviour culminated in Austin being physically attacked by one of his peers’ targets after a cruel jab at their birthmark, in which his nose was broken. The school’s policy led to the victim of their bullying being expelled, with him escaping any major punishment.
- Austin received a basic laptop as part of an NGO grant to aid disadvantaged children during his time in high school, which began a life-long passion for online socialisation – and he began to spend more and more of his time at home cooped up in his room, engaging with message boards and chat rooms. His experience here varied between engaging productively with groups that shared his interests, learning more about programming and computer science, and less productive time spent trolling other communities, either chosen at random or at the encouragement and direction of his friends from these other groups.
- He ultimately graduated with relatively good grades, achieving an A in Computer Science and a B+ in Mathematics, scraping C+’s to C-‘s in the rest of the core subjects. However, he decided against pursuing further education and instead successfully applied for a paid internship at a Janus-Hayes subcontractor as a Design Engineer, working in their Concessions department. The pay from this was enough for him to move out on his own, a decision heavily encouraged by his parents.
- In March of 2020, following the Coronavirus Crash, it was announced to his department that they would be consolidating operations out of the facility in Ellensburg to a bigger site in California, and that they could either relocate or take a generous redundancy package. Austin decided to take the latter, confident that the pandemic would be over shortly and that he would be able to find similar work somewhere else in Washington.
- Whilst half-heartedly searching for work and living off of his savings, he took the advice of his online friends and invested the majority of his redundancy payment into Ethereum, and watched it grow in value immensely over the next year – turning into more money than he could ever have possibly earned during that time. As a result of this, he ceased to look for a new job and instead spent his time researching blockchain technology, trying to find the next big things to invest in.
- Austin eventually liquidated the majority of his position during the latter half of 2021, achieving a 2,400% profit, which left him with a middling 6-figure net worth. This drastically inflated his ego, and he decided to ‘bet on himself’ once again, applying to the University of Cascadia and paying his tuition and boarding expenses up front – seeing himself as simply needing a degree to bring his ‘expertise’ to a hedge fund and secure himself a permanent place in the capitalist class.
- Academically, his work experience and existing independent research allowed him to excel beyond most of his peers during the foundation year of his course without applying himself. The focus of his time on campus has been partying, taking full advantage of being old enough to buy alcohol for his younger classmates, and frivolous enough with his money to give it away for free – buying himself a certain degree of popularity despite his somewhat abrasive personality.
- This lack of focus has come back to bite him as he has begun his first true year of study however, as he lacks the discipline to properly focus on the subject matters, leaving him to rely on his peers for help with the more technical aspects of the course and scraping through the longer coursework submissions through a mixture of bullshitting and bluffing.
- Recently, Austin has invested heavily into NFTs, believing that the drop in their price is indicative more of public perception than any lack of inherent value.
Assets: Austin is innately social, and good at listening to and using the information provided by others he respects to plan out courses of action, making him a potentially useful member of a team. He also has a strong belief in his own abilities, and that he can make what seems like a bad situation into a good one.
Limitations: Conversely, that belief is driven almost entirely by luck, a fact which Austin does not recognise – as such, he is likely to push his limits too far thanks to this ego and get himself into trouble he can’t talk his way out of.
