After Kevin left for Amsterdam, Nigel became incredibly bored. One morning he was sitting under the bridge, staring at the grey London sky, when he suddenly shouted:

“That’s it! I’m done rotting under this bridge! I’m flying to the Moon!”

He unrolled his old soggy Bitcoin chart on the ground and started drawing a plan:

“I’ll sneak into the spaceport, get on Artemis II, fly with the astronauts, take a photo of Earth from the Moon, turn it into an NFT called ‘Earth from the Moon by a Real Hobo’, and sell it for 69 ETH. Then I’ll finally make it, bro!”

He even drew a spacesuit with a marker on his old hoodie: “HODL-1 Mission”.

For two days Nigel hitchhiked toward the spaceport (he thought it was in Florida, but was actually trying to reach the one in French Guiana after reading the wrong Wikipedia article). On the way, he was begging near a big Tesco supermarket.

He stood with a cardboard sign: “Need money for Moon ticket. Will accept USDT, BTC or expired cheese”

That’s when his competitor approached — a tall, skinny crypto hobo in a bright T-shirt that said “Isle of Man Degens”.

“Are you Nigel from London?” he asked with a strong accent. “I read your story on Publish0x. You’re a legend, bro.”

The competitor rummaged through his backpack and pulled out a pair of new (well, relatively new) underwear from a second-hand shop.

“Here, take these. I stole them yesterday from Oxfam. Almost unworn. Only one guy wore them… I think.”

Nigel was moved to tears:

“Oh my God… brand new underwear… This is better than an airdrop! Thank you, Man of Isle!”

They hugged, exchanged socks as souvenirs, and even took a joint selfie outside the supermarket.

But that evening Nigel stopped.

He checked the date on his cracked phone and realized: tomorrow was Easter. And he had promised the kids at the orphanage he would come visit them with sweets and stories.

Nigel sat on the roadside for a long time, holding the pair of underwear from his competitor, and sighed heavily:

“The Moon can wait… Artemis II will manage without me. But I promised the kids. A promise is stronger than HODL.”

He turned around and went back to London.

On Easter, Nigel showed up at the orphanage with a bag of cheap chocolate eggs he got from begging, and the same pair of stolen underwear in another bag (as a “gift from the crypto community”).

The children immediately surrounded him.

“Uncle Nigel, did you fly to the Moon?” a little girl asked.

“No, sweetheart…” he smiled. “It turns out Earth looks beautiful from the Moon, but you guys here are even more beautiful. So I decided to stay.”

He didn’t tell them the mission had failed. He just sat with the kids, ate expired chocolate eggs, and thought that sometimes the best investment isn’t an NFT from space, but simply showing up where you’re needed.

Meanwhile, somewhere far away in Amsterdam, Kevin was probably trading Dutch dumpsters and had no idea his friend had chosen Easter over the Moon.