Formula 1: The GOAT

$806,850,000. That was the final amount in all of their joint accounts once the sale of the fifty thousand bitcoins ended.

They had earned $815,000,000 in gross, but after the OTC desks took their one percent cut for facilitating the exchange, the remaining amount was nothing but pure profit, sitting in five different accounts ready for her to use whenever she wanted. She could spend the entirety of the amount without any worries, as there were no taxes to pay on it in the country where the company that owned them was registered.

Even if she had initiated the sale of the bitcoins in Turkey, she wouldn’t have paid any taxes on them, as there was yet to be a legal framework that defined what cryptocurrency was, meaning there was no capital gains tax. The same was true for VAT, as they were not recognized as a good or service by the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency, making them essentially tax-free.

She had used this loophole to have one of the accounts be based in Turkey, which now contained more than two hundred million dollars for any future needs that were based in Turkey, so that no matter the situation, they weren’t put in a position where they had to transfer money from overseas.

As all the preparations were done beforehand, the execution of everything went swiftly, meaning by the time she had tallied the total once everything was over, she had nothing to do but react.

She had been sitting in the kitchen of their house for the past thirty minutes, looking at her laptop, which showed the Excel sheet with the final amount, along with the breakdown of how much came from where and when.

She was having a hard time believing that it was real, no matter how hard she tried. Just a portion of what her son had bought because he thought it was “interesting,” for a total of ten thousand dollars, had netted them nearly a billion dollars in just a few years. And he still had more than three times the amount they had sold, although Fatih hadn’t yet told her clearly, he had made it very obvious that he expected the price to crash, and when that happened, he planned to buy them back again.

When she finally came back to herself, as some of that surprise and disbelief had subsided, she started wondering if Fatih had any plan on how to spend the money already, or if he just wanted to cash out a portion of it and decide what to do with it when the money was in the accounts.

Although she didn’t know what he might spend it on, she knew that he was planning on using some of it to self-fund himself if the situation with Red Bull hadn’t been resolved. And it wasn’t like there wasn’t going to be friction in the future, and who was to say that it was going to be solved the same way it did this time? Having enough money to remove that worry put him in a position where he didn’t have to compromise; he could always leave and self-fund if an unresolvable situation once again arose.

“It’s all about motorsports,” she said as she realized that nearly everything impressive Fatih did was in the context of aiding him in achieving his motorsports dream in the way he had dreamed, not one that would be dictated by others.

She immediately connected it to the situation they had faced in his first year of karting when Selçuk’s father threatened them. She had thought that he had already moved on from it and even forgotten about it, but it seemed like he hadn’t forgotten about it since then. He went on and started earning millions from his information website, then accidentally created a sports company, and now he had amassed millions, all in pursuit of not having to experience the same thing he did when he was five years old.

The realization made her both impressed and gave her goosebumps. It seemed like her son, although normal when doing normal things, always over-prepared to never face the same problem he had faced previously when it came to things he deemed important.

A man of sheer commitment, who also managed to recalibrate her understanding of how much Fatih was going to do in order to accomplish his dream of reaching the pinnacle of motorsports, Formula 1. Since he was also talented in it, she knew that he was going to achieve it one way or another. All she needed to do was keep supporting him and making sure he didn’t have to focus on anything else.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

As she tapped the table with her index finger, she said, “We have definitely breached the minimum threshold for a family office.”

“What is a family office?”

When her mother asked, she jumped in surprise, nearly scared to death.

“You scared me,” she said as she turned back to her mother, who was already in an apron, making it clear that she was starting dinner preparations.

“So, what is a family office?” Güldane ignored everything else and once again repeated the question.

“How should I explain it easily…” Rümeysa trailed for a moment as she tried to come up with an easy-to-understand explanation without having to use complicated jargon. “A family office is like an investment company that handles that specific family’s wealth, along with dealing with their personal affairs.”

When Güldane heard the explanation, she knew immediately that it hadn’t yet scratched the full surface. Not wanting to leave it there, she said, “Go into more details.”

“It is a way for rich people to have a group of people who are solely working for them and helping them both invest their large wealth and handle their personal problems. Depending on the family, the family office can handle investments, hiring of workers, applying for school, private security, chartering tickets for traveling, buying houses, dealing with lawsuits, philanthropy, paying the electricity bills, and everything else the family needs to make their lives as easy as possible.”

“Doesn’t that sound expensive?”

“Yes, it is expensive because you need to hire professionals who will be working solely for you, so you have to compensate them well. The yearly operation cost alone, depending on the size of the family office, can range from five million to tens of millions of dollars, if not more, just in retaining staff and other small operational costs. Though the latter is for family offices controlling billions of dollars.”

“So what is this talk about you opening a family office if it is that expensive? Do you even have that much personal money to sustain it, or are you planning on using Fatih’s?” Güldane asked, looking at her daughter curiously. She knew that she was not someone who would spend her son’s money recklessly when she knew just how important that money was for Fatih’s career safety.

“The family office is not for me, but for Fatih, and we definitely need it, or we will be wasting his money needlessly due to inexperience,” she said, looking as if she was being accused of something unimaginable.

“How much does he even have to make you say we need it?” Güldane, who was now fully curious, asked.

“Look for yourself,” Rümeysa said while pointing to her laptop on the kitchen table.

“Why all the theatrics?” Güldane said as she moved closer to the screen to see for herself, but froze when she saw the total amount written at the bottom of the Excel sheet.

“Did you die standing?” Rümeysa asked in an amused tone while tapping her mother to see if she had fainted. She knew that amount was not something one would react to normally if they just learned their grandson now had it in hand.

When no response came, she got worried and immediately held her mother. The moment she did, Güldane lost all the power in her legs, forcing Rümeysa to use some force as she pushed her into the chair next to her. She picked up the glass of water that she had brought for herself to give her mother to drink while asking, “Are you okay, Mom?” with worry in her tone.

“I’m fine, I just need a moment to breathe,” Güldane said as she received the glass and chugged the water inside it.

After about five minutes of digesting the information and collecting herself, she finally spoke. “Yes, we really need the family office, but first, you need to explain to me exactly how he gathered that much money. Did he pull another scheme like he did when he was nine?”

“It is a long story.”

“Well, looks like we are ordering dinner from a restaurant today,” Güldane said as she took off her apron, setting it on the kitchen table, making it clear that cooking was now out of the window as she had something more important to do than that.