擁有模因的女人

拉斐爾·弗萊曼（Rafael Flaiman）發現了一個戴著淺藍色西裝外套的朋友，看上去有點過時。他給那個傢伙劃了一點。

At a backyard barbecue in San Pedro, Argentina, last May, Rafael Flaiman spotted a friend wearing a light blue blazer that looked a little too snazzy for the occasion. He needled the guy a bit.

去年五月，在阿根廷聖佩德羅的後院燒烤店，拉斐爾·弗萊曼（Rafael Flaiman）發現了一個戴著淺藍色西裝外套的朋友，看上去有點過時。他給那個傢伙劃了一點。

“What’s with the jacket?” Mr. Flaiman asked.

“夾克怎麼了？”弗萊曼先生問。

“La China pays,” the friend replied, with a triumphant smile.

“洛杉磯中國付款，”朋友笑著回答。

La China? Mr. Flaiman grew up in San Pedro, a struggling riverside town of 70,000, and for 16 years he’s been a reporter at La Opinión, the local newspaper. But he’d never heard of someone named La China — Spanish for the Chinese woman — and had no idea why she’d bought a nifty new blazer for his buddy.

中國？弗萊曼（Flaiman）先生在苦苦掙扎的河濱小鎮聖佩德羅（San Pedro）長大，16年來，他一直是當地報紙LaOpinión的記者。但是他從未聽說過一個名叫中國的人 - 西班牙婦女 - 不知道為什麼她為他的伙伴買了一個漂亮的新西裝外套。

A handful of the 20 people at the barbecue, it turned out, knew all about this mysterious figure and were eager to explain the singular way she’d earned them money.

事實證明，在燒烤的20個人中有少數了解了這個神秘的人物，並渴望解釋她為他們賺錢的單一方式。

Every weeknight at about 9 p.m., they said, La China turned up on the Telegram channel of a crypto currency exchange called RainbowEx. There, she texted instructions to buy some type of crypto — invariably an obscure and thinly traded one, known in the industry as a memecoin — at a particular price. The same message said to sell the coin when it reached a certain, higher price, which it always did soon after.

他們說，每個下午9點左右，洛杉磯中國出現在一個名為Rainbowex的加密貨幣兌換的電報頻道上。在那裡，她發短信說明了購買某種類型的加密貨幣的說明 - 總是以一種特定的價格以一種晦澀難懂的交易，在業內被稱為Memecoin。同樣的信息說，當硬幣達到一定的價格時，就會出售硬幣，這總是在不久之後做到的。