Joel Khalili’s Post

I spent three months lurking in the background of a16z’s latest accelerator program, a kind of boot camp for founders aiming to prove that crypto is for more than scams and speculation. Here’s my view from the inside, complete with pearls of wisdom from the classroom (“When you chew enough glass, you learn to like the taste of your own blood”), inside jokes beyond my comprehension, and a scene from Demo Day, where the ritual courtship of investors takes place. https://lnkd.in/egmvbtw5

Billy Restey, a digital artist from Seattle, is part of a small group of collectors trying to unearth rare fragments of bitcoin. These fragments -- known as sats -- can be worth millions of times the face value. Various properties can make one sat more scare than another. Perhaps they were used in a transaction involving the inventor of Bitcoin, or hail from the year of its creation. These rare sats are hidden in pockets throughout the Bitcoin network. Restey roots them out by repeatedly passing bitcoin through a crypto exchange -- like depositing cash with a bank teller and withdrawing the same amount from an ATM -- which gives him a fresh pile through which to sift with every cycle. He and the other collectors have unearthed thousands rare sats this way. But the window of opportunity is closing. The number of rare sats yet to be discovered is steadily shrinking and, as large organizations cotton on, individual hunters risk getting squeezed out. https://lnkd.in/dHa9htsG

For eight years, Craig Wright has claimed to be the elusive creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. On Monday, in the swelling heat of a London courtroom, a trial began that will settle the question. Wright, flanked by his legal team, appeared relaxed in the opening stages of the trial, reclining in his chair. His demeanour reflected neither the stakes of the trial nor the forceful rhetoric of the plaintiff’s lawyer, who called Wright's claim to Satoshi-hood a “brazen lie.” The lawsuit Wright faces was brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance, a nonprofit consortium of crypto companies. COPA claims that Wright’s recent history of filing lawsuits predicated on his claim of being Bitcoin’s inventor has driven developers away. It is asking the UK High Court for a declaration, in effect, that Wright is not Nakamoto. A trio of related lawsuits brought by Wright will be bound by the ruling. If COPA is successful, Wright will have difficulty taking these claims any further. If Wright wins, and is successful in his own cases thereafter, he would be free to decide who is allowed to work on the Bitcoin codebase and under what terms the system can be used. The stakes, says a representative of the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit that is funding the defense of Bitcoin developers in a separate lawsuit filed by Wright, are “very high.” On Tuesday, Wright took to the witness box. His cross-examination—a so-far attritional process whereby COPA’s lawyer scraps with Wright over the contents and meaning of almost every exhibit—is set to run for days. WIRED will be covering the trial throughout. https://lnkd.in/e6zYKYUn

Today, the trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried begins in earnest with opening arguments. The single largest unknown is how he'll seek to defend himself - and opening arguments will offer at least some indication of his strategy. The best guess is that Bankman-Fried will attempt to claim that negligence, not a criminal intent to defraud, was the cause of the multi-billion-dollar hole. WIRED will be reporting on the trial throughout, both inside and outside the courthouse. But to bring readers up to speed, we've put together a detailed explainer that covers the mechanics of the alleged fraud, the charges, and the possible defense strategies. #SBF #FTX https://lnkd.in/eGzt5gjC

For WIRED, I paid a visit to Real Bedford Football Club, a non-league side purchased last year by bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack. The plan: to use his standing in bitcoin circles to attract an international audience and propel the club up the English football pyramid. https://lnkd.in/ertMtCvT

For WIRED: In search of a way around the banks that refuse to serve them, many sex workers have turned to cryptocurrency. But with crypto now facing a banking crisis of its own, they are bumping up against its limitations. “Left and right, it’s been a struggle,” says Allie Rae, adult model and founder of WetSpace. “I didn’t understand the magnitude of the discrimination.” https://lnkd.in/eRd7bfsm

Earlier this week, I went to take a first-hand look at the Orb, a device developed by Sam Altman's Tools for Humanity that scans people's irises in exchange for a cryptocurrency reward. The aim is to develop a system for reliably distinguishing between humans and AI, in preparation for a time in which intelligence is no longer a foolproof indicator of humanity. But the project has attracted criticism from the likes of Edward Snowden and Jack Dorsey, and the crypto launch has analysts asking whether the interests of private investors have been prioritised over those of regular people. #worldcoin https://lnkd.in/eM3bkBTn

In April, I travelled to the Balkans for the eighth anniversary of Liberland, a 7x7 square km micro-country on the border between Serbia and Croatia. The idea is to build “the freest country on the planet." So far, that hasn’t been possible; the Croatian border force has blocked access to any that hope to settle or build on the land. But Vít Jedlička, president of Liberland, believes that’s about to change. https://lnkd.in/eCBGSyaH