Crypto's Power Play
The play about crypto's outlaws had to be followed by one about power. Writer Ben Schiller, who spent six years as managing editor at CoinDesk, created a new story called Bitcoin Bad Boy after seeing the dramatic change in the industry.
After breaking the balance-sheet story that led to Sam Bankman-Fried's 25-year prison sentence, Schiller realized that crypto was no longer just about developers going to jail. It was now about an anti-establishment movement making a deal with power.
The new play, Bitcoin Bad Boy, takes place after Charlie Schwagg, the hero of the first play, is pardoned and returns home as a celebrity. He's faced with launching a memecoin or taking a job selling the administration's initiatives. The central question of the play is about self-sovereignty: who owns your money, data, and choices?
Schiller's experience on this beat has taught him that the coins were never the point. They drove interest and funded parties, but prices rise and crash, and companies soar and collapse. What endures are ideas that resonate even more today than they did in 1993 when Eric Hughes wrote the Cypherpunk Manifesto or in 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin Whitepaper.