Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki and tech entrepreneur Jack Dorsey took the stage Wednesday to debate The Six Billion Greenback Man, Jarecki’s documentary on Julian Assange, and the position the bitcoin neighborhood might play in getting it to the general public — a dialog that stretched from censorship and surveillance to Satoshi Nakamoto and the unique ideas of the web.
Dorsey joined the panel just about. The setting itself carried weight: Jarecki instructed the group that the on line casino sitting near the place he stood had ties to the non-public safety agency that spied on Assange whereas he lived inside London’s Ecuadorian Embassy — a revelation the documentary locations on the middle of its surveillance narrative.
Dorsey: Bitcoin embodies a gatekeeper-free, open community
Jarecki mentioned he went to Dorsey first for cash. He wanted assist distributing a movie that, regardless of premiering at Cannes and incomes recognition on the competition circuit, discovered no takers amongst main streaming platforms. Dorsey shifted the dialog.
Slightly than write a examine, he instructed Jarecki that the bitcoin neighborhood represented one thing bigger than a funding supply — a constituency constructed across the identical ideas Assange had fought to defend.
“Bitcoin is an open protocol for money transmission,” Dorsey mentioned. “It routes around the gatekeepers — Visa, Mastercard, the banks.”
He described the neighborhood as one which views Assange as a hero, somebody who stood for the concept info ought to stay free and open, values he traced again to the founding tradition of the web itself.
Dorsey pointed to 2011 as a proof of idea. After monetary establishments minimize off WikiLeaks from donation channels underneath stress from the U.S. authorities, bitcoin stepped in as the one fee rail that would not be blocked.
He referred to as WikiLeaks adopting bitcoin out of necessity one of the crucial vital moments within the protocol’s early historical past — not as a result of it was deliberate, however as a result of it revealed an instantaneous, real-world use case underneath situations of state stress.
He then drew a line between Assange and Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin. Dorsey mentioned what issues most about bitcoin is that its founder walked away. He referred to as that exit a selfless act — one which made the community founderless, and due to this fact immune to the type of stress that governments and establishments can apply when a single individual stands on the middle of a venture.
He positioned Assange and Edward Snowden in the identical class: individuals who trusted the expertise they used, put their lives in danger for ideas bigger than themselves, and paid for it.
Jarecki mentioned making the movie carried its personal dangers. Whereas taking pictures in Russia, he mentioned his crew felt they had been being adopted and monitored — a layer of stress that formed the manufacturing from the within. He described the mutual regard between Assange and Snowden, two figures who understood one another’s positions with precision, as one of many documentary’s most putting undercurrents.
A pay-per-view watch social gathering in lower than 60 days
The movie’s distribution mannequin is essentially the most uncommon aspect of the venture. Dorsey proposed a world non-public pay-per-view watch social gathering as an alternative choice to the normal launch pipeline. Ticket patrons at thesixbilliondollarman.com obtain a credit score line on the movie itself, turning the viewers into contributors within the venture slightly than passive customers.
Jarecki framed it as a check of whether or not a neighborhood organized round open monetary infrastructure might do what media gatekeepers wouldn’t — get a movie about press freedom in entrance of the individuals who have to see it.
Dorsey mentioned the web site and the viewing mannequin provide a strategy to crowdfund and convey the neighborhood collectively round a shared trigger.
On the panel, Jarecki confirmed never-before-seen clips from the documentary — behind-the-scenes footage that gave the viewers a direct take a look at materials that has not circulated publicly.
Jarecki and Dorsey are betting that the bitcoin neighborhood, which absorbed that argument in 2011 when it mattered most, will carry the movie the place the streaming business declined to go.
