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 function the bitcoin group could play in getting it to the general public — a dialog that stretched from censorship and surveillance to Satoshi Nakamoto and the unique rules of the web.
Dorsey joined the panel just about. The setting itself carried weight: Jarecki informed the gang that the on line casino sitting near the place he stood had ties to the personal safety agency that spied on Assange whereas he lived inside London’s Ecuadorian Embassy — a revelation the documentary locations on the heart 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 test, he informed Jarecki that the bitcoin group represented one thing bigger than a funding supply — a constituency constructed across the identical rules Assange had fought to defend.
“Bitcoin is an open protocol for cash transmission,” Dorsey mentioned. “It routes across the gatekeepers — Visa, Mastercard, the banks.”
He described the group 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 below strain from the U.S. authorities, bitcoin stepped in as the one fee rail that might not be blocked.
He known as WikiLeaks adopting bitcoin out of necessity one of the vital important 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 below circumstances of state strain.
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 known as that exit a selfless act — one which made the community founderless, and due to this fact immune to the form of strain that governments and establishments can apply when a single particular person stands on the heart of a undertaking.
He positioned Assange and Edward Snowden in the identical class: individuals who trusted the know-how they used, put their lives in danger for rules bigger than themselves, and paid for it.
Jarecki mentioned making the movie carried its personal dangers. Whereas capturing in Russia, he mentioned his crew felt they had been being adopted and monitored — a layer of strain 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 occasion in lower than 60 days
The movie’s distribution mannequin is probably the most uncommon aspect of the undertaking. Dorsey proposed a world personal pay-per-view watch occasion as a substitute for the normal launch pipeline. Ticket patrons at thesixbilliondollarman.com obtain a credit score line on the movie itself, turning the viewers into members within the undertaking somewhat than passive shoppers.
Jarecki framed it as a take a look at of whether or not a group organized round open monetary infrastructure may 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 option to crowdfund and convey the group 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 have a look at materials that has not circulated publicly.
Jarecki and Dorsey are betting that the bitcoin group, which absorbed that argument in 2011 when it mattered most, will carry the movie the place the streaming trade declined to go.