In My Backyard
In recent months, I was shocked twice to learn about somewhat major events that happened in my backyard, and of which I didn’t know anything at all.
The first story is detailed in Ben Mezrich’s book Bitcoin Billionaires. It tells the story of the Winklevos twins’ second act: the world of Bitcoin. Both are working with Charlie Shrem to learn and build early infrastructure to trade crypto. Several important events happen in San Jose. I missed the news of those early Bitcoin conferences. Also San Jose native Roger Ver has an important role in the book. And I learned about a new dining spot in San Jose’s Japan town.
The second story I learned about in Netflix’s The Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies and the Internet, The Stingray episode. In the late 90s, pre-Wifi, when I was dialing up using EarthLink, Daniel Rigmaiden was using a Verizon Airlink card to connect to the internet from his apartment in Santa Clara, opposite of Santa Clara university. The story describes the capture of Daniel, who criminally made thousands of dollars scamming the IRS. In order to find Daniel, the government used Stringray, a new and dubious technology which legality is discussed in the documentary. Watching the 2-part story, Stingray was a huge deal. The entire story, which happened less than 10 miles from me, escaped me.