This A16z Startup is Building a ‘Virtual Galaxy’ for Bitcoin Nodes

Some have said that bitcoin can be thought of as digital property, akin to a kind of virtual gold. If so, this description then raises the question – can technology be used to create entirely digital landscapes?
The developers behind a project called Urbit have spent much of the past decade trying to answer that question. It’s through this concept that the project, developed by a startup called Tlon, has attracted support from Silicon Valley powerhouses like Andreessen Horowitz and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
Urbit is a network of personal cloud computers that, according to its founders, aims to create a means through which individuals can run their own servers without having to go through the trouble of running complicated server infrastructure.
Described by its creators as a “virtual city”, the project dates back to the mid-2000s and is the the brainchild of Curtis Yarvin, a programmer who has stoked controversy in the past for his “neo-reactionary” political writings under the pen name Mencius Moldbug. Despite attracting criticism over the years, the project is pushing ahead, and last night completed an initial sale of sever addresses.

This post was published at Coin Desk on June 29, 2016.