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Tilia Secures Strategic Investment From J.P. Morgan, Spins Out Of Linden Lab

Contributor

A former tech executive covering XR and The Metaverse for Forbes.

Oct 18, 2022,12:00pm EDT

Linden Lab announced the spin off of its proprietary finance engine Tilia this morning. Tilia’s solution, built for game, virtual world and mobile application developers handles payment processing, in-game transactions, as well as payouts to creators by converting in-world tokens to fiat currency including USD serving as the backbone of any functioning virtual economy.

F3IEGFZWBVHYHHZPL532NMP6SM — PC game Second Life. launched in 2003, is widely acknowledged to be the first Metaverse. It has a ... [+] thriving creator economy powered by Tilia.
Linden Lab

Tilia has been running Second Life’s $650 million dollar economy for the past seven years. Financing for the new company is coming from their strategic partner, JP Morgan. “It's very important virtual worlds have the instantaneous settlement Tilia provides,” said Brad Oberwager, Executive Chairman of Tilia, and acting CEO of Linden Lab. “We can handle very high transaction volume at very low dollar amount that even with USDC, the systems aren't built for that kind of stuff. We move one 250th of a dollar sometimes.”

In addition to the investment, Tilia is also working with J.P. Morgan Payments to increase payout methods and expand the number of pay-out currencies. Perhaps mosst importantly, partnering with the world’s largest bank will enable Tilia to scale to the potential size of the putative Metaverse. Drew Soinski, Senior Payments Executive, Managing Director, J.P. Morgan Payments, will join Tilia’s board.

Aston Waldman057 (1) — Aston Waldman, CEO and Director of Tilia.
Tilia

Tilia will be led by Aston Waldman, who is CEO, Director & Treasurer. He was previously the CFO of Linden Lab. Randy Waterfield, and Oberwager are the other board members. Oberwager also sits on the boards of two public companies, Asure Software (NASDAQ: ASUR) and Better World (NASDAQ: BWACU). Notably, he owned Bare Snacks, which was acquired by PepsiCo in 2018.

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One of the most interesting things about Tilia is that it’s registered as a money transmitter and its user accounts are compliant with state, federal and international regulations. Importantly, Tilia is the only token based virtual payment system that easily and securely converts in-game tokens into fiat currency, wherever the user resides. The partnership with JP Morgan assures a payout in fiat currency pretty much anywhere credit cards work.

bradheadshot — Brad Oberwager, Executive Chairman and acting CEO of Linden Lab and Tilia.
Tilia

The Metaverse is broadly defined as a virtual world where you feel present in real space with other people in real time, as you would in the physical world, or in a social game like Second Life or World of Warcraft. Where there is not a consensus about is the economy that would make The Metaverse work. Everyone assumes it would have to do with crypto, the blockchain and web3. “The largest challenge with a virtual world based on crypto is not because of blockchain.” Explained Oberwager. “Crypto, by definition, can trade outside the virtual world. If the crypto is treated as a speculative security, and it is going up and down in value by the day, it deteriorates the fabric of a social economy.”

A Tilia SDK is available in the Unity asset store. Tilia is easy for developers to implement, and it’s simple and convenient for their customers to use. Transactions are instant and cost pennies, some of which go into the developer’s pocket. At Second Life, those pennies amounted to $86M last year.

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Charlie Fink

Charlie Fink is the author of the AR-enabled books "Metaverse," (2017) and "Convergence" (2019). In the early 90s, Fink was EVP & COO of VR

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Retail

Patrick Byrne Of Overstock Fame Says He Was Involved In Monthslong Effort To Overturn 2020 Election

Lauren Debter

Forbes Staff

I cover the retail industry.

Jul 14, 2022,04:01pm EDT

Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC — Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne speaks at a press conference across the street from the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, in February 2022.
The Washington Post via Getty Images

When it comes to peculiar characters, 2020 election edition, few people had this guy on their bingo card: the former chief executive of online furniture retailer Overstock, Patrick Byrne.

Byrne, set to speak with the January 6 committee on Friday, was present at a contentious White House meeting days before Christmas in 2020 with then President Donald Trump and members of his staff, in which Byrne, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Trump lawyer Sidney Powell made the case that the election had been stolen and they needed to recount ballots in at least six states. They also discussed deploying the National Guard to seize voting machines.

Days before that meeting, Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have affected the outcome of the election.

On December 18, 2020, the group showed up at the White House undaunted. They didn’t have an appointment, but gained access thanks to a junior staffer and ultimately walked straight into the Oval Office, where they had a private audience with Trump. They had a short period of time alone with him, during which they presented their case. Before long, they were interrupted by several White House officials, including then counsel Pat Cipollone.

“I bet Pat Cipollone set a new land speed record,” Powell said in testimony to the January 6 committee about how fast he showed up.

Cipollone was not happy with the group he found. “The Overstock person, I’ve never met, I never knew who this guy was,” said Cipollone in his testimony. “Actually, the first thing I did, I walked in, I looked at him, and I said, ‘Who are you?’”

It turns out that Byrne had been actively involved for months in efforts to uncover fraud and prove that the election had been stolen, according to a book he self-published called The Deep Rig, as well as lengthy blog posts on his site DeepCapture.com and an hour-long video. (A self-proclaimed libertarian, Byrne says he did not vote for Trump.)

Byrne, 59, has a long history of hawking conspiracy theories and becoming embroiled in controversy. The son of an insurance tycoon who turned around Geico in the 1970s and attracted an investment from Warren Buffett, he earned a doctorate in philosophy from Stanford while battling three bouts of testicular cancer and wrote his dissertation exploring the virtues of limited government. He and his brother then began doing deals financed by their dad, buying up bankrupt hotels, strip malls, apartment buildings and distressed consumer debt.

In 1999, he bought a discount retailer, renamed it Overstock and began scooping up inventory from bankrupt dot-coms and selling it at discounts online. Three years later, the company’s revenue hit $92 million and he took it public. When the stock tanked, Byrne blamed it on an illegal practice called naked short-selling. He embarked on a yearslong crusade, ranting in one call with investors that hedge funds, journalists and regulators were conspiring to push down the company’s stock price under the direction of some faceless menace he called the “Sith Lord.”

Byrne later became enamored with blockchain technology, spending hundreds of millions of Overstock’s money to start or invest in more than a dozen blockchain companies. In 2019, he resigned from Overstock after his romantic relationship with accused Russian spy Maria Butina came to light. Byrne says he was a federal informant in her investigation and had been feeding information to the “Men In Black” since 2015. He then sold his entire stake in Overstock, worth about $90 million before taxes, citing a fear of retaliation from the government, which he referred to as the “Deep State.”

In the summer of 2020, Byrne was recovering from spinal surgery when he says a friend paid him a visit at his home in Utah and piqued his interest in election fraud. He told him he should get involved with a group that was looking into suspicious activity in the 2018 Dallas election and believed there was potential for election fraud on a much wider scale, according to Byrne’s book.

Byrne threw himself into the subject. He says he spent the next several months speaking with cybersecurity experts and hackers, learning about the ways in which electronic voting machines could be vulnerable to foul play and foreign interference.

By the time election night came, Byrne was on the lookout for signs of fraud. He says he approached Sidney Powell in mid-November with information on election fraud. He then relayed that information to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani at her direction, he says.

Days later, Giuliani spoke at a press conference during which rivulets of hair dye ran down his face as he made allegations of widespread voter fraud. When Powell stepped to the microphone, she blamed communists in Cuba and Venezuela, left-wing billionaire George Soros and the Clinton Foundation for a plot to ensure that Trump did not win the presidency. (The White House distanced itself from her after that.)

All the while, Byrne says he continued to spend time in D.C. and remained in communication with Powell, who introduced him to Flynn. In December, Byrne says the trio decided to “crash” the White House to try and get their message to Trump. Aides said the meeting became “unhinged” with shouting and insults being hurled between the conspiracy theorists and the White House legal team. The confab lasted until after midnight, ultimately ending in the president’s living quarters, known as the “Yellow Oval,” where Byrne says Swedish meatballs were served and he was “scarfing them down like popcorn.”

Hours after their meeting, Trump called on protesters to join him in the nation’s capital, tweeting: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

Byrne says he continued to try and get in front of Trump again, even flying down to Mar-A-Lago over the holidays, but he was turned away by security after showing up in a beat-up Toyota Corolla Uber ride and yoga togs.

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Lauren Debter

I am a staff writer at Forbes covering retail. I have been at Forbes since 2013, first on the markets and investing team and then on the billionaires team. In the course of my reporting, I

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Consumer Tech

Apple iPad 2022: The Biggest Update Yet, But There’s A Catch

David Phelan

Senior Contributor

I write about lifestyle tech

Oct 18, 2022,11:43am EDT

Apple-iPad-10th-gen-hero-221018 — The new 10th generation iPad.
Apple

The new Apple iPad has been unveiled and there are plenty of changes, many of them surprising. There’s a new design, new colors, new Touch ID, bigger display, faster processor, USB-C connector and a new Magic Keyboard Folio. But there’s a catch: a significant price increase.

The Apple iPad 10^th generation will go on sale on Wednesday, October 26, with pre-orders starting today. The price is noticeably higher than the 9^th generation which started at $329 (and remains in the line-up at the same price).

The new model costs $449 for the 64GB wifi model, $599 if you want cellular connectivity, too. There’s also a 256GB storage model: $599 for wifi only, $749 with cellular connectivity.

The design is completely different from any previous iPad and comes into line with the rest of the range, the Pro, Air and mini.

This new model looks very similar to the iPad Air, and comes in a range of four colors: silver, blue, pink and yellow (which looks particularly good).

There’s a 10.9-inch display, identical to the one on the pricier iPad Air. This is made possible by the removal of the Touch ID button from the front of the tablet. It’s moved to the power button, a place it also occupies on the iPad mini and iPad Air. Another similarity to the Air: you may be spotting a theme here.

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There’s a USB-C connector here (like the iPad Air!) and this means that the only iPad with a Lightning connector is the 9^th generation model. All others now use USB-C.

This adds a small complication: the new iPad is compatible with the first-generation Apple Pencil, which is charged and paired using a Lightning connector. So, when you buy a new Pencil, it comes with a USB-C to Lightning adaptor in the box. Already have a Pencil? You’ll need to buy the adaptor ($9) to be able to connect it.

The processor has been upgraded to the A14 Bionic, which is not the same as the iPad Air, which favors the M1 chip. This is the most significant difference between the two, I’d say.

And there’s a new Magic Keyboard Folio which is exclusive to this new iPad and hinges differently to the other Magic Keyboards.

At first glance, it’s hard to see why anyone would want to spend the extra money on an iPad Air when this new model is so potent and costs $150 less.

More news as we have it.