I'm crouching in a seedy alleyway off Trafalgar Square, London, with my MacBook teetering on one knee. The heady reek of piss fills my nostrils. I'm hurriedly punching emoji into a dialog box in my web browser, which is prompting me for the answer to a puzzle. It's day nine of Crypto: The Game. CTG is an elimination game that takes place over 10 days, almost exclusively online. It's a sort of mutant conglomeration of ideas from Survivor, Squid Game, The Hunger Games, and The Traitors, except everything is crypto-inflected in some way. Each of the 716 players that signed up for the third season, myself included, purchased an entry NFT for $200 in cryptocurrency. The last player standing would win the $140,000 pot. I had raced to Trafalgar Square on that Tuesday afternoon'barreling through tourists like a shoplifter fleeing the law'following clues that promised a route back into the game. I had been voted out by my fellow players the previous night, but if I could solve the puzzle...
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