transactions in any currency. With this idea they succeeded in becoming the first venture-backed company in the industry with Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures among their early investors.

Somewhat controversially, at its launch the Ripple blockchain simply created 100 billion Ripple credits, called XRP, in its genesis block in order to allow the company to distribute tokens through business development deals. At the start of 2017 Ripple reported that it held 63 billion XRP with the rest of the tokens distributed to others, including early founders and investors. As a result, only a small percentage of XRP are actively available, and the currency appears at the top of many market cap rankings for the sector albeit with widely disputed numbers.

The company has continued to develop into a global real-timedeaths of Arthur Miller and Pittsburgh native August Wilson in 2005, he was arguably America’s greatest living playwright.

Several years ago, before undergoing extensive surgery, Mr. Albee penned the following note to be issued at the time of his death: “To all of you who have made my being alive so wonderful, so exciting and so full, my thanks and all my love.”

Mr. Albee was proclaimed the playwright of his generation after his blistering “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” opened on Broadway in 1962. The Tony-winning play, still widely considered his finest, was made into an award-winning 1966 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

The play’s sharp-tongued humor and dark themes were the hallmarks of Mr. Albee’s style. In more than 30 plays, he skewered such mainstays of American