Crypto News: The next billion-dollar athlete?

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Alcaraz celebrates his Wimbledon victory in July. Photographer: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images Europe

Last Thursday evening, four days before the opening round of the US Open Tennis Championship, Carlos Alcaraz spent a few minutes playing pickleball in a ballroom of the Lotte New York Palace in Midtown Manhattan. The 20-year-old Spaniard and current world No. 1 in men's tennis was one of six players on hand (along with Venus Williams, Ons Jabeur, Holgar Rune, Andrey Rublev and Tommy Paul) for the Palace Invitational, an annual promotional event hosted by the hotel where a few dozen guests and VIPs get to rub shoulders with pros ahead of the open.

It was the first time for Alcaraz, who's vaulted to the top of the men's game over the past 12 months after winning his first Grand Slam at last year's US Open and his second at Wimbledon in July. When Alcaraz entered the bar during the pre-pickleball cocktail hour, he could not get a step without being stopped for a selfie, while Rune, the 20-year-old Dane ranked No. 4 in the world, slipped past practically unnoticed. Alcaraz, in this room at least, was the player people had been waiting to see.

For the past two decades, professional tennis has been dominated on the men's side by three generational talents. Since Roger Federer won his first Wimbledon championship in 2003, he, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have taken 65 of the 80 available Grand Slam singles titles. (During one stretch from 2005 to 2012, the trio won 29 of 30.) Their pas de trois has been great for the sport. Each pushed the others to greater heights and offered fans a different type of champion: Federer won with feathery groundstrokes; Nadal with relentless ball pursuit and a buggy-whip forehand; and Djokovic with the game's most lethal backhand.

By defeating Djokovic at Wimbledon in a five-set, almost five-hour final, Alcaraz made a strong case for himself as the heir apparent to the big three. After the match, Djokovic said that the young Spaniard combined the best elements of his own game with those of Nadal and Federer. "I think he's got basically the best of all three worlds," Djokovic said.

With that otherworldly combination, Alcaraz stands to become one of the wealthiest athletes on the planet. Will the US Open, now underway, be his coronation as the new king of men's tennis? —Ira Boudway, Bloomberg Businessweek

The offices of the New York City Criminal Justice Agency, the nonprofit tasked with administering the city's supervised- release program in Queens. Photographer: Andy Jackson from Bloomberg Businessweek

Governments across the US are testing ways to reform a bail system that traditionally favors those with means—think Sam Bankman-Fried, who walked free for eight months on a $250 million bond secured by his parents' home, or a certain ex-president. Lawmakers in Alaska; New Jersey; Washington, DC; and, recently, Illinois have eliminated cash bail for most offenses. Last year, DC released 85% of people charged pretrial, more than 90% of whom returned to court and weren't rearrested.

But New York City's ecosystem of pretrial release represents the forefront of America's efforts to reduce mass incarceration. At inception over a decade ago, it focused on nonviolent felony charges, seeking maximum impact for minimum risk, then gradually expanded its remit to include a range of misdemeanors. Now, it's dipped more than a toe into cases that involve allegations of violent crime. So far, the program is working. —Fola Akinnibi and Sarah Holder, Bloomberg Businessweek

Photographer: Carl Court/Getty Images

Doctors at some of the largest US teaching hospitals are blowing the whistle on a lucrative practice they say endangers patients: surgeons scheduling two or even three operations at virtually the same time, leaving during critical portions, then billing Medicare for work they didn't do.

A review of more than a dozen federal and state lawsuits offers a rare glimpse into a tight-lipped profession. Many include separate allegations of bribery, kickbacks and improper compensation. Some reveal closed-door debates by hospital administrators over the ethics, safety and staggering profits brought by concurrent surgeries.

The University of Southern California's hospital system is accused of billing for thousands of cases—costing taxpayers "hundreds of millions of dollars"—where the teaching physician left residents unattended to perform even spine and brain surgeries. When one doctor confronted a department head about an "embarrassingly high" rate of surgical injuries at one of its facilities, the administrator responded, according to the lawsuit: "Well, that's where the residents go to practice on the poor folks."

USC said in a statement to Bloomberg Law that "The University investigated the billing issues when it became aware of them and made reimbursements where billing mistakes were made. The university disputes the other allegations in the lawsuit."—John Holland, Bloomberg Law

92,003

That's the number of people who saw the University of Nebraska at Lincoln's volleyball team take on University of Nebraska at Omaha. It's a new record crowd for a women's sporting event.

Harper Murray of the Nebraska Cornhuskers serves against the Omaha Mavericks at Memorial Stadium. Photographer: Steven Branscombe/Getty Images North America

"The average US single adult doesn't date because they don't know how to flirt, or they're scared they don't know how."

Whitney Wolfe Herd

Bumble CEO

On the latest episode of The Circuit With Emily Chang, Wolfe Herd talked about dating technology as a cure to America's loneliness epidemic

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