Bankless - What’s It Take To Be a Crypto Journalist? with Coindesk's Eli Tan and Casey Craig | Layer Zero

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

On this episode of Layer Zero, David is joined by Eli Tan, NFT reporter, and Casey Craig, Global Head of Comms of Coindesk for an in-person Bankless Studio interview. Crypto is evolving at mind-boggling rates and traditional media is having a tough time keeping up. Enter Coindesk. Reporters such as Eli and the rest of the Coindesk team are as much on the frontier as those building in crypto. Hear how Eli and Casey fell down the crypto rabbit hole, how they got their roles at Coindesk, what challenges they face as a crypto journalism organization, and how media is keeping up with crypto. ------ 📣 Galxe | Explore Crypto’s #1 Credential Network https://bankless.cc/Galxe   ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across  🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave  💠 NEXO | CRYPTO FINANCIAL HUB https://bankless.cc/Nexo  🔐 LEDGER | NANO HARDWARE WALLETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger  ⚡️FUEL | THE MODULAR EXECUTION LAYER https://bankless.cc/Fuelpod ----- Topics Covered 0:00 Intro 5:26 Eli’s Background 7:57 Casey’s Role at Coindesk 9:13 How Eli Got Into Crypto 14:42 Challenges of Being a Crypto Journalist 16:55 Deciding What to Cover 17:51 The Crypto Journalism Balance 19:42 Coindesk’s Niche 20:33 Coindesk’s Journey 22:35 Hiring 23:44 Coindesk’s Disclosures 27:46 Due Diligence Process 30:32 Eli’s Proudest Scoop 30:50 Constitution DAO Story 33:00 Younger vs. Older Journalists 38:44 New Media Journalists 40:52 Where to Get Alpha 43:30 Do Kwon’s Coindesk Story 46:13 Anon Leads 47:22 Generational Connections 50:20 Average Future of Crypto Journalists 52:22 Going to Journalism School 53:16 The Future of Crypto Journalism 55:28 Coindesk’s Future 57:22 Poaching From TradMedia 59:33 Hierarchy & Flat Organizations 1:05:26 Closing ------ Resources: Eli Tan https://twitter.com/elitanjourno  Casey Craig https://twitter.com/caseycraig_  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but is composed by people. And each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell. The cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it. And Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code because Ethereum is people all the way down. And it always has been. Today on Layer Zero, I'm speaking with Casey Craig, Global Head of Coms at CoinDesk, and also Eli Tan, a journalist and an NFT journalist also at CoinDesk. And this is the episode that I really wanted to produce to talk about crypto journalism. I haven't really seen anyone go down the rabbit hole of what's it like to be a journalist in crypto or what's it like to be the head of comms of a crypto media, cryptojournalist publication. Bankless, we don't consider ourselves journalists. We call ourselves a thesis-driven

media company. We have opinions. There's a future out there that we want to help shape. And journalism is not that. Journalism is here's the facts. Here's the facts. the news, here's what you need to know. And it's also about getting the scoop. It's also about getting the alpha. And so Eli is this very young, 24 years old, started at CoinDesk at 22, fresh out of college, skipped over, going over any sort of like trad media, trad job, and straight into NFT journalism in the height of an NFT bull market. So we get that story. And Casey, the head of comms at CoinDesk, has been with CoinDesk for many, many winters now. So she's been around and she's seen it all. And so we just take a peek under the hood as to what's it like. And so we just take a peek under the hood as to

what's it like to be a crypto media company? CoinDusk is, of course, extremely large of a media entity in crypto. And they are now broadening their horizons to tradify competitors. So they are competing with the likes of Bloomberg or any of these other very large media institutions that are outside of crypto. And I think this is a sign of crypto really growing up and looking out at bigger fish, bigger horizons and thinking about what we can bring new to the table. We also talk about just the different structure of CoinDesk versus its competition, the very hierarchical nature of traditional media versus the very flat nature of Coin Desk and how CoinDesk really empowers their own journalists to do their best work, of course, after they earn the stripes. So let's go ahead and

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Wall extensions are a thing of the past. So get started with Brave's Web3-ready browser today and experience a decentralized web seamlessly without all the clutter. You can download the browser at brave.com slash banklist and click the wallet icon to get started. I'm here with Eli Tan and Casey Craig of CoinDesk. Eli, you are an NFT journalist at CoinDesk, and Casey, you are ahead of comms. Today we're going to go down the exploratory journey of what the hell it's like to be a journalist inside of the world of crypto, which I would imagine is a challenge. Eli, is it a challenge to be a journalist in crypto? It's a challenge, but I think it's probably one of the most

fun things a reporter can cover. It's got all of the drama, you know, of any beat, but all of the drama, all of the absurdity, yeah, I think it's... Let's go a little bit into your guys' background, just to kind of set the stage in the context for the listener. So Eli, can you give us a little bit of background of who you are, what you studied in college, and how you came to be a journalist at CoinDusk? Yeah, so I'm kind of an up-and-coming reporter. CoinDest is actually my first, you know, full-time professional job. I went to school in Minnesota, but out of college, it was June of last year. Join CoinDisk. And then at that time, June 2021, you know, NFTs were still kind of like

a nascent thing. So no one really wanted to get stuck with the NFT beat. It was kind of like something thing I like NFTs. I like writing about these. And then, you know, I don't think anyone could have predicted kind of the rise and fall of it throughout that next, you know, whatever it was, 12, 15 months. But yeah, kind of rode the career wave with NFTs. Okay, so you were writing about NFTs, you were pushing into that domain of crypto before media entities and crypto were really covering it. And I was assuming that flipped really, really fast pretty quickly, yeah? Yeah. And he's being modest, too. I mean, Eli, he was breaking. NFT news stories who's been featured in everything from like Rolling Stone to CNBC, Hype Beast,

kind of all across the board. And Eli came to us as an intern and within one year, he was not only one of our top reporters, but one of the top reporters in the entire space. Yeah, I mean, I benefited from having my entire beat be NFTs. You know, at the time it was like kind of this quirky technology niche, right? Like a lot of people were writing about Web3. NFTs were part of that, but I was like full on in the NFT space, you know. full-time, which was definitely interesting. Casey, on the CoinDex side of things, can you talk about that pivot pre-NFTs to post-NFTs? Like, what was the attitude about NFTs in CoinDest? And when it was like, okay, the transition would be like, oh, no, we need to cover this thing.

I mean, that's a great question. And Eli might be able to answer a little bit better, but I don't remember us ever covering it except for sporadically before. And when Eli joined, we really gave him that beat. And that was also one of the first time just from a comm standpoint that CoinDisc was cited in mainstream publications. We've always been cited for break. And we've always been cited for breaking news in the financial or tech or like traditional business publications like CNBC. But when we started covering NFTs, we were like cited in super mainstream publications. I think, you know, CoinDesk alone had 190 million people visit the website last year. And it was the crypto price was a part of it, but a big part of it was probably also the NFT coverage. And Casey, can you just explain

a little bit of your role in background at CoinDest? What do you do there? Yeah. So my job, you know, it's kind of a simple goal, but a complicated way to get there is I want to make CoinDisc a household name. When people think of Bloomberg, they think of news, business news. When they think of the Wall Street Journal, they think of finance news, business news, the New York Times, every kind of realm of journalism. So I want everybody to know what CoinDisc is and that we're the leader in crypto coverage and blockchain. And what did you do before CoinDisc? I've kind of always worked in crypto. I mean, there was like a stint when I was still a ski bomb and I was selling timeshares in Brackenridge, Colorado. But ever since then, when I moved to New York, I worked at Waxman PR. CoinDIS was a client then.

I went into Spark PR and worked with anyone from ABRA. I'm doing a few other smaller crypto companies. And then I ran actually the Financial Services PR at Publicist Sapient. So did a little bit of TradFi and then came back into CoinDesk in my current role. Okay. So I'm getting the sense from both of you that backgrounds generally not, you majored in journalism, Eli. So that's a strong background. I know, of course, journalism.

but no one can really prepare you for crypto, right? There's nothing like to really help you help you with that. And Casey, your background really isn't marketing or journalism or anything like this. And so, I mean, I feel like most people can empathize with these stories. Like crypto always throws you a curveball and you end up doing something a little bit different than you expected it to. But Eli, I want to kind of go through your background starting with majoring in journalism. What did you think you were going to do and write about what did you want to do? and then how did crypto end up throwing you a curveball?

Yeah, so I can remember really distinctly. It was the spring of my senior year, and I just wanted to get in a newsroom, right? I was applying to these papers, you're a Seattle guy, I was applying to papers on, it's like Bainbridge Island, right? Paper of like five people.

And, you know, I couldn't get in the door, right? No one wanted me. And then I had always been really interested in crypto, kind of from like an investment standpoint, and then, of course, like the Dogecoin stuff, I was like really interested in. So, you know, I'd see this kind of coin desk opportunity. and I essentially told them like, yeah, I've never written about this stuff.

And they were like, you know, not many people have. That's like the thing. Like if you just want to throw yourself into it, like you can become an expert and you can really have like a voice here. So I thought, okay, I'll try it out. Yeah. And then to go from that to being like, you know, tout as kind of like this NFT expert, right? Because essentially anyone that knew about NFTs like I did in, you know, the winter of 2020, technically is an expert, right? Because it's so new.

So it was like going from, you know, The rookie who kind of has no basis than anything to, like, the expert. I can remember distinctly it was actually in Miami. Oh, yeah. Your first public speaking role. The first time I ever spoke publicly was at FTX Arena in Miami. Where the Miami he plays. Yeah, I've been invited to talk, to moderate that panel in front of like thousands of people.

So I've like, they put the makeup on. I've got the nice clothing. I've got the mic. And you interviewed Pia and she's like, like, what, eight, 10, 20 million Instagram followers? Ors or something. You know, M Shadows from Avenge Sevenfold. Like, it was just kind of this funny thing. It was like my coming out moment of like, oh, wow.

I'm like freaking out. Like, I've never talked in front of people before. And that's like the big intro. And then since then, I mean, Eli's been to the Grammys. He interviewed Gee Easy right before the Grammys. He attended. You were like at a table. Like, right you did the full.

It's essentially like all the absurdity of NFTs I was kind of there for. Like during these times when it seemed like, Every sports team, every musician was doing NFTs. Like, I was kind of right there for it because, you know, of course they want the press, right? So, like, I think the Grammys thing was probably like the peak moment of absurdity, like, me on the red carpet for the Grammys. In a tucks, right? No, a suit, yeah. And people just being like, like, what is, like, who is this kid?

And it's like, I read about NFTs, you know? And it's, of course, changed a lot since then. Like, I think the industry is, like, rebranding a little bit. Like, the hype's not quite the same as what it was. but for a few moments, like, there was some glory, definitely along the way of what is going on. You mentioned how you were trying to just get into Bainbridge Island newspaper. And for those that aren't familiar with Seattle or the Pacific Northwest, Bainbridge Island is where you take the ferry to across the sound.

It's a small town. Population 300, yeah. Like, there's not a lot of readers of that. And so to go from applying for something like the Bainbridge Island, like local newspaper, to doing NFT coverage in the middle of a bull market, I'm sure it was a little bit of a whiplash. What were your emotions going through that year of your life? It was a lot. I mean, it's still kind of like a fever dream thinking about some of the stuff.

Speaking at like South by Southwest was another cool thing. Oh my gosh. Yes, he spoke at South by Southwest with WrestleMania stars. Yeah, yeah. It was Stephanie. It was Stephanie Cohen. No, that's not right. I think so.

Somebody. You know, Quentin is congeneral. We've had some cool public speaking opportunities. I think Eli is one of the only journalist that speaks to. He's asked me on panels with like real life celebrities, not just crypto celebrities, but big mainstream celebrities. And it's kind of funny because he's 22 at the time. They didn't know anything about NFTs,

and he was really the one leading the conversation, driving the conversation, the expert. I mean, South by Southwest is huge. So that was just one of them. And then, you know, he's even been interviewed by the New York Times. It's a piece that, like, we don't know when it's coming out, but it was just on his career in cryptojournalism and how you can become an expert with, I mean,

not a short amount of time because I don't want to dilute that expertise, but it's different. than every other career. That's pretty great, I think, is that people really don't care about credentials. Yeah. It's all just about what you know, right? Yeah. You've got some of the most authoritative figures in NFTs, and they're just like a picture of a monkey and, you know, some alias, right?

And it's like, no one cares who they really are. No one cares, like, where they've worked if they have, like, something to say, you know, like, people will really listen. And I think I kind of benefited a lot from that just because it's my first job, but because people, People like the articles, you know, they're willing to listen to me. So, yeah, you had the fortune to jump right into this industry. I wish I had, were able to skip that four years of my life of post-college before I found crypto. If I had just been able to gap that, that'd been really, really nice.

But so you don't really actually have, like, too much experience not reporting in crypto. This will take a little bit of creativity to answer this question. But what kind of challenges as a journalist? We are in an industry where there are tokens everywhere. People want to pump their bags. people have self-interest. And it's not like it's not true in normal tradfied, German Web 2 journalism. All these same kind of incentives apply. Like everyone's trying to like pump themselves, like promote themselves as a journalist. I'm sure you have to be skeptical. But in crypto,

it's got to be like on steroids. Right. So what are some of the hard, challenging parts about being a journalist in crypto? Especially doing a bull market, right? Like how crazy was that? Yeah, the pitches, right, Eli? You'd get 100 a day. Yeah, I was getting like, you know, a few hundred pitches a day. So that was hard to sort through. I mean, it's tough because you've got to balance what is news and what is a promotion for somebody's project. The way that information

is shared too with NFTs, like, it's all on Twitter, right? I think that's like probably what helps a lot of my articles is that I'm just like very native to like these Twitter communities and I'm kind of like in the weeds of like what's going on and some of the best stories like we were just talking about the whole Bendow liquidation thing.

It was just something that I was like watching and no one was writing about it because no one one was kind of in these like really inner circles of of nfti people. Interesting. Yeah, I can definitely relate to that because one of the first ways I got into content that I joke about like I did this thing and then a year later we created bank lists as I was just noticing this thing happened on chain with ether volatility and mkr burn. It's like oh, as ether is more volatile, mkr gets burned at a faster rate, mkr out of maker Dow. I thought that was pretty interesting and I wrote about it and like no one else was looking at it and then I thought like 50 people were going to read it but like 500 people

wrote it. And that was like my first dopamine hit. And people, I think, don't really realize how much there is to write about and how much of it is being like looked over by so many people. How did you develop your intuition as to like what is a good thing to cover or what is going to be interesting to the readers? So what I had always thought like in the early days, right, is like, oh, what are kind of like the groundbreaking things happening that are like moving the industry forward? But then what I found with NFTs is that they're actually more people that like to make fun of NFTs than there are really like promoting them right so like some of my favorite stories to do are stories where outsiders can kind of look in and just laugh at the

absurdity of like everything that's happening like the bend out thing is a great example right like essentially people recreating like the financial crisis of 2008 but instead of mortgages it's with monkey pictures right and it's like even if you're not like really uh don't know much about nfts or like understand the technology like something like that i think is kind of compelling. Do you think that incentive where, and this is true for all of crypto, people kind of want to crypto for just to crash and burn, right? There's that external incentive. And then that kind of creates incentives out of our media institutions to cater to those readers so we can get the views. And then it starts to intercept itself a little bit deeper into the

culture of everything. How do you think about this challenge where we want to promote our industry for the best that it is? We have businesses that run on like eyeballs and attention and use. As a journalist, how do you balance these things? Yeah, it's tough because if you look at most of the, you know, NFT media stuff, like people make their money writing about like the way up and the way down, like one or the other. You've got like, I don't know if you know Molly White, but her like Web 3 is going great. It's a great blog. We're recording with her later next week.

Oh, great. Yeah. She does great stuff, but she only writes about the bad stuff, right? And then a lot of people only read about the good. But as journalists, like, that's not her job, right? It's so many journalists do. And I think there's some publications. I mean, I don't want to say them because I don't want to hurt those relationships, but they really only focus. They kind of wait for a scandal. And they really want to focus. I mean, they're such pessimist because sometimes that is a good story. I mean, we even published The Genesis Story, and that's our sister company.

It was a little controversial. I mean, we're talking about a giant, giant loss. But, yeah, I mean, I think it's good to have both, you know, as our newsroom. I notice that we always try to represent both sides. I don't think, I mean, when you read Coinisk articles, we're really good at everything's, that only is it factually correct, but we're pretty blunt. We get to the point. We're not evangelizing crypto. We're extremely neutral, but a lot of other publications are not like that. I think either one in the spectrum, they're either evangelizing it and they're pumping it or they're ripping it.

Casey, how would you place Coin Desk in the sphere of crypto media? So we have CoinDes, we have the block, we have decrypt, we have all of these different journalists or media entities reporting on the news. how would you characterize CoinDesk's specific niche and flavor? So that's a great question. To be honest, and not just to sound like, you know, I'm trying to pump CoinDesk. But we've kind of, yeah, we've kind of, to be honest, those are our competitors for crypto, but we've kind of evolved beyond being a crypto trade. I mean, 190 people, 190 million people came to our site last year, consensus of 20,000 people,

the Indices Company. So honestly, we see Bloomberg as our competitor, CNBC as our competitor. So you guys have broken out. You guys are going for bigger fish. We really have, to be honest. Yeah, we really have. And so how did CoinDisc get there? Can you remind me when you started at CoinDusk and kind of carry us through that journey? So I've been Global Head of Coms for about two years. Like I said, they were my client in 2017 when I was at Waxman. So when I first started working with them, I don't think Michael Casey was even in his as a chief content officer yet. I think he was even advisor. So kind of a long time. And so CoinDest, kind of how we got there, it's a lot of, I mean, the people. I think it really does come down to the people. When we hire talent, we have this tremendous intern program that Eli was in. At a more senior level, we're hiring talent from Politico,

Bloomberg, other huge mainstream publications. We don't really have a super high turnover rate compared to a lot of other newsrooms. But yeah, we have like absolute legends working on the editorial side. I mean, Kevin Reynolds, our editor-in-chief, created Bloomberg's newsbreaking desk. So I think how we got there, it's kind of simple. I mean, I think it's the people, the commitment to journalism and integrity and our ethics are really strong. Yeah, and the elder statesman of CoinDesk are really important. I mean, it's true, like, can you explain that reference? Yeah.

Just people who have been in crypto, like literally since the inception, like later since Bitcoin, like a year after it's crazy. Like, you'll hear stories, like as much as the new young blood people have, like, given some life to it. Like, people who go to the first Bitcoin conference and took Bitcoin. as payment for hotels from the buddies that they were doing it from and had to sell hundreds of Bitcoin because the editorial policy was, you can't own any. So it's like stuff like that, right? It's like as much as...

M. Casey, too. I mean, Michael Casey was at The Journal for 20 years. He wrote the first book, one of the biggest first books on crypto. I think he's written three or four of them since. I can't actually think of a bigger legend in the space besides Paul Vigna, who's his partner at the Journal. They've been covering it for 10 years. CoinDesk has hired a bunch of people, both Chads from the traditional media world.

Smart Chads. Smart Chads. But I'm assuming also just like normal writers just because you need the talent, right? You need the manpower. How has it been to onboard these people to be crypto people or how do you hire people that are only interested in crypto? How do you grow out a staff when there's such demand like in a bull market and you need them to be like crypto informed? How are challenging is this? To be honest, we don't hire everyone. I mean, it is a pretty selective process. Most of the journalists that we hired, it is a big part of it is personality. They need to have tenacity. They need to be a team player. That's how the newsroom runs. We don't like internal politics, competition. So kind of it is a big part of it is a personality match. That's what the editor-in-chief told us. They don't really need to be like crypto-native or like super crypto-literate. I think anyone can learn the space if they're committed enough. Most of them, they have a regulation background, policy background, finance, and some tech. And how do you deal with that question of bags? Are journalists allowed to own only certain crypto assets? What are the general, like, rules and parameters? And this is on our website, too. So we allow our journalists to own.

I think it's like 15 or 1,500 USD. I think you can own as much as you want. You just have to disclose it. You have to disclose it. And then we have very strict policies on when you can buy. And we publicize it. So when you go to author's bio, you can see how much they own and of what specifically, just so that you know that their ethics are never compromised when they're writing about something.

But we think it's important. Like, how can you write about something that you don't actually use or know anything about it from a firsthand experience? And how can you also retain talent when, like, we kind of know Bitcoin, Ether are getting absolutely moon over the next five years. And it's both like good for alignment because you need your journalists to understand what they're writing about. But also like they want them bought into not just their job, but the industry as a whole, I'm sure. Yeah. I mean, I think we. strive to have a great workplace, which I know sounds kind of generic, but it's true. I mean, as of now, we're not going to make people come back into the office full time. We know writing is really demanding. And so we allow most of the journalists who are now

worldwide to work from home, which I think is important. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a big part of it. Like, I personally love working at CoinDesk, and I think most people do. And so there aren't any limits as to like the magnitude of one's bags. You can't, you're not limited to like $10,000 or $100,000. No, I think we are. So I think for the majority, most of the journalists own a minimal amount. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. Most of us don't want very much crypto. Yeah. Interesting.

How does... The skepticism is like very real, I think. How does that apply to NFTs? What are they... I'm assuming there's got to be rules on NFTs, right? Yeah, we typically... I think the policy is supposed to be similar. Any NFT over $1,000 value, we disclose, so...

Oh, but it's disclosing, not you're actually capped on owning that thing. Typically, like, I never own anything I write about as a rule of thumb. If I do for some reason, it's disclosed. Mm-hmm. My personal little NFT investments are very different from what I write about. Like I would never, no matter what the policy would be, I would never like buy an NFT and then write about the collect. You know, it was just compromised. Also, you would get outed so quickly.

Right. I mean, that's a thing. And I have my, yeah, it would never be like something that we'd even try to do. I mean, like, I don't think our competitors would do this, but the way our journalism, too, and like the investigative background for some of the pieces, I mean, that could be public knowledge. And that's just something that reputation is everything. Twitter's made journalist profile so public. Right. I don't think anyone would jeopardize that.

It's also a funny tool to use because people have their ENSs. And then it's like, okay, I'm going to look like, why were you, you know, you work for this company, you were buying me bits before the beginning. It's like, okay. Yeah. It's not hard to put it together. It's really, the on-chain stuff is interesting as like a tool. Sure.

So you guys feel that CoinDisc has got a pretty good wrap on just the incentive misalignment between having media people that we want these people to own assets. We want them to be neutral. As an industry, okay, rate yourself because that's a fun question. But also rate the industry at large and also like kind of the aggregate of your competition. Like how well of an industry are we doing at like disclosing? I don't think that well. I mean, I would want to kind of do more research before making like any kind of statement based on a specific publication.

But I think a lot of the crypto trades, it's obvious. I mean, it's a lot of misinformation that they're spreading. I don't know if it's for an incentive to their personal advantage. But that's one of the biggest problems in crypto journalism is that so many people, are getting the story wrong. And that's why we really pride ourselves on verifying every source. Everything is fact check so diligently. So yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of known that a lot of other crypto publications are paid for play. And that's something that we've never done and never will. Can you walk me through that due diligence process? Basically, yeah, you like, let's go

and like peel back the layers and make sure this is right. But crypto is so noisy. It's not like the easiest place to do that due diligence. Could you guys walk us through a process of what a due diligence process looks like in crypto? Yeah, I mean, a big thing, crypto are open secrets, right? Like, you know, scoops about people being involved. And this was a big thing when the whole lunar crash happened, right? Like all of Doquan's, you know, involvements. And it's like the process of, you know, taking the open secret and being like, no,

we've got to call everybody that could possibly be involved. And we've got to see the documents and we've got to see the records. Like, that's kind of what I think, crypto media, like why it's really like this really valuable asset to the industry. Like there are so many rumors that are swirling around, right? So to have an organization, and this isn't just us, I mean, a lot of other media places do this. To really go and, like, fact check what's going on, I think it's really valuable.

How do you balance wanting to be first and wanting to get the scoop and not having complete data, like where you don't really know if it's all there? How do you balance this? I mean, I think that was back to the process, right? When we publish a piece, it's like the fact checking. I mean, you're not ever publishing. a piece like by yourself. Like there's so many other eyes on it, so many other editors. I mean, I do think we get a lot of pieces first. But I think Danny, and I'm sure you've done

the same thing, they've stayed up all night publishing a piece to get it first. But it's a process and it's a commitment. Yeah. Trying to get things first is a dangerous game because it's like you really open yourself up to, I mean, we've gotten stuff wrong before. It's something, it's a temptation, you know? It's not really, the only added benefit is like the attention. So you kind of got to put that. What's the recourse process if you get something? wrong. Just panic? I don't know.

We'll correct it. Yeah. We have a very, like, yeah, we issue our corrections. Right up at the top. I'm thinking as the journalist, like, every bit with Reuters does that. Yeah, no, no, we'll immediately. And when we get something wrong, it'll be like, really.

Sorry? This is like a tried and true science of journalism. Yeah. Every mainstream publication does that. We never like, you know, try to cover it up, running. It's the exact opposite, if anything. That's why it sucks as the journalist so much,

because if you get something wrong, like everyone will know you got it because we have to let people know, like, yeah, we were wrong. Like, there's no, you know, like sweep it under the rug, right? Like, it's all very out in the open. Eli, in your history of coin dust, do you have, like, a particularly good scoop that you're proud of? What is your best scoop? Oh, man.

Yeah. Best scoop. Top three. There's a lot. Just in terms of, like, I love that Constitution Dow story. I got to go to the auction. I love kind of following it. Sutherbees?

Yeah, I've been to a few Sotheby's. Yeah, I've been to a few Sotheby's auctions. But that was probably one of my favorite stories, to be, like, right there as the auction. closed on the ground. Okay, so you were on the frontier of Constitution doubt. Yeah, yeah. We were one of the first people to kind of write about that. Amazing. But again, something that we just kind of saw happening on Twitter and we're like, oh my gosh, this is unbelievable. Okay, so you saw it happen on Twitter. Somebody I'm sure realizes like, hey, I'm making the call. We need to cover this. Can you like walk me through what happened next in your life? Yeah, I mean, that was one of the funny how I'm thinking of that and I'm thinking of the Razl Khan as well. Oh, yeah. That's a good one. Stories that become so much bigger than just crypto media, right? Like Constitutioned out for sure. Like, like, I remember we're at, it was Danny Nelson and I, who's now one of our editors.

Like, we're at the auction house. This was like one of my first months on the job, and it's like, everyone's there. The New York Times is there. Like, everybody's like, they're kind of like in the neck of it with these reporters. But we actually have, like, better information than a lot of them because our sources are really good. And it was like being in the Discord channels for it, which a lot of the reporters just didn't know how to do, led to, like, a lot of information that made for, like, some really compelling parts of the story. Right.

I would imagine there is a lot of advantage. you get as a journalist just being informed about very basic crypto principles. Like you be in Discord. You be in Telegram. You are a part of the community. When you're in a Discord, do people know who you are or what you up to? No, no. I'm a lurking in the background.

I think my Discord name even is like lurking leopard or something, some random thing, right? So I feel like that's a disclosure in itself. Yeah. Yeah. But knowing how to use Discord, like even a lot of cryptojournalists aren't up on that. Like there's just little things like that where it's like, the alpha, as they say, you know, it's like, oh, you got to go get it.

Would you say that most journalists at CoinDesk are Discord people? Definitely not. I think even... Is that what? Is that what makes you special? Is you a Discord person? Well, yeah, because young people, like,

yeah, I don't have any experience, but I can go in. I don't have any... And then, like, the Boomer crew, right? It's like the two forces, right? It's like the Wall Street Journal, you know, experience reporter, and then, like, someone like me, I don't have any experience

or anything, but, like, we both kind of, kind of add our own, like, value to it, right? Like, I think that's what makes crypto so great. It's just all over the place. Casey, since you've been, I coined it for a while, is there a division between, like, older and younger journalists and how they operate, what they talk about and what they cover? Yes, but it's not a bad thing.

It's, um, boomers is mean. It's more boomer in spirit. I don't know. Um, but no, I mean, it's funny. I mean, Eli's 22, you know, the editor Danny Nelson is talking about was 26. And then, um, I think our editor-in-chief, I don't want to, guess and get it wrong, but he's definitely over 4550. But I think that's why our journalism is so good, because we have people like Eli hustling working on Discord. And then these Wall Street

journalists veterans, as he said, they know the editorial process, almost from like a corporate standpoint in terms of like these larger media newsrooms. So it's a good balance. Like we have the hustlers and then the like, you know, steady eddies. And I'm assuming you're doing as a result of that a very good job in capturing both audiences, right? Something. People need to be talked to like they are being written by, like, an adult who is a tie. Well, I mean, think of, like, all the crypto verbiage and, like, lingo and language. My mom and dad don't understand that. But, like, that's who we want to read CoinDesk.

We want everyone to read CoinDesk. That's what we become a household name. Right, but you can't only have that because you also need the people in the telegram. You also need people in the Discord, right? So we have, I think, Cryptoerun, or no, sorry, CoinDisc Werner, or Explorer is almost like there is, like, breakdowns of what a lot of this terminology means for anyone. But yeah, we do try to strive. And it is kind of hard to straddle between this industry that's moving so fast. I can't even keep it with the lingo. I've to ask Aubrey, like, what does this mean? On Twitter. But, yeah,

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letting the fuel development environment go beyond the limitations of the EVM. If you want to learn more, there's a link in the show notes to see how you can get involved with a fuel network. What would you say is like the 50% older crowd, 50% younger crowd? How is the division of journalists and coin dust split? You mean readership or like the staff? Staff, journalists, the writers. I'd say 40% boomers, 60%. Well, the editors are boomers. They're great. That's what you want from editor-

Yeah, that's great. It's more of like a lot of the reporters that are probably younger. They age, like, fine ones. That's the balance. The editors have to be the breaks, and the young journalists have to be the gas, right? Yeah. That's an interesting relationship. So your editors are of the boomer crowd?

Yeah, I would say so, yeah. But it's exactly what you need, right? They'd be like, Eli, like, people don't understand white lists or, like, people don't understand what gas wars are fermenting, right? like explain to them like you're explaining to me right like they got to know so is that a frustrating part of your job's like oh these boomers don't understand what a white list is or is it interesting no no no it's great i love the editors yeah the wisdom they passed out it's like unbelievable i mean yeah like you know kevin reynolds not i mean again like such a legend he's been covering

news for 30 years i think i mean he practically invented the bloomberg terminal he invented he invented bloomberg terminal i mean can you imagine how much he's seen in news how much it's change. He was writing before people were reading their news online, before push notification, social, before any digital subscriptions. When people were still picking up the physical newspaper, he's seen all that evolve. I mean, that kind of wisdom is priceless. So, Eli, since you are on the frontier of, like, what new journalism is, if you accept a take that, like, once upon a time, there were internet funds, and now it's just funds. Now it's just A16C. And the same way, internet is just taken over. And we kind of think that's going to be the same

thing with crypto. And so now that we call this thing crypto journalism, crypto media, eventually, you're 22, you're on the frontier. I'm 24 actually. It's 24. Sorry, I started the job at 22, now 24. You're on the frontier of what it means to be a journalist in a brand new industry that is figuring out everything about itself. So if you had to explain what the difference is in your job is to perhaps a journalist who is at the end of their career, they're 50, 60 plus, they're ready to retire. can you compare and contrast these things? What are you doing? What do you need to do to do your job very, very well?

That is completely foreign to journalists of old. Like one of your professors at Columbia, because they've probably been tenured or you've been there for a while. I think like we kind of talked about just being proficient in like these new ways of communication, like the discords, like the Twitters. I really think maybe it's, if anything, it's kind of the opposite. It's like how do you integrate kind of the existing methods of journalism into an arena that is just like seems really chaotic and new, but really kind of isn't when you think about like,

at the end of the day, like all these, even NFT companies, like they're just institutions, right? Like they're just companies. They're just people behind the companies that are making money, right? Like, if anything, yeah, like trying to figure out, like, okay, how we're, what's the, the dot-com bubble? Yeah.

Like, oh my gosh, going back and reading about how that was covered and how people figured out how to, like, get information from the rise and crash of that, like, it's so relevant to crypto. It's so relevant to NFTs, like, as much as I like, as much as I, like to think that I'm like in this kind of like uncharted territory with everything. Like it's all history rhymes or whatever they say, right?

Like it's all kind of. History repeats itself. Yeah. I would always imagine that like a strong media institution like CoinDusk would have just like a stable of sources that they would call. If they needed to get like just information, verification, a scoop. And like growing up as a child, you would like listen to the morning news and be like, sources say. And like, oh, sources.

They clearly have somebody that they call up and give them a bunch of alpha. And I'm sure CoinDisc has that. But then this whole new open Discord thing or open telegrams changes that a little bit where their Discord handle is like Lurker. Looking Leopard. Do you do you? I just docked to me. I just docked myself. I got other ones.

Everybody is typing in their discords right now. Is there a lurking leopard in our Discord? How do you balance? Like where do you get your alpha from? Do you have sources or do you have Discord channels? Like what's the greater source of alpha for you when it comes to your, you? your journalist endeavors. I mean, me personally, like, yeah, there are a ton of people that you'll just see tweeting

out random stuff. And it's unfounded, right? It's a complete rumor mill. But usually there's some kind of truth, right? Even if it's not exactly what's being said. For example, like, there were a bunch of tweets about Amazon doing an NFT marketplace, right? Insiders, they know, yeah, Amazon's right?

And it's like, that's some version of the truth, right? And then you kind of have to follow, you follow the money? Like, you get in touch with people who are not anonymous, but might be in the same circles as these people that are and like see what they have to say and see who they can kind of put you in touch with because you really can't cite sources that are not real people or that are not like really committed to you know always telling the truth which are in cryptother a lot of them how does using an anon as a source work does that change the game at all if you're like citing somebody like you got to have the first and last name typically is just invalid if you don't

have that i mean the anons they're good at giving you like the information that you can go in fact check, but like it's risky business to cite somebody that you don't know who they are or what they're about. Yeah. And we had an interesting conversation about this the other day. Like if we broke the story with like Doquan, for instance, they were originally anonymous, do we, should we reveal that name? Is that an ethical question? We know that it's going to blow up their identity. And we decided that unless we felt it was absolutely necessary, we do try to maintain the anonymity of the sources just so. I mean, it's also good journalism. It'll keep, you know, the relationship with the sources strong.

But unless, because it really blows up someone's spot. So we're not looking to make somebody a target. Yeah, that's a great example. Like, Doquan, you know, it's an open secret. Yeah, he had this other algorithmic stable coin thing. And people know, but it's like, no, we need to see. And we ended up getting, this wasn't my story, but like we got the text between him and his team, right? Like, we got the actual documents that prove like, yes, this is real.

This is not a rumor. And this is in references to Doquan leading basis cash, right? Yes. And so did you guys get the scoop on the story? Yeah, we did. Danny Nelson did. Yeah, Sam Kessler and Danny Nelson. That was the story they stayed up all night to get.

Yeah. All right. Okay. So, CoinDest figures out that everyone knows who Doquan is. This is post-Theraluna blowing up. But it was revealed that Doquan was also the anonymous leader of basis cash. And then CoinDisc at the time decided that that was an appropriate time to disclose

somebody's anonymous identity against their, like, probably against something. Because it blew up, They were willing to go on the record as they're who they actually were because they didn't fear, you know? Right. Okay. But, yeah, I mean, I think the start of this conversation was we were talking about if we knew who Satoshi, should we reveal that source? And it was kind of the conversation I had with the editors, like, we don't have this story. I just want to be clear.

We don't know who Sadatia is. Wait. We're not sitting on that. Yeah, we're not sitting on that. But if we were, should we do that? It could change. Media is powerful. I mean, articles are super powerful in the news.

It would change someone's life. honestly it was like the newsroom was split half and half. It's such a great story. Should we give enough information where people can kind of figure that out on their own? Do we disclose the identity? Yeah, the doxing thing is like ongoing conversation. Right. And I was assuming some of the issue would be like, well, if we discovered who Satoshi Nakamoto is and we keep it a secret, somebody else could reveal it. And then the outcome is the same is public information, but we don't get the credit of revealing it. So we've lost that opportunity. A little bit of that game theory, I'm sure it comes into play, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was big with the board eight founders when they got docs. It was a big conversation. People knew who they were. But yeah, BuzzFeed chose to reveal it. And it was a whole conversation, well, if they're not doing anything wrong, do you want to reveal their names? Did you guys know it ahead of BuzzFeed? I didn't personally know it, but a lot of NFT people knew it.

I read something in New York Magazine they came out with. It was just like a background on it. And it's a good example of they gave enough details where I'm sure if you just figured out the city that they were talking about in Florida, the school that they were went to. They were like literary majors are super interested in it. You can kind of like figure that out on your own if you're interested enough. I'm assuming you might get leads or get alpha from anon's, maybe in DMs. Have you had this opportunity or what do you would, a circumstance presented to you where like an anon comes and he was like, hey, here's some alpha. Have you ever

had this before? Yeah, I'm less of a scoopster for the team. Scoopster. I'm not like Sam Castle. I'm not like Tracy. I'm not like Danny Nelson. But that's essentially what happens. Like I don't know if you read Danny Nelson's story about called Master of Anans about the guy who had like 16 or 17 different anonymous alter egos. I mean, someone essentially just came with the document and was like, here it is, right? Like, we had to fact check it and all, but like, you know, somebody had enough, right? And they were like, some people know about this, but I think it's worth if everyone knows. So it doesn't really matter if they're coming to you as an anon because it goes through

the same fact-checking process that all articles and journalism goes through. So you're kind of filtering out the fact that it began with an anon to begin with. Yeah. And I think that's probably true in traditional. Yeah, that's probably the same exactly inside about. Yeah, not every. But some people are more valuable completely off the record or on background. I meant to ask this question earlier, but we were talking about the age divide in a

coin desk and how different journalists approach their strategy of writing an article. I would imagine the younger types are the ones like in the discords probably don't have the same level of like connections out there. And then the older journalists are the ones with like the behind the scenes connections, the good, I don't even know what you call these things, but just like, you know, the feelers, the birds, the whispers, yeah. You know what? I think it's actually shifted. Really? I mean, of course, you know, like Michael Kesey is such a legend in the space. He knows so many people. But the media invites are usually going to the journalist, not the editor.

So it's like, Eli, Danny, are going to these parties. You're meeting so many people. They might have a bigger Rolodex, I think, than the more senior journalists. Just because of the amount of people that they're exposed to the amount that they're invited to, I think it's shifted. Do you often, Eli, I feel like you have a leg up on some of your older colleagues? Maybe a little bit, yeah. I mean, it's tough because I really like operate kind of in the, I just do NFTs, right? So I'm not like, it's not as much crossover.

But it is funny when it's like someone will be talking about a certain person, like, oh, you should get touch and it's like, yeah, I was just got a bird with them. I was just with them. I was just with them. I was just with them. You know, I can get up. Yeah. So how collaborative is the journalist environment?

It's very collaborative. Open floor plan kind of thing. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is open floor plan. It's a strength of numbers thing for sure. Like, that's probably why we have such a good newsroom just because we have so many great reporters that all. Yeah, and everyone gets along, which is rare. Yeah, I think everyone does get along.

So, like, I would imagine if you're, like, just stumped on a story, you just need something, you can just stand up and be like, does anyone know who this? Pretty much. We'll just, like, group chat or something, I imagine. Right, yeah. I guess there are things like Slack and Discord now. Yeah. Tell you the event, you meet so many. I mean, you know this.

Like, we go out a lot together. you meet so many people. Yeah, one of our journalist Tracy, she'd call it Hotel LobbyCon. She would call conferences. Because you could just go to the hotel lobbies. She would get all her great alpha from Hotel Lobbyes, which is like, it's true to the cryptojournalist idea, right?

If you're just willing to go out there, you can't do it. People used to tell me anything. How many journalists do they have, you guys have on staff? We have one-sixth. Oh, no, sorry. We have 160 full-time at CoinDess, so I think 120, 140 of those are journalists. 21, 40? Or maybe I'm less than that.

We maybe have like 40 journalists. Full time, I think. So I think we're 160 total coin-Dist staff. And I guess that does include indices. The majority of that are in the editorial room or CDTV. I'm not sure the exact number because we do of freelancers. They're global, but it's the majority of the staff. So, Eli, when you look forward into your own personal career, what do you want to become as a journalist in crypto?

And also, do you feel like that is also true for your colleagues? What does the average cryptojournalists want their future career to be? And does that relate to what you also want personally? It's tough because something like being an NFT journalist, like there has never been one. And I don't even know if that will exist in the future, you know. So it's hard to know like what this whole crypto media landscape will really turn into and like what kind of roles will be out there in the future. But I mean, personally, like there are so many great tech reporters out there, right?

Like I love like Katie Nautopoulos, like Taylor the Wrens, right? Like people that are able to kind of make their livings with really more than the tech, like the communities, right? Like the culture. Like NFTs, like it's finance, it's tech, but it's also culture. And I definitely love the culture part. I think that in the future, like, I would love to kind of continue to live in that realm. But also, I mean, you always wanted to get in the Columbia Journalism school, right?

And now Eli's there. So, I mean, that's pretty crazy. You're in the middle of school right now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. it was going on? No, no, no. I started school like, yeah, like a few weeks ago, like a couple months ago. So now, yeah, thank you. Now I'm doing Coiness part time, but I was doing it full time during the Bull Run. But it's funny, like, you know, I'm not writing about

NFTs in class, right? My Vita's actually like, it's the Bronx, is like my beat. So I'll be like going up to the Bronx and doing like local news stories and it's like it couldn't be more different than like CoinDest stuff. So was CoinDesk like bummed when you had to scale back your time to go to

Columbia Journalism school? Like, what was the CoinDest against. I was devastated. Well, I know I was so happy for Eli because I know you always wanted to go to the J school, but I was like, no. People were trying to get me to stay. Yeah. I don't go to J school. So is the purpose of going to J school is I guess what you call it the J school. The purpose is to be a better journalist. For you, is it to be a better cryptojournalist? Not necessarily. I mean, I think I'm going. It's always kind of been my dream to go. Like Columbia, it's kind of a famous program. Yeah, before. When you tell people what you, like, what you're background is at the J school, like your students are like, I'm like, oh, I wrote about NFTs and people

are like, like, what's the fun? Like, did you get, like, no, I got paid. Like, it was a real job. Well, you're one of the only kids in the program, right? That one of the only students that was a writer before, right? Like, a fully employed journalist. Yeah. Yeah, most people come from out of undergrad, but yeah, before. Eli's, like, maybe you'll teach. Maybe you'll be like one of the ad in professors. Before, um, coin-dessa, I always had interest. I had interested in sports journalism. I'm always like criminal justice stuff. So, yeah, being able to maybe cover that in the future would be great as well. So where do you see your fellow colleagues? You're taking a bit of a not a hiatus because you're still working at Coin Dust, but taking a little bit of a step back.

Where do you see your colleagues seeing the industry of crypto journalism? What does cryptojournalism look like? I mean, I'm going to ask you, Casey, the same question after Eli's done. Where do you see, like, your fellow journalists seeing crypto journalism go in like the next few years? What's going to need to change and what should change? How's the meta going to change? I think that after this last bull market, we need to be equipped to kind of know who the bad actors are, right? Something like the Terraluna deal, right? It would be great to not have to have that play out the way it did and have so many people be affected when maybe there was a way to kind of prevent this. I think crypto journalism is most important in the bull runs and then the crashes. I think that's where the industry

most needs, like transparency. I think trying to figure out our identity when it's kind of like a lull is going to be not a challenge, but it's just like something we'll have to figure out. But I think like kind of gearing up and saying, okay, what a fun time it was for the rise and fall. Like how can we do it better. And I think we're still

figuring that out, you know, how we can do that better next time. Yeah, it's a good time to pull back, build, kind of focus on like the structure of our business or business model. And like, you know, Cointess, we've already been through two or three winters before. This isn't new to us. Yeah, Quindis has been around forever. Yeah, this isn't new to us.

But it's a good time because the bull run is so crazy. It's such a frenzy. So now we can kind of focus on like structure and overall strategy. So it's good to have a both. I don't think anyone could do bull run hours forever. I don't think that's sustainable. I remember when the bull run started. It was like one quarter into the bull run.

And like it took me and Ryan about that long amount of time for us to be excited about the Bull Run to then realizing the absolute magnitude of just like feeding frenzy that was about to be in front of us. And we were like, we were stoked, like sweet Bull Run. But we were also like, oh shit, Bull Run. I'm not going to sleep. Yeah. Like this is my life is now different. Yeah. Casey, you talked about how Coin Desk wants to go and like compete with the likes of Bloomberg or like, you know, the biggest fish that are outside in the world of Trad Media. One thing I don't want out of our media companies in the space is to just be just like them when they grow up, right? When CoinDest grows up and it does, you know, bite the head off of Bloomberg and replace it as a media institution, how and why is it going to be

different and why is it going to be better? I mean, for a lot of reasons, I think one is we're never going to go public like any other media company because we're already owned by Digital Currency Group. Another thing, too, is I think we'll always focus on crypto and blockchain and how it evolves. We'll always be specialized in that. You know, these other media outlets, They've evolved and they've covered so many different beats will always be focused. And because of that and because of that niche, and, you know, blockchain and crypto will become more mainstream, so it'll grow. But I think it'll just mainly because we'll be, you know, so focused. Yeah, I mean, we often talk about, like, our audience, like, all the different buckets

between people that are just getting into crypto for the first time. And I think, like, our strength will always be like that bullseye of people that are interested in crypto. Yeah. Like, we serve them, I think, better than anybody else. Like, the crypto native, like, we, we, do a lot of coverage, but we're kind of the best at that. Yeah. And that audience on who's interested in crypto at the moment, that's always changing. Right now we're doing a big, it's not like the editorial room is as much focused on TradFi, but as a company, like right now my overall strategy for comms is how we can really tap into

the TradFi audience in terms of our external representation. They're super, you know, interested in crypto. But yeah, it changes. I mean, last year, that was literally everybody on the planet. And now it's more institutional companies, which is interesting. And Casey, you talked about a little bit of a brain drain coming when CoinDesk is hiring a bunch of new journalists, new talent, new operators. You said you're doing a lot of effort just poaching them from the Trad Media space, right? Why do they want to come into crypto?

Like, what's motivating them? And can you just talk about just the quality and the vibe of these candidates that are coming in? Yeah, absolutely. So we did hire a lot in the past year. So, like, we have fulfilled the positions that we were looking for. And I think a lot of them are interested because, again, like, there is like, this, you know, having a niche and focusing on a specific beat is really enticing. You can have, like, one thing that's really rare about Coindex compared to other media companies,

everybody that is an expert and anybody that wants to have, you know, broadcast appearances, public speaking, we give them the opportunity. There's no hierarchy. And so any journalist that really wants to get recognition for the stories they're publishing, building their personal brand, Coindisc is a much better platform to do that than these giant newsrooms like Bloomberg in the journal where things are kind of, you know, they start at the top and it'd be pretty rare for you to be a junior journalist at Bloomberg or CNBC, I imagine to get the amount of airtime that our journalists at CoinDisc get. I think what you're saying

is that these older institutions, older media institutions are just very hierarchical and probably a little bit more calcified. Would you say CoinDisc is a flatter and wider? Super flat. Yeah. I mean, like, it's so flat. I mean, of course there is, we do have a C-suite leadership. There are editors, editor-in-chief, but everything's pretty collaborative, don't you think, Eli? Yeah. Yeah. It's super collaborative. And honestly, what's kind of funny is a junior journalist like Eli are the ones that get more public recognition. They're on more TV externally.

They're in like other articles externally than the more seasoned boomers. That's just kind of how the way, you know, the way that we operate. I'm guessing here. So correct me if I'm wrong. But for an older institution, I guess we're just going to pick on Bloomberg for the rest of this episode. So like say there's this hierarchical structure. A new journalist comes in.

They're probably like banging out some like fodder. articles. They're probably not really on. They don't have too much freedom, I'm guessing here. And so what you're saying is like a lot of the opportunity, if a good article comes or a good scoop comes or a good piece of story or something happens, the good stuff gets captured up by the people higher up in the hierarchy first. And so there's less real value for the people, the newer journalists, the newer hires to really prove themselves. I think so. I mean, I haven't worked and, you know, I did have an internship at the New York Times a long time ago. So I'm familiar with that newsroom a little bit. I've never worked in the Bloomberg newsroom, but yeah, I would imagine it's

kind of like that. And speaking to some of my external contacts, it's a little bit like that. But one thing, too, you know, with CoinDesk and my role, you know, CoinDest making it a household name, but I want to make sure that the journalists that we have get recognition for their pieces that they publish, not just CoinDest, but them individually, which I think is people when they think of journalists, they know the stories, they don't know the person behind it. And I want change that. Yeah, and a lot of it is also just the subject matter. Again, like, you know, if wrote about banking, like, you're going to go to one of these things. There's going to be people that have been writing about banking, though, for like decades. Or like, you're an education

reporter. You know, if I want to do a newsroom, there's going to be education reporters that have been writing about that since, like, the 80s or 90s, DAWS, like, people have not been writing about DAWs for decades. People have been writing about DAWs for months and years. So if you want to write about something like that, like, yeah, go ahead, right? Like, there's not kind of like a precedents where people are going to be ahead of you for experience, right? Do you guys think that as CoinDest grows up and as the crypto media grows up and starts to emulate more of the properties that we see in the traditional media space, you think that flatness will kind of disappear and be replaced by a little bit more hierarchy? Or do you think we have some of this flatness here for

good for the rest of time? It's just part of our model. I mean, even like our CEO, Kevin Worth is so sweet, there's no hierarchy. He's not ever condescending, but he just is fully like immersed in whatever we're doing. Michael Casey's the same way. I think that's just a huge part of our culture and I think it'll always be that way. And like, you know, the way that the company structured is we have like a business side. They're taking care. Like there is, I guess, a little bit of hierarchy there just to make sure that we are generating like a healthy revenue to make sure that we can keep hiring when we do have open decisions again. But yeah, I think the flatness is a core part of our brand and work culture. Yeah, Eli, can you talk a little bit about

how the flatness makes things fun? Can you? Flat is fun. Can you explain the flatness. us a little bit more? Yeah, so instead of like having a, we have, you know, open bazaars or we have like top top down hierarchies, right? And so hierarchies is like, you are pretty rigid in your role. You can't really expand out. There's like your superior who has a superior who has a superior versus a more flat organization, which is like everyone's kind of on equal footing. And maybe there's one superior who's kind of coordinating it all together. But it's not layered and layered and layered on like a hierarchy. You're giving a lot more freedom. There's a lot

less top-down control. You're a little bit more in charge of what you write about, what you think about what you do. And so when Casey's telling me that like you start writing about NFTs and all of a sudden, Coin Death starts sending you the Sutherbees, that feels very empowering and very flat. And that Sotheby is inviting me. Afterwards, yeah, after Constantine Now, it's like, they're emailing me like, oh, we would like you to come and drink the champagne while we do the auction. Yeah, opportunities like that. I feel like with crypto, there's way more free reign as to like what stories you want to tell, especially now, like, with my editor, Rosie,

like very, very little am I being now assigned stories that I need to hit every few days. It's more of like, well, you're out there on the ground in the Twitter circles, like, what's going on, right? Like, it feels more like I have more autonomy, you know, with the news gathering aspect of it. And it's like, oh, well, even if something might be interesting to her, like, well, do you think it would be interesting

that the people that were reading, right? Like there's a lot less it feels like just kind of strict Yeah Yeah But then there's also the onus of I have to go out and I got to find stuff Yeah

Gotta be creative right But you had to earn those stripes right Oh yeah for sure Oh yeah when I came in I was flipping so many press releases I mean I was really It was unbelievable like I had no autonomy in the beginning It would be like Zach you know giving me Yeah but you were an intern

I mean it was your first job I was writing like three stories a day Like I was banging out those short hits right Like, yeah, I definitely paid my views. How long were you doing that before you started to have, you know, your own stripes? Oh, months and months. Maybe like four or five months. Okay.

Months and months and months. Months and months. Oh, my God. Some people did do that for years. Years. Yeah. Like I said, I had like four or five years before after graduating college before I got into crypto.

After you're just kidding, only two. But like I'm seeing like the shorter and churner turnaround time where people are graduating from college and be like, I want to get into crypto. Yeah. And those people are having the best time. Like they get to skip over all the shenanigans of like tradfi, trad media, trad whatever.

Eli, you're a lucky fellow man. Like going straight from college to coin dust. It's pretty sweet. Yeah, it's funny. Every once in a while I'll see another person like me. Another 24 year old crypto media person at whatever like backstage concert. We're kind of like just laughed at each other like what's going on.

It's so funny. This is just absurd. Well, Eli, Casey, thank you so much for joining me on banklets. Are any last thoughts or things we should talk about before we should sign off here? Just thanks for having. us. It's great to be here. Cheers, guys for having us.

Of course.