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

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 https://bankless.cc/fuel ----- 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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03David Hoffman?

  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 it's 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 Comms at CoinDesk, and also Eli Tan, a journalist, an NFT journalist, also at CoinDesk. And this is the episode that I really wanted to produce to talk about cryptojournalism. I haven't really seen anyone go down the rabbit hole of what's it like to be a journalist in crypto?

• 0:46David Hoffman?

  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 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.

• 1:30David Hoffman?

  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 to be a crypto media company? CoinDesk is, of course, extremely large of a journalist entity, media entity in crypto. And they are now broadening their horizons to trad-fi competitors. So they are competing with the likes of Bloomberg, or you know, 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.

• 2:10David Hoffman?

  Versus the very flat nature of CoinDesk 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 get right into this conversation with Casey and Eli of CoinDesk. But first, I'm going to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Arbitrum One is pioneering the world of secure Ethereum scalability and is continuing to accelerate the Web3 landscape. Hundreds of projects have already deployed on Arbitrum One, producing flourishing DeFi and NFT ecosystems. With a recent addition of Arbitrum Nova, gaming and social dApps like Reddit are also now calling Arbitrum home. Both Arbitrum One and Nova leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive, familiar, and fully EVM compatible.

• 2:56David Hoffman?

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• 3:41David Hoffman?

  Fuel also goes beyond the limitations of the EVM with its own Fuel VM, which is more efficient and optimized, opening up the design space for developers. And lastly, Fuel brings a powerful developer experience with its own domain-specific language, Sway, and a supportive tool chain called Fork. With Fuel, you can have the benefits of smart contract languages like Solidity, while adopting the improvements made by the Rust tooling ecosystem, 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. Nexo is your financial hub for all your crypto needs. Nexo lets you buy crypto instantly with your credit or debit card or via bank transfer. They also have an awesome Some advanced trading platform called Nexo Pro that pays you rewards when you swap crypto assets.

• 4:24David Hoffman?

  And Nexo also lets you earn interest on your crypto in Bitcoin, ETH, or other assets. And they also give you an instant crypto line of credit with as low as 0% APR. And they also give you access to a crypto-backed Mastercard, of course, earning you more crypto when you use it. So enhance your financial life with Nexo, who ensures all credit lines are over collateralized with insurance on all custodial assets. Nexo, the right place for your crypto. So click the link in the show notes to join over 5 million users who are getting the most out of their crypto. I'm here with Eli Tant and Casey Craig of CoinDesk. Eli, you are an NFT journalist at CoinDesk and Casey, you are head 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,

• 5:09David Hoffman?

  which I would imagine is a challenge. Eli, is it a challenge to be a journalist in crypto?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  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 of any beat, but all of the drama, all of the absurdity. Yeah, I think it's.

• 5:26David Hoffman?

  Let's go a little bit into your guys' backgrounds just to kind of set the stage and the context for the listeners. 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 CoinDesk?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm kind of an up and coming reporter. CoinDesk is actually my first full-time professional job. I went to school in Minnesota, but out of college, it was June of last year. Joined CoinDesk 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 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, I kind of rode the career wave with NFTs.

• 6:14David Hoffman?

  Okay, so you were writing about NFTs, you were pushing into that domain of crypto before media entities in crypto were really covering it. And I was assuming that flipped really, really fast, pretty quickly, yeah?

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Eli's being modest too. I mean, Eli, he was breaking NFT news stories. So he's been featured in everything from like Rolling Stone to CNBC, Hypebeast, 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.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  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 Web 3, NFTs were part of that, but I was like, full on in the NFT space, you know, full time, which was definitely interesting.

• 7:03David Hoffman?

  Casey, on the CoinDesk side of things, can you talk about that pivot pre-NFTs to post-NFTs? Like, what was it like? What was the attitude about NFTs in CoinDesk? And when it was like, okay, the transition would be like, oh, no, we need to cover this thing?

• 7:16Speaker 02

  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 times, just from a com standpoint, that CoinDesk was cited in mainstream publications. 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.

• 7:57David Hoffman?

  And Casey, can you just explain a little bit of your of your role and background at CoinDesk? What do you do there?

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. So my role is Global Head of Communications, which is just a fancy way to say PR. So I coordinate all the internal communication between the industry side of the business, the business, you know, just the business, business, the events, consensus, and then our editorial team. 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 CoinDesk 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, you know, realm of journalism. So I want everybody to know what CoinDesk is and that we're the leader in crypto coverage and blockchain.

• 8:42David Hoffman?

  And what did you do before CoinDesk?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  I've kind of always worked in crypto. I mean, there was like a stint when I was still a ski bum and I was selling time shares in Brackenridge, Colorado. But ever since then, when I moved to New York, I worked at Waxman PR. CoinDesk was a client then. I went into Spark PR and worked with anyone from Abra to a few other smaller crypto companies. And then I ran, actually, the financial services PR at Publicis Sapient. So did a little bit of TradFi and then came back into CoinDesk in my current role.

• 9:13David Hoffman?

  Okay, so I'm getting the sense from both of you that backgrounds generally not, well, you majored in journalism, Eli, so that's a strong, a strong background. I mean, 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, 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, how did crypto end up throwing you a curveball?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I can remember really distinctly, it was the spring of my senior year and I was applying, 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? A paper of like five people and you know, I couldn't, I couldn't get in the door, right? Like 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 I, you know, I'd see this kind of CoinDesk 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 can, 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

• 10:42Speaker 01

  go from that to being like, you know, touted 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 as an expert, right? Because it's so new. So it was like going from, you know, the rookie who kind of has no basis in anything to like the expert. I can remember distinctly, it was actually in Miami.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Your first public speaking role.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  The first time I ever spoke publicly was at FTX Arena in Miami.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Where the Miami Heat plays.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd 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.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  And you interviewed Pia Mia on stage. She is like, like what, eight, 10, 20 million Instagram followers or something?

• 11:30Speaker 01

  M. Shadows from Avenged 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 then it's like the big intro, but.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Um, and then since then, I mean, Eli's been to the Grammys. Uh, he interviewed G Eazy right before the Grammys. He attended. Um, you were like at a table, like right to the full.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  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, um, was doing NFTs. Like, I was kind of right there for it. Cause 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.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  In a, in a tux, right? No, a suit. Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  And people just being like, like, what is, like, who is this kid? And it's like, I read about NFTs, you know? Um, and it's of course changed a lot since then. Like, I think like the, yeah, the, the industry is like rebranding a little bit. Like the hype's not quite the same as what it was. But like, for a few moments, like there was, there was some glory definitely along the way.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Lots of glory.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Going on, yeah.

• 12:37David Hoffman?

  There's a, you, you mentioned how you were trying to just get into Bainbridge Island newspaper. And for, for those that aren't familiar with Seattle or the Pacific Northwest, Bainbridge Island is where you take the ferry to across the Sound. And it's, it's a small town.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Population 300, yeah.

• 12:50David Hoffman?

  There's not a lot of readers of that. And so to go from, uh, applying for something like the Bainbridge Island, like local newspaper, to doing NFT coverage in the middle of a bull market, I'm sure was a little bit of a, of a whiplash. Like, how, how, what were your emotions going through that, like, year of your life?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  It was a lot. I mean, it's still kind of like a fever dream thinking about like some of the stuff. Speaking of like South by Southwest was another cool thing.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh. Yes. He spoke at South by Southwest with Wrestle, WrestleMania stars.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  It was Stephanie, um, uh, it was Stephanie Cohen. No, that's not right.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  I think so, somebody.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  I mean, so like we've, you know, CoinDesk in general, we've had some cool public speaking opportunities. I think Eli is one of the only journalists that speaks to, he's asked me on panels with like real life celebrities, not just crypto celebrities, but um yeah, like big mainstream celebrities. And it's kind of funny because he was 22 at the time. Um, and he like, they, 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. Um, 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 crypto journalism. Um, and how you can become an expert with, I mean, not, not a short amount of time because I don't want to dilute that expertise,

• 14:08Speaker 02

  but it's, it's different than every other career.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  That's pretty great, I think, is that people really don't care about credentials.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  It's all just about like what you know, right?

• 14:17David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Like, you know, 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?

• 14:26David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  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 I'm, it's my first job, but because people like the articles, you know, they're, they're willing to listen to me.

• 14:43David Hoffman?

  So yeah, you had the, the fortune to jump right into this industry. I, I wish I had, were able to skip that four years of my life of post-college before I found crypto. If I could just been able to gap that, that'd be really, really nice. But so you don't really actually have like too much experience, uh, not reporting in crypto. And so this will take a little bit of creativity to answer this question, but what kind of challenges as a journalist? Uh, where like we are in an industry where there are tokens everywhere. People want to pump their bags, people have self-interests. And it's not like it's not true in normal TradFi, journalism, Web 2 journalism, all these same kind of incentives apply. Like everyone's trying to like pump themselves, like promote themselves.

• 15:24David Hoffman?

  And so like 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 when they're like, especially during a bull market, right? Like how crazy was that?

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, the pitches, right Eli? You'd get a hundred a day.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was getting like, you know, a few hundred pitches a day. Um, so that was hard to sort through. I mean, it's tough because you've got to balance like what is news and what is a promotion for somebody's project, you know? The way that like information is shared too with NFTs, like it's all on Twitter, right? Like, 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 the whole Ben Dow liquidation thing, it was just something that I was like watching and no one had really, no one was writing about it because no one was kind of in these like really inner circles of of NFT people.

• 16:19David Hoffman?

  Interesting. Yeah, I actually, I can definitely relate to that because one of the first ways I got into content and I joke about like I did this thing and then and then, you know, a year later we created Bankless, as I was just noting this 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

• 17:00David Hoffman?

  you develop your intuition as to like what is a good thing to cover? Or what is going to be interesting to the readers?

• 17:07Speaker 01

  So what I had always thought like in the early days, right, is like, oh, what, 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 there are 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 Ben Dow 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. And it's like, even if you're not like really don't know much about NFTs or like understand the technology, like something like that I think is is kind of compelling.

• 17:52David Hoffman?

  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 inept itself a little bit deeper into the culture of everything. How do you think about this, 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 views.

• 18:24David Hoffman?

  As a journalist, how do you, how do you balance these things?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's tough because if you look at like most of the, you know, FT 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 three is going great. It's a great blog.

• 18:40David Hoffman?

  We're recording with her later next week, actually.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Oh, great. Yeah. Yeah, she does great stuff, but she only writes about the bad stuff, right? And then a lot of people only write about the good, but as journalists, like that's not our job, right? It's.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  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 scandal. And they really want to focus, I mean, they're such pessimists 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 noticed that we always try to represent both sides. I don't think, I mean, when you read coin disc articles, we're really good at everything's. Not 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.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  I think most, they're at either one of the spectrum. They're either evangelizing it and they're pumping it or they're ripping it to shreds.

• 19:44David Hoffman?

  Casey, how would you place CoinDesk in the sphere of crypto media? So we have CoinDesk, 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?

• 20:00Speaker 02

  So it's a great question. I mean, okay, so to be honest, and not just to sound like I'm trying to pump CoinDesk, but 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 million people came to our site last year, consensus of 20,000 people, the indices companies. So honestly, we see Bloomberg as our competitor, CNBC is our competitor.

• 20:29David Hoffman?

  So you guys have broken out. You guys are going for bigger fish.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  We really have, to be honest. Yeah, we really have.

• 20:35David Hoffman?

  And so how did CoinDesk get there? Can you remind me when you started at CoinDesk? Can you kind of carry us through that journey?

• 20:40Speaker 02

  So I've been global head of comms 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 as a chief content officer yet. I think he was even an advisor, so kind of a long time. And so CoinDesk, 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.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  I mean, Kevin Reynolds, our editor in chief, created Bloomberg's news breaking 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.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the elder statesmen of CoinDesk are like,

• 21:45Speaker 01

  I mean, it's true, like,

• 21:46David Hoffman?

  Can you explain that reference?

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Just people who have been in crypto, like, literally since the inception, like, literally since Bitcoin, like, a year after it's created. Like, you'll hear stories, like, as much as the new, young blood people have, like, given some life to it, like, people, you know, you hear stories about 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 sold, had to sell, like, hundreds of Bitcoins because the editorial policy was, you can't own any.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  So it's like, stuff like that, right? It's like, as much as,

• 22:17Speaker 02

  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 this space besides Paul Vigna, who was his partner at The Journal. They've been covering it for 10 years.

• 22:36David Hoffman?

  So CoinDesk has hired a bunch of people, both Chad's from the traditional media world, but I'm assuming,

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Smart Chad.

• 22:44David Hoffman?

  Smart Chad, but I'm assuming also just like, you know, 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, 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 challenging is this?

• 23:07Speaker 02

  I mean, I think so. To be honest, like, 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, like, 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. But 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 are regular, they have a regulation background, policy background, finance and some tech.

• 23:45David Hoffman?

  And how do you deal with that question of bags, right? Where are journalists allowed to own only certain crypto assets? What are the general like rules and parameters?

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Great question. And this is on our website too. So we allow our journalists to own, I think it's like 15 or 1500 USD.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Essentially, I think you can own as much as you want. You just have to disclose it.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  You have to disclose it.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  And then we have very strict policies on when you can buy.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Yep. And we publicize it. So when you go to the 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?

• 24:24David Hoffman?

  And how can you also retain talent when like we kind of know Bitcoin, Ether are going to absolutely moon over the next five years? So you need to, and it's both like good for alignment because you need your journalists to understand what they're writing about, but also like you want them bought into not just their job, but the industry as a whole, I'm sure.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think we like strive to have like a great workplace, which I know sounds kind of generic, but it's true. I don't think we're, 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. But yeah, I mean, I think that's a big part of it. Like CoinDesk, I mean, I don't like, I personally love working at CoinDesk and I think most people do.

• 25:11David Hoffman?

  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 a hundred thousand dollars.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  No, I think we are. So I think like, I mean, I think for the majority, most of the journalists own a like minimal amount.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, most, it's kind of interesting. Most of us don't own very much crypto.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:26David Hoffman?

  Interesting.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  The skepticism is like very real, I think.

• 25:29David Hoffman?

  How does that, how does that apply to NFTs? What are they? I'm assuming there's got to be rules on NFTs, right?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, we typically, I think the policy is supposed to be similar. Any NFT over a thousand dollar value, we disclose, so.

• 25:41David Hoffman?

  Oh, but it's disclosing, not you're actually capped on owning that thing.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I don't think there's a cap. I mean, typically, like, I never, I never own anything I write about as a rule of thumb. If I do for some reason, it's disclosed. But like, 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 would just, it would just compromise.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Well, also, you would get outed so quickly.

• 26:08David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  I mean, that's the thing, yeah.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it would never be like something that you'd even try to do.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  I mean, like, our, 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, that could be public knowledge and that's just something that, reputation is everything. Twitter's made journalist profiles so public. I don't think anyone would jeopardize that.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  It's also a funny tool to use because people have their ENSs. And then it's like, okay, I'm gonna look like, why were you, you know? You work for this company, you're buying me bits before the big, you know, it's like, okay.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  What's up with that? You know, yeah, it's really, the on-chain stuff is interesting as like a tool.

• 26:46David Hoffman?

  Sure. So you guys feel that CoinDesk has got a pretty good rap on just the incentive misalignment between having media people that we want these people to own assets. We want them to be neutral. How, as an engineer, okay, rate yourself, rate yourself, because that's a fun question. But then 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?

• 27:10Speaker 02

  I don't think that well. I mean, honestly, like, 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, they also get, 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-checked so diligently. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's kind of known that a lot of other crypto publications are pay-for-play and that's something that we've never done and never will.

• 27:48David Hoffman?

  Can you walk me through that, the due diligence process where, I mean, basically, yeah, you like, let's, let's go in and like peel back the layers and make sure this is right. But crypto is so noisy and it's not like the easiest place to do that due diligence. Could you, could you guys walk us through a process of like what, what a due diligence process looks like in crypto? You like, you want to start?

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, a big thing crypto are just open room or open secrets, right? Like, you know, scoops about people being involved. And this was a big thing when the whole Luna crash happened, right? Like, all of DoKwon's, you know, involvements. And it's like, the, 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's just all this kind of 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, like, to really go and like fact check what's going on, I think it's like, it's really valuable.

• 28:54David Hoffman?

  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?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  I mean, I think that was back to the process, right? When we publish a piece, it's like the fact checking, it's, 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 that, like, 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.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, trying to get things first is, is a dangerous game, because it's like, you really open yourself up to, I mean, we've gotten stuff wrong before, but, yeah, it's, 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.

• 29:46David Hoffman?

  What's the recourse process if you get something wrong?

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Just panic? I don't know.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  We'll correct it, yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  We have a very, we have a very, like, yeah, we issue our corrections.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Right up at the top. I'm thinking as the journalist, like.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Everybody, Reuters does that.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, we'll immediately. And when we get something wrong, it'll be like, really.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Sorry?

• 30:05David Hoffman?

  This is like a tried and true science of journalism, like.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, every mainstream publication does that.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  We never, we never like, you know, try to like cover it up or anything. 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 wrong, 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.

• 30:25David Hoffman?

  Eli, in your history at CoinDesk, do you have like a particularly good scoop that you're proud of? What is your best scoop?

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Best scoop? Top three. Just in terms of like, I love that Constitution Dow story. I got to go to the auction. I loved.

• 30:43David Hoffman?

  Oh, wow. Sotheby's?

• 30:45Speaker 01

  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.

• 30:51David Hoffman?

  Okay, so you were on the frontier of Constitution Dow?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. We were one of the first people to kind of write about that. But again, something that we just kind of saw happening on Twitter and we're like, oh, my gosh, this is unbelievable.

• 31:01David Hoffman?

  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?

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that was one of the funny, I'm thinking that and I'm thinking of the RazzleCon as well. Like, stories that become so much bigger than just crypto media, right? Like Constitution Dow for sure. 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, right? The New York Times is there. Like, everybody's like, you'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.

• 31:51David Hoffman?

  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're up to?

• 32:06Speaker 01

  No, no. I think my Discord name even is like lurking leopard or some random thing, right?

• 32:13David Hoffman?

  I feel like that's a disclosure in and of itself.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, but knowing how to use Discord, like even a lot of crypto journalists aren't, you know, 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 gotta go get it.

• 32:26David Hoffman?

  Would you say that most journalists at CoinDesk are Discord people?

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Definitely not. I think even-

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Is that kind of what makes you special? Is you're a Discord person?

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, because young people, like, yeah, I don't have any experience, but I can go- And then like the boomer crew, right? It's like the two, it's like the two forces, right? It's like the Wall Street Journal, you know, experienced reporter. And then like someone like me, as I don't have any experience or anything, but like we both kind of add our own like value to it, right? Like, I think that's what makes crypto so great is that like, it's just, it's just all over the place.

• 33:02David Hoffman?

  Casey, since you've been at CoinDesk 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?

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Yes, but it's not a bad thing. It's, um, boomers is mean.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  It's more boomer in spirit, I don't know.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  But no, I mean, it's funny. I mean, Eli's 22, you know, the editor Danny Nelson he's talking about is 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 45, 50. 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, uh, veterans, as he said, that can like, they know that editorial process almost from like a corporate standpoint in, 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.

• 33:53David Hoffman?

  Right. And I'm assuming you're doing as a result of that, a very good job in capturing both audiences, right? Some people need to be talked to like they are being written by like an adult who wears a tie.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  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. Um, we want everyone to read CoinDesk. That's who we become a household name.

• 34:18David Hoffman?

  Because you also need the people in the Telegram. You also need people in the Discord, right?

• 34:22Speaker 02

  So we have, uh, I think CryptoLearn, or no, sorry, CoinDeskLearn 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 up with the lingo. I have to ask Aubrey, like, what does this mean? On Twitter, but yeah, I mean, I think we do a good job of blending it.

• 34:45David Hoffman?

  What would you say is like the 50% older crowd, 50% younger crowd? How is the division of journalists in at CoinDesk split?

• 34:53Speaker 02

  You mean readership or like the staff?

• 34:55David Hoffman?

  Uh, staff, journalists, the writers.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  I'd say 40% boomers, 60%.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  A lot of the editors are boomers. They're great. That's what you want from editors.

• 35:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  It's more of like, a lot of the reporters, I said, are probably younger.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  They age, like, fine ones.

• 35:09David Hoffman?

  That's the balance. The editors have to be the bricks and the young journalists have to be the gas, right?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Uh, that's, that's an interesting, interesting relationship. So, so your editors are the, of the boomer crowd?

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say so, yeah. But it's exactly what you need, right? They would be like, Eli, like, people don't understand whitelists or like, people don't understand what it's,

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  what gas wars are fermenting, right? Like, explain to them, like, you're explaining it to me, right? Like, I gotta know.

• 35:33David Hoffman?

  So is that a frustrating part of your jobs? Like, oh, these boomers don't understand what a whitelist is? Or is it, is it interesting?

• 35:39Speaker 01

  No, no, it's great. I love the editors. Yeah, the wisdom they passed on is like unbelievable.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, like, they, they were, I mean, like, you know, Kevin Reynolds, I mean, again, like, such a legend. He, he has been covering news for 30 years, I think.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  I mean, he practically invented the Bloomberg terminal.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  He invented Bloomberg terminal. I mean, can you imagine how much he's seen in news? How much it's changed? He was writing before people were reading their news online, before push notifications, social, before any like 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.

• 36:13David Hoffman?

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• 37:41David Hoffman?

  and made the new Ledger Nano S device more DeFi and NFT friendly, making it the perfect hardware wallet for beginners. Ledger has truly maximized for both ease of use and security. So discover which Ledger device is best suited for your journey by going and visiting shop.ledger.com. The Layer 2 era is upon us. Ethereum's Layer 2 ecosystem is growing every day, and we need Layer 2 bridges to be fast and efficient in order to live a Layer 2 life. Across is the fastest, cheapest, and most secure cross-chain bridge. With Across, you don't have to worry about high fees or long wait times. Assets are bridged and available for use almost instantaneously. Across's bridges are powered by Uma's Optimistic Oracle to securely transfer tokens between Layer 2s and Ethereum. Across is critical ecosystem infrastructure, and Across V2 has just launched.

• 38:24David Hoffman?

  Their new version focuses on higher capital efficiency, Layer 2 to Layer 2 transfers, and a brand-new chain with Polygon, all while prioritizing high security and low fees. You can be a part of Across's story by joining their Discord and using Across for all of your Layer 2 transferring needs. So go to across.to to quickly and securely bridge your assets between Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, Arbitrum, or Boba Networks. So Eli, since you are on the frontier of what new journalism is, crypto journalism, if you accept the take that like, "Once upon a time, there were internet funds, and now it's just funds. Now it's just A16Z." And the same way, internet's 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 it's just going to be media.

• 39:09David Hoffman?

  And so you're 22, you're on the frontier- I'm 24, actually. 24, sorry, I started a 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 your, 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. How, 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.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Like one of your professors at Columbia, because they've probably been tenured or they've been there for a while.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  I think like we kind of talked about just being proficient in like these new ways of communication, like, like the discords, like the twitters. I really think maybe it's, if anything, it's kind of the opposite. Like, 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, I, I think if anything, yeah, like, trying to figure out like, okay, how were, how were, you know, the, what's the, the dot com bubble?

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Like, oh my gosh, going back and reading about how that was covered and how, you know, 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 to think that I'm like, you know, 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-

• 40:52Speaker 02

  History repeats itself.

• 40:53David Hoffman?

  Yeah. I would always imagine that like a strong media institution like CoinDesk 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 CoinDesk has that. But then this like whole new open Discord thing or open Telegrams changes that a little bit where, again, your Discord handle is like Lurker, right? And so-

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Lurking leopard?

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Lurking leopard, yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Oh, you were giving it away. Now you're gonna have a new one.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  I got other ones.

• 41:33David Hoffman?

  Everybody's typing in their discords right now. Is there a lurking leopard in our Discord? So 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 journalist endeavors?

• 41:49Speaker 01

  I mean, me personally, like, yeah, there are a ton of people that you'll just see tweeting out random stuff.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  And it's unfounded, right? It's completely like, 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. Like, for example, like, there were a bunch of tweets about Amazon doing an anti-marketplace, right? Insiders, they know, yeah, Amazon's, 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 follow, 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 crypto, there are a lot of them.

• 42:37David Hoffman?

  How does using an anon as a source work? Does that change the game at all?

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we, if you're like citing somebody, like, you got to have the first and last name typically.

• 42:48David Hoffman?

  Is this invalid if you don't have that?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  I mean, the anons, they're good at giving you like the information that you can go and fact check, but like, it's risky business to cite somebody that you don't know who they are or what they're about.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  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, um, yeah, unless, because it really blows up someone's spot. So we're not looking to make somebody a target.

• 43:33David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great example, like, Doquan.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  You know, it's an open secret. Yeah, he had this other algorithmic stablecoin 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 texts between him and his team, right? Like, we got the actual documents that proved like, yes, this is real. This is not a rumor. Like, this is...

• 43:53David Hoffman?

  And this is in reference to Doquan leading Basis Cash, right? And so, wait, so you guys, did you guys get this scoop on the story?

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, we did. It was our story. It was, uh...

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, Sam Kessler and Danny Nelson. That was the story they stayed up all night to get.

• 44:06David Hoffman?

  Ah, right. Okay, so, uh, CoinDesk figures out that, everyone knows who Doquan is. This is post Terra Luna blowing up. Um, but it was revealed that Doquan was also the anonymous leader of Basis Cash. And so it was, and then CoinDesk at the time decided that that was an appropriate time to disclose somebody's anonymous identity against their, like, probably against...

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Because it blew up, they were willing to go, they were willing to go on the record as their, who they actually were, because they didn't fear, you know?

• 44:34David Hoffman?

  Right, okay. Okay, cool.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  But yeah, I mean, I think the start of this conversation was, we were talking about if we knew who Satoshi was, should we, should we reveal that source? And it was kind of, I think, like, the conversation I had with the editors, like, this isn't, we don't have this story. I just want to be clear. We don't know who Satoshi is.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Wait, we're not sitting on that, yeah?

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're not sitting on that, but if we were, should we do that? Um, it could change, media is powerful. I mean, articles are super powerful in the news. It would change someone's life. Um, and 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?

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, the doxing thing is like, ongoing conversation.

• 45:15David Hoffman?

  Right, right. And, uh, 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, it's 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, comes into play, right?

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was big with the Bored Ape founders, when they got doxed. It was a big conversation. People knew who they were. Um, 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?

• 45:48David Hoffman?

  Did you guys know it ahead of BuzzFeed?

• 45:51Speaker 01

  I didn't personally know it, but a lot of NFT people knew it.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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 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, if you're interested enough.

• 46:14David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 46:16David Hoffman?

  How do you, I'm assuming you might get leads or get alpha from Anons, maybe in DMs? Is this a challenge? Have you had this opportunity or what do you, a circumstance presented to you where like an Anon comes to you and is like, hey, here's some, here's some alpha? Have you ever had this before?

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm less of a, I'm less of a scoopster for the team.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Scoopster?

• 46:35Speaker 01

  I'm not like, I'm not like Sam Cass, I'm not like Tracy, I'm not like Danny Nelson.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  But that's essentially what happens. Like, I don't know if you read Danny Nelson's story about, it was called Master of Anons.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was great.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  About the guy who had like 16 or 17 different anonymous alter egos.

• 46:49David Hoffman?

  On the salon?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  I mean, someone essentially just came with the document and was like, um, you know, 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.

• 47:02David Hoffman?

  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, piece of journalism goes through. So you're kind of filtering out the fact that it began with an Anon to begin with?

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that's probably true in traditional journalism as well.

• 47:17David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's probably the same, exactly, inside of outside.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, not everybody, you know, some people are more valuable completely on, off the record or on background.

• 47:25David Hoffman?

  Okay, so I meant to ask this question earlier, but we were talking about the, uh, not gender divide, age divide in, uh, CoinDesk and like how different journalists approach.

• 47:36David Hoffman?

  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, the behind the scenes connections, the good connect. I don't even know what you call these things, but just like, you know, the feelers, the birds, the whispers.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  I think it's actually shifted.

• 47:59David Hoffman?

  Really?

• 47:59Speaker 02

  I mean, of course, you know, like Michael Kisi is such a legend in this space. He knows so many people, but the media invites are usually going to the journalists, not the editors. So it's like Eli, Danny are going to these parties or 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. So yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's shifted.

• 48:25David Hoffman?

  Do you often, Eli, feel like you have a leg up on, on some of your older, older colleagues?

• 48:31Speaker 01

  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, we should get in touch. And it's like, yeah, I was just got a burger with them.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  I was with them last night.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I can text them, you know, I can get up.

• 48:52David Hoffman?

  So how collaborative is the, the journalist environment?

• 48:55Speaker 01

  It's very collaborative.

• 48:56David Hoffman?

  Very collaborative.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, we all share, we all.

• 48:57David Hoffman?

  Open floor plan kind of thing.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is open floor plan.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  It's a strength in 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.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and everyone gets along, which is rare.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think everyone does get along.

• 49:09David Hoffman?

  So like, I would imagine if you're like just stumped on a story, you just need something, you could just stand up and be like, does anyone know who this person is?

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Pretty much.

• 49:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  Or like, or like they'll like, you know, like we'll just like group chat or something. I imagine.

• 49:23David Hoffman?

  Right. Yeah. I guess there are things like Slack and Discord now.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Telling you the event, you meet so many, I mean, you know, that's like, we, we go out a lot together and you meet so many people.

• 49:32David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. One of our journalists, Tracy, um, she would call it hotel lobby con. She would call conferences because you could just go to the hotel lobbies and you could get, she would get like all her great alpha from hotel lobbies. Which is like, I think it's very, it's true to the, you know, crypto journalist idea, right? Like if you're just willing to go out there.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. People used to tell me anything.

• 49:53David Hoffman?

  How many journalists do they have, you guys have on staff? How many writers?

• 49:57Speaker 02

  We have one, six, oh no, sorry. We have 160 full time at CoinDesk. So I think 120, 140 of those are journalists.

• 50:04David Hoffman?

  Twenty one forty.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Or maybe, I think it's less than that. We maybe have like forty journalists.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  Full time, I think. So I think we're one sixty total CoinDesk 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 have freelancers, they're global, but it's the majority of the staff.

• 50:23David Hoffman?

  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? Like, what does the average crypto journalist want their future career to be? And does that relate to what you also want personally?

• 50:42Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it's tough because something like, you know, 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 Notopoulos, like Taylor the Rens, 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, NFT is 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.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  But also, I mean, you always wanted to get into Columbia Journalism School, right? And now Eli's there. So, I mean, that's pretty crazy.

• 51:32David Hoffman?

  You're in the middle of school right now?

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm in the middle of school. I got class tomorrow, yeah.

• 51:36David Hoffman?

  Were you in the middle of school while the bull market was going on?

• 51:39Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I started school like, yeah, like a few weeks ago, like a couple of months ago.

• 51:44David Hoffman?

  Oh, congratulations.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. Now I'm doing CoinDesk part-time, but, yeah, I was doing it full-time during the bull run. But it's funny, like, I don't, I don't, you know, I'm not writing about NFTs in class, right? My beat is 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 CoinDesk stuff.

• 52:04David Hoffman?

  So was CoinDesk like bummed when you had to scale back your time to go to Columbia Journalism School? Like, what was the CoinDesk answer? Like, oh, sweet, our guy is going to...

• 52:13Speaker 02

  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.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, people were trying to get me to stay. They're like, I don't go to J school, but...

• 52:24David Hoffman?

  So is the purpose of going to J-School, is I guess what you call it, the J-School?

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:29David Hoffman?

  The purpose is to be a better journalist. For you, is it to be a better cryptojournalist?

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Not necessarily. I mean, I think I'm going. It's always kind of been my dream to go. Like, Columbia's kind of a famous program.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, before-

• 52:42David Hoffman?

  When you tell people what you, like, what your background is at the J-School, like, your students-

• 52:46Speaker 01

  I'm like, "Oh, I wrote about NFTs," and people are like-

• 52:48Speaker 02

  What?

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Like, "For fun?" Like, "Did you get-" I'm like, "No, I got paid." Like, "It was a real job," like, you know?

• 52:53Speaker 02

  Well, you're one of the only kids in the program, right? Um, one of the only students that was a writer before, right?

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are some of us, yeah.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, most people come from out of undergrad, but-

• 53:05Speaker 02

  I told Eli, I was like, "Maybe you'll teach. Maybe you'll be like one of the added professors."

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Before CoinDesk, I always had interest. I had interest in sports journalism. I've always liked criminal justice stuff, so... Yeah, being able to maybe cover that in the future would be great as well.

• 53:18David Hoffman?

  So where do you see your fellow colleagues? You're taking a bit of a, not a hiatus, because you're still working at CoinDesk, but you're taking a little bit of a step back. Where do you see your colleagues seeing the industry of cryptojournalism go? Like, what does cryptojournalism look like? And I'm gonna ask you, Casey, the same question after Eli's done. Where do you see, like, your fellow journalists seeing cryptojournalism go in, like, the next few years? Like, what's going to need to change and what should change? Like, how's the meta gonna change?

• 53:47Speaker 01

  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 Terra Luna deal, right? Like, 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 cryptojournalism is most important in the bull runs and then the crashes. I think that's where the industry most needs, like, transparency. I think, like, trying to figure out our identity when it's kind of like a lull is gonna be-

• 54:23David Hoffman?

  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. 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.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good time to pull back, build, kind of focus on like the structure of our business, our business model. And like, you know, CoinDesk, we've already been through two or three winters before. This isn't new to us.

• 54:46David Hoffman?

  CoinDesk has been around forever.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  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 have both. I don't think anyone could do bull run hours forever. I don't think that's sustainable.

• 55:04David Hoffman?

  I remember when the bull run started, it was like one quarter into the bull run and like it took me, 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 like usually, and we were like, we were so like, sweet bull run, but we were also like, oh shit, bull run.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  Not gonna sleep.

• 55:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, like this is, my life is now different. Yeah.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:31David Hoffman?

  Casey, you talked about how CoinDesk 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. What does CoinDesk, one thing I don't want out of our media companies in this space is to just be just like them when they grow up. Right? So when when CoinDesk grows up and it does, you know, bite the head off of Bloomberg and replace it as a media institution, what, how, and why is it going to be different? And why is it going to be better?

• 55:58Speaker 02

  I mean, for a lot of reasons. I think one is, I don't, 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 have covered, they've evolved and they've covered so many different beats. We'll 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.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  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 or people. And I think like our strength will always be like that, that bullseye of people that are interested in crypto.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Like, we're kind of like, we serve them, I think, better than anybody else. Like, the crypto native, like, we do a lot of coverage, but I think we're kind of the best at that.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  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. Now, it's more institutional companies, which is interesting.

• 57:26David Hoffman?

  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

• 57:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:34David Hoffman?

  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?

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So, so we did hire a lot in the past year. So, like, our, you know, 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 CoinDesk 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, CoinDesk is a much better platform to do that than these giant newsrooms like Bloomberg and 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

• 58:33Speaker 02

  Bloomberg or CNBC, I imagine, to get the amount of airtime that our journalists at CoinDesk get.

• 58:38David Hoffman?

  I like that, yeah. So 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.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:46David Hoffman?

  Would you say CoinDesk is flatter and wider?

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Super flat.

• 58:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah?

• 58:50Speaker 02

  I mean, like, it's so flat. I can't, 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?

• 59:01David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 59:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's super collaborative. And honestly, what's kind of funny is the junior journalists 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.

• 59:20David Hoffman?

  And so 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. Like, say, like,

• 59:29Speaker 02

  We also love Bloomberg, so let me clear.

• 59:31David Hoffman?

  Right. They're great, but also we're going to be better than them.

• 59:36David Hoffman?

  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 that 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, by the people higher up in the hierarchy first. And so there's less, there's less real value for the people, the newer journalists, the newer hires, to really prove themselves.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  I mean, I think so. I mean, I, you know, 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, CoinDesk 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 CoinDesk, but them individually, which I think is, people, people, when they think of journalists, they know the stories, they don't know the person behind it, and I want to change that.

• 1:00:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and a lot of it is also just the subject matter. Again, like,

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:50David Hoffman?

  You know, if you're like, if you're writing about banking, like, you're gonna go to one of these places.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  You're just a banking guy.

• 1:00:54David Hoffman?

  There's gonna be people that have been writing about banking, though, for like decades, or like,

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57David Hoffman?

  You're an education reporter. You know, if I want to do a newsroom, there's gonna be education reporters that have been writing about this since like the 80s or 90s. DAOs, like, people have not been writing about DAOs for decades. People have been writing about DAOs for months and years. Like, if, so if you want to write about something like that, like,

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  You can.

• 1:01:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, go ahead, right? Like,

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:15David Hoffman?

  There's not kind of like a precedence where you need to have, or people are gonna be ahead of you for experience, right? And so. Do you guys think that as CoinDesk 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? Do 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, here for good for the rest of time?

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  It's just part of our model. I mean, even like our CEO, Kevin Worth, who's so sweet, he is fully like, he's, there's no hierarchy. He's, he's not ever condescending, but he just is fully like immersed in whatever we're doing. Um, like, OKC is the same way. I think that's just a huge part of our culture, and I think it'll always be that way. Um, and like, you know, the way that the company is structured is we have like a business side there taking care, like, there, 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 positions again. But yeah, I think the flatness is a core part of our, of our brand and, um, work culture.

• 1:02:15David Hoffman?

  Hmm. Yeah, Eli, can you, can you talk a little bit about how the flatness makes things fun?

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  Flat is fun.

• 1:02:21David Hoffman?

  Can you explain the flatness a little bit more? Yeah, so, so instead of like having a, like, we have, we have, you know, open bazaars, or you have like 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, your superior who has a superior who has a superior, uh, 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 doesn't, it's not layered on layered on layered on, on like a hierarchy. You're getting a lot more freedom. Uh, there's a lot less top-down control. Troll, you're a little bit more in charge of what you write about, what you think about, what you do.

• 1:03:01David Hoffman?

  And so when Casey's telling me that like you start writing about NFTs and all of a sudden CoinDesk starts sending you the Sotheby's, that feels very empowering and very flat.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  And them, Sotheby's inviting me.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, they didn't invite him.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Afterwards, yeah, after Constitution 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. I mean, yeah, opportunities like that. I mean, just being able to have, I feel like with crypto, there's way more free rein as to like what stories you want to tell.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  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 on, you're out there on the ground, on the, 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 to the, the people that were reading, right? Like there's a lot less, it feels like, uh, just kind of strict, strict assignments, I would say.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  So I definitely get to be, but then there's also the onus of, okay, I have to go out and I got to find stuff. Got to be creative, right?

• 1:04:13David Hoffman?

  But you had to earn those stripes, right?

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. When I came in, I was flipping so many press releases. I mean, it was unbelievable. Like I had no autonomy in the beginning. Like it would be like Zach, you know, giving me.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you were an intern. I mean, it was your first job.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  When I first started, I was writing like three stories a day. Like I was banging out those, those short hits, right? Like, yeah, I definitely paid my dues.

• 1:04:32David Hoffman?

  How long were you doing that before you started to have, uh, you know, your own stripes?

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Oh, months and months, maybe like four or five months.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  Okay, Eli, that is nothing. Four months. Oh my God. Some people do that for years.

• 1:04:44David Hoffman?

  Years, yeah, for, for a decade. I'm, I mean, I had like, like I said, I had like four or five years before, after graduating college, before I got into crypto. Actually, just kidding, only two. But like I'm seeing like the shorter and shorter turnaround time where people are graduating from college and be like, I want to get into crypto.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02David Hoffman?

  And those people are having the best time. They get to skip over all the shenanigans of like tradfi, tradmedia, tradwhatever. Yeah, it's like, Eli, you're a lucky fellow, man. Like going straight from college to client desk is pretty sweet.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  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 laugh to each other, like, what's going on? This is just absurd.

• 1:05:30David Hoffman?

  Well, Eli, Casey, thank you so much for joining me on Bankless. Are there any last thoughts or things we should talk about before we should sign off here?

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  Just thanks for having us. It's great to be here.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Cheers, guys. Thanks for having us.

• 1:05:41David Hoffman?

  Of course. Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast, and community as a Bankless Premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks, and exclusive content, and even the Bankless token for airdrops, raffles, and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the Bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a Bankless Premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders,

• 1:06:23David Hoffman?

  Ask Me Anythings, and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks, everyone, for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless Nation.