EB57 – Allen Scott & Ian DeMartino: CoinTelegraph and The Rise of Crypto-Powered Independent Media

Transcript

hello welcome to epicenter Bitcoin the show which talks about the Technologies projects and startups driving decentralization and the global cryptocurrency Revolution my name is Sabetha and thanks so much for joining us on uh our special episode today with the guys from coin Telegraph hi guys so we're joined uh by we're joined with sorry bye uh Alan Scott and Ian D Martino um Alan is the chief editor at cointelegraph and Ian is a freelance writer and so today's show we'll talk about uh different things but you know it's going to be a little meta I gotta say because we are going to talk about a lot about content production uh

different ways that we can monetize that content you know we are sort of in an era where a lot of new things are happening uh within within the Bitcoin ecosystem that are sort of uh creating a new path for for media and I mean that in the sense that you know we're sort of developing new models by which we're going to be able to uh run media outlets and so these are questions that you know here at epicenter Bitcoin we're definitely thinking of and also a coin Telegraph so um I'm really excited about this conversation and to really dive into sort of like Bitcoin media but also like the new types of models and business structures that we can imagine in this new ecosystem uh Brian is not here today unfortunately uh we really I really

would like for him to be here as well but he's traveling unfortunately so he couldn't be with us um but I'm sure he's here in presence so could you guys uh briefly introduce yourselves individually yeah sure um I guess I'll go first so my name is Alan Scott I'm the chief editor at cointelegraph and uh I've only gone into Bitcoin uh pretty late back in March but ever since then we uh we are coin Telegraph have grown very rapidly uh expanded our Media Group and uh we're now hoping to get better and better oh yeah Ian demartino I've started writing about Bitcoin I guess in uh

January for General Tech site but uh joined up coin Telegraph I think it was also in March and started getting paid in Bitcoin then and it's uh been kind of a rocket ship ride ever since and Ian I believe you're pretty much living on bitcoin only now right yeah yeah 100 yeah I mean uh I have three roommates and they get paid in Fiat but I mean I pay my part of the bills and everything you know with the money I make from coin Telegraph and Bitcoin cool that's really I mean it's good to hear that I guess it's kind of nice to hear that uh that you're able to uh make your full-time living uh living off

Bitcoin yeah I mean and and writing too which has always been sort of my dream so it it's a nice combo uh cool it you know I gotta dump a lot you know during rent times but I always try to spend a little bit Overstock and give us a little bit away before I do that and try to hold as much as I can cool well um I guess I'd like to start off by uh by talking about corn Telegraph um I mean personally for me you know since we started this partnership I mean before we started this partnership uh and we will talk about that in a little bit uh cointelegraph is sort of a black box to me I mean uh it's out there it's

definitely one of the most well-known Bitcoin um new sites and you guys put out great content you know have a lot of talented writers there that are doing content for you guys um thank you but uh you're welcome but uh you know it I think to a lot of people uh there are there are questions around like you know how did it get started who's behind it what's the organization look like um and so I'd like to uh maybe ask you Alan if you could sort of uh briefly uh talk about cointelegraph okay so basically I want to clarify that we have private investors and uh since coin Telegraph is operating on uh in the cryptocurrency market uh certain Banks and governments uh

usually uh could be pretty hostile towards the emerging cryptocurrency that could disrupt their business so uh the investors they would prefer to remain anonymous for as long as possible and with that I'd like to say that our content is completely autonomous so our writers can they pick and choose whatever they they think is interesting um I don't censor them nobody censors them and basically we're we're in Independent Media that's run completely on bitcoin our staff includes Maria Jones she's the general manager I think most people are familiar with Hershey's the one that uh goes to all the conferences and the

events and then uh there's myself I'm in charge of uh guiding the content and then there's our uh of course very talented creative director uh Dennis swans he's uh he's the one that sort of started the whole Comic Book theme and now there there's a there's also other artists as well like uh there's I'm sure someone uh right and a few others so they're all trying to get into the game and follow our style cool what was the idea behind that whole comic book thing I mean because it's really cool and I think it's quite original but uh yeah well besides just uh you know standing out and trying to be unique uh one day we just tried it

out and we liked it and it was different than uh like coindesk for example that's sort of a standard new site and yeah we just wanted to do something different and our yellow background I think uh does very well with those no it's definitely a good idea and it's something that in fact we've been sorry we've been looking for a graphic designer for a little while to to to do that kind of thing for uh for our episode it's not it's not it's not easy to find someone who's able to come up with you know cool graphical ideas to illustrate you know some content yeah I mean we actually got really lucky that Dennis came to us and he sort of just drew something and well one of his first pictures actually

resembled the you know our current style and we're just like you know this is really cool and we just you know ran ran with it so getting back to cointelegraph um then there's I guess uh some people that are on staff there so you're one of those people and then there was also some freelance uh writers perhaps come and go that's right yeah so most of our writers are freelance and they're based all over the world and which is pretty uh I would say unprecedented uh I think Bitcoin has allowed us to have writers all over the world and with Bitcoin we could uh we could pay them you know instantly uh regardless of whether in the same office

or 3000 miles away so yeah absolutely don't think uh without Bitcoin the the centralized nature of our business would would work where I mean there's people all over the U.S we have people in Latin America we have people in Europe so yes with all the banks and I'm trying to pay all those kind of people without a digital currency like Bitcoin I I can't imagine it'd ever work yeah I think it actually enhances the news as well because uh it gives us the ability to have a reporter almost in every time zone uh before this uh you know when people had just had to pay their staff writers and journalists they had to send them out you know spend a lot of money that way

now we're uh Bitcoin has allowed us to be everywhere but not everywhere no that's true and I think what it what it enables because this this model already exists you know there are Publications out there that have writers everywhere around the world and Matt and manage to pay them Etc but I think it just lowers the bar it lowers the entry level so that you know smaller um smaller startups can can do this I mean we're definitely part of that you guys as well so um it may it makes it's an enabler yeah definitely uh lowered the barrier to entry for this market now uh

now pretty much anyone that has Bitcoin can Finance operations across the globe a set of businesses that are global and before you you really needed to be a sort of a CNN to have Affiliates uh all over the world and I find that uh very interesting and very exciting and it works a lot better for essay for the writers too because I mean when you're freelance writing and you're writing for like uh you know text Mill kind of sites or odesk or freelancer or something uh they're taking a significant chunk out of everything and you know that this model works a lot better where you're just getting paid directly from the person even if you're you know freelancing

once I send you the Bitcoin it's not like they can exactly take it back or anything so it's uh for trustful but most importantly there isn't that huge chunk being taken out by you know those companies that facilitate uh freelance writing or freelance uh design work or whatever having yeah I think I think we I mean definitely we've been seeing that happen with sites like cornality or where we're trying to replicate the odesk model uh and and bring Bitcoin into it so that you don't have that intermediary I mean we did we definitely started working with people with on the odesk uh when we first started and and quickly like got them out of odesk so that we can pay

them directly uh some of those people were paying with Bitcoin others were still paying with PayPal um but yeah we wanted to get them out of there as quickly as possible and and they wanted to as well you know they they also wanted to be able to get that cut for themselves so uh something that that I wanted to talk about with you guys uh because this is something also that we're both doing is uh talk about around running a Bitcoin only business this is something this is a new a new experience for all of us um we're operating in a world that is for the most part uh Fiat based uh I guess I guess for the large part and we're we're doing this new thing which

is running a company on this digital currency that has some advantages like you mentioned it has the ability we have the ability to pay people very quickly and very easily and I personally you know feel um as a business I I really find that it sort of empowers me to be able to find people and um and there's a there's a relationship there that that it establishes uh which is perhaps different from another type of business where you're passing you're going through a bank or through PayPal yeah you know there's there's sort of a Common Thread which is Bitcoin um but there are some challenges as well I mean not everybody accepts it uh there are other challenges such as you know

the fluctuation of the of the uh of the of the price so what are some of the challenges that you guys have seen in running your Bitcoin only business well that's it for the business side of it uh probably Allen would be better to speak on that I could speak after that on uh what's it like to be paid by Bitcoin only business to live on but well to be honest I don't really do any like backdoor uh business deals I I'm only in charge of the content and um so as far as challenges with operating uh with Bitcoin uh I've only seen positives to be honest I don't know Ian maybe you could pitch

in uh I guess you know there's always the on-ramp off ramp of like I get paid now I gotta wait you know three more days or two more days for the bank to to uh changing to Fiat so I can pay my landlord or whatever but I mean I kind of like it makes it easier for me to save money anyways uh because I'm not very good at that and uh uh really as far as downsides I can't really think of much of course I'd rather more places take Bitcoin so I could just do it well uh one downside is of course we could you know complain about the low price right now actually yeah one of our writers uh he's

uh from England and he's always uh complaining how he has to uh with a price going down and uh on a on and off ramps he's always having trouble uh cashing out of the system so for example if he has to pay back his uh student loans in cash in fiat currency it's uh difficult to do that right now uh I mean it's doable but there's fees involved in uh all that stuff so uh that's definitely a problem right now yeah I think that also reflects some of the problems that we've been having is convert it's it's the often on ramp and this is where you'll find roadblocks and this is where we'll find fees um for example uh you know if you want if we want to buy something on a website

that doesn't accept Bitcoin we have to go through these hoops and Loops to uh to try to find like I mean I haven't really found some really viable Solutions but um prepaid credit cards and things like that but uh one solution we're using got to actually have to shut down because their ranking relationship with sour so [Music] um so yeah I mean we try to find as much as possible we're trying to find people and companies that we can work with that accept Bitcoin obviously but you're always going to have that friction as as long as um as there are companies that aren't accepting Bitcoin and as long as we don't have easy solutions for uh interacting with the non-bitcoin world and of course then the problem is you're

always going to have some sort of fee Associated to uh to using that service and and I've been kind of lucky you know if I lived in New York maybe I'm sorry I lived in New York maybe there'd be uh you know my Banks would be more cautious about you know all these payments coming in from Circle or coinbase or whatever but uh also I I've seen some people complain about how like their banks are shut down or cancel payments or going back you said you know looks suspicious or whatever I think when you're putting money into a bank account they don't care as much as when you're taking money out and buying Bitcoin because uh my bank called me a while ago about something else and they asked me if I had a job and then

the last job that they had on record for me I I left like two three years ago and so this whole time they thought I was unemployed and just getting payments into my bank account from this mysterious Bitcoin company or something and that didn't even make them suspicious I guess because the money's going in and not coming out at least that's my little theory on it oh yeah yeah I I see what you mean because I mean I'm I'm also uh sort of an independent uh I don't have a day job anymore and I think it's at some point especially here in France where having a job is sort of like the most important thing and it's required to get an apartment or any sort of like loan or that's what they look at

um you know uh getting getting telling someone uh that you're trying to borrow money from this you get paid in Bitcoin is uh is probably not the the most reassuring thing yeah that's why all our operations we try to do everything in Bitcoin so because the on and off ramps are a real problem right now um one of our writers I remember now the he was complaining that he has to keep his money in an uh online Exchange uh because that way he can cash out um and those online exchanges I mean some of them right now are not very reliable well why wouldn't he just keep his money in a in a regular wallet yeah you mean like uh off well because he has to keep

money on the exchange so he could cash out uh in the morning you know people that live in America yeah he does everything through the exchange uh I don't know a bit again the on off ramps are a real problem and so Alan you're based in Latvia how how is it there like in terms of on and off ramps to well a lot of view is not bad I mean we got uh air Baltic accepting Bitcoin a few cafes uh we did we did a couple of articles on a few bars that are accepting Bitcoin so I I think it's uh it's definitely growing here but again uh like Ian said if I lived in New York uh if I moved back to New York or San Francisco would be a lot easier

uh right now um in about a week I'm gonna go to Amsterdam I'm gonna and then go to Arnhem the Bitcoin City and check that out and see what I could do and I'm gonna try to do everything Bitcoin uh there as well no Fiat well Amsterdam New York you might be able to do quite a few things the Bitcoin I think yeah I think it's like uh one of the best places right now to go if you have Bitcoin definitely cool well um we'll we've got lots more to talk about but first I just want to take a minute talk about uh gems so you know we had gems uh CEO Daniel palette on a few weeks ago and we're you know Brian and I are both really excited about this project so this is you know it seemed

natural uh for us to to work with gems and to promote what they're doing so Genesis is a social messaging app it looks a lot like WhatsApp uh but we like to think of it as what's up on cryptocurrency steroids so there's a couple things we like about it first thing is that gems encrypts all of your conversations so you know this can't be said for a lot of the other uh social messaging apps and social media I mean of course website just said that they would start encrypting all conversations but you know you know Facebook and all these other platforms you know can you really trust where your information is going so gems encrypts everything and so that's really cool uh the second thing about them is that they really take the full the advantages of crypto in the sense that

it's also a Bitcoin wallet so they have their own currency within the app that is called gems and that you can um that you can share with your friends that are also using the platform and when users first download the app they also get a few gems immediately to start off with and sort of get them uh accustomed to using cryptocurrency so that's kind of a good an interesting step into bringing Mass adoption and getting people used to using cryptocurrencies building it into an app that is just really user friendly and that serves a purpose which is you know messaging something they do every day and um third gems is sort of designed incentives to facilitate growth

um so by that I mean that you know when you invite someone and they get gems well that incentivizes people to get into on this network and build the network and really um incentivizes people to take a real stake into the project so it you know when you when you get onto a platform and you're sort of participating in the growth of that and you have a real stake in it well that just makes you want to build the platform more and uh and bring more people into it and really create value and since you're a holder of that currency and um that currency gets you know creates uh goes up in value may go up in value well you're also uh you can also benefit

from that so uh you know that's that can't really be said for other examples uh like WhatsApp being sold for several billion dollars and all the users getting nothing so we really think yeah go ahead uh one thing about social media apps is I can't remember who said it first but I'm not coining this it's kind of old but uh if you can't figure out what the product is then you're probably the product I think Daniel Powell has said that actually he might not have coined it but he did mention it right and uh gems you you I mean I think we will I guess you know the product is gems and it's not the person using the product so I think that has some value right there you know

yeah I mean the really interesting thing with this thing is I mean the advertising is I mean the user is paid to be advertised too that and I think that that model um to try to disrupt the existing advertising model and that really kind of ties into what you know to the types of things that we're doing um is an interesting experiment and I'm really excited about where that to see where that's going so we really think that gems has a real shot in building a super valuable tool uh and taking cryptocurrency to to adoption to the next level so they're running a crowd sale right now on quantify uh it's it's been running since December 1st it's going on until January 5th so if you'd like to take part in that crowd sale you

can go to getgems.org uh check out the project and participate in the pre-sale and uh so we'd like to thank gems for uh their support of epicenter Bitcoin I actually can't find the app in the app store right now well it's not out yet that's the thing I mean it's it's an it's In Crowd silver right now in pre-sale and everyone will come out in January uh we had one writer uh Cheryl uh I don't know how to say her last name it's like Hustle yeah she wrote a really nice article on gems just recently if you guys want to go check it out uh yeah I was trying to incorporate more female users yeah into the Bitcoin space yeah I think I saw I think I read that

article um but you know that is one of that is one of their strategies I mean Daniel kind of told us this off off the Record off the air but uh I mean I think I could say this but you know one of the ideas to one of the ideas is really to make it an app that is that is uh appealing also to female users right I mean let me just look at their logo and everything it's kind of um so yeah I think that's that I think that strategy is is very interesting in the sense that uh well they've really sort of tried to make an app that uh enables just regular people to to to get into the cryptocurrency space so I hope more people will try to do that

absolutely so the next thing I want to talk about with you guys is um it's sort of like Newton the new business structures that that Bitcoin enables especially for Content producers and this is something that Brian and I have been talking about a lot uh in our discussions I mean right now we're I don't want to say unfortunately but um we haven't really been able to come up with a way to really monetize our content in a way that would allow us to pay the bills pay our suppliers and also uh well pay ourselves because you know this is this is something that this is a business that we're trying to grow and

making something quite prosperous um so we've we've resorted to sort of the traditional advertising uh model um what are what are some of the ways that some of the things that you guys are doing to uh to disrupt that and how has that been uh working for you guys well um right now we think a change tip is one of the cool new uh features that we're trying to integrate we have a general change the book icon but we're trying to make a change stuff for every particular specific author so right now it would be really cool if

it's still somebody could just read an article if they like it and they could instantly with one click you know give a tip and I think that's the future and uh right now of course it's very small but hopefully in the future as the Bitcoin economy grows that'll be one of the best ways to monetize I think yeah I think since the uh at least as long as I've been on the internet people have been talking about the common micro payments or microtransactions and it just never worked because of all the friction in it so now we get to see what happens when there's you know virtually no friction on it and will micro transactions work and you know I think the Bitcoin ecosystem probably has to grow a little bit before it can work you

know uh on a mass scale but I have hope that Humanity will make little tiny donations work well that this is something that uh We've thought about I mean we we always ask people to tip us I I gotta say it I mean it hasn't really been successful for us we do get some tips but it's it's been nowhere uh enough to to to to pay for for hosting or we've gotten so little tips since since we started this so to us it didn't seem like a very viable option but but then again you know other people have talked about how uh tipping really works for them uh I think Adam B Levine

um gave a talk uh at some point a Bitcoin conference talking about how YouTube is broken and pitching this model where he puts out a change widget with a change tip widget with an individual QR code for everything he puts out everywhere he puts up that way he can not only get tips for every piece of content that he publishes but also um sort of track it so it's got the sort of built-in analytics which is interesting well uh there's some you know podcasts have been out there for a while that uh even before Bitcoin that kind of have survived on the on the donation model yeah you know what I listen to is Dan

Carlin just for an example and he just started taking Bitcoin but he's been you know dealing with PayPal this whole time uh before that I I think it's just a matter of like size you know like there's not that many people into Bitcoin right now like as it gets bigger you know if a hundred people watch your show maybe only one person donates but if we just get it large enough that that one percent is enough to pay bills then you know I think that's the hope but definitely things like change to make it easier and you know that can only be a good thing how successful is that been for you guys like you know if you can talk about I

mean what kind of tips are you are you seeing come in on your on your articles I would say not that funny either yeah right now it's uh pretty insignificant but uh I think the the main strategy right now is to tip yourself I mean start using chain step yourself and uh do all the micro transactions send them via Twitter I think that's the best way to get more people involved I mean they're going to see tweets coming uh to them with uh 50 cents you know two cents it doesn't matter but that's going to get them into the Bitcoin space and that will uh cause it to grow and soon we'll be seeing uh much bigger tips and new ways to monetize it

so what you're saying is in order for more people to start tipping the beginning yeah so yeah okay well you gotta be the first one yeah yeah well I mean just coming back to gems uh real quick I mean I think that you know getting people accustomed to using cryptocurrencies is definitely one of those things that uh will sort of grow the ecosystem uh you know what they're doing is definitely allows that to happen um you know change tips also you know tipping someone who who doesn't use cryptocurrency uh sort of forces them to in a sense start using it yeah yeah exactly yeah

it's actually surprising how um hard it can be you know before change tip to get people to take money as uh I uh I went back to a message board I used to a political message board I used to frequent before I even knew about Bitcoin before I started writing professionally and uh try to get them to take Bitcoin and like I just ran into like a wall of hate that I mean not like a wall of paper but a wall of like skepticism and it's like no I'm not trying to scam you I'm trying to give you money and they didn't want your Monopoly money right yeah well they thought somehow I was gonna weasel a way to scam them out of given that's what I think I don't know some people did take the money but

it was surprisingly it took a while for them now you guys are doing you guys are doing both I mean you're you're taking tips but you also have a traditional ads uh I mean when I say traditional lines the traditional CPM model where you you put ads on the site um you know and moving forward do you think what is what is the long-term Vision there do you want to at some point try to get rid of those ads how do you see that in the future well that would be uh that would be ideal I mean on the future room we if we could sell sustain on just tips and uh you know funding from our readers and that would be uh that would be very good because right now we yeah

we do have uh advertisements and in the future uh we hope to you know go towards more the direct funding model yeah I mean I I tend to think that as as much as we'd like to the the traditional ad model I think is really here to stay I mean as long as you have companies who are willing to pay money uh to people who have large audiences to talk about their products I I don't think that's going to go away I mean we may see some variations of that with Bitcoin um we may definitely see a shift towards paying the paying the audience rather than paying some sort of central uh

publication or like an essential entity but I I really think that advertisers are not going anywhere yeah it's definitely interesting when I uh was in school I remember teachers telling me uh not to become a writer Because the Internet had destroyed writing and there's no money in it but what what ended up happening was by you know the time I was in an adult and ready to do it uh there's such a demand for content on the web that it ended up paying for it so I think it's still involve in space and you know I've seen some bad you know business practices at other sites but uh cointelegraph has been you know

fantastic and just let me write what I want and uh pay me well for it so as long as that continues I'm not going to hate on the model we have too much but I would I would like to get rid of advertisers and everything we see way too many ads in our life in general but yeah I'd like to add that our advertisement is more as um as a way to gain trust in uh in the ecosystem right now so we would only promote companies that we that we use ourselves for example shapeshift.io is an excellent product that could convert crypto to crypto without any registration so I've been using that that's really cool and uh I do agree that the advertising

model is here to stay but what I Envision is in the future there might be a way to monetize clicks so right now for example you have to click the change step button but in the future that could all be automated and when people just read articles they could automatically send a micro transaction could be like a fraction of a penny but either way I think there's something in there yeah I think uh Andreas Antonopoulos was talking about uh interesting what I thought was an interesting idea on The Joe Rogan podcast was uh uh uh being able to like set aside a budget for like articles or whatever your Media budget for the month or whatever and be like five dollars and it

could give you know two cents to every article you read during the month and then uh some something like that but I mean that's kind of the future I guess yeah I've got my doubts about that I mean there has been some talk about uh sort of automating so for for instance say like in your browser you've got a built-in um built-in wallet where uh yeah this is sort of the idea right where you have money sort of set aside for for for media that you consume I'm I'm not sure that really works in the last 15 20 years people have gotten so used to not paying for stuff uh they've gotten so used to I mean not paying for stuff through advertising

I've I've got my doubts about that I mean maybe some variation of that but I think maybe what would perhaps be more realistic in the future is where advertisers pay you directly um and that would force and that would force advertisers to really get to know the people they're advertising to because you're not going to want to advertise to someone that's not gonna that's not gonna buy your product uh and well that's where it forces The Advertiser to really get to know what are your preferences so that they make sure that they're advertising to somebody who's who might buy their

products at the same time I wouldn't want to write about someone who who had paid me directly you know uh even if I tried you know my hardest to not let it influence me I I don't maybe I could but then I don't think the readers would be able to trust that I could you know I I'd rather go to you know coin Telegraph and then coin Telegraph pay me because they like my writing and they just want their ad next to it I wouldn't want like shape-shift to pay me to write an article about shapeshift you know uh I think I may have um what I meant to say was where readers get paid directly by the

appetizers rather than the platforms if you're watching on YouTube for instance uh you you're you're getting paid for your attention right yes but uh actually Sebastian I would disagree with you on the fact that people only seek free content because uh right now if you offer quality content I think it has shown that people do pay for it for example iTunes uh Netflix if you offer high quality content people don't mind paying for that and I think uh it's uh they prefer that over you know going through the back door for some blue light copy for example so you think that the con quality

content does force people to to pay for it yeah with a big enough audience too yeah like yeah and uh you know there there's certain things you can do like uh advertising wise for yourself like kind of try to make your audience feel guilty or whatever for not doing it I think we'll see more of more of that in time you know yeah come on man just a dollar just this dollar yeah I mean I actually would change that but I've seen uh I never expected this many people to just give out money for free but if people are tipping I think they will pay for Quality content so uh like all these different things that

may or may you know not work I think we should just keep trying and we'll figure out what works another thing that might you know how we get paid is definitely going to change like um musicians you know I mean I just heard this you know overheard I haven't looked into it but from what I understand they're getting paid more for concerts than they are for their like CDs Now with you know Spotify and everything making it so cheap uh uh I think you know I don't need to be rich as a writer you know I just want to be able to pay my bills so if the new model doesn't pay you know what you used to pay for someone who wrote for the New York Times or something that's fine but as long as

it's more available to people I think overall it's better now I'd like you guys to talk about your automated payroll system Alan you can you uh tell us about that yeah so ours is a meritocracy based uh payment system we we get a set budget that grows you know as we attract more viewers so we have a sort of a common pie that all the writers share and the way this is split up is uh based on the article's popularity so the social impact so for example if uh if an article gets a lot of Facebook likes um that article would uh get give more money to the author and uh similarly you know if the article

doesn't get any views they get a very small percentage if any so Ian I think you could weigh in here since you you're in our parts pie chart a lot uh yeah it's you know it just gets split up you get to see how much everyone made which you know I guess some people would feel kind of weird about that but it it's best I guess for transparency and you know um it does it based on Google Plus and Facebook and Reddit and uh the only thing I have a little problem with it is I just think there should be a cap right now there's no cap so if one article does really good it kind of yeah it could just take a lot of them out and

put and so how do you protect yourself against like Bots and things like that I mean how because I suppose there's lots of there's lots of that too right well we have one guy that uh uh well there was one box on one shares that uh for one guy's article and he's no longer with us I think that's fair to say but uh you know usually you can tell when there's bots on Twitter because they're all the same or whatever and I think we just have a great group of writers that you know so far other than the one exception that hasn't happened yeah and I'll also like to add that this is not just for writers this is this is our uh entire staff so the editors and the

the artists they're also included so if an article does well the artist also gets a cut so it's a very egalitarian in that sense and very transparent that's what we're trying to do and uh it's a work in progress I mean it's not perfect right now but we're gonna keep trying to develop the system and uh please everyone in the future and so just as an order of example you know if you write a successful article how much how much can you make from a successful article like or on average or what I mean on average how much would you make from there like I would say somewhere between like uh just for the writing you know if I edit it myself or whatever I get a little

bonus but uh between like 20 and 50 is pretty typical but like I got on the the Microsoft accepting Bitcoin article so that one's over 200 right now but that's not typical typical you know 25 to maybe 75 or yeah would you say that's about right um yeah that's about right but uh our our the whole pie budget uh it's uh fluent so as we grow so does the percentage that the authors get so right now it's about yeah you're right it's about 20 50. on average but I I would expect that you know in the near future though we'll

number will go up and this is all automated I suppose yes uh well look I gotta clarify something it's not like fully automated you still have to confirm so it's not like it doesn't just do it yeah by itself but it calculates um all the stats automatically so we don't need a accountant so we save money there uh because before we used to you know count all the words and that took a lot of time now it's just uh fully automated automated in that way and then uh at the end of the week the writer everyone sees what everyone got and then the next day the payments go out and people just confirm it and after that

they get into their wallet now have you ever has it ever uh crushed your reminder has it ever occurred to anybody to maybe have a coin Telegraph currency with which you would pay your average your your writers but advertisers would also I mean LTB has been doing this and I think others have been trying to do some of the same oh actually no we haven't thought about that but that's uh it sounds interesting what do you think I mean I think the ideas interesting but I don't think the world needs another altcoin by us we don't want to get accused of a pumpkin uh it's I mean not not to say that about LTB or anything like that you know but

you know they got a lot of talented people over there I don't I'm if I made a coin you know it'd be a copy paste bullcrap coin so um and it's just you know bitcoin's volatile enough to add another altcoin on top of that that would have another layer of volatility and then who you know if it doesn't work out then I'm getting paid and and all going that doesn't have value and I I'd rather I mean I like all coins I'm not you know I had an altcoin column uh but Bitcoin is like the one that's right now you know that's usable right now that can I can you know I can't like I mean I'm sure there's a place where I can

trade you know whatever coin for into my bank account but I'd have to switch it you know and then add a layer of complexity is too early in the game I think uh right now Bitcoin is the preferred method of payment so I think we'll stick that and grow uh our business model and actually we're gonna try to include besides the writing we're gonna try to automate Everything 100 in the future including um business uh deal so for example um like ethereum is doing smart contracts so for example we could take advantage of that by making partnership

deals with those smart contracts so we wouldn't need uh any intermediaries or anything like that and the whole process will be fully automated so that's what I'm looking forward to in the near future foreign speaking of all coins uh I'd like to take a minute to talk about uh our next sponsorship which you mentioned a while ago Ellen I think you guys are also working with them uh so shapeshift I mean the best way I can I can I can describe what shape just does is really to show you guys uh we can talk about for as long as we want but a demo is always the best to illustrate some things uh utility so shapeshift is a website which allows you to easily convert Bitcoins into altcoins or vice

versa so maybe um you want to buy some Litecoin or some Dogecoin so they support Litecoin purecoin Dark Coin Dogecoin name coin feather coin Bitcoin and they're adding new altcoins all the time so let's uh just do a screenshot here it's basically like Google Translate for altcoins exactly hey that's a good thing that's great I'm gonna use that Google's translate for all coins uh so I think everybody can probably see my screens here so here we've got the currency converter I want to deposit Bitcoin and I want to get Litecoin and so I want to buy 0.5 Litecoin I just put that amount here and then I put my payment address so this is my Litecoin address I hit

start and then what happens so shape shift is awaiting deposit so it says please deposit this many Bitcoins to this address so I'm going to pull up my wallet and I'm going to send the scan QR code all right found URL confirm send and in just a few seconds I will have Litecoin in my wallet so it's awaiting exchange right now God I hope this works

so it's waiting should be receiving it in just a second there you go complete so how long does that take what 30 seconds something like that yeah so basically I was able to buy some litecoins in about 30 seconds without having to create an account at an exchange without having to give any of my personal information to anyone this is completely Anonymous you stay private uh your information stays private they don't even want and your email address you don't even need to create an account it's super fast super easy and uh and uh they only charge a small fee so if you want to get some altcoins if you want to convert some all coins into Bitcoins or vice versa go to shipshift.io give it a try tell us what you think and we want to thank

shapeshift.io for the support of webcenter Bitcoin so you guys recently actually you guys recently did something with shapeshift right you uh you had a contest that's right so with shapeshift we have a article contest right now and we picked the best seven articles about uh personal bank horror stories so everybody writes their own stories about their their dealings with Fiat and Legacy Banks so you can check that out on our site and we're on the 15th tomorrow we should uh get the poll up uh where people can vote for the Affairs favorite stories and the winner of that will get three Bitcoins yeah I read one

um I think it was from a German guy who was living in the states and the bank wouldn't want to wouldn't let him take his money out of his account or something like that yeah my favorite one was the the one about the the Syrian guy who kept everyone kept getting his name wrong and then I kept asking for for ID to clear a wire transfer because they thought he was a you know a national security threat lovely yeah so we're just about ready to wrap up here but before we do um I'd like to talk about uh independent Bitcoin media we we are both independent Bitcoin media upstarts and uh there have been quite a few popping up I mean uh since Bitcoin is becoming sort of this uh this new

interesting phenomenon a lot of people interested in you know people want to get into that and start talking about it that's definitely one of the reasons why why I started doing this podcast um now what what do you think what what role do you think independent Bitcoin media such as cointelegraph or epicenter or others play in sort of preaching the good word of Bitcoin to the non-bitcoin world or or does it stay closed does it safe to close in our own ecosystem this is the the question I often ask myself is who am I talking to am I talking to a Bitcoin enthusiasts or am I actually doing good work in in spreading the word the people who are involved

well but I started in Tech a lot of people were telling me that uh I was good at explaining technology so when I came over started writing about Bitcoin I I first thought that um that would be what I would be doing kind of is trying to explain it to the Layman of uh exactly you know to get non-coders into Bitcoin and still that's kind of I guess our rule but I think also we're talking to the Bitcoin crowd primarily I would say yeah I would agree with that yeah no I'm just uh it's primarily uh the Bitcoin crowd the community

um I'm just hoping that as the the main driver of this would be the price and if the price goes up like we saw last year that's when a lot of uh newcomers you know were introduced to bitcoin was exactly the last year when the price went over one thousand dollars so I think that is the main driver of adoption and getting more people on board and uh right now we're uh I agree that we're mostly talking to the Bitcoin crowd and with some spillover hopefully and I think who mostly talks to the mainstream crowd or websites like walls or Publications like the Wall Street Journal or wired and uh places like that and I would say if you want to help

uh mainstream people understand about Bitcoin you got to get them to hire some writers that understand Bitcoin you know maybe they poached some people from coindesk or from coin Telegraph or something and that'd be good for the community if it's then there's more knowledgeable people up at the mainstream uh levels but I would just say when when you see an article and it has misconceptions about Bitcoin as a Bitcoin Enthusiast you should always try to point that out in the comments and uh shame the writer a little bit into doing more thorough research before he starts talking about Bitcoin now as a freelance writer do you sometimes uh write for other Publications that are not like maybe

Business Insider or other Publications that uh that work with freelance writers uh no I um I have uh but then I started writing a I'm writing a Bitcoin book called Bitcoin guidebook uh with Sky horse publishing that should be on bookshelves uh so before I got that deal I was working also on a crowdfunding site called stick blocks and uh uh before that a site called social News Daily and you know I I could go back to that at some point but right now between the book and between point Telegraph I don't have the time to write about Kickstarter stuff is it interesting as Kickstarter stuff is you know

crowdfunding stuff and I get to write about crowdfund stuff in Bitcoin space obviously but just general you know look at this crazy Gadget that's coming out on Kickstarter uh I don't have time to write those anymore because I got more important stuff in Bitcoin and better paying stuff so where do you think uh where do you think the Bitcoin media uh world is going the do you do you think that it's it's going to stay very focused on bitcoin and sort of remain seated in that Enthusiast crowd or do you think that it will somehow uh Bloom into something that's perhaps a bit more uh generalized as also as cryptocurrency becomes more of a uh uh

well it becomes a technology that is used by by more people I guess the masses oh I don't really like that term but um yeah I do think that uh it will Bloom something that that's a bit more palpable for uh for people that aren't Bitcoin enthusiasts yeah I started you know not to say this again but I started as a tech writer and now that I'm in Bitcoin I've kind of found myself as a financial writer which was unexpected for me uh so I think it's just gonna be kind of a blending if if Bitcoin takes off like we all hope it will and it's ten thousand dollars of Bitcoin or whatever and everyone's jumping on it then all of a sudden you know cointelegraphed is is Forbes or coin

Telegraph is you know the the new version of places where people go for their bitcoin news which is like financial news I guess I don't know it's it's definitely a tough question yeah it's really uh difficult to predict but I've actually noticed the more the mainstream media Outlets uh covering Bitcoin in a more positive light I don't know if you guys noticed that but I've noticed yeah I have Wall Street Journal writing uh articles with titles like Bitcoin could disrupt Banks and Bitcoin is the future and stuff like that so possibly in the future they will uh they will take over as far as the news goes I mean I don't know but coin

Telegraph and everybody else uh I think will Bloom into something else like you said what is the the long-term Vision sort of long-term plan for coin Telegraph well uh in the Bitcoin space it's really hard to have a long-term Vision we all know how fast everything changes and uh let's let's define long term so uh or like a year do we even speak that long that far ahead well if we're talking about a year then we hope to still be here yeah I would say our immediate goal and you know no offense to these guys it's a friendly competition but I would say our media immediate goal is to become the biggest cryptocurrency News website and

then you know we'll worry about the rest when we've accomplished that goal yeah right now we're just focusing on expanding our Media Group um getting more Partners on board and just helping the Bitcoin economy grow because uh we're not just reporting on the news uh we're not some just Outlet that's uh writing articles were actually a product of the new Bitcoin economy were completely uh you know autonomous we we're only dealing Bitcoin and so it's uh there's an incentive for us to uh sort of help the Bitcoin space grow yeah I mean as as the Bitcoin space grows well then it brings in new

companies and it's sort of a small and you know new new uh Publications as well and new podcasts and it's a Snowball Effect right so um I mean I think like you said and this is an answer that that we tend to get a lot is you know what brings a lot of new people in when do you notice uh like the slew of people coming into the ecosystem and coming in and downloading your wallet or coming in and reading your articles or whatever type of business you're in and that is when the price goes up and so so so you mentioned partners and and growing your network so I understand you're so coin Telegraph has been sort of acquiring and creating new uh new properties

yeah so for example we uh we started with we partnered with corn market cap um and a few other sites uh such as a I think it was crypto yeah do you know the other side um I I mean I didn't pay attention for example yeah so uh so we just want to expand the Media Group and grow like every other business uh you guys are actually trying to do the same or no uh well I mean so yeah I mean I think everybody knows now that we've uh We've partnered with you guys uh our

partnership for those of you who don't know is um what we've been doing is every Saturday we've been publishing sort of a a summary article uh for the previous week's episode so like our episodes come out on Monday and then the the Saturday um right after we publish like sort of like 600 to 800 word articles summarizing the content of the article and that's been that's been going really well for us I mean when when we first started this you guys approached us and and said that you guys were thinking of doing a podcast and I can't remember exactly how it went and then we said well you know we guys we could have you gone and then finally we and we we ended up doing this

um so I mean for for us it's it's been positive in the sense that it's been bringing uh new traffic to our website which right now is not where we're uh driving most of our traffic but as uh we uh we're building a new site and then eventually we want all our traffic to go there and stop sending people to YouTube and other places like that um it's also been valuable in uh growing our subscriber base uh especially on YouTube and also on Twitter and just personally it's been valuable in the sense that it sort of forces us to write every week about the content that we produce um which uh which I think is is uh is really enriching on a personal level

um when you sort of have that deadline uh because otherwise I tend to not write so much yeah I think don't you actually like learn more about the subject when you write definitely yeah definitely and and it kind of forces me to because I we I mean myself I listen to everything we put out I always listen to the episode after it's been edited but to listen to it and stop and think about what I'm going to say in this article um yeah it really has been an interesting experience and sort of forced you to think about these topics a bit more than when you're just talking about them in the podcast so or listening to it after the fact well how about you guys um we actually got into a coin Telegraph

because I wanted to write because I know that would uh help increase my understanding of Bitcoin itself because before I was you know I just read the white paper and I thought this is pretty cool but in order to sort of Master it you do have to write about it and read about it and research and I found that writing articles really helped so yeah yeah when I uh used to write text I I could I could pump out like six articles in a day uh Bitcoin that that's impossible uh so it because you when I started out I was really behind I think uh on cointelegraph and I would have to research like all day just to get one article out and slowly but surely it's been I've been able to do it

a little bit faster a little bit faster a little bit faster just as my knowledge about cryptocurrencies have grown you know just every article and learn something new yeah I mean for me like I said I I I don't uh I have these I have these sort of periods where I'll write a bit more [Music] um not always about Bitcoin perhaps about other things as well and uh so it's it's uh it's always been hard for me to force myself to write about something but uh having that that deadline every Friday or Saturday morning I don't have to send you guys an article sort of it's it's nice to to be um so I've kicked in the rear to to write

something yeah but no it's been it's been um for us it's been valuable on all those uh in from all those perspectives and I think we want to keep you know we'll want to keep doing it uh for the long run cool uh well I think we're just about ready to wrap up here uh is there anything you guys want to add anything you want to plug here's your opportunity uh just I guess my book Bitcoin guidebook coming out uh should be February of 2016 so it's a while from now uh yeah okay the little bottom thing to work but if you want to follow me on Twitter it's at e d Martino which is d-e-m-a-r-t-i you know Ian's I

and so i-n-d-e-m-a-r-t-i-n-o that's about it cool uh actually I just want to tell you a little quick story from yesterday yeah so apparently I think I was the first person in New York City to order flowers with Bitcoin so it was this uh is this place uh website called afterhourflowers.com and they were the first uh and if I'm mistaken you guys could please tweet uh they were the first I believe in New York City to accept Bitcoin and I went on their site to order my mom uh flowers for her birthday but their coinbase API was broken so I wrote them and I'm like you guys you accept Bitcoin and they're like yeah

sure we'll set it up so it was to just give me an account and I sent them the money fully trusting them because I read the Yelp of reviews that they're really cool and uh yes sure enough the flowers did come and I'm really happy about that so shout out to uh after hour flowers .com awesome so yeah if you're a New York and you want to send flowers to your mother or your girlfriend or whatever you know you could buy you could buy with Bitcoin that's great it's uh it was a little disappointing because uh I did look at their wallet and it said zero transaction so I was definitely the first one for them that's how I know but uh yeah hopefully I won't be the last cool well thanks a lot guys for coming

on uh it was really really cool to talk about you guys and talk to you guys about all this uh all this stuff uh I think this is a conversation that maybe we should be having again in a little while to see how things have evolved um but uh yeah it's a topic that I'm definitely very interested in I think Brian is as well uh so uh thanks you guys thanks everybody for listening if you want to support us you can leave us a tip at epicenterbitcoin.com tips uh you can also subscribe to the newsletter at episodebitcorn.com newsletter uh and the newsletter right now I mean Brian's been sending out as consistently every every Friday um it's going to change a little bit I think in the next few weeks we're looking at different ways that we can uh utilize the newsletter to tell you guys

about an interesting content that we write also we haven't really been announcing new episodes um when they come out so we're we're going to be doing some new things there as well uh what else do I want to add oh yeah next week we have vitalik buteran it's gonna be on a guest on the show so that is Sunday January uh sorry December 21st and I believe it is at the same time so uh 1800 UTC um so if you want to take part in that uh definitely uh join us for the hangout I think would be very interesting I am just reading about uh proof of stake right now and uh I think I'll be doing a lot of research This Week Tonight sound like an idiot with uh with vitalik on uh so thanks again for listening and we

look forward to being back next week great thanks a lot