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

welcome to layer zero layer 0 is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the ethereum community crypto is built by code but is composed by people and each individual member of the crypto Community has their own story to tell the cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it and layer 0 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 crypto journalism I haven't really seen anyone go down the rabbit hole of what's it like to be a journalist in crypto or what's it like to be the head of comms of a crypto media crypto journalist publication uh 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 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 coindeska 22 fresh out of college skipped over going over any sort of like Trad media Trad job and straight into nft journalism in the height of an nft bull market so we get that story and Casey the head of comms at coindesk has been with coindesk for many many Winters now so she's been around and she's seen it all and so we just take a peek under

the hood as to what's it like to be a crypto media company coindesk is of course extremely large of a journalist entity a media entity in crypto and they are now broadening their Horizons to Trad five 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 uh and looking out at bigger fish bigger Horizons and thinking about what we can bring new to to the table we also talk about just the

different structure of coindesk versus its competition the very hierarchical nature of traditional media versus the very flat nature of 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 a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible arbitrim1 is pioneering the world of secure ethereum scalability and is continuing to accelerate the web 3 landscape hundreds of projects have already deployed on

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so enhance your financial life with nexo who ensures all credit lines are over collateralized with insurance on all custodial assets next though 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 tan and Casey Craig of coindesk Eli you are an nft journalist at coindesk in case you are ahead of moms today we're going to go down the exploratory journey of what the hell it's like to be a journalist inside of the world of crypto which I would imagine is a challenge Eli is it a

challenge to be a journalist in crypto it's a challenge but I think it's probably one of the most fun things you know a reporter can cover it's got all the all the drama you know of any beat but all of the drama of the absurdity yeah I think it's let's go a little bit into your guys's backgrounds just to kind of set the stage in the context for The Listener so Eli can you give us a little bit of background of who you are uh what you're what you studied in college and how you came to be a journalistic at coindesk yeah so I'm kind of an up-and-coming reporter uh coined us actually my first uh you know full-time professional job I went to school in Minnesota but out of

college it was uh June of last year um join 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 oh 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 um yeah I kind of rode the the career wave with with nfts okay so you were writing about nfts you were you were

pushing into that domain of crypto before media entities in crypto were really covering it and I'm assuming that flipped really really fast pretty quickly yeah he's always being modest too I mean Eli he was breaking nft news stories um so he's been featured in everything from like Rolling Stone to CNBC hypebeast kind of all across the board um and Eli came to us as an intern within one year he was not only one of our top reporters but one of the top reporters in the entire space yeah I mean I benefited from having my entire

beat the nfts you know at the time it was like kind of this quirky technology Niche right like a lot of people were writing about web3 and if he's were part of that but I was like full on in the nft space You Know full time which was definitely interesting Casey on the on the coindex side of things can you talk about that pivot pre nfts to post nfts like what was it like uh what was the attitude about nfts in coindesk and when was like okay the transition be like oh no we need to cover this thing I mean that's a great question and Eli might be able to answer a little bit better but I

don't remember us ever covering it except for sporadically before um and when Eli joined we really gave him that beat um and that was like 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 um and the financial or Tech or like traditional business Publications like CNBC um but when we started covering nfts we were like cited in super mainstream Publications um I think you know coindesk alone had

190 million people visit the website last year and it was the crypto price was a part of it but a big part of it was probably also the nft coverage and Casey can you just explain a little bit of your of your role in background at coindust what do you do there yeah totally um 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 um yeah so my job you know it's kind of

a simple goal um but a complicated way to get there is I want to make coin Escape 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 and what'd you do before coindesk I've kind of always worked in crypto I mean there was like a stint when I was still a ski bomb and I was selling timeshares in Brackenridge Colorado

um but ever since then uh when I moved to New York I worked at Waxman PR coinus was a client then I went into spark PR and worked with anyone from Abra um to a few other smaller crypto companies and then I ran actually the financial services PR Public's Sapient so we did a little bit of Trad fi and then came back into Quinn Quinn desk in my current role okay so I'm getting the the sense from both of you that uh backgrounds generally not were you you majored in journalism Eli uh so that that's a

strong uh a strong background and of course journalism but no one can really prepare you your background really isn't marketing or or uh 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 uh 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 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 paper of like five people and you know I couldn't I couldn't get in the door right like no one wanted me um 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

um so I you know I see this kind of coindesk opportunity and I essentially tell them like Adam I've never written about this stuff and they were like you know not many people have um that's like the thing like if you can if you could 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 um yeah and then to 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 is an expert right

because it's so new so it was like going from you know the rookie who kind of has no basis in anything to like the expert I can remember distinctly was actually in Miami oh yeah I ever spoke publicly was at FTX arena in Miami where Miami he plays yeah I've been invited to talk to moderate that panel in front of like thousands of people so I have like they put the makeup on yeah and the Nice Clothing I've got the mic and you interviewed Pia Mia on stage and uh she's like like what

eight ten twenty million Instagram followers or something you know and shadows from um Avenged Sevenfold like it was just kind of this funny thing it was like my coming out moment of like a wow I'm like freaking out like I've never talked in front of people before and that's like the big intro but 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 you did the full it was 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 because you know of course they want the Press right so like I think the Grammys thing was probably like the peak moment of absurdity like me on the red carpet for the Grammys in it and it talks right now 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 lots of Glory what's going on yeah there's a 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 population 300 yeah 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 whiplash like how how what were your emotions going through that like year of your life it was a lot I mean it's still kind of like a fever dream thinking about like some of the stuff speaking at like South by Southwest was another cool thing oh my gosh yes he spoke at South by Southwest with Russell WrestleMania Stars yeah yeah it was Stephanie Cohen no that's not right I think so somebody I mean so like we've you know acquaintance can generally 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's 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 but it's it's different than every other career so it's pretty great I think is that people really don't care about credentials yeah it's all just about like what you do right yeah like yeah you know you've got some of the most authoritative figures and nfts and they're just like a picture of them monkey and you know some Alias right and it's like no one cares who they really are no one cares like where they've worked if they have like something to

say you know like people will really listen and I think I kind of benefited a lot from that just because I'm it's my first job but because people like the Articles you know they're willing to listen to me so yeah you uh had the the fortune to jump right into this industry I wish I had like were able to skip that four years of my life of post College before I found crypto if I had just been able to Gap that that'd 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 uh self-interest and it's not like it's not true in normal Trad fire journalit web 2 journalism all these same kind of incentives apply like everyone's trying to like pump themselves like promote themselves 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 the 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 yeah the pitches right Eli you get a hundred a day 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 um the way that like information is shared too with nft is 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

um like what's going on and some of the best stories like we were just talking about the uh the whole bend down liquidation thing it was just something that I was like watching and no one had really no one was writing about because no one was kind of in these like really inner Circles of of nft people interesting yeah I actually I can definitely relate to that because one of the first ways I got into content uh and that joke about like I did this thing and then and then you know a year later we created Bank lists as I was just noting this noticing this thing happen on chain with ether volatility and mkr

burn it's like oh as ether's more volatile mkra gets burned at a faster rate mkr out of maker Dow I thought that was pretty interesting and I wrote about it and like no one else was looking at it and then I thought like 50 people were going to read it but like 500 people wrote it and that was like my first dopamine hit and people I think don't really realize how much there is to write about and how much of it is being like looked over by so many people how did you develop your intuition as to like what is a good thing to cover or what is going to be interesting to the

readers so what I had always thought like in the early days right is like oh what what are kind of like the groundbreaking things happening that are like moving the industry forward but then what I found with nfts is that they're actually more people that like to make fun of nfts than there are really like promoting them right so like some of my favorite stories to do are stories where Outsiders can kind of look in and just laugh at the absurdity of like everything that's happening like the bend out thing is a great example right like essentially people recreating like

the financial crisis of 2008 but instead of mortgages it's with monkey pictures right and it's like even if you're not like really uh don't know much about nfts or like understand the technology like something like that I think is is kind of compelling do you think that incentive where and this is true for all of crypto people kind of want to crypto for just to crash and burn right there's that external incentive and then that kind of creates incentives out of our media institutions to cater to those readers so we can get the views and then

it starts to incept 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 uh how as a journalist how do you how do you balance these things yeah it's tough because if you look at like most of the you know empty Media stuff like people make their money writing about like the way up and the way down like one or the other you've got like I don't know if you know Molly white but her like web 3

is going great it's a great uh blog but we're recording with her later next week oh great yeah um 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 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 um they really only focus they kind of wait for Scandal um 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 um but yeah I mean I think it's good to have both you know as our Newsroom um I noticed that we always try to represent both sides I don't think I mean when you read coin disk 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 Evangel is in crypto we're extremely neutral but a lot of other Publications are not like that I think most they're at either one of the spectrum they're

either evangelizing it and they're pumping it um or they're ripping it to shreds yeah Casey how would you place coindesk in the sphere of crypto media so we have 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 in flavor so it's a great question um I mean okay so to be honest and not just to sound like uh I'm you know I'm trying to pump coindesk but we've there's a lot of yeah we've kind of um

to be honest those are our competitors for crypto but we've kind of evolved Beyond being a crypto trade I mean 190 people 190 million people came to our site last year consensus of 20 000 people the indices companies who honestly we see Bloomberg as our competitor CNBC is our competitor broken out you guys are are going for for bigger you really have to be honest yeah we really have and so how did coindesk get there can you can you remind me when you started at coindesk and sure kind of carry us through that Journey so I've been Global head of comms for about two years um but like I

said they were my client in 2017 when I was at Waxman um so when I first started working with them I don't think Michael Casey was even in his as a chief content officer yet I think it was even advisor so kind of a long time um and so coin to ask 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 um when we hire Talent they we have this tremendous intern program that you I was in um at a more senior level we're hiring Talent from Politico Bloomberg other huge mainstream Publications

um we don't really have a super high turnover rate compared to a lot of other newsrooms um but yeah we have like absolute Legends working on the editorial side I mean Kevin Reynolds or editor-in-chief created Bloomberg's news breaking desk um 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 um and our ethics are really strong um so yeah yeah and the the Elder Statesman of coindescar oh no I mean it's true like can you explain that

reference just just people who have been in crypto like literally since the Inception like later since Bitcoin like a year after it's great like you'll hear stories like as much as the new Youngblood people have like given some life to it like people you know you hear stories about um people who go to the first Bitcoin conference and took Bitcoin as payment for hotels from the buddies that they were um doing it from and had sold had to sell like hundreds of Bitcoin because the editorial policy was you know you can't own any yeah so it's like stuff like that right it's like as as much as

uh MKC too I mean Michael cakes he 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 um I can't actually think of a bigger Legend in the space besides Paul vigna who's his partner at the journal they've been covering it for 10 years so it coin desk has uh hired a bunch of people both both Chad's from the traditional media world but I'm assuming but I'm assuming also just like you know normal writers uh 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 I mean I think so to be honest like we don't hire everyone I mean it is a pretty selective process um 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 um that's what the editor-in-chief told us um 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 and how do you deal with that question of uh bags right where like uh are journalists allowed to own only certain

crypto assets what are the general like rules and parameters yeah um and this is on our website too so we allow our journalists to own I think it's like 15 or 1500 USD um essentially I think you can own as much as you want you just have to disclose you have to disclose it and then we have very strict policies on when you can binds 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 um 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 first-hand

experience 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 yeah 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 they want them bought into not just their job but the industry as a whole I'm sure 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 um 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 um and so we allow most of the journalists who are now worldwide to work from home which I think is important um but yeah I mean I think that's a big part of it like coins I mean I I don't like I personally love working at coindesk and I think most people do and so there aren't any limits as to like the magnitude of one's bags you can't you're not limited to like ten thousand or a hundred thousand dollars no I think we are so I think like I mean I think for the majority most of the journalists own of like minimal amounts yeah most it's kind of interesting most

of us don't own very much yeah interesting how does skepticism is like very real I think how does that how does that apply to nfts what are they I'm assuming there's got to be rules on nfts right yeah we typically I think the policy is supposed to be similar any nft over a thousand dollar value um we just closed so oh but it's just it's disclosing not you're actually capped on owning that thing yeah no I don't know whatever you want 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

um 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 also you would get outed so quickly right yeah it would never be 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

profile so public um I don't think anyone would jeopardize that yeah it's also a funny tool to use because people have their enses and then it's like yeah I'm gonna look like why were you you know right you worked for this company you were buying me bits before the you know it's like okay yeah it's really the Unchained stuff is interesting as like a tool sure so you guys feel that coindesk has got a pretty good wrap on just the incentive misalignment between having media people that we want these people to own assets we want them to be neutral how as an

engine okay rate yourself rate yourself because that's a fun question yeah 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 uh 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 um and that's why we really pride ourselves on verifying every Source everything is fact checked so diligently um so yeah I mean I think I think it's kind of known that a lot of other crypto Publications are pay for a plan that's something that we've never done and ever will can you walk me through that uh the due diligence process where I mean basically yeah you're like let's let's go 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 it what a due diligence process looks like in crypto you like you want to start yeah I mean a big thing crypto are just open room or open Secrets right like um you know Scoops about people being involved and this was a big thing when the whole Luna crash happened right like all of dokwan'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 to do this like to really go and like fact check what's going on I think it's like it's really valuable how do you balance uh wanting to be first and wanting to get the scoop and not having complete data like where you don't

really know if it's all there how do you balance this I mean I think that was back to the process right when we publish a piece um it's like the fact checking it's I mean you're not ever publishing a piece like by yourself like there's are 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 stayed up all night publishing a piece to get it first but it's a process and it's a commitment yeah trying to get things first is a dangerous game because it's like you

really open yourself up to I mean we've gotten stuff wrong before um 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 gotta put that what's the recourse process if you get something wrong uh just panic I don't know we have a very we have a very like yeah we issue our Corrections yeah right up at the top I'm thinking as the journalists like everybody Reuters does that yeah no no well immediately wrong

it'll be like really sorry this is like a tried and true science of Journalism like yeah yeah everything's location yeah you never we never like you know try to cover it up or anything that'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 okay 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 uh do Eli in your history at coindust you have like a particularly good Scoop that you're proud of what you have a what is your best scoop here top three yeah just in terms of like

um I love that Constitution down story um I got to go to the auction I love oh wow yeah I've been to a few Sotheby's auctions um but that was probably one of my favorite stories is to be like right there as the auction closed obviously you're on the frontier of constitution doubt yeah yeah we were one of the first people to kind of write about that amazing but again something that we just kind of saw happening on Twitter and we're like oh my gosh this is unbelievable okay so you saw it happen on Twitter somebody I'm sure realizes like hey I'm making the call we need to cover this uh