Transcript 0:00 Bitcoin hit another all-time high this year. We have a president who's pro crypto, and yet there is not a leading crypto publication in the country or the world right now, which just seems very weird. 0:09 It makes me sad, man, because it should be the premier publication for Bitcoin coverage. You can have really cool, like, early vice-esque articles about culture and all these other things, and there's just none of it. 0:23 I understand that journalism is a very tough business model to make work, but I still don't believe somebody can't make money and do pretty well running a newsroom covering a world that's really literally able to spend money out of thin air. 0:37 That just is hard for me to believe, but, uh, but no one is really doing it right now. Happy New Year, y'all, and welcome back to the Block Space pod, brought to you by CleanSpark. 0:47 Crypto media seems like it's always in flux, or dare I say, even in an existential crisis perpetually. 0:53 So as we enter twenty twenty-six, we ask ourselves the question: What is the current state of crypto and Bitcoin media, and which outlets truly deserve your trust and readership? 1:01 To help address these questions, we have Brady Dale on, the author of the Frontstage Exit newsletter and long-tenured crypto beat reporter with stints at Axios and CoinDesk. 1:11 We break out the leading crypto publications, both mainstream and crypto industry-specific. Which ones do we think really merit your time and attention? Listen on to find out. [upbeat music] Howdy, y'all. Charlie here. 1:24 Watch our new documentary, The Bitcoin Professor, featuring StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben Sasson as he and I hit the road to meet with real Bitcoiners in the American heartland. 1:34 We visit a Bitcoin mine, a Bitcoin cattle ranch, and a local Bitcoin meetup. Discover how Eli and StarkWare are building tools to supercharge the Bitcoin economy. Watch the full documentary today on our YouTube channel. 1:47 Link's down below in the show notes. Hey, welcome back to the Block Space podcast. We have Brady Dale, formerly of Axios, with us today. Longtime friend and colleague. Brady, how you doing today? I'm good. 2:00 Thanks for having me. And then, of course, Colin Harper, EIC over Block Space with us today. 2:05 Uh, I'm not doing too many podcasts, but I wanted to do this one because it's a topic I, uh, love covering, which is crypto media, and Brady did a great thread on the topic in December. 2:16 So we're gonna use that thread, go through it in a second just to talk about the business problems with crypto media, and then we're gonna talk about all the names that probably people listening to the show already know, the CoinTesks, the CoinTelegraphs. 2:29 Uh, we're not gonna talk about ourselves too much. 2:31 I think that might be a little unfair, but then we'll also talk about Tradfi, uh, alternatives like newsletters, crypto Twitter, et cetera, and do some rankings, or not quite rankings, like, more listicle, I suppose, but we'll go through that as well. 2:47 So Brady, I'll throw it to you first. Uh, brief intro if you can, since you have-- You were on the show a few weeks ago for mining, but- Mm-hmm... 2:54 I don't think all those audience members necessarily listen to each other, so that would be helpful, and then let's talk about your thread. Sure. Uh, I'm Brady. 3:00 I've been a crypto reporter since, uh, I mean, full-time since twenty seventeen. I think I wrote my first story ever about Bitcoin in, like, twenty fourteen. 3:07 I kinda got serious about it around twenty fifteen, and then I joined CoinDesk in twenty seventeen, and, uh, you know, have been doing nothing but reporting on crypto ever since then. 3:16 So, you know, I was big on reporting DeFi and NFTs, and in the last year or so, because I was at Axios, I was doing a lot of policy-related reporting stuff, but that's kinda my background. 3:25 As for the thread, um, you know, there-- I'm now an independent reporter. I don't have to worry about irritating an editor any longer, and so I've kept a lot of things to myself for a long time. 3:36 But, uh, I just decided to go ahead and get some things off my chest about the crypto media, and honestly, a lot of it was about the media in general. So, like, really briefly, up top, I mean, a frustration. 3:46 Anyone who's worked in a newsroom with me knows I have a lot of, uh, gripes about the PR industry, and in particularly, uh, it frustrates me the way I feel like editorial leadership thinks we ought to just get really let them, uh, kind of be effectively the managing editors of most of our newsrooms. 4:04 And, uh, so, you know, I would push back on all of that to a certain degree, but I've always kinda kept it under my hat. 4:09 So, you know, I, I critiqued the sort of use of embargoes and exclusives and sort of like allowing the inbox to define sort of what people wrote about and, and sort of took the side of, uh, Balaji Srinivasan, who said a long time ago that startups should be their own media and that they shouldn't be going to reporters, and I was like, "Yeah, don't, don't come to us. 4:26 That's great." Uh, and then we can focus-- You guys can write your blog posts about your updates, and we can focus on, like, real stories, larger trends, scoops, investigations, things like that. 4:35 So, and then, and then I went from there poi-- And then the, the other big motivation for it was just, you know, Blockworks had let go of its whole newsroom this year, which is probably the biggest piece of news in crypto media this year. 4:47 And-- But it was hardly the only time reporters in the space have been laid off, and it's just hard not to notice that, like, Bitcoin hit another all-time high this year. 4:54 We have a president who's pro crypto, and yet there is not a leading crypto publication in the country or the world right now, which just seems very weird. Like, CoinDesk lost that pole position. 5:04 No one else took its place, and in fact, Blockworks, which kind of seemed to me like the healthiest publication, big publication out there, let all its reporters go. That was a big surprise to me. 5:13 So, y-- a thing that I pointed out was, having been a crypto reporter for a long time and noticed this again and again, is that they sort of all had roughly the same business model, and that business model was like lead with editorial, but don't really make that much money off of it. 5:26 Maybe do some crappy ads, but not, you know, that much. Then have-- Then everybody does an event, you know. That was, uh, it was CoinDesk who proved that out, at least among crypto media back in the day with Consensys. 5:36 And, uh, and then they'd all have some sort of... It used to be research products. 5:41 I, it was always confusing to me the difference between, like, reporters and researchers, but, like, a research product, and that kind of evolved into a da- a data product. So some sort of, like, paid thing. 5:49 And it's not that I think this lineup of three things is bad. It's just, like, everybody was doing exactly the same three things, and it, and it seems like it's... 5:58 You know, none of these companies are doing great, so probably some folks should take some big risks at this point. 6:03 And, uh, like, the one big innovation I think I found as I was poking around, maybe there was a couple, but it seems like Decrypt is trying to lead into-- lean into prediction markets as a, as a new sort of, um, chunk of its business. 6:16 I don't really know how that's gone, but at least it looks interesting. Um, but I couldn't really find much else beyond that in terms of, like-Companies that you know of that are trying genuinely new stuff. 6:25 So that was kind of the point of the overall thread. Yeah, I think that's, that's true for us in a lot of ways, too. It's like, 6:32 from an editorial perspective, like, that's your way of getting attention for what you're doing, and then the ads, if you're good at selling ads, like, you can make a living off of that. 6:41 But then you always wanna have a few different legs to the stool, is what I always say. Mm-hmm. Three, four legs for a stool. 6:48 Events is really juicy, but events is very crowded, and it seems like there's been a lot of consolidation in that space. Um, and then the last, the research product, which itself has turned into its own thing, right? 6:59 Like Messari popped up in like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. Um, Dune hit, like, all-time strides, somehow became a unicorn. I still don't really understand that one. 7:09 But they hit a u- unicorn status in twenty twenty-one, twenty twenty-two. Um, and there's a few others, right? 7:15 And I think Blockworks pivoting to the data model probably shows, like, how that one could work long-term better than the editorial lens of things. 7:24 Like, I wonder if they're gonna get, like, the, uh, amount of foot traffic you need to keep that kind of product going, but they're banking, I think, on winning so far. 7:33 Uh, Colin, any other input, and then let's go over to our, uh, categories and start kind of going through them. Uh, I think there's a lot of different storylines to, to pick through. 7:40 Yeah, I'll try to keep this short, 'cause I have a lot of thoughts here. [laughs] And, and Brady, Brady identified, I think, a lot of the, of, of the undercurrents of the problem. 7:50 First, going to the fact that there's no leader right now. So much has changed over the last year in terms of the crypto landscape. Another thing about, uh, Blockworks, I, I agree with you, Brady. 7:59 I felt like Blockworks, over the last year and into twenty twenty-four, really revved up their game and showed that they were one of the more serious newcomers in the media space. Mm-hmm. 8:09 And to see them cut their newsroom was really kind of a crossing the Rubicon moment in the sense that, well, we can't really go back to that, and the one newsroom that really seemed to be getting into a groove and doing some great original reporting, some germane reporting that wasn't just PR-driven, is now gone. 8:28 [lip smack] And another one, going back to Decrypt, I've-- they've been getting pretty creative in some ways. 8:32 They're the only crypto publication, I guess except Bitcoin Magazine, but they're the only crypto-specific publication that has a White House press pass, and Sandra Lutz has done some really interesting original reporting with that. 8:44 That's kind of been cool to see, along with the prediction market stuff. 8:47 And going back to the PR problem, I think one of the issues with a lot of the newcomers and the old guard crypto media, they have survived, especially the smaller ones, on freelance work for a long time, and the freelancer is incentivized to pump out a story, and so they're gonna take those PR pitches more often than not, just so that they can get a payday. 9:09 So the incentives there aren't good. 9:11 I also think there's a problem with, just generally speaking, a lot of the reporters at some of the especially bigger crypto pubs were, you know, uh, CUNY, uh, journalism grads, and they were getting their, you know, master's out of Columbia, NYU, some of these other big journalism schools, Missouri. 9:29 And, and they probably envisioned themselves working at Business Insider or Bloomberg or something else that wasn't crypto-related. 9:36 And so I find that the best reporters in this space are those who are actually legitimately interested in the underlying technology, like anything, and if you're not interested in it and you don't wanna learn more in your free time, it's gonna be really hard for you to distinguish between what is a good story and what isn't, and you're gonna be more likely to be fed from the PR trough as a result. 9:56 The last thing I'll say, and we'll get into this when we dissect the, uh, other com- the, the crypto media that we're gonna be putting under a looking glass here in a second. 10:05 When we were at CoinDesk, there was this huge-- when all, when all three of us were here, there was this huge push for the discovery audience. I'm sure y'all remember this in, in discussions a lot. 10:14 And when you are trying to bifurcate your audience and write for people who are diehard crypto natives and people who know nothing about it, they don't even know what Bitcoin is until it popped up on their Google feed- Right... 10:25 there's no way you're gonna satisfy both of those. Yes. And there's no way you're gonna be able to write in a way that is appealing to both. 10:31 You either have to water it down so much that my grandma can understand it- Mm-hmm... 10:35 or you're going to have to make it so laden with industry terms and insights that are kind of beyond the average reader that they're not going to like it, but the crypto native people are. 10:45 And the, the last part about that, I think, that, to just get into one last point. Mm-hmm. 10:51 Crypto and Bitcoin people are very much in the tinfoil spectrum, and I mean that with all love because I, I, I live in this, this realm too with a lot of things. 11:00 But they're gonna be more apt to go direct to Twitter or direct to primary sources for their information because they can understand it. 11:06 And so they're going to be looking at threads from industry thought leaders and from professionals in the space. 11:12 That's how they're gonna digest a lot of their news, and they're gonna probably be biased towards alt media or a big anon account rather than legacy media. 11:20 Kind of like we've seen with a lot of the kinda more, um, I would say fringe, but they're becoming increasingly, uh, bumped into the Overton Window, some of the, uh, on- online habits of people on the right or the left that fall kind of out of the mainstream, so- And just to jump on a thing that you said in there, I largely agree with you about the sort of level of curiosity of most crypto reporters, but I also felt like a lot of that also came from editorial leadership. 11:44 Like, a part of the job when we were at CoinDesk was w- our expectation was, go through your inbox and you needed to decide if any of those press releases you got were worth covering. 11:51 Obviously, we weren't gonna do all of them. We got hundreds, you know. But, like, a part of the job was to, like, look at those and, uh, and I, and I just think that, um, in fact, that that really... 12:02 It doesn't, to your, to your later point, that a lot of the crypto native people, they're gonna wanna take the primary sources. 12:07 I think you're 100% right, which just goes to show why journalists, people who are working in newsrooms, just shouldn't be bothering with those. Those should just come straight from the companies. 12:15 They can just put out their blog posts, and that's fine. 12:18 And we should be looking for bigger trends, the story beneath the story, um, the things that people aren't trying to tell you about, the companies that are closing down. 12:25 That's the, that is the higher and more useful piece of our work, and I think a lot of these newsrooms are burning their energy chasing these low-hanging fruit stories that really are gonna get out there over Twitter anyway. 12:36 They should be doing, they should be doing higher quality work than that. That was sort of my argument. We're CleanSparkAmerica's Bitcoin miner, a publicly traded company with the largest operating hash rate, 12:49 powered entirely by self-operated infrastructure across four states. This is our proof of work, and we are setting the standard for what's next. 13:02 Learn more about the intersection of energy and Bitcoin at cleanspark.com. Okay, so I have a few categories that we're gonna go through. We're just gonna put the crypto publications that I myself thought worth covering. 13:16 There's a few more out there. Apologies if you did not make the list. Maybe next year. Uh, we're gonna put them into these categories, but the list as of now is Unchained, The Rage, Decrypt, TradFi. 13:27 I'm gonna put New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Reuters in that bucket. Bloomberg, CoinDesk, The Block, Forbes Crypto, Crypto Twitter. 13:34 Just saying Crypto Twitter in general, there's like the creator class, which we will talk a little bit about at some point, I'm sure, on the podcast. 13:42 Blockworks, Messari, Fortune, DL News, Cointelegraph, TFTC, and Bitcoin Magazine. So those are the groups. We'll probably get to talk about all of them at some point, uh, and then at least put them in the categories. 13:55 So for the categories, we have small but deadly, research desks, uh, we have TradFi giants, shuffling the deck, non-journalist challengers, the alternative to the alternative, and can the conference circuit keep working? 14:12 Which is a mouthful, but we're gonna throw that one in there. So small but deadly. I'm just gonna throw these one at you guys. I won't even, like, throw it up on the, on the screen. Small but deadly. 14:22 I put DL News and The Rage in this category. Colin, if you can actually open the Google Doc if you wanna follow along with us there. There's probably a few others you can put in there. It really- The Defiant probably. 14:34 Yeah, The Defiant. I m- I didn't put them on my list 'cause I haven't-- we don't cover DeFi too much. Mm-hmm. It's also hard to know, like, what small is because I, I didn't do any... 14:44 This is completely based on, like, bias, but- Mm-hmm... small to me is under a hundred thousand Twitter followers, maybe even under fifty thousand- Oh, okay... 14:52 for the main publication, and then I would assume, like, website traffic's probably under a hundred thousand. Um- Yeah... 14:58 maybe both of those have more than that, I'm not, not sure, but they're also more recent publications. I said they're deadly, though, because they've both had really great reporting over the last year. 15:09 Uh, I wouldn't say anything that, like, is-- nothing, like, really negative comes to mind. They're the smaller publications still getting off the ground in some ways. 15:17 You know, they're not as big as sort of the incumbent crypto companies, other crypto, uh, reporters out there, but they are, like, making a splash. 15:25 The Rage, obviously, with its reporting on a few different issues this year. 15:30 I thought the Luke Dashner piece they put out a little bit ago was really interesting on the soft work, uh, consideration they got from the signal text group that, or texts that leaked, and then they had one other one during the year, uh, that I'm blanking on now. 15:45 Colin will remember. Well, they, they owned the, uh, Samurai trial. The Samurai trial, yeah. They, they, they absolutely owned coverage of that, and shout out to Lola Leeds and David Moritz for, for their work on that. 15:58 I, I, I've loved what they've put out. I think they've punched well above their weight. You know, it's almost kind of like, uh, what the original intercept was for, for crypto and Bitcoin in a lot of ways. 16:09 And going back to Brady's point about what's the business model, they're one hundred percent reader-funded. They have no, they have no ads. I don't know how much they're making from their donations. 16:20 They have silent Bitcoin payments as well as a static address. The static address doesn't show too much inflow, so no doubt Lola is kind of bootstrapping a lot of this herself. They might have donors that we can't see. 16:31 But I think that in the era of ad fatigue- Yeah... there's room for a few subscription-based models, especially if you show that you can really produce the work. 16:42 You have to put out a lot of content or at least really high-quality content, and I think that's where it gets tough, where there's probably ten stories a year in crypto that really matter, and I think that's where we can get to the TradFi segment in a little bit. 16:54 It's like they just cover on the majors. They're last to it. You know, they're obviously last to it. Took them two weeks to put a story out on Hayden Davis after the mem- meme coin thing, but they, they get to the story 17:07 at some point. They cover the ten of them. Uh, DL News, I'll just mention really quickly, uh, they've awesome data because they're attached to, I think, like, the larger, um, data landscape as kinda like their backbone. 17:19 And they- Well, DeFi Llama is what started it. That's why it's DL. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they got, they got that larger attachment. 17:25 And then I think they've just done, like, a really good job being consistent on the beats that they cover as well. And I haven't seen- My-... too much more than that. I like DL News a lot. I go to it frequently. 17:35 Um, I think they've got good coverage. 17:36 My [chuckles] my one critique of DL News is that I think if you follow their newsletters and stuff, I think they're-- editorially, they have this guilt about the fact that they're owned by, like, a crypto-rich, you know, group. 17:47 Yeah. And so they, like, they sort of do that sort of annoying default, like, crypto kinda sucks sort of lens that so much crypto media does a lot. Yeah. 17:54 Um, and I think it just sort of comes from feeling somewhat guilty about the fact that they are just purely funded by crypto money, which I just-- I ne- I-- One of the other things I said in my thread is crypto media just needs to get over this. 18:03 Like, we are a part of the ecosystem that we're reporting on. Like, the negativity towards... 18:08 You know, it's, like, fine to point out mistakes and scaminess and whatever, but, like, to just be, like, fundamentally critical. I sort of sometimes feel like I get that from DL News. 18:15 But, but the reporters are really good. Um, they were up-- w-- They were, um, mainstays of the SBF coverage last year. 18:22 You know, there was a gang of us who were there, like, every day, and, uh, and DL News was always there. So I think it's great. 18:27 I, I don't-- The thing about DL News is I don't think they have to worry too much about a business model. I think the business model is DeFi Llama, you know. 18:33 So it sort of started with data, and then for whatever reason, those founders just wanted-- [lip smack] Maybe they just wanted, sort of wanted to, uh, sort of guarantee that no DeFi Pulse ever replaced them again, so they created this editorial thing. 18:45 But I don't think they needed to do it. I think they were making plenty of money as it, as it was.Yeah, they're doing fund acknowledgments. This new site was built on stolen funds. [laughs] I would also put un- You know? 18:56 I, I put Unchained under this category. I didn't earlier, but I, I think there's not really another great category for them because maybe they're under the alternative to the alternatives. 19:07 Uh, you could also put a pitch for them to be in that category. Or shuffling the deck in the sense that I feel like they've really... Laura Shin's been hiring out a lot for that. You know- Yeah... Steve Ulrich. 19:16 Yeah, but they don't stay. The former head of research for digital assets at Forbes recently joined as an executive editor. Yeah. I feel like they've leveled up recently. Is there a-- I don't really think so. 19:26 I mean, Unchained is-- I was baffled- I'm not necessarily saying in the terms of the content. I'm just saying they've tried to ramp up coverage. No, I know. 19:33 But I, my point on them is, I guess, I just, having watched them somewhat closely, and I, I was baffled by them launching a newsroom. I don't re- I didn't... I was just like, "Just focus on the podcast. 19:42 That's what's doing great for you guys." But they launched this newsroom. But if you look, like, nobody's there for long other than Steve. But, like, and he hasn't been there for that long yet. 19:50 But a lot of reporters have come in and out. It's never usually more-- a newsroom of more than, like, a couple of people at it or maybe three people at any given time, you know? 19:57 Where would you put them in our categories, though? I think small but de- I just, I just think, I think they're doing- Yeah... 20:02 their podcasts are great, and this new formula that they're, they're getting onto, where it's like recruit a few semi-famous people in a category to do a show together. 20:10 I mean, that-- it's basically the show that you used to do at CoinDesk. Well, only it's just like- Yeah... a little bit... You know, like The Chopping Block is. What was that show that you did? 20:17 The Hash, but, uh, Chopping Block actually has important people on it. That- Well, no, it's like that's what they did. They [laughs] they took-- They go, "The Hash idea is pretty good." Yeah. 20:25 "Let's get a few famous people." And that became Bits and Blips, and this new one with the ladies, the Sex and the City or whatever it's called, and the, um, and The Chopping Block. And, you know, so it's like it... 20:35 I kind-- This was like-- I sort of thought Blockworks shouldn't have opened a newsroom either because they were strong on, in the same way. They sort of, podcasts were good for them, but they both did this. 20:44 They felt like they did the newsroom thing, I guess, for SEO or whatever. But, um, I don't know. I think, I think Unchained clearly is a, has a, takes up a lot of space in the market. 20:53 I just don't know that its editorial side is super important. Yeah. 20:56 I mean, I, I think it's cool to see them making strides at the very least, and it is really hard to establish an editorial room and then make money off of it in the s- in the same year. 21:04 They've had a few important stories. They did the one on Pomp and his SPAC, which I think got a lot of traction, a few others. 21:11 My thoughts on Unchained really quickly before I move to the next one is, like, they combine this really well-known and loved podcast that ob-obviously is making a lot of money, it's one of the largest out there, 21:23 with, like, the other shows that are more, like, shill-based, right? Like Chopping Block is obviously, like, four VCs talking their backs. Mm-hmm. And they make a lot of great points, and they're all very smart. 21:33 But you also have, like, risk there, and then the other shows too. So you have, like, this combination which probably a lot of crypto media will go this way and, you know, we're guilty of this to a large degree as well. 21:45 The professional part of being a journalist publication and then also being, like, a shill house, and it's-- have to put those two together to some degree because we're in crypto. 21:55 Uh, and I think all media is like that to some degree as well. So that's, that's my thought. I'm gonna sit on the fence for that one. Let's keep going, though. Research desks. Uh, I think we can firmly put Messari there. 22:08 Blockworks is the new entrance there, though I also put them in shuffling the deck, uh, for obvious reasons. But I think Messari, uh, Blockworks, and then, you know, there's a handful of other ones. 22:20 The Coin Metrics, Kaiko. Block, that's a good show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, some of those I didn't include just because, like, I haven't seen Kaiko on my feed too much. 22:28 I don't know if it's just, like, X isn't showing me Kaiko as much anymore. But, you know, I'd say, uh, Coin Metrics also would fit in there, but they're way less vocal after they sold. 22:39 Um, in terms of, like, the crypto publications, it's Blockworks and Messari I'd say that are, like, more publisher first. Messari puts out a lot of reports. 22:49 Blockworks obviously is rebuilding that entire team around data. Uh, research desks, the model obviously is subscription-based, and that can be really strong. 22:59 You're trying to get to that f-five thousand dollar a year subscriber who works at a bank and then can interact with your team. And it, it works really well long term if you're able to get a decent sized moat. 23:10 My question with all these things, though, is at what point do people stop paying for this because a lot of the data is just free and available on other sites? 23:17 Uh, and what data do you actually really care about, especially in a world where a lot of alt chains are just dying. Blockworks went all in on data right now, and especially on Solana. 23:27 They, they launched this new product that's basically investor relations for Solana-based tokens. 23:32 And I think the long-term vision for that is, like, tokenized stocks on Solana, and they will be, like, the team that kind of helps with that. 23:39 But the issue with it is that there's already, like, a bunch of competitors in the investor relations world, and it doesn't really matter. Like, there's an underlying blockchain for a tokenized stock. 23:46 Like, you're still talking about revenue figures and EBITDA at the end of the day. 23:51 So I don't, I don't really see what having more metrics around Solana, which are free and available everywhere, gives you versus the incumbents that are already there. 24:00 I think your best case scenario is using that hype to be able to become some sort of research arm for an investment bank or something similar. So that's how I see it. 24:09 An easy idea, if I, if, if all I was doing journalism for was just to make money, I was just like, "Oh, I can kind of write, and I just wanna make some money," a, a, an idea I've had for years which I think would work great, is, uh, spend the money up front to subscribe to a bunch of the most bespoke, uh, research and, uh, you know, newsletters and stuff, and then just write a newsletter where I summarize the best stuff out of all of it every day. 24:30 Oh, right. 'Cause, you know, that's not illegal. 24:31 It's why I didn't s- it's-- If I didn't steal the actual writing, I just was like, "Here's the important points from, like, [laughs] what Messari put out, what Kaiko put out, what Coin Metrics put out." 24:40 I think, you know, just charge a fee for that. I think you can make good money off of it. But I don't-- That's not what I wanna do, but I, I think a person could do that and do quite well. 24:48 Going back to your point, Will, about who's buying this and will they continue to buy it, think-A lot of this data is out there, but the value is in cleaning it up and also showing it in different perspectives or contrasting it with other data and finding a way to complicate the data set by adding new data points, different chart views. 25:07 But my question is, uh, yeah, who is buying this and how quickly do they end up hiring someone to just do this for them? Will they end up doing that, these financial institutions? 25:20 Because I, I wonder, and I'm not sold on this, but I wonder if there's a transition period where now you have a lot of TradFi institutions and other legacy institutions that are starting to wade into this stuff, and they just need to outsource this expertise right now. 25:33 But how long until they bring it in-house? I don't have an answer to that. I don't even know if that's a problem. I don't know how many people are buying these as retail investors versus institutional. 25:43 I've always kind of been of the mindset that most of the bigger institutions, I could be totally wrong about this, are gonna have some resources at hand to do this. But 25:53 the data providers also benefit from the fact that a lot of these things are corporate cards that are paying for this, right? So- Well, the thing- You, you, you know... 26:01 the line we heard at a lot of the crypto desks as I was leaving full crypto media, you know, around twenty twenty-one and I went to Axios, but, uh, all of them were saying, or not all of them, but many of them were saying, "We wanna be the Bloomberg Terminal for crypto." 26:14 Totally. You know, like, that was the line. And I, I don't, I, I don't know if people are still thinking that's possible. Say the line, Bart. [laughs] It's literally that, yeah. 26:22 I, I don't know if anyone's really saying that. 26:24 We do work with an interesting startup called Synoptic, and they are building that, but they're actually building a data-first product, and they're, like, talking to, uh, specific trading teams, and so not, it's not for retail at all. 26:36 But everyone else- So many people have tried to build it, though. I mean, it's like they're not the first person to try to- Yeah... build, you know? Yeah. And maybe it gets back to what you're saying, Will. 26:44 I mean, how all of this data is public, so you can pull it. The reason why a Bloomberg Terminal- Who knows?... is so valuable- Yeah... is it is aggregation on every single market in existence. Yeah. 26:55 I've never, I've never accessed one, but I feel like if I did, my soul would leave my body for a second just for the fact that it is an immense database. It's huge. And a huge engineering feat. 27:06 Comes with its own custom keyboard, it's how big it is. Uh, I don't know if we need to spend too much more time on the research desks. The models make sense. 27:16 Blockworks is saying that they're making more money than ever after letting go of their team. So we will check back in on them, right, maybe, you know, mid-year and, and see how they're doing. 27:26 But best of luck to all those teams. Uh, let's go to shuffling or actually TradFi giants next. I put Reuters, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. 27:35 Like, you could put Bloomberg in here obviously, but I just wanted to maybe even carve out Bloomberg as its own category because it does seem to still be, like, the giant everyone has to fight. 27:47 Uh, they just have all the data. They have all the AI integrations now into Terminal as well. Um, David Dee- They stole a bunch of the best Coindesk reporters. They did a great job doing [laughs] that. 27:58 Like they got Wu Yao and David Chen, you know? Like, that was smart. Yeah, they, they are kind of their own beast versus Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Reuters. So I kinda wanted to put Bloomberg to the side. 28:10 With those three, I, I only have the same thing I said earlier, which is they cover 10 stories a year. Maybe Reuters does more 'cause it seems to be, like, more passive, shorter stories. 28:20 New York Times and Wall Street Journal, they get really good exclusives now, and they certainly do, like, the deeper dives, and they have more hour, hourly coverage of things, or hours to cover something if they want to. 28:32 But they're always a few weeks behind, and it's mostly for, like, their subscriber base that doesn't really care if they're a few weeks behind. 28:38 So it, it's not a competitor in the sense of the daily news flow on X, besides those exclusives in the few times a year they get a scoop. 28:48 They almost aren't really competitor to Coindesk, The Block, et cetera, because that audience wants, like, the IV drip on a daily basis, and you're just not gonna get that from The New York Times. 28:59 Like, they're gonna give you 10 crypto stories a year that really matter that are going to be very one-sided, especially if you look at the Bitcoin mining coverage, which oddly enough is a huge focus for them, even though most people don't care about Bitcoin mining. 29:11 They, they really do. But they care about it when it's Chinese nationals undermining US security. It's crazy how- Sorry... yeah, like, most crypto media doesn't care about Bitcoin mining. Like, maybe they cover it. 29:23 Most companies don't. Uh, and then New York Times, if you look at, like, their crypto coverage over the years, 30, 40% Bitcoin mining I would estimate, so. And it's all FUD. Yeah. 29:33 I think that's-- Sorry, not to cut you off, Will, but- No, it's great... uh, there have been multiple times where my father-in-law will say, "Did you see this New York Times article about Bitcoin mining?" 29:42 And I'll read it and I'll say, "David, I can't begin to tell you how one-sided or just factually inaccurate this is." [laughs] That was my whole life at Axios too. Yeah. 29:51 It's like you should, you should email them and tell them [laughs]- Yeah, right... tell them to issue a correction. It's like he doesn't understand. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, he doesn't get it. 30:00 Um, and The Wall Street Journal is a little bit better but also bad. I actually think Reuters generally has done a decent job recently. 30:08 They've gotten some pretty good scoops related to mining and also treasury companies. Wall Street Journal had a few as well. 30:15 But if I ever see any Bitcoin headline coming out of New York Times, this is not good, but my prior is to dismiss it as a, like, propaganda mouthpiece, you know? Well, they did this 30:25 really, really bad story on, like, the SEC and, uh, and, and how it's sort of dealt with crypto. I mean, it was, it was truly, I mean, it was just generally horrible reporting. 30:34 But of course it was getting shared around all over and being like, "Look at the corruption of the Trump administration," whereas like, you know, like the whole cor... I mean, I don't need to... I'm sorry. 30:41 I'm gonna break down right now. But it was, it was re- it was very bad, and they similarly did another sort of like hand-wringing, we should all be panicking about stablecoin story, which was doing the sort of... 30:50 A- and my problem with The New York Times is I was really hoping that we were gonna get to the point where they were gonna kind of grow up a little bit about crypto and be like, "Okay, this isn't going away. 30:59 Let's treat it as a business sector now." But they're still just sort of-Ser- serving their progressive leadership ba-- their progressive readership base who wants to hear that- Yeah... 31:08 this is evil and bad, and that eventually Elizabeth Warren will in fact stop it for them, and we'll all be saved. 31:14 Um, but, and you know, at the end of the day, it's just like what it all comes down to is, you know, for really liberal people, they feel bad about the environment, but they're not gonna sell their SUVs, and they're not gonna leave the suburbs, but they can scapegoa-big- scapegoat Bitcoin as the big problem out there. 31:28 And as long as they keep doing that, they can feel a little bit better about themselves. Um, and that's, that's the story. Then that's what the New York Times coverage is, is rooted in. 31:36 It's also a business model issue, right? Where on their side, their long-term subscribers want to have that reinforced opinion because they're- Mm. I'd love to see, uh, 31:47 some sort of investment look at their subscribers, how much of them actually own Bitcoin versus, like, the general US population. And I would assume their readership would probably be lower. 31:58 I don't know if it'd be a stark difference, but they have a huge subscriber base, and they have to sell into that every story they publish. 32:05 Uh, you know, obviously they have that as a reoccurring, but, like, you don't wanna attack your subscribers' biases too much because you want them to resubscribe at the end of the year. 32:14 Versus crypto media, we're selling advertisements to crypto people and other people in the crypto industry, so we're on the flip side of the issue. 32:22 From an Axios perspective, I'm curious, Brady, like, how did you kinda see the meat get handled internally when it came to crypto stuff? Well, it's just like, I mean, if, 32:32 you know, if one of those hand-wringing, crypto is burning the world sort of big stories would come out, it would instantly get shared into the channel that I was in, that, like most people in it [chuckles] never even like looked at the crypto channel. 32:42 I was like- Yeah... the sole person just sort of posting things in there most of the time. And then they would post that, and of course, they never read past, you know, the first two or three headlines. 32:48 Well, uh, uh, two or, two or three paragraphs 'cause it just would've confirmed their priors. I mean, I don't, I would-- I don't wanna say that like everyone there was like totally hostile. 32:55 I mean, obviously they hired me, and they wanted us to be covering it. But, but there still was that sort of like, kinda that sta- same sort of mainstream, sort of generally progressive person not really loving- Yeah... 33:05 the sector and sort of assuming most all of it is, is just nothing but scams and, you know, blah, blah, blah. 33:09 So, um, that, yeah, I mean, I was, I was always patient about it and would like push back gently and just be like, "But, you know, this is, [chuckles] this is-- there's more to the story," or, "This, this prediction is not gonna pan out," and like blah, blah, blah. 33:20 Um, but yeah. And, you know, to their credit, I mean, one of the things I'm, uh-- One of the pieces that I can't believe they let me publish, but they did, and they, they didn't just let me publish. 33:29 They put it in AM, which is like the big thing for them. 33:31 But right after FTX went under in Dec- like, at the end of that year, like in the f- a month later in December, I wrote a story in AM, which is like their big thing, and then it's also on the site, whose headline was, "Crypto Will Be Fine." 33:44 You know, just a month [chuckles] after FTX melted down, I was just like, "It's all gonna come back." Like- Yeah... "Don't worry." And I, you know, they let me publish that. So, um... 33:51 And they didn't just let me publish it. They put it in, you know, a prominent spot. A big spot. So, uh, yeah. So it was great. Wait, so that happened in the fallout, like twenty twenty-two? 33:58 So you published this in like twenty twenty-three, late twenty twenty-two? A month after FTX fell, I published it, yeah. I was like, "This is- Nice... this is all gonna come back." I hope people listened to you, Brady. 34:07 [laughs] If they bought when you told them to, they'd be up a lot. They would be. They would be. Okay, we'll go to the next one. This is shuffling the deck. 34:16 I put Blockworks in this one, also put them in research desks because that's essentially what they became, but they obviously shuffled the deck by, uh, laying off their entire editorial staff, keeping the podcasts and focusing on research. 34:31 Cointelegraph, for them, they brought in their former EIC, John Rice, so the return of Rice 2.0. Uh, they've also had a tough year with Google oddly taking them off the site almost completely. 34:45 Um, I don't know if that's been resolved as of now, but- Good. [laughs] It's, it was awful. Um, went from like ten million monthly views and then cratered because Google SEO just kinda deleted them. 34:58 There's some conspiracy theories I've seen around that with like Gemini scraping their site and then pulling all their information to that LLM, but we'll talk about that in a second. 35:08 Uh, Coindesk with the bullish acquisition, Forbes Crypto, uh, a few thoughts on that. I'll actually throw it to Colin maybe for some more thoughts, uh, and Brady. 35:18 And then The Block as well, uh, with Frank Chaparro leaving earlier this year, and them sort of focusing more on data, I would say, and then also launching a few new podcasts this year. 35:30 Um, overall, I think this shuffling the deck group, they're all in various states, right? 35:36 Some of them are completely shuffling the deck, where like Coindesk brought a new CEO as of December and has a new owner, or Blockworks letting go of their editorial staff. 35:45 Some of the shuffling the deck is like pretty slight. Like, I haven't seen a huge difference with The Block. 35:49 Like, Frank left, yes, but it was, it wasn't like he was doing a lot of like his normal beat the last few years. 35:55 For those of us who were around in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, like he was the face of that company, and he put them on the map with a lot of his tether reporting. 36:04 Uh, and then after twenty-one and like the fallout of their president being leaked or the CEO being linked to FTX, that was the major shuffling moment for them. 36:15 I would say this year there's still like some more like, where are we fitting into this media landscape? Uh, any thoughts on these groupings or this grouping? Lot of thoughts. I, I'll go through really quickly. 36:27 We kind of already talked about Blockworks. Cointelegraph getting nuked from Google, I'm not one to- Brutal. Sorry? Brutal. 36:35 I, I'm not one to simp for the Mag Seven overlords, but that was probably a long time coming, honestly. 36:44 Cointelegraph has been historically really kind of, uh, toed the line between what is promotional and what is straight up, you know, paid content. 36:54 And there was a time there where they dominated SEO for anything Bitcoin and crypto-related. They just pumped out a bunch of articles. They relied on a lot of cheap labor to do so. Quality was never really that good. 37:05 Um, sometimes they had a few good things from a few good reporters, but overallI, I think Cointelegraph is the closest thing the big publications have to almost like a National Enquirer for the crypto industry. 37:17 Um, Coindesk, we've already said- Unpopular take, I like the art. That's all I'm gonna say there, but I, I do like the art. The art's great. [laughs] That is so true. 37:23 The art style has always been a classic, and ripped off by a number of, you know, smaller, you know, m- uh, smaller crypto publications. But I kinda already touched on Coindesk. Lost a lot of talent. 37:38 I would, would love to see a few things turned around there. I think that they're probably still considered the top crypto news site, uh, at least in public perception. Quick thing on the Block before I go to Forbes. 37:51 The Block, I think, has probably weathered the changes the best out of all of these. I think they would maybe get moved up a little bit, I think, in terms of prestige if they did a little more original reporting. 38:03 I'm probably gonna get skewered for that with someone being like, "But see all these headlines." But, you know, they got Daniel Kuhn from Coindesk recently. That was a huge win. 38:10 They've still got a lot of really solid people on their team, and their, their research is, and their data is great. Uh, Forbes Crypto. 38:18 [laughs] Um, I'm a senior contributor at Forbes, and I, you know, I don't really post there anymore, but b- i- it's an open secret that Forbes Crypto has the lowest editorial standard, because, like, literally for just regular contributors, 38:34 you go into a backend and you publish a story, and there's no editorial oversight. And so you'll wonder, and I'm gonna just name a name here. I'm sorry, I'm just gonna do it. 38:46 I, I'm not trying to be a douche or anything, but this is just how, this is how it gets gamed. There's a reporter there called Billy Bambrough, Billy Bambrough. Apologies- Notorious... 38:55 I don't know how you say it in UK, in, in, in UK English. But 39:00 you'll see he's consistently the number one, uh, journalist on Forbes Crypto in terms of views, and that's because he has figured out how to hack the attention and SEO game for stories, and all of his stories are like, "Fed Powell releases bombshell warning about Bitcoin." 39:18 And then it gets like 150, 200,000, a million views. 39:22 The reason for that is because Forbes Crypto's contributor program pays people, like, $50 an article, and if you publish six articles a month, you then receive consideration for additional payment based on how many views you bring in. 39:37 I don't remember the specifics, but it's, like, fractions of a cent or, like, a, a cent for recurring US v- viewers, and then, like, maybe half a penny for recurring international viewers, and then something else for every one-time viewer. 39:51 So this is really important, because it, it does two things for Forbes. One, it guarantees really cheap labor for their crypto coverage, and, and they do this for everything, by the way. This isn't crypto-specific. 40:03 This is every Forbes contributor network. They have it for video games, consumer goods, finance, uh, real est- like, literally any category you can think of. Go on forbes.com and go to the different categories. 40:15 You'll see what I'm talking about. It's a huge litany. But they do this for all of these contributor groups, and they get cheap labor for it, but also it allows them to dominate SEO. 40:23 Because now you have writers who are not just incentivized to pump out as much as possible, but also they're, they're really paying attention to the SEO on their articles, 'cause if they don't, then they're not going to get any money from the view count. 40:38 So I would love to see Forbes change this. It's, it's actually kinda sad that one of the premier financial magazines in the US has kind of figured out how to game SEO this way. But 40:51 as a result, they consistently have some of the, I would say, lowest quality coverage, you know? So- Just to... A funny story here. 40:58 When the Razzlekhan news came out, um, or the, [clears throat] the, the YouTube rapper who stole $4 billion worth of, uh, Bitcoin, I mean, allegedly from, uh, from, um, uh, what's it, Bifinex. 41:10 Uh, when the story came out about her having that, David Floyd, who used to be a reporter at Coindesk and is still a good, good friend of mine, he and I both, like, were reading it at the exact same time, and we basically texted each other and they were, like, going through her various attributes, and we basically texted each other at the same moment, like, "Forbes contributor." 41:25 [laughs] Um- And one... And sorry, and before you continue, one last thing. Oh, sorry. 41:32 Forbes contributors are notorious, or it's an open secret that, like, so much so that there are internal emails sent about this, that they will be paid by PR people to place stories. 41:43 I personally have been contacted multiple times on Twitter or via email asking for paid placement in Forbes. I have never acted on that- Mm-hmm... 41:51 because I have morals and ethics, but that's, that's another kind of malincentive within this whole model. It's crazy they leave the backdoor open for anyone to post on their website. That's just kind of insane. 42:02 Well, you have to be onboarded first, right? But to your point, it's, it is wild. Now, an editor will go through after the fact and either remove an article if it doesn't meet standards or edit it if it's- Yeah... 42:13 horrible. But i- I, I couldn't believe it when I got, uh, signed onto the contributor network in 2020. Uh, last thoughts on shuffling the deck to Brady, though. 42:21 Blockworks, Cointelegraph, Coindesk, Forbes Crypto, The Block, or anyone else you wanna throw in that category? Yeah, no, I think, I think that's, um, that's the right list. 42:30 Um, yeah, I don't, uh, I don't really understand, like, what any of those companies are doing. 42:34 I guess the one thought I would say bouncing off what Colin said is just, um, I kinda thought The Block was sunk, uh, at a certain point there, and I think there was rumors going around that they were going under any minute now, but they keep not going under. 42:46 So I guess, I don't know- Yeah... it's not true or something, [laughs] you know? Like- The, the going under rumors are always there in crypto media, so- True... for now. People s- seem to survive somehow. Uh- Yeah... 42:58 okay. Next one, non-journalist challengers. So this is kind of an open one that we didn't even, like, listen in the names earlier for. But it's basically, like, creator channels or newsletters that are doing really well. 43:09 Brady, you put Milk Road, Blockmates-The Pomp letter, Glassnode insights. 43:15 Uh, there's probably a few other ones in here, and there's probably a lot of overlap with the alternative to the alternatives, which we'll do after this one. 43:22 The non-journalist challengers, we could also probably put in crypto Twitter with the rise of, like, the, the quote unquote citizen reporter. Um, 43:30 and just, like, general large Twitter accounts that will report on things either well or horrifically poorly, uh- [laughs]... which is most of the case is, like, very poor reporting. 43:41 Um, you could also probably put in, like, ZachXBT. Sure. And, hmm, trying to think of a few other ones. Uh, Sammy, the TimeChain guy. He does, like- Mm-hmm... a lot of stuff with ETFs. Uh, yeah. 43:53 Any thoughts from you guys on this one? I actually throw it to Brady, 'cause this was your category. Well, I kinda think this is what crypto media is now, and these are the people who are doing really well. 44:00 I mean, Mc- Milk Road was acquired for a ton of money. They're so big. I wasn't even paying attention to them about, until about seven months ago, but, you know. 44:08 I, and I think th- these publications all speak to what a- people actually care about as, like, you know, when will number go up? What should I buy, you know? 44:15 But, um, I don't know that I feel great about it, but this is, I think, the chunk of this world that, uh, I, you know, I need to pay more attention to, because this is the real competition in this, is kind of where the puck is headed. 44:27 I mean, I guess it's what I'm kind of doing now with my newsletter, uh, on sub- but I'm trying to still do it from a, you know, kind of like a reporter would do it, and someone who's an alum of these newsrooms would do it. 44:37 But, uh, I just kinda think this is sorta the, the future. Somehow some amalgamation of these sorts of groups are the new Coindesk, I think. I just don't... It's just not as legible to me. 44:48 Like, especially when you talk about, like, um, a ZachXBT, for example. I feel like every t- I've, I sort of quit Twitter for a while. 44:54 I'm back on it in a big way now, but I'm just sort of constantly seeing accounts with, like, 85,000 followers who I've, like, have no idea who you are, what you're about. 45:04 [laughs] And, like, how does someone keep track of all these folks coming along who are doing super well and clearly have big followings, but they're just coming out of nowhere? I don't know. It's baffling. 45:13 It's hard to follow, but I think it's, like, kind of the future maybe. 45:17 I, I would agree with that, and there's a tension that y'all have both touched on with this that we're seeing in alternative media for everything else, is there's a lot of really high-quality reporting going on with some of these one-man shows, one-woman shows, right? 45:30 But there's also [laughs] a lot of slop and a lot of garbage. Uh, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, and any time anyone brings up, "Well, you can't trust those sources. 45:39 Here's an example of one that is misreporting or is, is pushing, you know, misinformation," uh, you have the same problem in the mainstream media, which is why these guys exist in general. 45:49 There's still good reporting going on there, but there's also some absolute crap and propaganda, right? 45:54 The, and the interesting thing about, like, the ZachXBTs of the world, for those who don't know, he's this on-chain sleuth. 45:59 He comes from the world of traders, and where he understands how to track these things and knows what to look for, and that's what you'll see a lot with these kind of citizen journalists, I guess we'll just call them, or the non-journalist challengers, is they really exist in these worlds. 46:14 And, and to throw a bone, we, we do it too much, but I just think this was one of the bigger stories of two years ago, or really it's unfolded over multiple years. 46:22 But let's not forget that, like, Nick Carter was really the one to break the news of Operation Choke Point 2.0 in Pirate Wires, and part of the reason he was able to do that, people say, "Why aren't the journalists looking at this?" 46:32 Well, like, Nick swims in the schools with the people who are getting screwed, right? Like, he, he swims in the waters with the people who are getting screwed by Choke Point 2.0. He had first-hand n- knowledge of it. 46:41 He knew it was happening. And there's this interesting tension here where some of the best reporting, traditionally this is a no-no, right, kind of per what we were originally saying, journalistic ethics. 46:51 It's coming from people who have staked interests in these industries. Just because they're close enough to the information and they can see it clearly and be able to relay it to the rest of us. 47:00 So, like you said, Brady, is this good? It can be. I don't know long term if it is good, but it's certainly something that we have to come to grips with, to your point. 47:09 Yeah, on the Nick thing, I, I, you know, I was, I bought into Operation Choke Point 2.0 from the beginning. I, a lot of my peers then in the mainstream media were poo-pooing it and saying this is all nonsense. 47:19 I mean, I know some folks who still say it is, but, um, y- I was always all for it. 47:24 But one of the challenges, yeah, that I've often had as a reporter, you'll, a refrain you'll see a lot on crypto Twitter is like, "Why don't we have any real investigative reporters?" 47:32 Well, like, I tried to work on the O- Operation Choo Po- Choke Point 2.0 story a number of times. 47:36 I called around to a number of people who kind of, like, hinted that they'd had problems on crypto Twitter and tried to get them to tell me more. 47:42 But they were afraid to, like, go on the record with me about their trouble with their banks, because they had another bank now and they didn't wanna s- they didn't wanna scare that bank off, you know? 47:49 And so this is a problem that reporters have all the time, is where people don't wanna really tell us the hot goss. Where someone like a Nick Carter can come along, he can just say, like, "I know this is happening." 47:59 He doesn't have to, like, name names of, like, companies- Yeah... that got shut down, and people will believe him. I've gotta name names if I'm gonna do that story. 48:05 You know, I've gotta, like, show my work, and I'm not criticizing. I mean, he, he just has a, he has a different sort of set of r- rules that he's working around. 48:12 But it's just, it, people are so often afraid to talk about the things kind of when the things are hot and when they matter, and that's a struggle us reporters have. 48:19 But yeah, folks like Nick and investors can break through that on occasion. Okay, last category. Well, actually we have two, 'cause we're doing the conference circuit one. 48:28 But the alternative to the alternatives, uh, I put Decrypt and Fortune in here. Uh, we talked about Decrypt with the prediction markets that they're obviously leaning into. 48:37 They also did some stuff with Rug Radio and a few different, like, crypto businesses, I'd say. 48:44 And s- so the reporting's still there, but it's certainly less of a focus for them, and it seems to be some sort of discovery channel for all these different crypto businesses. 48:55 You know, they're still operating, so I'm, I'm assuming it's kinda working. Brady? I, I love Decrypt, uh, on some level. [laughs] They do this weird thing. 49:02 They did this reorganization of their site recently where, like, you know, they show other people's stories on there, including their own. There's this feed of, like, what they see as the important- Yeah... 49:11 stories in crypto, so it's kind of my starting point. I don't know. They do this weird thing where you click on anything on that, and then it opens another page, and you have to click again to get to the actual story. 49:19 Even if it's one of their stories, it's like two clicks. I don't know why they do it. Drives me insane. But it is useful. Um, so yeah, it could be that Decrypt is sort of looking as itself-I, I don't know. 49:30 It seems Decrypt has consistently been the publication that's the most willing to, like, try weird things. Absolutely. I think they also did it at Cryptcoin at some point. Yes. You know, which I sort of respect. 49:39 I'm so happy, I'm so happy you mentioned that. [laughs] Do you, do you, how much do you know about that? Not much. I mean, I didn't really think it was gonna work, so I didn't look into it. 49:47 So it was, it was, I think it was a way to engineer longer page visits. Okay. 49:52 Because it was weighted not on how lo- like, if you scroll down the article, like, your, your allocation was weighted how long you sit on the article. Uh-huh. 50:01 And, and so it was a way to mine attention, but also boost their times pa- uh, uh, uh, the times of, of visitors on each individual page, which is just kind of devi- devilishly genius. [laughs] Yeah. That was smart. 50:15 That was quite smart. So the other one I put on is Fortune. They've had some nice pieces this year. Uh, Jeff John Roberts, right, is the main editor for them now, and then they have a, a few other people. Yeah. 50:26 They consistently have, like, a few good exclusives a year, a few good hits. 50:32 The only knock I'll give is I think, like, sometimes they're, kind of fall into that PR bag where it's like, oh, we have an exclusive, but it's like, is this really, like, a story worth publishing, or is this just, like, 50:43 you have a friend with an exclusive? That's the only thing I've kinda seen from them. Besides that- Well, and people wanna say it was in Fortune, you know, 'cause it's a big brand. Yeah, precisely. 50:51 So, uh- I think Leo has had some good policy scoops. Yeah, Leo's great. Yeah. 50:56 I, I can't quite remember, but I, there's definitely ones, 'cause you know they're paywall, and there's definitely been times where I'm just like, damn it, Leo. [laughs] Like- Yeah... 51:02 I wanna take a look at this, you know? I, and I gotta find a hustle to get to, get to it. But, um, yeah, no. They, they're, they're solid. 51:09 It's just sort of s- small, but, um- Yeah, it's not their main focus for them, but I put them as the alternative to the alternatives. 51:15 They don't, like, truly they're a TradFi publication, but they're not publishing to the same amount as those publications. 51:22 Doesn't seem to be as much of a focus, but- Well, and they, they dip out of crypto when it, like, drops out too much. Like, they've got the crypto newsletter that will just, like, go away if it's like, you know, not... 51:33 And then it'll come, you know, and, and then John'll be like, "Hey, it's back now." Or, I mean, Jeff, sorry. Jeff will be like, "Hey, it's back now," you know, like every now and then. [laughs] I get it. 51:41 Uh, the last one I wanna throw in here is TFTC, which, uh, are friends of ours, and I've dubbed them as the Zerohedge of Bitcoin, which is the, the angle they're taking. They've had a really big glow up year. 51:51 Uh, Marty Bent's podcast has sort of become one of the staples in the Bitcoin podcast landscape. I mean, there's what Bitcoin did, th- that had its whole transformation. It's not really a, a publication. 52:04 TFTC is trying to become a publication, is becoming one in its own right. They're adding, like, news. 52:10 I think, like, the biggest thing for them has been the win on the Twitter feed and using Twitter as their platform, and then driving people to the podcast. 52:19 Uh, they've also taken on, like, this cultural mandate where they are willing to talk about topics that they think Bitcoiners are going to jive with adjacent to Bitcoin. 52:29 So it's like red meat or, like, China invading Taiwan or things like that. They're, they're gonna dive into those subjects, and it's proven to be a working subject. 52:40 Like, I, I wouldn't have thought talking about COVID vax and then the next week talking about Bitcoin security budget would work, but turns out the Venn diagram is very, very tight, and so it did indeed work. 52:52 Um, so shout out to TFTC for being the alternative to alternatives column. Yeah. I think Marty did a really smart, I wouldn't call it a pivot, but expanding his coverage. 53:03 It was, it was really quite brilliant, 'cause, you know, you say Zerohedge of Bitcoin here, you know. 53:09 There's a part of me that a- also wants to say almost, like, the Infowars of Bitcoin, and I, and I don't mean that as like a slight to him at all. 53:16 Uh, but what I mean by that is he, he, he's, he's verging into content that is branded by the mainstream as the realm of conspiracy theorists, right? 53:24 Some of it may legitimately be conspiracy theory, but a lot of the stuff that he talks about is stuff that we were told was a conspiracy theory four years ago, and it's turned out to be true. 53:33 So I think this whole pivot, or this whole expansion was, yeah, just really smart in trying to capture the attention of Bitcoiners with those i- those topics that they're already kind of predisposed to want to engage with. 53:44 Also, he's really pushed into the macro stuff a lot. Totally. That's something that Danny's done and what Bitcoin did and Peter did before he handed the helm, uh, the mantle d- or the helm to Danny, 53:56 and that has paid out off, uh, extremely well, I think. Yeah. I, this one is not on my radar. I don't really, I don't follow it until you guys brought it up here. 54:04 But the idea of, like, crypto as a cultural lens, I think is underexplored. 54:11 You know, a thing that, like, our former editor, Zach, uh, Seward, and I have talked about a bunch of times is how, like, often the crypto world is, has been right about other stuff. 54:19 You know, as much as, like, crypto people now are, like, so over COVID stuff and so over, like, you know, the vaccines and all that stuff, and they just sort of hate even talking about it, we all remember that they were, like, hands down, like, f- three or four months ahead of everybody else being like, "This is gonna be a problem." 54:35 And that's just one of many. You know, they were ahead on inflation. 54:37 They were ahead on, you know, just lots of different times where COVID people, sort of because they're willing to explore wacky ideas, like, do see things first. 54:44 And I, and I, and, like, like, in the Use Case magazine that came out that Will and I are both part of, there's a great section where they sort of talk about network states, and I think network states is a good example of, like, ways in which crypto and culture are sort of, like, becoming more complicated. 54:58 So that's, that is a great topic to go into, and it, it doesn't always have to have a coin for it to be crypto, I guess, is the point. Last one, can the conference circuit keep working? 55:07 And I'm just throwing Bitcoin Magazine in this one. It has for six years now, five years now, so I would say yes, to answer my own question. 55:16 I brought this one up because Bitcoin Magazine, they have a website, does about 500,000 monthly page views, so, you know, not really enough to keep the lights on, honestly. But they are expanding to different podcasts. 55:29 They have a white-House, uh, press pool pass as of recently. I don't know if they still have it, 'cause I think that reporter, uh, recently left. 55:37 And then they have the massive Bitcoin Magazine Twitter handle, which is huge, and their YouTube account is frankly pretty big as well. 55:44 They do a lot of paid content, which is just, you know, a form of marketing, but that does have a place in 2026. 55:51 The breadwinner is the conference, and they've turned this into sort of a traveling circus, uh, where they'll bring all their, like, headline speakers to, uh, Bitcoin Mina in the Middle East or Amsterdam. 56:03 Now they're gonna do, uh, I think Bitcoin India in the future as well. 56:07 So there's a lot of different placements for that conference, and they're still a media brand even though, first and foremost, they really are a conference company. Uh, and that seems to keep on working. 56:19 The only question is, like, is there fatigue from that product over time? I, I would say no, just seems like there's a lot of normies out there that are still gonna be 56:29 loving the idea of going to Vegas for a week, get really drunk, and talk about Bitcoin. 56:34 Conferences are not going anywhere, it just, there's, but there's, there are only so many conferences that the industry can support, you know? So, like, that's the thing. It's like there will always be conferences. 56:43 One of my favorite moments early on in my crypto reporting coverage was I was watching this CoinDesk event on YouTube that Marco Santori was on, you know, former chief legal officer at Kraken, and somebody asked the question to the room [laughs] like, "What's the best way, do you guys think, to make money in crypto right now?" 56:58 And this was like 2016, and Marco was like, "Oh, easy. Hold conferences." So that's the, [laughs] that's the move. Um, but it's not true anymore. But, like, Consensus is going nowhere. 57:06 The, the big Bitcoin, you know, whatever year is going nowhere. Um, you know, there's a few of them that are like, I think Blockworks is a couple of brands that'll stick around. 57:14 But, um, but the next, you know, little media company that comes along... Like, I don't think Unchained should do a conference. Like, I don't think that's a, that's a move for them. You know? 57:21 There's just, like, there's enough already. Yeah. Like Decrypt, I mean, Ethereum does, their, the Ethereum world does a conference like every two months it seems like. There's [laughs] like so many of them, you know? 57:31 Yeah. It's awful. Well, when you can print money, it's easy to do that, right? [laughs] Um, little joke, little joke. Not good. We don't have many heads listening to this. 57:39 But, um, yeah, the Bitcoin conference is the Bonnaroo for Bitcoiners at this point. I think that that's a strong brand alignment. They also have been pretty smart about the international ones. 57:50 I don't know about Hong Kong as much, but Bitcoin Mina, the first one in Abu Dhabi, the second one this year in Dubai, that's really smart. I, they made a killing on that, as far as I understand. 58:00 Like, they're, you're going into a deep-pocketed region and, you know, you are kind of maybe not solving for the po- the problem of conference fatigue, but you're moving geographies and that might help a little bit. 58:12 Now that being said, a lot of the people who went to that were still industry professionals. You know, there weren't too many, uh, you know, sheikhs walking around at that thing. 58:20 The ones that were were, you know, kind of the ones bankrolling the whole thing, and that's the whole point. But I, I just have to pour one out actually for a second for Bitcoin Magazine. 58:32 I got my start at Bitcoin Magazine. I had a lot of really great editors there. 58:37 Christie Harkin, uh, went to CoinDesk after, uh, after Bitcoin Magazine, and Aaron Van Wieerdam really cut my technical teeth with him on a lot of stuff. 58:48 And Bitcoin Magazine was positioned and should have been a kind of conglomerate Vice and Wired for Bitcoin. It had all of the pieces to do that. Aaron Van Wieerdam was great on the technicals. 59:02 Y- y- you know, Christie Harkin would've been g- really good on the cultural front of things. 59:07 When the conference was actually successful and they had a windfall w- uh, in, in cash, they could've really revved up the newsroom. 59:14 Instead, they leaned into a lot of cheaper options to growth hack, like with the Twitter account and with some, uh, you know, kind of some slop-related stuff. 59:25 And now, quite frankly, their newsroom is kind of at an existential crisis. Aaron was editor-in-chief. He ended up leaving. As far as I understand from 59:35 conversations that I've had, there's ki- there was this kind of falling out with regards to coverage of Bitcoin Treasury companies. 59:42 And, uh, you know, Frank Corva ended up leaving, uh, Joachim Book, their, their managing, uh, editor ended up leaving. 59:52 And you have the print magazine, which is really cool and well-designed and special, but they, they, they have just hemorrhaged talent because there's no direction for what the magazine will be. 1:00:03 It's all in the conference and all in the social profiles. And I just feel like... I'm sorry, I, I, I have to just finish with this. [laughs] A lot to get off your chest. [laughs] Well, I... 1:00:14 It makes me sad, man, because it should be the premier publication for Bitcoin coverage, but they, they just have not executed in the right way at every single level. 1:00:24 And you can have- Their newsletter, like, if you click a link in their newsletter, it goes to tweets. I'm just like [laughs] Yeah. Right. And it's like you could have the content that The Rage has on Bitcoin Magazine. 1:00:34 You could have some of the stuff, quite frankly, that we're doing on Blockspace within mining, original reporting. 1:00:39 You can have really cool, like, early Vice-esque, you know, articles about culture and all these other things, and there's just none of it. Yeah. Um. Yeah. A- and I, I just... It's just so sad to me, man. Sorry. 1:00:54 Rant over. Well, I'll, I'll throw some thoughts in there, uh, and then we'll kinda finish up with some thoughts on Brady's Twitter thread to kinda recap here. 1:01:03 I think, like, Bitcoin Magazine, it's, it's hard to pick, because I do think investing in a big Twitter handle is actually totally worth it. 1:01:11 That's something that we have not focused on at Blockspace, 'cause we've been focused on podcasts or, like, syndication deals, things like that. 1:01:17 And I also don't know if investing in a Twitter account ever actually works. I think-You have to hire the right person, and it's very difficult. The algo is very fickle. 1:01:27 They have one of the biggest Twitter handles, and that real estate seemingly is going to keep paying dividends because it allows for a huge discovery audience. Now it's about putting the other parts together. 1:01:37 They focus on the conference, and that has been a huge winner, and, like, that is a media company. 1:01:42 So I'd say, like, if you need three things for a successful media company, and I know this is not what we kinda started talking a- about the, the top, but, like, a conference, an actual website with stories, and then social growth engine. 1:01:57 They have two of the three, so I think they're, to some degree, pretty close, um, even though there's a lot of competitors out there now that have kinda eked into... 1:02:05 Like The Rage, and then us, and a few others have picked up where they haven't. So, uh, Brady, any thoughts on that? And then let's kinda close out on some thoughts on, like, what can 1:02:15 all these different crypto publications do to start fixing their problems or looking at different business models. No, I got nothing initial to say on Bitcoin Magazine. You guys cover it well. Okay. 1:02:25 Hit us with final thoughts on, like, your, your Twitter thread, because I think there's a lot of ways to re-bake the cake, but you're still wanting a cake, right? So y- maybe there isn't. 1:02:37 Maybe, like, you still need the flour, and the sugar, and the water, and the egg, and that's just how it, how it is. 1:02:42 Is there any other, like, thoughts on, like, what can we do to make this cake more special or, you know, make it a little different? 1:02:48 Well, one thing, I wanna go back to a thing Colin said early on and just underscore it further. I, I just do think this whole, like, um, discovery agenda thing is nonsense, and that folks just need to drop it. You know? 1:03:00 Like, I don't, I don't think that... 1:03:02 I, I-- one of the first posts I wrote on Front Stage Exit, my newsletter, was just sort of a, a history of, of Bitcoin and crypto explainers just to show that, like, that ground has been covered, and no one needs to do the, like, the 101s any longer. 1:03:14 That's just, you know, it's done. We can stop. Uh, 'cause I just don't think people are motiv- who are... I don't think people become motivated to learn about this weird space by writing. 1:03:23 They become motivated in some other way, and then they just go find things and figure it out. So, um, I think that whole notion... People need to... 1:03:30 Specialist publications need to write for the people in their audien- their specialist audience and just sort of assume the new people come along. 1:03:37 There's millions of people who hold cryptocurrency of different kinds now. There's plenty out there to, you know, cover a media company. So, um, I would say be crypto native. Um, I think the idea of, uh... 1:03:48 I, I think, I think the direction that I think probably could be stronger and, and, 1:03:54 and I think crypto is big enough now to do this, and I talked about this a little bit in my thread, is focusing more on specific chains so you're not an all-over crypto publication. You're a Bitcoin publication. 1:04:05 You're a Solana publication. You know, you, you are cover... And if-- and then if you wanna do everything else, you can be, like, the general Bitcoin publication that's just trying to track the next big winner. 1:04:14 But I have a feeling it's smarter just sort of going to the loyalists in different communities, 'cause those things are kind of becoming nations unto themselves now. 1:04:22 It's weird that there isn't specifically an Ethereum publication. That's wild. That is, like, an opportunity out there because there's tons of people who, like, love Ethereum and are going nowhere, you know? 1:04:31 And, uh, they're not planning to go anywhere else. So that seems to me to be pretty interesting. 1:04:35 And then, I don't know, I guess, like, I would like to see more people in the crypto world, uh, actually dogfooding some of this technology more and make that a part of their business model. 1:04:45 So, you know, we made the joke about the Decrypt coin. I don't know that the coin is the way to do it, but there probably are some stuff that, you know, could be smart. 1:04:51 For example, to its credit, I think one thing CoinDesk tried, and they probably are making some money off of this, I don't know if it's that crazy, but, uh, but the, the CoinDesk indexes I don't think is a bad idea. 1:05:00 That wa- that was... I think I mentioned that in my thread too. That was innovative, and they're probably doing okay off of those indexes, and, and there's no reason for a publication not to run indexes. 1:05:08 So, like, more things like that would be a decent idea. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm not a, I'm not a founder. 1:05:13 I just, like, I just want, uh, I just want there to be reporters out there, and I want journalism to, to do well and to not die, and it, and it just... 1:05:22 I understand that journalism is a very tough business model to make work, but I still don't believe, uh, somebody can't make money and do pretty well running a newsroom, covering a world that's really literally able to spend money out of thin air. 1:05:36 That just is hard for me to believe, but, uh, but no one is really doing it right now. That's a great place to leave it. Brady, thanks for, so much for joining us on the Blockspace Podcast. 1:05:45 We'll see you again here shortly, I'm sure. Peace, guys. [upbeat music]
