WEBVTT - This Is What Happened When They Tried To Fix Journalism Using Blockchain 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:15.200 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:20.040 I'm Joe Wisenthal. Unfortunately, my colleague Tracy Elloway is out 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:22.600 again this week, so it's just going to be me 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:26.560 and I'm going to be talking again kind of about 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:30.560 the broader crypto world. But I think a really interesting 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:35.760 different story this time. So listeners might remember that in 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:41.320 two seventeen, during the last cryptocurrency boom, when Bitcoin was 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:44.919 taking off, through all these follow on coin offerings and 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:47.600 beyond just that, beyond just other coins, are all these 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:53.320 ideas about how different industries could be transformed via blockchain 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:57.840 technology in some way, or tokens or their own cryptocurrencies, 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:02.279 and the work stories about putting banana trade on the 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:07.119 blockchain with the currency, and dentistry having its own currency 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.400 and all kinds of weird things that never really took off. 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:13.920 Tomatoes there was a famous story about putting the tomato 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:16.160 trade on the block chain. Anyway, none of that has 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:18.959 really taken off, And at the time when a lot 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:20.920 of this was going on, I thought a lot of 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:25.520 these um endeavors were kind of cynical, just attempting to 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:28.880 cash in on the hot market for coins in general 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:32.240 without much purpose, But some of the projects actually did 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:35.959 UH did seem sincere, And today we're going to be 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:41.040 talking about one such project UH that did sincerely try 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:45.360 to solve an interesting problem, and that problem was journalism. 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:49.520 And so the question was, could this technology could a 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:56.040 currency somehow helped build a sustainable journalism business model in 0:01:56.200 --> 0:02:02.320 some way that existing subscription subscription or existing UH models 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:06.000 weren't capturing UH well or weren't doing a good job 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:08.800 of So I'm very excited about our guest. I'm going 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:13.360 to be speaking with Maria Bustillos. She's the founding editor 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:16.640 of Popular. She has a new endeavor called the Brick 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:19.959 House co Op, But several years ago she was a 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:24.760 co founder of a project called Civil which attempted to 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:28.760 create a new journalism business model and in part using 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:32.520 its own cryptocurrency. We're gonna be talking about what she 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:36.160 learned from that project, and these sort of potential and 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:40.960 limits of the technology should be very interesting discussion for 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:44.400 both people interested in finance and markets and our markets 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:48.840 creating centers, but also journalism and journalism business models. So, 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:52.120 without further ado, I want to bring in Maria. Thank 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:54.480 you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:56.960 It's a real pleasure to be here. Joe. Yeah, I'm 0:02:56.960 --> 0:03:00.480 really looking forward to getting your story. But and it's 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:03.760 it's always I've been following you in your career on 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:07.200 Twitter from Afar for a long time. We've never talked before, 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:09.880 but it's it's always seemed interesting, and you seem to 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:14.560 have inclination to experiment, to try new things and be 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:17.800 open minded about new ideas in a way that is 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:19.919 kind of rare for this industry, to be honest. But 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:23.160 I'm just sort of curious your background first, you know, 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:26.800 how you got into journalism and how you got interested 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:31.400 then in the sort of world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:35.840 Um well, I am kind of a serial entrepreneur. Really. 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:38.440 I started my first business when I was in my 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:43.240 early twenties as a as a designer, like overpriced tchaticas 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:47.600 for the home, and and then I sold that and 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:53.320 opened uh kind of like a proto at Sea in ninet. Like, 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:55.800 I was always really interested in the Internet computers. I 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:59.800 met my husband on Prodigy, you know, so I kind 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:03.560 of came at journalism from an interest in the Internet, 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:05.880 and you know how a long time interest in sort 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:09.240 of research and writing and an entrepreneurial stuff, and my 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:12.600 husband's a Wall Street guy, so there was a lot 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:15.960 of business in our in our house, business talk, and 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:18.080 that's kind of how I how I approached it to 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:19.880 start with. But I mean, you know, I love sort 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:25.480 of literature and blogs, and I wound up going to 0:04:25.640 --> 0:04:29.800 um see that terrible movie Avatar with my husband and 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:32.080 I just hated it so much, and I just came 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:35.360 home and banged out this like absolute screed about how 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:37.440 awful it was and sent it to my favorite block, 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:41.280 to Corey Spica, and he printed it and that became 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:46.919 my job, like eleven years ago. Almost. That's awesome. I 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:48.760 love I love stories like that. I feel like so 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:52.479 many of the most interesting people in media came at 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:56.800 it from some angle where they didn't originally intend to 0:04:57.360 --> 0:04:59.800 be in journalism, but then all these new tools opened 0:04:59.880 --> 0:05:01.680 up and they realized they could write, and they're like, oh, 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:04.080 this is pretty cool, and that's a that's a pretty 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:06.760 great story. I love it. I like, this is my 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:09.479 favorite job by far, and there's there's a lot of 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:12.440 work to do in it. So I've been really fortunate 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:15.280 to be for in front of some really interesting projects. 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:34.919 So let's talk about Civil and I this civil you 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:37.240 could describe it, but it got a lot of attention 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:42.200 from the sort of like media world. Media. The media 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:44.919 world is always upset with like media business models and 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:48.479 sustainable journalism and who's going to pay for journalism and 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:52.479 you know, understandable and why there's so much concern. But 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:56.120 talk to me about that project. When was it conceived 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:58.760 and sort of what was the problem you were trying 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:01.960 to solve. Well, the interesting thing is I had been 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:08.359 really interested in founding a block chain based journalism publishing platform, 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:11.240 like before Civil contacted me. It was like this really 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:14.599 weird coincidence, you know, because I had been interested in 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:20.560 bitcoin and blood chain technology from very shortly after it started. 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:25.320 You know, maybe I started looking into it, and um 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.719 I wrote about bitcoin for the first time in for 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:33.400 the New Yorker blog. I was you know, people all 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:35.520 thought it was very weird at that point, and I mean, 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:40.360 it is really weird. But the things that, yeah, well, 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:44.440 what interested me about it always was here is a 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:50.040 way to produce incorruptible records and they cannot be altered. 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:52.679 And I have a very big interest in archiving in general, 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:54.599 and so I kind of still see that is the 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:58.039 most valuable aspect of blockchain technology. That's what you know, 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:00.719 people talk about applying it to voting, talk about applying 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.480 it to cold chain, you know, supply chain, like all 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:06.599 this stuff. What they're really talking about is that they're 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:12.600 incorruptible records are unfalsifiable records because they're distributed. So when 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:16.480 you kind of apply that idea to journalism very separately 0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:19.080 from the idea of a currency or a token, it 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:21.720 looks different, right. It's like, this is a way to 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:25.280 record things. I was really fortunate, you know, as civil 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:29.600 to be the first person ever to commit the full 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:33.320 text of a news story directly into the Ethereum block chain. 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:35.680 This is like really important, right, This is an I 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:41.080 PF S or some other kind of incorruptible distributed things. 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:43.960 Is like it cannot be changed until you basically have 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:46.600 to shut off the Internet. Once you have recorded something 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:49.320 in the Ethereum block chain, it's now on what like, 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:52.720 you know, a fluctuating number of computers, but tens of 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:55.800 thousands of computers, there's always going to be a record 0:07:55.840 --> 0:07:58.080 of it, kind of like there used to be microwthiast 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:02.160 records of newspapers. It's very similar to that. You can't 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:06.120 you can't falsify that. I like wrote about Barack Obama's 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:09.640 birth records, you know, like really there was an unfalsifiable 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:14.280 mark microfish in Hawaii. If that had not existed, it 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:16.360 would have given a lot more oxygen to the birth 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:20.120 of movement. But there were unfalsifiable records in that library. 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:23.480 And so I kind of view what blockchain can do 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:27.200 for journalism is being related to that. So I've been 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:31.200 looking for a way to uh, you know, just kind 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:33.880 of instantiate these ideas, and and then I got this 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:36.880 phone call, like just out of the clear blue from 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:40.559 Josh Benston of Old Town Media, who had been consulting 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:44.880 for Civil and what it was. It was a consensus 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:49.320 funded project. I mean at that point, you know, end 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:53.440 of twenty seventeen, the price of ethereum got to fourteen 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:57.560 hundred I think at the end of that year, and 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:01.760 so it would go down between that point and the 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:05.640 bottom I think was sixty six. So consensus was very 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:10.559 flesh with cash money and they were throwing it around 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:12.360 it a lot of projects that were you know, sort 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:17.319 of had a social you know component of some kind, 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:21.040 you know, or there's suitor stuff, you know, there's like 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:23.760 they just had unlimited money and they were handing it 0:09:23.800 --> 0:09:27.440 out and so this is Consensus. So this is one 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:31.480 of the one of the original sort of co founders 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:36.320 of the Ethereum project started a company called Consensus, which 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:42.120 I think characterizes itself is a development studio for etherium projects, 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:47.720 and as part of it, they fund various endeavors designed 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:51.199 to build something a top the network. Yes, Joe lit 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:55.680 bin Um, you know, funded civil directly, and I think 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:58.960 it was originally like five million or something like that. 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:03.520 It was really substantial investment and so you know, there 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:05.280 was money in it, and it was the idea that 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:07.280 I wanted to work on. And I'm like, oh my god, 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:09.680 They're like, we want to start a black chain based project. 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:11.679 I like, sit down, let me tell you what we're 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:17.679 going to do. But um, you know, it was really 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:21.760 fun and a lot of the ideas and are I 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:24.280 haven't changed my mind about any of it really. But 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:28.640 what happened is that the crypto winter came and you 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:32.679 know kind of why, well, you know, regulators didn't like 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:34.920 all these I c o s. You know, they started 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.080 there started being a lot of money raised in those markets, 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:40.560 and I mean, I don't know. I know that this 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:44.560 is maybe a slightly crazy idea, but I I think 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:48.719 that regulators watching those markets swell up, you know, and 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:51.920 seeing like an actual direct threat to the regular capital markets, 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:55.200 you know, started paying a lot of attention, and suddenly 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:58.480 it became, you know, very difficult to do an ic 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:02.360 out you don't you say, direct friends to capital markets. 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:07.160 A cynic might say a bunch of people got fleeced 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:10.160 on some of these huge things because the projects were 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.839 always sort of um, you know, some of these mega 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.160 ones never really took off extraordinary amount of money, raise 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:22.120 extraordinary amount of short term speculation assets that by many 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:27.040 accounts looked like traditional security regulations whose purpose exists to 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:32.280 protect investors in theory loss a ton of money. True, 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:37.520 I mean, and go past that, there was like scam Scalore, right, 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:44.040 Like there's also scam Scalore markets. So that's true. Maybe 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:46.320 people forget this, you know, but so like this is 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:49.160 what I was saying in the intro, which is that 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:53.480 at the time, you know, I was like, there struck 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:57.400 me as a lot of projects that had no purpose 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:01.960 other than to cash in on the market. And when 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:07.640 Symbol launched and seeing the participation of people like yourself 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:12.160 and other sort of like long time veterans of the 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:16.040 media industry. It has had a pretty impressive roster. It 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.800 did not look to me like a sort of get 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:21.480 rich quick thing by any stretch. And so that's why 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:24.120 at least seemed different than all these other projects. And 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:27.200 so like what was the premise because it wasn't actually 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:32.280 putting content on the blockchain, right, well, it was for me. 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:35.040 I mean there's one thing, right, there's a number of 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:37.680 things that you can do with this technology, like, for example, 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:41.760 you know comments, Yeah, you can, Like I actually built 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:43.440 this with the last of my civil many because I 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:47.520 was just so interested in popular which tiny, tiny little laboratory. 0:12:47.640 --> 0:12:49.920 It still it works. You know, you can only put 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:52.880 a comment on a popular story if you're a paying subscriber, 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:56.520 and it costs five cents worth of eat to do that. 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:01.040 And what this does is make zeros fam You don't 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:04.000 have to have any kind of thing like that's just 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:05.880 one thing. There's a hundred things like this that you 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:08.319 can do with it, right, But the way it was 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:12.120 supposed to work was the token. It was an ARC token, 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:14.640 which is like sort of you know, sort of ethereum 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:19.160 is kind of like programmable currency, right. It's it's like 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:22.280 bitcoin that you can put code to it. And so 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:26.040 you you have a token that is specific to a 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:30.240 certain project or set of properties or people or whatever. 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:34.280 You can you can program it to be for one purpose. Now, 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:39.520 if you have like a journalism denominated token, let's say 0:13:40.040 --> 0:13:44.280 you have to purchase subscriptions using the token, you have 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:46.920 to do your comments using the token, you have to 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:53.599 like you create like an economic world um that's denominated 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:57.280 in this token. And so you know what I like, 0:13:57.360 --> 0:13:59.800 I was really excited about things like micro tipping. This 0:13:59.880 --> 0:14:02.199 was like a huge, huge thing for me. Microsipping is 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:04.959 still huge and we can do this up popular right now. 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:07.120 But I mean very few people have eight So I 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:09.520 mean at the same time that this whole thing is happening, 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:13.719 the market is contracting, you know, there was there were 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:16.680 there were some regulatory blows that were well, the one 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:20.080 fatal one I think is when Finsen decided tightened the 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:24.120 rules for what counted as a money transfer business. Like 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:26.160 what it sort of meant was if I were to 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:33.240 tip you know popular writer in eat and popular is 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:36.240 holding that eat for the writer, I'm now I'm now 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:40.800 a money transfer potentially now it costs three million dollars 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:44.080 a year to get licensed for that, like in all 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:46.960 fifty states, because it's like a state regulated thing. And 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:52.240 so they made it impossible for these projects to be viable, 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:54.400 and you know, and it kind of all goes hand 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:58.080 in glove, you know, the prices, crashing, confidences, you know, 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:01.640 eroding and all this stuff kind of happened at the 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:04.840 same time. But what it was supposed to do is 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:06.840 stuff like that, is like make it make it possible 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:11.080 to do like frictionless micro tipping really really cheap wit. 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:13.560 So I want to actually, before you go any further, 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:17.640 I want to ask about that point specifically, because the 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:22.560 idea of sort of micro payment for content for journalism. 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:26.640 People have fantasized about this for a while, and from 0:15:26.680 --> 0:15:29.920 what I understand, and I've never been directly involved in 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:32.000 any of these projects, but from what I understand, the 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:35.080 issue is never really I mean, maybe the issue is 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:38.000 partly of the cost, but also the issue is sort 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:41.240 of the mental cost. Do I want to think about 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:45.200 doing a transaction every time I make a comment or 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:47.240 load an article or whatever like that is sort of 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:50.160 like a mental tax. And when I think about doing 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:53.600 that in a cryptocurrency which is already like ten times 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:56.480 more complicated. It's like, okay, I'm gonna like pay an Eve, 0:15:57.000 --> 0:15:59.040 and now I have to check the eight to US 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:03.000 dollar exchange RAID, and I have to have like my 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:05.400 separate Like okay, I got to go buy some Eve 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:08.480 and then I have to convert that into the civil token, 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:10.840 and I have to hold that into a wallet, and 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:13.040 I need to remember my password for the wallet, and 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:15.640 if I don't, then all that money is gone. It 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:18.080 always struck me as like, all right, so we've taken 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:22.280 all of the difficulties of micropayments, which we know are enormous, 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:26.240 and added about five different complicated, uncomfortable layers on top 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:29.360 of it. So tell me why my that perception is wrong, 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.600 because that's my outside perception of the challenge here. Yeah, 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:35.800 well it's it's you can do it today and it's 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:39.520 really easy, uh, with a metal mask wallet that just 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:42.880 sits in your browser. And this was in vision right 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:46.160 when we started. Meta Mask was like, well, on its way, 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.920 you can do meta mask. This is a meta mask 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:55.160 is a browser based ethereum wallet, right that allows you 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:59.240 to hold ethereum and any Ethereum based token such as 0:16:59.280 --> 0:17:02.760 the civil token. And when we started, the idea was, well, 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:04.679 by that time, you'll be able to buy eight with 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:07.239 a credit card. It will take five seconds, you know. 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:09.919 And so but I mean, right now, if you just 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:11.679 if you, if you get through the hoops, which is 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.119 like roughly like opening a bank account, you know, to 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:17.159 open a crypto account at you know, coin base or whatever, 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:19.800 you have to show them, you know, picture idy and 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:21.600 all the kind of junk. But you know, you you 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.200 can buy ethereum and you can put it in your 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:26.760 browser and it's just always there, so you don't actually 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:30.239 have to think about anything. That like my theory of 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:32.800 it was, I had this moment when we were in 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:34.879 development and I read this really good story that Frank 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:39.520 Rich had written about the history of his his career. 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:41.760 You know, he's a New York magazine or something. And 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:43.800 I got to the end and he has really meant 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:45.200 a lot to me in my career. It just in 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:48.240 heeps such a wonderful writer, and so um, I got 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:50.000 to the end of this thing and I thought, if 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:51.959 I could send this guy fifty dollars right now, just 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:56.360 so he knows, you know, what he just is a 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.119 is a way of saying I appreciate this piece, like 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:02.520 you've so much for me, I don't know I would 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.560 send it, And so I thought this is gonna work. Right, 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:08.040 there's this moment of passion at the end, like after 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:11.200 you hear the song or whatever, after you read the story, 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:14.359 that your heart opens to the idea of contributing to 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:17.640 that person's welfare directly. I think it's very important, and 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:21.440 so you can do that right now at popula Um 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:24.160 using a metal mask wallet. It really once you set 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:26.679 it up, it takes five seconds. It doesn't interfere with 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:28.639 you in any way. You just click two buttons. All 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:31.280 the exchange and all that stuff is handled in a 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:34.040 very smooth, seamless, very simple way. Just that you want 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:35.800 to do it in dollars, you want to send fifty dollars, 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:39.280 it just automatically does the eighth transfer whatever price it's 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:43.760 at at that point. And considering the problems that we're 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:47.680 getting this thing started, it's remarkably simple right now. So 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:50.440 but I mean, you know, people are afraid of it, 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:53.400 and I mean with good reason. They should be careful, 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:55.280 just like they should be careful with their regular money, 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:57.120 just like they should be careful not to let their 0:18:57.400 --> 0:18:59.959 credit card never be stolen. I mean, these are problems. 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:05.919 It exists in all of every economic transaction. You know, 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:09.000 if there is a store of value that somebody can sees, 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:11.760 they will do it. And in the case of crypto, 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:17.600 you can seize someone's assets with a very little risk 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:21.960 of being caught. Although there is that risk has increased substantially. 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:26.119 So um, I'm still a big believer in all these 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:28.720 in all these principles, it's just not a way to 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:31.840 do it. Now, why not dollars? Like if I go 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:34.359 to if I see like this is this is still 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:37.520 I guess, you know, if it's about tipping. So you know, 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:39.800 I think we want to if we sort of decompose 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:44.680 the question of how the technology could be applied to journalism. 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:48.320 There's the first thing that you've described which is super 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:51.679 powerful to me, the idea of creating a truly permanent record. 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:54.679 And as you say, if you have like a sufficient network, 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:59.359 enough computers, enough hash power, you could inscribe something onto 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:02.240 the blockchain as you have done, or onto a blockchain 0:20:03.000 --> 0:20:05.800 um that really like cannot ever be tampered with. And 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.840 that's pretty powerful. When it comes to something like tipping, 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:14.120 it could be done with dollars. I mean Venmo exists, 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:16.520 I get, you know, that's a mobile thing, but right, 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:20.879 like the Apple pay exists, what is the idea by 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:26.320 which a cryptocurrency solves this problem and creates new incentives 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:30.960 for journalism business models that didn't exist. We've seen many 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:34.960 attempts at micro tipping. They never took off because the 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:38.400 transaction costs were too high, you know, the tips that popular. 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:40.920 I mean we've only taken you know a few fewer 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:43.560 than a thousand so far, but like they're quite often 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:46.399 like ten cents, you know, cents, which would be great, 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:49.359 right if if there were a way to do that. 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:53.840 All these other technologies didn't work out because they became 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:57.760 keeping track of the transactions. It's very bloated. This is 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:00.280 a great thing that crypto or you know, really chain 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:04.840 technology can do. It's like it removes the overhead and 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:10.760 creates like a bulletproof audit trail for every transaction. You 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:14.080 can have a quite complicated system where people are leaving 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:16.520 each other ten and twenty five cents, you know, and 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:21.560 it's it doesn't create any sort of accounting overhead at all. 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:25.200 It's all done automatically. So that's like a huge thing. 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.879 Like the other thing is you know the system I 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:31.960 have right now, If you write a comment and you 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:33.760 pay your five sets and you write your comment, that 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:37.280 comment is also eligible for tips. The idea is to 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:42.960 create an economy of discourse. So here here's something I wondered. Okay, 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:45.080 let's let's talk a little bit more about the civil 0:21:45.160 --> 0:21:47.760 structure and how it was supposed to work. And so 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:50.320 the idea was it was going to be this token 0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:52.600 offering And tell me if I'm wrong, but this is 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:54.879 my impression from the outside. There was this token offering 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:57.439 that was going to raise some money. Then that was 0:21:57.440 --> 0:22:00.159 gonna fund a series of news rooms that were like 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:04.400 a sort of multiple journalism endeavors under the civil umbrella. 0:22:05.240 --> 0:22:08.000 And then that token uh would be used to a 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:10.359 fund the newsrooms and then people would have that and 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:13.080 they could um then what happens from there, like what 0:22:13.080 --> 0:22:15.960 what is the purpose of the token after the sort 0:22:16.000 --> 0:22:18.960 of fund raise to get the journal uh, the initial 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:22.959 ce see the journalism? What is its purpose there? And 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:24.680 how why and why would it go up or down 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:27.639 at that point? Like what makes it fluctuate? Okay, So 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:30.400 there were multiple projects going on at the same time. 0:22:30.440 --> 0:22:35.240 There was a token curated registry. Have you heard of this? Yeah, 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:38.560 but only kind of, so maybe explain that. Okay, So 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:41.840 they I was not in favor of having this be 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:44.280 the first project, but it was the first project at 0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:46.640 Civil and what it was supposed to do is actually 0:22:47.400 --> 0:22:51.600 determine who was allowed to publish ah UM. And it 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:53.960 was supposed to be like the community itself is sort 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:56.520 of this self policing thing. There was like a civil 0:22:56.600 --> 0:22:58.680 code of conduct is like it was actually pretty good. 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:00.879 I helped them work on an UM a bunch of 0:23:00.960 --> 0:23:03.960 us did. It was like, you know, no plagiarism and 0:23:04.040 --> 0:23:06.639 make your best efforts to verify what you print and 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:08.879 all this kind of stuff. And the idea was the 0:23:08.920 --> 0:23:13.040 community would cause new new applicants to come in and 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:16.119 stake a certain amount of tokens, and then people would 0:23:16.359 --> 0:23:19.320 decide between themselves whether or not this person is okay. 0:23:19.359 --> 0:23:21.160 And you know, it's sort of like they like an 0:23:21.280 --> 0:23:24.280 entrance fee or whatever. That is then sort of help 0:23:24.800 --> 0:23:27.639 by the company. But if people want to complain, then 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:30.800 they have to stake tokens and they say, like you're 0:23:30.840 --> 0:23:33.399