🎉 Announcing the First ACJR Election Candidates! 🎉
The best blockchain and crypto industry coverage in October 2021
Hello again, from the Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists and Researchers! 👋
Next month, we’re launching our “Off the Record” season three, our virtual series where we help journalists understand how to cover the often pretty intricate workings of the crypto space.
Sign up here for more info on Off the Record — and these aren’t to be missed, they really are “off the record,” so no recordings allowed!
So far, more than 150 journalists and professional researchers have participated in all of our online and offline ACJR events, including staffers from The New York Times, CNBC, Bitcoin Magazine, Protocol, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Defiant, Coindesk and The Street, just to name a few.
Besides our virtual Off the Record series, we’ve also hosted crypto happy hours from New York to San Francisco — send any ACJR board member a ping on Telegram if you’re interested in hosting a crypto happy in your own city.
Next, we’re also excited to share more information about the upcoming ACJR elections.
Here are all our candidate statements so far. What questions do you have for them? Tell us in the members-only Telegram chat!
If you’re not officially a member yet, apply here.
If you’d like to join the board and take on a leadership position (people can share roles as co-presidents, etc.), please email officers@acjr.network by October 30th with your resume and a short description of what you want the nonprofit to achieve in 2022. We’ll share more details about the election date and process in November.
💡ACJR is picking up and publishing stories from PubDAO, an experiment to build a decentralized newswire. Here’s the first story, on lobster NFTs at the heart of U.S. power. The news business needs new models, and PubDAO is trying one out that is participatory and embraces the most interesting aspects of Web3 technologies. Several ACJR founders and members are participating in the PubDAO experiment. Watch out for stories from the wire and if you’d like to contribute in some way, hop into the PubDAO Discord.
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In the meantime, here is the 411 on the elections:
What do ACJR officers actually do?
Any full member can apply to become an officer. ACJR officers generally meet on a (bi)weekly Zoom call to discuss above-mentioned applications and programs. As community leaders, officers have the opportunity to shape both the nonprofit organization and to impact the broader industry.
Do officers get paid?
Not right now, but the organization could certainly get big enough to pay officers or maintain a staff in the future. Currently, we pay a few freelancers working on some operational matters. Future payment would be up to the board to decide.
How is ACJR funded?
ACJR is funded by member dues, donations and sponsorships for our events and products. The board is responsible for fundraising and revenue.
Do I have to be an officer to get more involved in the ACJR?
Not at all! Become a member, or send us your ideas to improve the crypto journalism and research industry — we’re happy to support committees to create the essential crypto style guide, or a crypto book club, or any other of your wonderful ideas.
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We wanted to shout out a recent research blog post on the Lightning Network from Arcane Research. We like how they took a real world problem (the capacity of second-layer solutions) and broke down how its usage signals mainstream adoption with plenty of graphics.
We also wanted to highlight a new crypto newsletter (can there ever be too many crypto newsletters?) from Stocktwits called The Litepaper. We’re loving the proliferation of high quality content in this space! Next, here are a few of the top articles that we enjoyed in October:
“Blockchain Bros and Crypto Socialites Came to Party” by Brock Colyar, The Cut
It’s not often that an article blows up in the ACJR Telegram chat like this one did. It’s so juicy! Colyar details a hilarious night at an exclusive crypto party in NYC, hour-by-hour. Our favorite line: “Just when I think he’s going to kiss me, he says, ‘I think it’s best if we don’t know each other’s names. I don’t need the SEC knocking at my door.’”
“Inside the World of Black Bitcoin, Where Crypto Is About Making More Than Just Money” by Janell Ross, Time Magazine
This piece starts off so strong — At the Black Blockchain Summit, there is almost no conversation about making money that does not carry with it the possibility of liberation — that there's really nowhere to go but up in this in-depth analysis exploring the intersection of cryptocurrency and social justice issues.
“For $200, You Can Trade Crypto With a Fake ID” by Anna Baydakova, Coindesk
With all of the talk about crypto regulations, Baydakova’s investigation shows how easy it still is to get ahold of a fake ID to register a crypto exchange account.
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That’s it for October! Please keep sending us all the memes, and of course, follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram group. If you want to help us with upcoming programs, please contact us via social media or our website. (The meme below comes courtesy of @nic__carter.) We can’t wait to see what the market has in store for us in November!
Subscribe here! Don’t think, just click! 😉