Don’t miss the ACJR meetup in San Francisco! 🍻
The best blockchain industry coverage in July 2021
Happy July from the Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists and Researchers! 👋
It’s never too late to apply for ACJR membership. If you’re interested in getting access to our full membership benefits (including a members-only Telegram chat), please apply here. Whether you're a journalist, researcher or just interested in the crypto space, you can also join our “Off the Record” (virtual) events and in-person meetups this summer.
Join our next meetup in San Francisco on July 27th, from 7-9 pm, by RSVPing here. There will be free food for the first 10 people to arrive — so don’t be fashionably late!
In the meantime, stay tuned over the next month for announcements related to the ACJR awards. Thank you to everyone who participated and we look forward to introducing this year’s award winners soon.
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Before we delve into our favorite (English-language) articles of the month, we also wanted to call some attention to the great work that El Faro, an El Salvadorian outlet, has been publishing about local bitcoin news. The Elfaro.net website includes articles, from a local perspective, in both English and Spanish, so check them out!
Another media company that deserves a shoutout is the Turkish startup Aposto — for experimenting with a blockchain-based licensing platform that allows users to read content on multiple platforms without buying multiple subscriptions.
And last but not least, a quick research shoutout to this The Block Research piece on private funding related to crypto companies in Q2 2021. Now, finally, here our some of our favorite articles from July:
“Welcome to the Church of Bitcoin” by Zoë Bernard, Rolling Stone
This relatively comical (yet informative!) piece shows the quasi-religious fervor of the Bitcoin 2021 conference that took place in Miami in June. One of our favorite quotes from the piece comes from a conversation between the journalist and a cop near the conference entrance: “What’s to confer about? I mean, you either have Bitcoin or you don’t. Right?”
“Uniswap Proposal Sparks Blowback After Grantees Dump $10M in UNI Tokens” by Liam Frost, Decrypt
This succinct news piece explains exactly how a Uniswap proposal got the crypto world riled up by selling millions of dollars worth of tokens that were supposed to be “allocated over the next 4-5 years.” This article breaks down the DeFi scandal in a clear and simple way.
“SoftBank Invests $200 Million In Brazil’s Largest Crypto Exchange” by Nina Bambysheva, Forbes
This piece gives a glimpse into the world of Latin American crypto exchanges, giving readers a relatable way to learn a little more about Brazil’s crypto exchange infrastructure.
“NFT Sales Volume Surges to $2.5 Bln in 2021 First Half” by Elizabeth Howcroft, Reuters
This well-researched piece with graphs shows the sales volumes of different types of NFTs over time. It offers a clear and simple way to get a quick overview of NFT trends. We dig the visuals.
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By the way, if you’re interested in getting more involved with ACJR, feel free to get in touch with us via social media or our website, or use this link to suggest topics for future meetups.
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Next we’ll turn to a quick word from the next ACJR meetup co-organizer in San Francisco (July 27, 7-9pm at 601 Mission Bay Boulevard North),Anna Tong. She is currently moonlighting as a writer and working as VP of product management at PolySign Inc. Here’s what she has to say about working as both a freelance journalist and a tech executive:
My first job out of college was as a reporter at a newspaper called the Sacramento Bee, where I covered health and science. But the newspaper industry was imploding back in 2010, so a year in, I left Sacramento to take an entry-level job at Google.
A decade later, I’m the head of product at a cryptocurrency bank (PolySign), was one of the first Ripple employees, and have worked at various other startups. The crypto world has been the best thing that’s happened to my business career. And now I also have crypto to thank for helping me take a step towards my dream of becoming an investigative, longform writer.
When COVID hit, I saw an opportunity to get back into reporting as demand for crypto content went through the roof. I started tapping into my old network of contacts to pitch articles at outlets like VentureBeat and Vogue Business. It took me a month of persistent pitching, but eventually I was able to write pieces I feel super proud of, stories that were also reposted or aggregated by crypto outlets that I know from my day job. It’s so exciting to know that I don’t have to work full-time in journalism in order to produce great feature writing with an experienced editor!
Perhaps some day soon I could work on the types of projects I’d probably never get to do on staff at a newspaper, like an investigative piece that stretches up to 10,000 words. (Hey, I’m in crypto, of course I’m optimistic.) All this is to say I'm grateful to crypto (the community, the technology, all of it) for helping me make my dreams come true.
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And that’s a wrap on July! We look forward to sharing the results of the first ACJR awards vote with you soon. Until then, remember to follow us on Twitter, join our Telegram group and visit our website. We’ll be looking forward to August!
(Courtesy of @ariellebeau)
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