Many journalists who write about crypto have been criticized by the industry for not “hodling” and not understanding the work processes themselves. Some of the important speakers tend to refuse to give comments to such interviewers. However, the people behind technological developments make no effort to speak a simpler language so the stage of mass adoption would come faster. That might be the same reason why there is still a lack of understating among authorities on how to regulate the fast-growing industry.
The Wall Street Journal, one of the giants in the business news sphere decided to change the rules and to create their own coin. Their market reporter Steven Russolillo, who has been working as a financial journalist for 10 years yet still struggles to understand the “bitcoin frenzy” went to Japan, the motherland of the bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto.
Inspired by a case study of a whole university that turned their payments to the blockchain with their own emitted coin, the journalist went on and met the 21 years old owner of a mining facility that had recently quitted college to spend all his time on his mining farm. Surprisingly, he was very lucky to convince the guy to start mining his coin that didn’t even exist yet. What is it if not the magic of the camera?
So where are we? If there wasn’t any coin, what would the poor guy mine? Russolillo moved on to find his own developer for the WSJ coin. He turned out to be an American who moved to Japan to create his own startup. Together with Makoto Takemiya in one day, they created a coin based on Iroha blockchain, the ledger system Takemiya has invented.
They calculated the average number of issued coins among the ten largest cryptocurrencies and decided to limit the number of WSJ Coin to 8.4 billion.
To celebrate the birthday of the new currency, the moved to a nearby bar where they decided to pay with the WSJ token. Surprisingly the bartender has also agreed to accept WSJ as means of payment for two beers. However, when she asked what is the value of one coin, WSJ journalist decided out of the blue that one token should be equal to the price of one glass of beer in the Japanese bar. However. They could only enjoy their beers after 45 minutes that took Takemiya to set a payment system for the coin.
“If cryptocurrencies can’t be used like a currency to pay for goods in the future, I believe they will lose its value” – said the head of DMM Bitcoin exchange, and agreed to start listing the WSJ coin because “it has a big chance people would use WSJCoin to pay for goods”.
So, when the issue with the exchange was also settled, Russolillo went to the final stage: the people’s support.
At a blockchain and cryptocurrency conference held in Hong Kong, he asked the participants if they would like to have the WSJ coin in their portfolio. However, those who were very supportive and enthusiastic about Russolillo’s creation a second ago somehow refused to purchase his coin.
“Many people are trying to apply blockchain to whatever comes to their mind, simply because there is a hype around it. You need to think about what actually the technology brings up to the table and is it useful for the industry” – said Dominik Thor, CEO of Valtitude.
But this didn't stop Russolillo, so at the WSJ Annual Tech Conference, he made the panel speakers create use cases for the new token. The results sounded pretty promising!
The journalist went through all the stages. He created the coin, he found a miner that would mine it and an exchange that would list it. He even managed to find potential users. However, everything can be ruined after a single conversation with the Senior Ethics&Standarts editor. Neal Lipshuts didn't approve the full-scale launch of WSJCoin, as it would not allow the Wall Street Journal itself to stay objective.
So here we come from where we started. Nonetheless, thank you, colleagues, for the shared experience!
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