What was your first job as a journalist?
Covering Bitcoin when nobody took it seriously. That turned out to be the only beat that mattered.
Have you ever used a typewriter?
No. I went straight from pen and paper to a keyboard.
How is social media changing news?
It killed the news cycle and replaced it with the reaction cycle. The story matters less than who responds to it first. In crypto that is especially dangerous because a single tweet moves markets before any journalist has time to verify anything. The publications that survive are the ones that slow down enough to ask whether the thing that just went viral is actually true.
Who's your favorite fictional journalist?
Peter Parker. He had the best source in the room, never revealed it, and still could not pay rent. Sounds about right.
What does it mean to be a journalist?
Being the person who asks the question everyone else is thinking but nobody wants to be the first to ask. And then not accepting the first answer.
What's the funniest news-related #hashtag you've seen?
. It has trended 17 times. Bitcoin is still here. The hashtag is the punchline.
How do you prefer to be pitched on stories?
Email. One paragraph. Tell me what the story is, why it matters now, and why nobody else has written it. If you need three paragraphs to explain why it is interesting, it probably is not. The best pitches I have received could have been a single sentence.
What tools and software do you use to do your job?
X for breaking news, Glassnode and CryptoQuant for on-chain data, and a browser with too many tabs open. The most important tool is still knowing which source to trust and which one is talking their own book.
What's your favorite social network?
X, because it is where Bitcoin news breaks before anyone has had time to spin it. By the time a story reaches every other platform it has already been reframed three times. I would rather read the chaos and think for myself.
Who do you wish followed you?
Satoshi. I have a lot of questions.
Why did you become a journalist?
Bitcoin in 2013 convinced me that the most important financial story of my lifetime was being covered by people who did not understand it. I started writing to fix that. I have not stopped since.
Did you work for your high school newspaper? If so, what did you do there?
No. By the time I was interested in writing, I was more interested in what was happening on the internet than what was happening in the hallway. That probably explains a lot about how I ended up covering Bitcoin.
What story are you most proud of writing or working on?
A piece on what happens to Bitcoin's security model when the block subsidy runs out. It is not a story most people think about because it will not matter for another decade. But it is the most important unanswered question in the industry and almost nobody is covering it seriously. I wrote it because somebody had to.
What advice can you offer to aspiring journalists?
Find the story nobody is telling and tell it better than anyone else could. The beats that seem too niche, too technical, or too early are the ones that matter most. Everyone else will catch up eventually. Be there first and understand it deeply enough that you can explain it to someone who has never heard of it. That is the whole job.
When's the best time to pitch you?
Anytime by email. I read everything. The pitch that arrives at 2am on a Sunday gets the same attention as the one that arrives Monday morning. What matters is not when you send it but whether it is worth reading.
What's the best pitch you ever got?
One sentence. "Nobody is writing about what happens to Bitcoin miners after the last halving." No deck, no attachments, no company name. Just
What's the worst pitch you ever got?
"This is the next Bitcoin." I have received that exact sentence hundreds of times. It has never once been true. The next Bitcoin is Bitcoin.
What's your favorite drink?
Coffee. Black.
When you're not at a computer, where are you most likely to be?
Checking my phone for Bitcoin price. So essentially still at a computer, just a smaller one.
Aside from your own, what's your favorite publication to read?
The Block for crypto and the Financial Times for everything else.
What's the most common misperception about your beat?
That it is about getting rich. Crypto attracts that perception because price is the loudest signal. But Bitcoin specifically is a story about monetary systems, sovereignty, and what happens when you remove the middleman from money. The price is just the scoreboard. Most people only watch the scoreboard and miss the game entirely.
