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February 22, 2017 By dpm

One month of studying cryptocurrencies and blockchain

The CryptoLab project is now about a month old and I thought I would take a minute to reflect on what I have learned so far.

Just a quick recap: The goal of CryptoLab is to be an educational and information resource for people new to cryptocurrencies and blockchain. I’m trying to use my own experiences navigating the cryptocurrency space to (hopefully) produce stories and content that are useful to others who are also trying to learn and engage with these new financial technologies.

A game of telephoneI’m motivated by my own needs: I’m looking for prosperity and privacy all while trying to understand a new way of interacting with the very old concept of money. For me, trying to figure out how cryptocurrencies work, despite all of the issues and uncertainty, is an interesting and practical challenge.

I also like the idea that cryptocurrencies and blockchain are about more than money. The technologies can be used for all sorts of things that will have a positive social impact, some of which I’ll explore in greater detail as part of this project.

So far, I’ve written about two dozen posts for CryptoLab, with each being a little bit of an experiment. While I have experience reporting and writing, I’m not as familiar with blogging and producing a story every day. Just adjusting to the workflow and the idea of writing, editing, and publishing all on my own has been an adjustment.

Mainly, I have to get used to the condensed production timeframe (which is generally between 5am and 7am each weekday morning) and accept the fact that I’m not producing a highly edited and polished product, but more of a work-in-progress kind of notebook.

Timing

While this project was in development before the launch, I I sort of lucked into the timing. Right now, there is a great deal of energy and excitement surrounding cryptocurrencies, and bitcoin in particular, which are reflected in its market value.

One thing that I have noticed, however — and this is something that CryptoLab is designed to address — is that the cryptocurrency news and information landscape is underdeveloped.

Some of the more established cryptocurrency and blockchain news outlets seem focused on covering the business side of financial technology. There is plenty of news about major exchange issues or how different governments are regulating cryptocurrencies. There is also coverage of new startups and of the moves made by names already established in the cryptocurrency world.

But, if I can offer a critique, it’s that the crypto news ecosystem as it stands at the moment can seem like a bit of an echo chamber.

While I’m not sure yet how to deal with that, and I don’t have a clear solution on how to create value out of that problem at the moment, it is something that I’m working toward.

Opportunities

One of my goals while developing CryptoLab is to also create a community around the idea of getting others oriented and comfortable buying, selling, and investing in cryptocurrencies. So far, I don’t really see a clear path to do that.

Also, I think the biggest challenge I face is how to promote this project without seeming spammy. I definitely want to get the word out there that this is something that I’m working on, but I also want to stay true to my own core beliefs and not create some plastic content just for the sake of driving traffic and generating pageviews.

Please let me know if you’ve seen examples of people or projects that have been able to pull off the balance of authenticity and promotion.

If you’ve made it this far, I just want to say thank you for reading, and please be in touch if you have any ideas for the direction of CryptoLab.

 

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