Name: Balancing the Ledger: A Conversation with Laura Shin
Uploaded: 2019-07-08
Duration: 10 min 55 s
Description: The host of Unchained and Unconfirmed podcasts joins The Ledger team to talk micropayments, crypto media, and what drew her to covering cryptocurrency.

[ MUSIC ] Welcome to Balancing The Ledger, where tech and finance intersect. I'm Jeff Roberts. And I'm Robert Hacket. Today we're delighted to welcome Laura Shen, host of the Unchained and Unconfirmed podcast. Thanks for coming, Laura. Thanks for having me. One thing I was wondering when I got here, how did you become the sort of the crypto journalist, Laura? Well first of all, I don't know if I would call myself that but I was a contributor at Forbes and I was covering personal finance and it was something I covered for a while so I was getting kind of bored a bit, I felt like I was writing the same articles over and over again, and I mentioned that to them that I'd like to do something different and they so they said we have this idea to do a [ UNKNOWN ] list, why don't you lead that with another reporter so she and I just divided it in some kinda of [ UNKNOWN ] and I took digital currencies and then just became really obsessed. And I think it's actually a good. Contrast to personal finance. Which, isn't a subject that changes a lot and this we're not. We see it's changing probably faster than any of us can keep up. So, in that sense I think it's actually a good fit for my personality. Was it totally by chance that you happened to get the digital currency section. Or, did you have some background in it? Did you come across it in other, you know, in your past and Have an affinity for it? Yeah, so I've told this story before but it's kind of funny. I actually heard about the coin for the first time in 2011. But the person who explained it to me, made it sound to me like essentially people just kind of Solve math problems with like pen and paper at their computer and then they can win these like, what I thought were video game coins. That's literally how the description somehow you know was interpreted in my brain. That's pretty accurate. Yeah, and then years later I learned a little bit more and I did write about it a little bit, so I did have some curiosity, but yeah it didn't Fully understand that world until, it was actually four years ago now, so. And [ UNKNOWN ] broader view of cryptomedia, what sort of job do you think cryptomedia is doing? 'Cause I know, I think people who aren't in the media often accuse the media of being biased, and often correctly. But I think even more so in cryptomedia. It's like you hate [ UNKNOWN ], or you own this currency, or whatever it is. Do you find it sort of hard to. Get it across at your objective and what do you think of the perceptions of people in crypto media? I think, you know, you've got kind of the spectrum. You know, there are definitely places where what's being printed probably is low and accuracy and As we know, there have been reports showing that there's a lot of pay to play in media which I'm sure you guys have been approached. Obviously I've been approached, although it's someone that actually and I don't know if this is going to sound un- pc but because this is a global movement and you've got Teams from other countries, where the norms around journalism are a little bit different. I've tended to notice that a lot of those offers actually come from foreign crypto projects, [ UNKNOWN ] as normal. Exactly, so I think sometimes there's a cultural misunderstanding there. But, then at the other end of the spectrum, I do think that there are legitimate outlets that are covering this space. But, they could do so probably with a measure of temperance and like we saw in the craze in 2017, there were some outlets that Seem to practically be trying to feed the frenzy. And I just thought, my god, their audience is just going to lose so much money. Why are they doing this? There should be a lot of caveats to what they're saying, so It really runs the gamut. What are your visions for the long term prospects of the media industry? We've seen, you know, Facebook has come along people, media outlets were reliant on Facebook for traffic. Very recently CCM, which is a crypto media outlet. They said that Google's tweaked algorithm had basically forced them to shut down I think they're back in business, but there is this reliance on big centralized entities, do you see that changing? And is cryptocurrency going to enable the media to sprout up into a beautiful blog universe again? For sure. The lessons of the media industry, that's just something that I Frankly thinking about all the time, what if someday there's the Google of podcast ads and they tweak something and suddenly my revenue plummets. I'm thinking about stuff like this already quite a bit. And that's why I'm trying to diversify already. In terms of- In what ways are you diversifying? Unlike I did my first live event earlier this year, I learned a lot of lessons did not actually diversify the new but going forward how to make that happen. And yeah, I would say that as for whether or not the crypto ecosystem can come up with something that can help save media, like It would be great if that happened, but am I gonna bank on that? Probably not. I've had multiple people suggest that I launch my own coin, and I'm a little bit like, do you guys know how this stuff works? Because I don't think that's a very good idea. [ LAUGH ] So, we'll see. We'll see what happens. Although I did hear something really encouraging. I was talking to the CTO of Ripple at a conference the other day. And I'm still have micro payments my mind because I was wrote about it recently and how they promised us for 10 years that would happen just see an article on the internet be able to pay 50 cents, you know without friction to something in your browser. And apparently, you know, crypto is going to make that easier but he was talking about The idea of being able to stream payments, so you'd have like your crypto wallets, you go to the article and the longer you stay there, the more it would stream we're just talking about like thousands of a cent per second or something like that. And he seemed to be thinking that the infrastructures all there and then a year or two we could see that. Which I think could be an enormous boon to media but It does sound promising. I do wonder if that kinda thing that will be Quite similar to the way that Spotify has been for a lot of musicians, where the problem is where this long tail of payments and essentially it's basically decimated a lot of their income. Except for maybe some of the really, really popular artists. For instance, on my website I have a little thing where you can tip me using the lightning network And I think so far I've made like 42 cents or something and, Yes. It's literally just, [ LAUGH ] Yeah, people give me fractions of a penny. And so it is super funny. Like, I'm a little bit like, okay, if this is the future of micro payments and I'm definitely not going to bank on that. So we'll see. We'll see. It does sound promising, but you know, like I said, it might be one of those things that only works for certain breakout stars. And over the years, you've probably interviewed dozens or hundreds of crytpofigures. Do you have any one episode that really stands out or do you have like a favorite guest of all time? My favorite guest was probably CZ of Binance. I had a lot of very tough questions for him about his strategy of regulatory arbitrage and also about the fact that the SEC will claim jurisidiction if He's serving US investors and he really pushed back at me, he was not counted in any way. And so there's just something very pleasurable about that experience of kinda giving somebody a tough question and having them like, come right back at you with With the strength of their convictions, and he did that, and so it was actually a very entertaining episode, but also, kind of got you thinking a little bit about, like, what is the point of these regulations and stuff like that, and so he made some really good points from an intellectual standpoint, as well. What is your take on how the US is approaching regulations here? A lot of the people we interview are usually treading on eggshells and they don't want to rock the boat too much and upset the FCC because we're totally compliant, don't worry about us. But what is your take on it as a sort of an impartial observer of this industry? Wow. That is such a difficult question. I really could see it both ways And the reason why I say that is I think the way that it goes is that the FCC is just enforcing the law that they have at the moment but they don't make laws. And so that really can't happen until probably something like a court case or maybe if Congress passes something like the Token Taxonomy Act. So at the moment the way they're going about it. It's sort of, I wouldn't say in a vacuum necessarily. But with the tools they have, they're doing sorta of what they're supposed to be doing. However, that could change if there's an act of Congress that says no, they're gonna need these other rules. Or if a court decision rules a certain way, then there could be a completely different law that the FCC would have to enforce. So in that regard, yeah, it's hard for me to say like, what is the right thing to do I really see it from both sides like, totally get that a lot of the teams are trying to leave the US and just as an American, I'm like, hey, wait the these teams are actually American. They should be here like there's all this talent here that's leaving But on the other side, we were just talking about the meaning of 2017. I've literally have my own friends lose money in this space. And it's something that I know is a concern and it's a big problem. And we saw all those cameras and everything. So I also see the SEC side so I'm not giving you a good answer. It's one of those things where Yeah, there's just really good arguments on both sides so it's hard to make a call. You worked on a book, right? Is there anything you can tell us about that? Yeah, yeah, I consider my book to maybe tell what I would call the second chapter of crypto history. So At the first chapter is how Bitcoin got started. Which was a great story told by Nathaniel Popper in Digital Gold. People should all read that if they haven't read it. That book actually ends in March 2014 so there's been quite a bit that's happened since then. And I would say that what really happened in the second chapter is that we saw That finally this world hit the mainstream in a way. And from that point forward people kind of recognized, okay, this is here to stay, something's gonna happen. And granted as I mentioned, we don't have these ability, but they could kind of see the potential and they at least were speculating on it. And so my book kind of tells the story of how we reached that point, but it won't be out for, like, two years, so I guess, get your preorders in. We'll sign it right to the next bubble, right? Yeah, probably, hopefully, fingers crossed. it is coming out after the having, so that's a good signal. Nice. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me. I'm Jeff Roberts. I'm Robert Hackett. Come to fortune. com for more Balancing The Ledger. See you next time. [ MUSIC ]

Balancing the Ledger: A Conversation with Laura Shin

Fortune_Crypto

The host of Unchained and Unconfirmed podcasts joins The Ledger team to talk micropayments, crypto media, and what drew her to covering cryptocurrency.