About a year and a half ago, I started writing for a startup financial industry outlet from Australia called The Industry Spread. I wrote a couple stories for them, but it didn’t go anywhere. I was too focused on my own startup to give this startup an adequate amount of attention.
But the publisher and I had discussed my tech-savviness, having written for IT sites and spending 15 years with IBM. He directed me to “follow blockchain.”
“What’s blockchain?”
He couldn’t explain it. Something about money you can’t spend anywhere. Yadda-yadda about ledgers.
So I took my eye off the ball.
But now I’ve been a full-time, freelance financial writer for almost a year. I write about another side of fintech — online lending — for DealFlow’s Alternative Lending Report, and just successfully pitched a couple blockchain stories to Global Finance magazine. I’m also ghosting newsletters for retirement planners you’ve seen on CNBC.
And in writing those newsletters, I’ve made one life-changing discovery: Some of the smartest financial people in the world still don’t know their ass from ethereum when it comes to cryptocurrency or any other blockchain application.
Right now, as the currencies are correcting from a way-too-fast runup — still valued dozens of times more than they were a year ago — this is the time to get on the bandwagon. I’ve been approached by a confidential party to work on an ICO, and I’m seeing a lot of white paper work to be done. These white papers tend to be pretty technical, and the IBMer in me likes it like that. But what’s been lacking from most of what crypto-world calls a white paper — and I call a business plan — is any kind of financial sophistication. And they do read kinda crappy. So a business writer with an MBA would be insane to let the opportunity slide.
So I’ve started a Medium feed (and Bitcoin Forum, and What’s App, and Telegraph and everywhere else crypto diehards congregate). My first posting promotes the thesis: Crypto is just a word Millennials made up because they never heard of bearer bonds.” Please follow me here and click on the clapping hands once in a while.
Fintech Writer William Freedman 