Ines AissaniSmall article to announce that the newspaper you are currently on has just celebrated its 3rd year of existence.
The very first article (which presented bitcoin faucets) dates from November 05, 2018. As I write these lines, it is November 18, 2021 and I am, despite myself, taking stock. And, I want to share with you the main points of my thinking…
3 years is both a little time for a business and a lot at the same time. Well, by saying that I'm knocking down open doors, of course, but 3 years, very often, is a milestone in the creation of a project, whatever it may be. To put it lightly, if love lasts 3 years, a business starts to take shape (seriously) after 3 years 😉
The first years are certainly the most difficult, especially since we have colleagues who have very good quality crypto journals. It is then less easy to stand out.
Yes, I said "colleague" and not competitor because in this adventure, and it will seem naive and childish to you to say this, but we are all soldiers in the same battle. We work to make this technology known to as many people as possible. We are not competitors but allies, partners and colleagues, if we take a step back.
The first thing that grabbed me was actually the title of the first article published in 2018. We deliberately wanted to publish on Bitcoin faucets (sites that offer you bitcoins for free) to attract our first readers.
We are not fools and know very well that the vast majority of people who are interested in cryptos do so through financial incentive. There is no criticism there, it is in fact the best engine and the motivation which made the cryptosphere grow. It is often the first attraction before discovering all the beauty of technology. The important thing is therefore the purpose: to discover the advantages of the blockchain.
The end justifies the means? This is not the debate here, you will understand…
In fact, what surprises me in this article is that at that time (it wasn't that long ago, so only 3 years), there weren't many methods for earning money. money with cryptocurrencies. There are so many methods today that no one talks about faucets anymore.
It's just amazing to see how DeFi has grown since then. In the space of 3 years, this universe has evolved so much and developed at lightning speed.
In 3 years, we have witnessed the rise of new, ever more scalable blockchains, ever more sophisticated protocols and the ever stronger appreciation of the establishment. We have seen the rise of NFTs and the inclusion of cryptos in gaming and real estate, among others. We have mainly seen investment bankers and hedge funds investing in cryptos. It is perhaps even this point which was the most revealing of the change. This certainly makes you think of low-level Dutchism, but we have been able to see in 3 years how institutions have finally recognized the merits of bitcoin and the blockchain.
This is perhaps the greatest victory. Seriously.
Otherwise, the article could be so much longer but for fear of boring you, we'll cut to the chase.
We know that our newspaper is still a baby. Yes, we are a very small team and the vast majority of articles are written by me…
We don't write a lot of articles and that can be a flaw. It's a fact. We are evolving slowly from a pure business point of view. We are not very "marketable" either because our audience is still small. We are not looking to get rich fat either. We make good investments in a personal way and that is what allows us to self-finance (among other things) this newspaper. It doesn't matter, in fact. We have also chosen an editorial line that refuses to publish too many articles just to publish.
We also don't want to publish hot news because it clutters the mind more than anything else.
We know a lot of people who think they know about cryptocurrencies simply because they are ingesting a whole bunch of knowledge. They don't realize that their knowledge is a jumble of inconsistent information. There are no explanations, just descriptions. No vision, no height, just hot information on the price of bitcoin or another crypto at the moment.
We clearly prefer in-depth articles and more in-depth analyzes or those based on systemic thinking... This therefore implies reducing quantity in favor of quality. A most basic equation, indeed.
To stand out, we chose to do so with a light tone. This was even the purpose of creating this newspaper. We wanted to be the first crypto newspaper that uses light language and is even meant to be funny, when possible. We wanted to offer articles to read that we would have liked to read: nice and informative.
Another important point, we have also developed our YouTube channel in 3 years. This was even the reason that prevented us from writing often about Zonebitcoin.
This requires a lot of time and clearly we had underestimated this work. You should know that I do everything on my own, for the moment. The research, the script, the filming, the editing and even the vignette. This is also why I only post one video per week. Here again, many YouTubers publish at a much higher frequency and that is to their credit.
As soon as I could, I would hire an editor to reduce the workload and be able to focus on what I love most: writing. I know that many delegate the writing of the script, this seems inconceivable to me. Delegating content writing and just reading the script written by someone else seems like a misleading approach to me.
This is how I would end this article, by clarifying my opinion on the subject. I personally think that we have the unfortunate tendency to want to learn mainly through videos and only through videos. However, I think that the medium itself (video) and the channel (YouTube) have inherent flaws that can hinder a good understanding of this discipline.
This is my opinion (and not a conclusion from extensive intellectual reasoning, to be clear). I think we understand concepts better through writing. A good article or a good book for me will not be able to replace the video in terms of understanding and pedagogy.
Youtube pushes us to reduce our sentences, to be disproportionately dynamic and to condense knowledge into a few minutes. The population there is young and impatient. We want to know the next crypto that will explode without asking why and how. The thumbnail alone can be the reason for the success of a video. Put a face of a person with wide eyes and a hand in front of their mouth (the face of emotion of astonishment always clicks) and you have a good vignette. This is why you see so many thumbnails of this type. That works.
I'm trying to stay on track with my thumbnails and titles that are more enticing than I would normally do. That's the game and there's nothing wrong with that.
I like to remind people that the video must be a complement to a piece of writing. I think you have to rely on both mediums to really learn and understand.
I allow myself to write this because I see so many people who launch into this universe without knowing its foundations, the technicalities or the philosophy. They are interested in the surface of things and are there only to speculate on tokens, each one more stupid than the other. They don't know the difference between eth and barbecuetoken for example. Neither a trader nor a fundamental analyst, it’s a sort of mix between the two…
Fortunately there are very good crypto channels like that of Cryptoast, Journal du Coin or those of hasheur to name a few. There are also English-speaking channels which are astonishing in terms of finesse of reasoning (I am thinking of the Finematics channel among others, I am personally a fan).
To conclude, for the 3 years, I am delighted with the evolution of the site and the YouTube channel. What is certain is that we will continue on this path.
We will improve in technical terms, it is desirable 😉
And, we want to thank the first readers, the viewers of the channel, the people who are still here and those who have just discovered us.
Always do your own DYOR (Do You Own Research) research, no matter what source you seek information from. Sharpen your critical thinking and curiosity to find information that will be useful to you.
