The Wall Street Journal has released a mini documentary on cryptocurrency today, October 3rd, called: “WSJCoin: To Understand Cryptocurrencies, We Created One”. The film is created by markets reporter Steven Russolillo, who documents his travels to Japan and Hong Kong to explore the world of cryptocurrencies. While the title suggests, Russolillo takes his acquired knowledge regarding the world of digital money to build his own cryptocurrency, the WSJCoin, that is definitely described as “an on-line token on your newspaper industry”.
The documentary briefly outlines the wild journey cryptocurrency has been on since 2009. As every crypto enthusiast knows, the idea of digital cash is filled with ups and downs, tons of hype and limitless expectations. Even so the booms and busts in the crypto market couldn’t deter Russolillo in the allure to create his own crypto.
The film gives a brief tour of how people all around the world are finding different use cases for cryptocurrency, on a Japanese college campus features own coin for cafeteria purchases, in the failing attempt via the Venezuelan government to produce a stable coin backed by way of country’s national oil reserves. Private manufacturers like Kodak and Playboy will also get a mention for creating currencies created to reward customer support, and viewers pick up a tour of the small cryptocurrency mining facility run by an ex-college student dealing with Japan. Concerns regarding the tremendous amount of fraud occuring through half-baked cryptocurrencies and poorly managed exchanges are also noted.
A total of 8.4 billion WSJCoins manufactured , and an additional 150 physical WSJCoins were later distributed at the WSJ’s D.Live annual technology conference in Hong Kong. The introduction of the coin ended in partnership with Japanese developer Makoto Takemiya, who helped discover the WSJCoin up and running in 24 hours.
Amusingly, Russolillo and Takemiya later search for a bar and acquire a couple of beers employing their new coin, marking the WSJCoin’s first official transaction.
While the documentary is essentially produced for those entertainment of crypto novices, the panel discussion at D.Live provided some interesting discussion surrounding the potential for cryptocurrency to reshape the journalism industry. Cointelegraph reports that both BitPesa CEO Elizabeth Rossiello and former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas were vocal supporters through conference for your potential property value a journalism-based crypto asset.
“If you lower the cost of moving money around, the entire economy changes – ‘How must i pay for a news article online?’ changes,” Thomas told the crowd at the D.Live event.
Unfortunately for?Russolillo, the WSJCoin project was ultimately terminated by company’s head of ethics, Neil Lipschitz, who argued that this WSJ Coin raised way too many “ethical questions”.
“We’re not in the commercial of getting into your cryptocurrency world; we’re here to report it also to explain it, similar to we directory of banks but we don’t go out and take up a bank,” he stated, adding, “We’re not planning to create a currency.”