Catching Up with the Crypto Editors

Bloomberg senior editors Anna Irrera. There's always someone waking up, always someone needing an edit, always someone with a story idea, and Philip Blogger, cancer prosecutors doing raid on different crypto exchanges, people's homes for the latest Friday in the editor's room at Welcome back to the podcast. Hi, thank you, and I know you were joining us today from your closet. I am indeed, this is my preferred location for podcast recordings.

It's wonderful and cozy and probably around forty degrees celsius, which is like what a hundred ninety I'm not sure. This is the glamorous life of Bloomberg editor podcasting and Phil you are in frankly more glamorous surroundings than one of the like gorgeous conference rooms in the Zurich office. How's life over there? Live is good? Thank you very much.

Excellence This week, like every other week, I feel that, you know, when I was kind of reviewing the file, I was like, wow, we published a lot of stories about a lot of things. And one of the things I've noticed is that since you joined, which was just a couple of months ago, at this point, your byline has popped up with almost equal frequency in the you know, reported by Field as it has in the edited by Field.

And I'd love for you to just talk a little bit about what it's like having been a reporter in Crypto for a long time and now, you know, being primarily an editor but still kind of contributing to reporting in the way that you have been. Yeah, I think you know, I'm still reporting because maybe at heart I will always be a reporter. And I guess many editors are the same way, right, because that's the way you become an editor often is because you were a reporter before.

And I think in specifically with crypto, I feel it's helpful to be reporting also to an extent because you're keeping taps on what's going on, and you know, it helps when you're editing too because you have you know, heard from sources as well, and so you can also help reporters frame stories and help with sourcing as well. Just make sure that everything you know is solid, and you know, maybe sometimes a reporter has done great reporting, but they're struggling a bit on how to like frame

it or get the angle right. And if you're speaking to people in the sector as well, or people not in the sector but have but who have views on it, you can help shape that in a way that's more I guess accurate or compelling or whatever the case is. And it's just always fun, you know, Like I think it's one of my favorite parts of the job is speaking to people and then writing stories and finding out things. So I'm happy that I still get to do that,

especially things that people don't want to tell us. Love to hear about those. I'm reminded of something that a former editor of mine, Ben Smith, who is now you know, the founding editor at Semaphore, used to say when we were at BuzzFeed News, and it is that being a reporter is the most fun job that anybody in the in the newsroom can have. And he said this while he was editor in chief, and all of us the editors were like, I guess our jobs are fun too.

But I do think that having your main responsibility to be like going out and finding stuff out and then you know, writing it down or recording it for audio or sharing it on video, is is a pretty a pretty interesting way to spend time. For sure. Sometimes I still think, is this my job? Like this is so cool?

I get to do this, like it's my job, Like I speak to people and like, you know, you get front and row seats for what's going on in the world, even if I mean, you know, obviously depending on the beat you cover, it's more you know, relevant to the course of humanity or not. But in any case, wherever you are, you are seeing, like, you know, an industry developed, you know, big decisions being made, So it's it's you know, I'm still kind of in love with it, so that's good.

I guess right. I will not answer the question of whether crypto is relevant to the course of You might go to Phil because Phil, you too, you've been an editor at Bloomberg for a longer time than me or on a combined but you've also you know, there's like wild stuff happening in the markets, and I wake up in the morning in the the U. S. Time zone and I see a Phil larger cross little byeline, Like, what's that like? Yeah, I mean there is a there is a very large element as an editor at Bloomberg,

I think of writing and sometimes from scratch. In my position, I've had I've taken copy from many parts of the world, and crypto is, as you know, it can be fairly technical, and it's a fairly nascent field. And and and sometimes you do have to do sort of the quite invasive writing of things that are filed or you know, rewriting

maybe something that you need to do. But also as an editor, you you need to be able to step in and write from the top down sometimes, especially if you know people are out, reporters are out doing what they should be doing. Are you reporting um? And you're there and it can be written up quickly and cleanly, and it's it can be very rewarding to write something from scratch as well. Yeah, just like a reminder that we know how sometimes for for ourselves, but for our

teams as well. There's something that you said about, you know, sometimes you something will come in and I know you talked about helping folks frame things, and and you know, Phil, you talked about the kind of the technical hurdles and

barriers that people face. We've talked on this podcast, and Phil you've shared the fact that you know, anybody kind of coming into this asset class from a journalistic perspective, encounters words, stats, metrics, things that you may not have seen previously, even if you have deep financial markets expertise

or have over other markets for years. What are some of the kinds of things that you see, you know, in in copy maybe that you think to yourself, Oh, yeah, I remember when I did not know what this was. And it's good to be able to guide somebody along that path. You know, nine months ago I would have said that I had no idea what the DeFi was. I could not have described that to you at all. An algorithmic stable coin would be another example. We had to take a crash course and that back in May

or many of us, you know, especially missed myself. Blockchain bridges well, n f T, so I had a vague idea. The interesting thing about the crypto bait as like every month there is a new set of terms that you get introduced to. UM. This year it's often been you know, in conjunction with said invention crashing spectacularly, and I fully expect that to continue. It's you know, it just rolls

out every single time. I don't think there's been a month since I started this bait that I haven't come to face with a new a new set of terms that I needed to all use upun come to terms with h and that you know, for me, that's always been one of the attractions of asset classes like this is you're you're constantly learning, right, And I think one of the things that folks criticize journalists force They're like, well, you didn't know what you were talking about six months ago,

and yeah, like that's that's kind of the point. Sometimes, It's that you balance deep expertise and proficiency in certain things with an ability to become deeply experts and deeply proficients and other things in it sometimes aggressively short amount of time, and you know, learning how to learn is on on deadline and under pressure while somebody on the

other end of the line is potentially yelling at you. Um. That's that's certainly helped me in being able to cover cover markets like this at the time, like the one we're dealing with right now. Phil, I also to ask you about you know, you and Anna are both in

kind of are like European time zone, European offices. And one of the advantages or disadvantages you could disagree with me, but one of the things about that is it lets you get a lot of overlap with the sort of the Asia Pacific day as well as the US day. And so, you know, to use a phrase that you used earlier, you both have front row seats to a different kind of thing, which is like how the markets

and the coverage and the companies are different. As you know, the the day shifts and you know, like Asia starts going to sleep in Europe starts waking up, and then the US comes on stream. What have been some of the kinds of stories coming out of Asia that you've been able to edit that sort of give folks a

sense of that global scoop of our coverage. I remember from the get go, I think it was early January we started getting stories out of Japan UM and there was some interesting stories about how the Japanese UM Cryptox Changed Association was overhauling listing rules for crypto tokens, and it was really like the reporter in Tokyo was new

to the subject. I was very new to the subject, but it was a very interesting thing because it was a complete rethink of how they were going, you know, through the process of of screening new tokens for listings. I mean that was one UM. The whole Korea Terraform

Lab story has been another. UM Korea for those who aren't too familiar with this story, has launched an investigation into the circumstances around Terraform Labs and the collapse of the terra USD stable coin, and there's been a lot of stories around that and how that that sort of moved through the judicial system with prosecutors doing raid on different crypto exchanges, people's homes and things like that that have been breaking over the past month or two and

has been very very interesting and rewarding to be part of as well. And and uh, you know, you being in our London office are often interacting obviously with folks there, but also like our teams and Brussels who cover the the European Union, or you know, other like our fintech reporters who are writing about various elements of the the UK market. What has it been like for you now being in this endless see of stuff to do and

people to encounter. It's been great. I mean, I Phil was like everyone deserving of a holiday, so he was gone for a few weeks and I really got to appreciate the you know how hard it's been like to cover two different time zones, right, because you know, there's always someone waking up, always someone needing an edit, always something, someone with a story idea, which is great because it's better to have more than less, but it is quite consuming.

Um As for the sort of geographical distribution of things that it's been really fascinating because obviously with the Bloomberg we have reporters everywhere, and so while we might not have Crypto specific reporters everywhere, you know, Crypto is a story that touches upon everything you mentioned. Brussels, so the ECB is thinking of launching a digital token, right, so I've been speaking to the reporter there and trying to figure out sort of what interesting stories we can do.

And you know, there was a big conference in Paris, so we were lazing with the reporter in Paris. So it's it's just been really really fascinating, um and interesting to cover it as a global story rather than just you know, a local story, which it's not, because crypto in its very nature is a global sort of asset class that doesn't have time zones or you know, doesn't

never shuts down, never sleeps. Coming up some more of what we're watching in crypto as we head into next week from Bloomberg Crypto Senior editors Anna Arera and Philip Blogger Cranso. One of the the elements of crypto that is global. It means that our coverage has to be global, but it also means in lots of different places. So you know, if you are listening to this podcast and you've listened to the end, first of all, shout out

to you, thank you for listening to the end. But one of the things you've heard is, you know, we always say hey, you can find more of our coverage on the terminal on Bloomberg dot com or follow us on Twitter. We are also responsible for things like a newsletter we're responsible for. You know, we have colleagues who work on uh Bloomberg Television where they do various types

of crypto coverage, including a weekly show. In addition to what we do on Bloomberg Television, we also have a video streaming product called quick Take, you know, which has sort of more social friendly videos that are often quite short, quite accessible, regularly cover crypto and a range of other topics.

I sometimes think about how many different ways people who are interested in crypto like have to get access to their information, you know, whether it's they're watching TikTok's if people explaining why they bought a certain toka, or three hour long YouTube videos of somebody going on a deep investigative dive into unnamed companies, dubious financial statements. What are

y'all reading or watching or listening to? That is you know, kind of crypto related but doesn't come from Bloomberg right now. I mean, I know it makes me sound very millennial, but I do still get a lot of stuff out from Twitter, and you know, because I do find people still are able to share even concise opinions, and then from there then on they linked me to other places,

and I know it makes me sound very boring. And obviously podcasts are also something that's easy to learn from because you can be doing something else while you're you're listening, and that's quite valuable because reading, you know, we might not actually have the time, or you know, you just need to be more focused. But still do read all of our stories from the beginning to the end because we care about kickers very much. We take much you know, pride in the last quote, so please read it. I did.

I didn't tend to read the Financial Times scrypto coverage. Shout out to my former colleagues. Yeah, shout shout out. They break a fair bit of news on crypto. They write, you know, fairly critically about crypto. I also, you know, as a general sort of I enjoy the Bloomberg big Takes. I think that the format is nice, and you know, they're usually almost always stories that that kind of hit

it right on the bottom, well reported, well executed. While I did, I'm very proud to see that the Crypto team has been punched I think above its own weight in terms of getting stories on as big takes, and I think that's very nice for somebody who's not familiar

with the big take. How would you describe it? I think it's a you know, selection of basically highlighting our best work, um be it often often it's enterprise of some sort big feature stories, but sometimes it's you know, big breaking news that we are just giving the royal treatment. Um I believe there was a story about Goldman Sachs and you know there their travails with community consumer banking

fairly recently. That was off a breaking news, but but given the sort of big treatment, so it could be a little bit of everything. But usually they are stories that have a good visual element, a good graphical element, nice storytelling and and very interesting information in them. There was a great big take a couple of weeks ago about mayonnaise, like for real, for real, you know Tracy Alloway, who some of you may have heard because she's obviously

part of the Odd Lots squad. But the title of that story was what the Great Mayonnaise Inflation Mystery can tell Us about prices? And it was just this incredibly well written deep dive into you know, inflation and supply chains and how things how prices are calculated, using mayonnaise as an example, and as somebody it doesn't even particularly like maybe he is so sort of fascinated by by that.

So that was, if you will excuse the pun, a good flavor of what the Big take has to offer on that awful pun note, I think I'm gonna let y'all go back to your well. Hopefully Anna you can get out of the physical closet that you are in and back to your your your virtual or real desk. And Phil, thank you so much for as always for joining us from Zurich. Thank you, thank you. You can find all of our work on the Bloomberg Terminal, on Bloomberg dot com, on Twitter, and in that Bloomberg Crypto

newsletter that I mentioned. Anna is at Anna Arera on Twitter. That's I R R E r A, and Phil is at lager Crancer. That's l A g e r k r A n s e R. On the next episode of Bloomberg Crypto, n f T prices might have cooled significantly from their recent highs, but luxury brands are still betting that clients wants exposure to these tokens. For more on why brands like Gucci and Tiffany are embracing n f T s, tune into the episode dropping on Monday,

August twenty nine. This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Send us your comments, questions, or suggestions for the show to Crypto at Bloomberg dot net or find us on Twitter We're at Crypto. The supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky very Galina. Our senior producer is Janet Babin. Our producer is Sharon Burriro,

Associate producer is Ty Butler. Desta wonder At is our engineer. Original music by Leo Sidrin. I'm Stacy, Marie is Shmell. Have a great weekend. M