SLP327 Mike Germano – Going Against Fiat Media & Bitcoin Magazine Print Edition

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Mike Germano of Bitcoin Magazine (and previously of Vice) joins me to talk about his latest efforts with Bitcoin Magazine Print edition and to share his thoughts on media in today’s age. 

We chat:

  • Why do a print magazine now
  • Is Bitcoin media overly US biased? 
  • Why Fiat Media is getting Bitcoin wrong
  • Technical precision and accuracy in stories

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Stephan Livera links:

Podcast Transcript:

Stephan Livera:

Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Germano:

Thank you. I’m really happy to be here.

Stephan Livera:

So Mike, I know you’re involved with Bitcoin Magazine and everything. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved with Bitcoin Magazine?

Mike Germano:

Yeah. I’m the publisher over at Bitcoin Magazine, which I have been for the last six months, but I’ve known the team now for many years, primarily when I was the Chief Digital Officer over at Vice Media when Vice used to be edgy and trying to tell the truth and do big stories. And at the time, we were a great counter-culture brand that loved freedom and loved all the things I think Bitcoiners really do like. And I remember telling people—and I’d been a Bitcoiner for a while—thinking, Hey, Bitcoiners are the most punk counter-culture thing out there. Why would we not want to have a bigger relationship with the people in this space? And I remember everyone at Vice going, No, Bitcoin is for buying drugs. I’m like, Yes, Bitcoin can be for buying drugs, but it can be for other things. You don’t need to just think that. And I started a conversation with the folks at Bitcoin Magazine who—you know, we had Vice Magazine—so anyone who produces a magazine, there’s a very small group of us. We had good discussions and got to know that team. And to be very honest, I saw more of that pirate, rebellious, trying to find the truth and make society a better place coming from Bitcoin Magazine than I did [at] Vice. And I had a background more in being a web developer since I was 14 and looking at how to build websites and getting in trouble in high school for, of course, saying things, but realized freedom of expression has obviously always been a cornerstone of where my morals and ethics and beliefs are and the Internet allows you to do that. So that was always very exciting for me and I built a whole career around. That. And after leaving Vice and traveling with family and realizing how important that is—to spend time with your family—why else are you working so hard and starting businesses if you can’t actually enjoy the time with your family, ended up catching back up with David Bailey, the CEO of BTC, Inc. prior to the conference and realizing, If there’s going to be any time to join Bitcoin Magazine and really make this media company something that we all want it to be, and the purpose that it should have, now’s a great time. So I reluctantly joined because I knew I would be completely hyper-focused on it and tune out everything else and just go pretty extreme with it, which I’ve done, and I’m very excited about.

Stephan Livera:

That’s great to hear. Bitcoin just has this different culture around it. I’ve heard Jack Dorsey say it’s of the internet, it’s by the internet. It just has that feel around it. So how does that play into your thinking about how a Bitcoin media and Bitcoin magazine company should be?

Mike Germano:

Great question, and maybe you’re alluding to the Bitcoin Magazine as a print edition. So Bitcoiners, if we’ve all been grown and born in the Internet, why would you do a print magazine? First, I think the thing that makes the Bitcoin community and culture—I believe—the best, is they’re curious. They want to educate themselves on their own opinions, but they honestly are willing to listen to people that they disagree with, which is the most important part of any conversation or any debate is: are you willing to listen to the other person and not just call them a Nazi or say they’re a communist, but actually dig in and hear something. So I think our community is interested in being educated and seeing different opinions. And that’s why we have a diverse culture. As much as they want to think it’s a bunch of tech bros, you look around at the people that are involved in Bitcoin—they’re from all over the world, they have different opinions, their core beliefs seem to remain the same, which is nice—and so that’s the community. The culture is everything that resonates from the community. And one of the things that they do is they value their time. They value their work. And I believe that because of that, they value the work that Bitcoin Magazine does. So to come out with a print magazine, which, and let me tell you—we resurrected the print magazine, we’re now printing quarterly starting with the El Salvador issue—I understand why print is dead. It’s extremely difficult to want to print. The cost of paper has been going up. I’m not sure if that’s just inflation or wood prices or the fact that the US government is printing so much that there’s no more paper left for anyone else, but, you know, you’re a new magazine and no company even wants to touch you, having to get distribution. So it was a real pain in the ass to get going with the print magazine. However, it did two things for us: One, we asked people to lower their time preference when they’re thinking of a story, because Twitter, you’re used to having it instantly, right? And with the magazine, everyone knows that this is a story that took time to make, that it’s not going be reported on something that happened yesterday. So understanding that between the time we print, design it, that’s at minimum a month before it gets in your hands—you’re giving us time to actually perform the story. And I believe you’ve had Aaron, one of our best reporters—actually the editor of the magazine, who spent three months down in El Salvador. He wasn’t like these tourist journalists, the CNN that comes in and shows a burning ATM and then leaves. And they’ve been there for 12 hours. Aaron was there for three months and that’s how we have the best story about what happened with El Salvador. We had most in-depth [research], we had the most information, we had the most time spent, than any other media company in the world, and that was because we made that investment in it. Because, once again, the El Salvador issue, that story that everyone else thinks on Bitcoin Day is over, they’re now getting a copy of the magazine two weeks ago. Now they can have the in-depth story, and the magazine allows us to have time to tell the story. When you buy a magazine, what we have is people really take a lot of pride in it. The biggest issue that we’re facing with the magazine is we can’t ship it in like regular mail because a regular mail magazine gets shipped to you and it gets the corners a little frayed and everyone starts freaking out on us. So we had to like package this magazine up. We have to go to the extreme. It’s something that they are excited about, it has a little bit of novelty, almost. We live in such a digital world that it’s nice to have a physical item, one they might say, Hey, look, I’ve been a fan of Bitcoin Magazine since issue seven, or something that they feel they can hand to a friend because look—Bitcoin is a difficult topic for a lot of people to understand. And I believe that when you see a print magazine, you realize, Wow, people care enough about this. This is a real industry. This is a real business. This is a real community. It’s physical, something that they can hold, that they can pass on. And more importantly, then all of those words—the Internet, we can’t have a Google or Facebook remove our content from every magazine unless they want to start burning books. So it’s also a way to preserve some of our thoughts and make sure we can’t get censored.

Stephan Livera:

Whenever you’re making any kind of content, there’s always this constant battle between trying to punch out a lot of material versus high quality. Because obviously more quality costs a lot more effort, time, money—you name it. There’s that interesting balance there. So from your perspective, how do you see that with Bitcoin Magazine, especially now with the physical edition?

Mike Germano:

Yeah. Our goal for the physical edition is to do the best quality content we can. So we are already working on stories now for two issues down the road. So that’s six months from now. There is not enough investigative reporting that’s happening in Bitcoin. There’s not enough time allowed to have this. It does not make financial sense for us to do. What we are fortunate about is that David Bailey, the other partners in the company, they believe in this mission so much that they’re allowing us to make this investment while it might not make sense from a business plan, saying, This is how much we want to invest in this story versus how many magazines we can sell. Obviously we have a conference, Bitcoin 2022, that does bring in revenue for us. Which can help us tell these important stories. We think that this is a cycle. And to be blunt, we’ve had amazing subscription growth already. And this is just letting us know that this is something that they want. So as long as that continues, this is going to continue to fund the stories we have. And obviously any type of print ad in the magazine helps us tell a story, but it’s kind of fun talking to traditional—it sounds weird to say traditional Bitcoin companies—but more of these Bitcoin and blockchain companies saying, Hey look, we’d love for you to do a print ad. They’re like, We don’t even have a print ad. What are you even talking about? I’m like, Okay, we’ll design the print ad for you because we know you don’t have a team to do that. So what’s nice is people are very supportive of the magazine. I believe that the biggest issue we’re facing is: do we tell hardcore Bitcoin stories, real analysis into Taproot, or do we try to tell stories that are more pop culture that could get the people who are just getting into Bitcoin? So that’s the biggest problem that we’re facing now is: is this for the hardcore Bitcoin community? Or is this for new people entering the Bitcoin space? Because we could be a counter-culture magazine and movement, but we do want to go mainstream and we do see the benefits of the Bitcoin message helping everyone. So there’s a balance there that sometimes some of the articles might be very difficult to read for someone who’s even been in Bitcoin for two years, but we have to reward and educate and provide content for people who’ve been fighting the good fight in Bitcoin for the last nine years, eight years. We also need to start making content that can help nocoiners, or they’re just kind of curious about Bitcoin, because for a lot of other people, Bitcoin Magazine was the first time that they saw some of this content, that they start seeing people passionate about it. And we need to make sure that we’re not only rewarding the old following, but introducing ourselves to new Bitcoiners.

Stephan Livera:

I definitely can appreciate that as well. Myself, when I’m thinking about podcast episodes and targeting beginner vs. intermediate vs. advanced-level Bitcoiners—and even different subjects, right? Is it a cultural sort of thing or is it more economic or is it more technical? Is it some other element of this? And the other thing with Bitcoin is: things can change so quickly, right? So someone might have gone and written a guide on how to self-custody or how to run their Bitcoin node. And then six months later or one year later, it’s changed. So how is that going to work with the print magazine as well? Like if someone writes a guide, let’s say, and that goes into the magazine, but then you know, a year down the line, well, it serves more like a time capsule for people. Okay, this is how people set up their Bitcoin node in 2021.

Mike Germano:

Yeah. I think that’s part of the fun part about all this look: back at some of the old magazines, you see when people are trying to tell you how to use a VHS in your home to record shows, or you see some of these things and you go, Wow, look how ancient technology was back then. Look what you had to do. So let’s hope that innovation keeps continuing in this and people look back at self-custody and goes, That’s what you had to do in order to secure your Bitcoin? I would say we probably don’t do as many guides—we’d leave our guides for online, because you want that information to be up to date. I think it’s also—the magazine—it’s important to capture the movement, the tone, what’s happening in culture at the time. And El Salvador being an example. I think some people are a little bit hesitant about a government adopting Bitcoin Is that good or is that bad? To try to understand what the sentiment was at the time: what people were actually thinking, what were the concerns and the causes. So that is a time capsule of that moment. That is a time capsule of what happened when El Salvador pioneered this—the good, the bad, the ugly. And I think if you read the article, you’ll see, the nice thing about it—it’s very truthful. So we’re not just fanboys saying everything is great. This is how it all works. We have to do the journalist job there of actually reporting on it. And so once again, facts will change and people try to rewrite history, but we’ve written it down. We’ve printed it. By not rewriting history—I think that’s a crutch that a lot of other media companies use, to repost it or to delete the old one. That means we have to be more accurate. So I think we’re more accountable when we have a print product.

Stephan Livera:

There’s no memory hole or rugpull of changing definitions over time or things like that. It’s: the magazine that went out in this month of 2022 is that magazine. Of course it depends who you talk to and who you’re listening to or who you’re reading, but sometimes in the Bitcoin community, we can get very technical about things. And sometimes that’s not the best way to appeal to the precoiners and the newcoiners. Sometimes the stories are what really captivate people’s minds more so. I presume that’s also something that came into your mind as well about how to structure, how to plan, what goes into the magazine, right?

Mike Germano:

Look, the physical magazine should also be a celebration of the community that Bitcoiners have created, a culture that we are embracing and trying to push. And it’s important also to highlight the people that are making this happen. And by doing so you can see a little bit of yourself in probably everybody that’s doing this, and get to understand more people. Because I personally believe that Bitcoin’s values—there’s so many people out there that share the same values. They just maybe don’t know that about Bitcoin, right? Because as we all know, there is no Bitcoin PR company. If you think about like what company could be started? That there’s not a PR company providing information—there’s so much misinformation, or they don’t understand. I mean, news can’t even cover it correctly and they do such an atrocious job. So I think when we are looking at what type of topic we’re trying to cover, I think it’s important to highlight real cultural stories. For example, Bitcoiner’s Travel Guide. Why do I think that’s important? Not just because, Oh, here, travel to El Salvador because El Salvedor accepts Bitcoin. No, the point is that—and we have Dread, our Jamaican pole-vaulter who’s a hardcore Bitcoiner and does an amazing job with PlebNet and everything else with that. We’re like, Hey listen, you’re a loving, great person that’s already organically traveling the world, trying to tell people about Bitcoin. Let’s go to places where you can only use Bitcoin. And once again, people have done that before. But more importantly, you’re connecting with people in a new way. When you’re traveling to a spot and they accept Bitcoin, they’re excited to have you there. This is a language we all speak. So we were just in Ukraine , in Kiev, we were talking to people who accept Bitcoin. They might speak Russian, Ukrainian—it doesn’t matter. We have this smile that we know we all believe—at least in Bitcoin—there’s a connection we have there. And that’s exciting to me, it’s a way to showcase, Here are places around the world, and this is how they’re actually utilizing it. I think you can dig into the story and not just make it superficial like travel here or travel there, but you can dig into almost understanding why people are using it, the type of people that are using it, how you can travel to those destinations. So that I think, you know—it’s a travel guide. That’s the context to do it. Now, American Express and MasterCard spend tons of money sponsoring travel shows. They don’t spend the whole show talking about how Visa international terminals work with merchant pay so that they—like they don’t spend the whole time talking about that, right? They try to tell you, Listen, you can go anywhere in the world, and if you have this card, you’re able to purchase things around the world. What do you want to explore? It’s about you. So, similar to that balance, we want to talk about what freedoms does Bitcoin allow you to have, not talk exactly about all the technical aspects. Now, we were in Ukraine and we rented a tank with Bitcoin, but actually in order to do it, the guy would only accept it if we used a Telegram bot where you send your Bitcoin and then you send it directly to his prepaid Visa card, so it took us like 10 or 15 minutes, but it’s funny dealing with a guy who’s 75 years old who happens to have a tank who was part of the former Soviet army, who’s now using it to get paid on a prepaid card through a Telegram app. So that part of it was clunky, but it was fun to actually see. And you can tell that in an exciting story, but also, once again, put a time capsule to how people are actually using it back then. What was actually the adoption rate? What are the tricks that other people are using to be able to make this part of their kind of economic financial life, but also be utilizing Bitcoin technology but maybe in the best possible way for them to use it, in their traditional way.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. And you mentioned Ukraine, so I’m curious how you get the ideas for which stories to cover. And this also came from what you mentioned earlier with what was happening with Vice around, What’s the interesting story? What’s going to be hot? What’s going to be on people’s minds and what’s going to get people thinking? How do you think about that in terms of Bitcoin stories?

Mike Germano:

One of the things that made me most excited about joining this company was: I thought some of the best stories that are happening right now are around what Bitcoiners are doing. And for some odd reason, they’re not being told in traditional media. We see, organically, an unbelievable podcast community that wants to talk about it, but we’re not visually being able to see it as much or capture it. So for us, when we’re looking at stories—unfortunately there’s too many right now to tackle all of them. But part of our plan is to grow our media company, our magazine, our video product, and part of that is doing that internationally, because even though Bitcoin is a global language, English, while it’s the predominant language, is not the global language, right? And if we’re trying to get more people to understand Bitcoin, we need to be translating our content, localizing it, which is why we opened an office in Kiev, Ukraine to handle what’s called the CIS region, but mostly Eastern Europe and Russia. We’re taking all of our content, translating it, but also by doing so, we’re having original reporting done by reporters on the ground there. And what that will start doing for us is we’re building out our global network because it’s not just us looking—I’m based here in New York, our company’s based in Nashville—we’re have people all over the world. We’re a very remote company. But it’s not just a US version of what is the story. We need people that are in the trenches that are actually reporting on how this is happening, whether that’s in El Salvador—I mean, I laugh that poor Aaron is going to be known as the McDonald’s guy, because he’d made that original tweet, like McDonald’s and Bitcoin, but the truth was, it was because he was there for three months and knew what was going on, and that was the place he was always going. So he finally asked, and was able to capture that. And now it’s always weird because now you see all these Bitcoiners go to McDonald’s and they like take a picture and it’s like a rite of passage thing, which is strange. But that’s an example of, If you have someone on the ground, we’re going to be able to find out the better stories than if we’re just looking at Twitter, or if we just go, Hey, let’s try to force-feed this story. So having this community, these people that are telling us the interesting insights—I hate to say this and don’t want to be crude, but in Ukraine there was actually—you know, you’re there, you’re talking to people and you find out, well, there’s a priest that actually accepts Bitcoin as donations at one of the churches. And you’re like, Well, that’s cool. And then someone tells you, Well, also there’s a stripper who has her Bitcoin wallet tattooed to her. And you’re like, Well, that’s very interesting. So now all of a sudden, by having people that are local who understand the community, you’re able to find these very unique stories that I think would resonate to an international audience, and also highlight some of the things that are happening locally. Part of selecting the story, we have our editorial team, but also I think it’s important to try to look outside that and look for new stories that maybe traditionally we didn’t cover in the past.

Stephan Livera:

Right. And it’s probably fair to say a lot of Bitcoin community discussion is happening on places like Bitcoin Twitter, on the podcast, and so on, where that can be very US-centric and very English language-centric as well. And that’s actually something I heard even when I was in El Salvador as well when I was at Adopting Bitcoin. I was chatting with some people just on a side conversation and it sort of came up, this idea that a lot of the Bitcoin conversation is very US-centric. And so that was something that struck me. And even for me, as someone who was previously based in Australia, I found myself doing episodes based on things going on in the US, or with developers and other writers or people working or coming out of the US as well. And I wonder, what’s your sense been of that, at least in the last, say 3-4 years?

Mike Germano:

I think the reason why people are doing US stories is because it’s the easiest—it’s right in front of them, it’s in English. And that one seems to always get the traction. But I don’t want to say it’s lazy, but does that really help the purpose? We’re trying to have hyperbitcoinization. We’re not trying to have hyper-English-speaking-bitcoinization, right? And let’s be very blunt. It’s not Texas, it’s not Florida, it’s not Wyoming, it’s not the US, it’s not Canada, to right now be the area that has the most interesting, unique adoption of Bitcoin. It’s a Spanish-speaking country called El Salvador that a year ago people weren’t even talking about it or caring about it, right? No. So the biggest story is not happening in the US. And if Bitcoin is about meritocracy, it’s about this ability for anyone to participate, why are we limiting ourselves to only English stories when the whole point is anyone can do this? I think the biggest innovations are happening outside of the US! I think that’s where the most interesting part of this is happening. So I understand why Bitcoin Twitter, part of it, unfortunately, I would say—by doing live with Bitcoin Twitter Spaces is you’re actually also unfortunately more of a time-zone restraint. So you’re maybe talking to people—okay, cool. If you’re English-speaking in the US, you tend to want to talk about that because that’s in the times zone of the people you’re listening or talking to. So that’s where I think, the type of content that we produce, whether that’s in print or producing video—we’re going to be producing more original content video—that gives us the time for how we air it. But once again, we have to create more hubs internationally, more bureaus internationally, because that’s where the important stories are, and I think we really push our team to take a look at that. We were the first ones, for example, that had a draft of the law that Ukraine was trying to pass through their house—it was more of a crypto-based law—of how to accept it. We were the first ones to hire a lawyer to translate this in English so the English-speaking group could actually see this. Well I think other media outlets wouldn’t have taken the time to care about that, or they’re just like, Oh, here’s a law passed. This is what someone said in the news. And here’s a quote. Well, okay, here’s the exact law. Here is word for word how it’s being translated for English. And once again, those I think are more important stories. I’m more interested internationally how this is adopted, not just how people in the US are fighting about it.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. And on top of that, it’s also that let’s say US-based Bitcoin companies tend to get a bit more love in the media and in Bitcoin Twitter, whereas let’s say the European or Asian Bitcoin companies, or potentially even Bitcoin developers or other people, they might not get as much love unless they’re kind of, Oh, there’s already a very established scene there. Like an example might be, let’s say the German Bitcoin scene is pretty strong, I would say. There’s multiple German Bitcoin podcasts. There’s some pretty well-known German Bitcoiners, as an example. But yeah, it might also be fair to say that maybe the Bitcoin ecosystem is missing out on some really hot startup or some really talented entrepreneur or developer in some less well-known country. And they’re just struggling to actually get some traction because of our sort of myopia towards US, UK, Australia, et cetera.

Mike Germano:

And as you said earlier: look, Bitcoin was born on the Internet. And the whole point of the Internet is we’re all connected. That’s been the beautiful thing about it, right? And that’s the beautiful thing about Bitcoin. Does it not connect us all? If we’re all trying to get onto one financial framework, this is happening globally. It’s not just happening in the US. Startups—obviously because they get the VC funding—VCs feel more comfortable with US-based companies because they have more legal protection so they’re getting the proper funding. They’re able to grow faster. They’re the media darlings—once again, sometimes local press can be lazy and just be reporting on things that they know in the US. So you have at least a massive competitive advantage if you’re building—especially the tech startup companies in this space—in the US. It’s just the truth. And unfortunately, sometimes some great entrepreneurs decide to move to the US in order to do that. But what we’re hopefully seeing—obviously, some of the pandemic really impacted people’s freedoms, their inability to travel or move, which is pretty gross and disgusting. One of the benefits could be that people who are trying to now search for—as they’re getting their freedom taken away if they have to be in lockdowns and ridiculousness and they’re trying to look for freedom and they find Bitcoin—maybe they’re building things within their local community. These are things that we should be highlighting, not just, Let me just move to the US and try to do a startup. So I think I said earlier, when you look at our company, we have a lot of international people organically because people who are attracted to a Bitcoin-only company—how many Bitcoin-only media companies out there are there? Very little. Cointelegraph, CoinDesk—fine, they’re covering everything, but the people who believe in Bitcoin want to be at a Bitcoin-only company. There’s not a lot out there. So we’re trying our best to make sure we get in these places that obviously we also create a business model that we can hire local people. We can tell local stories. So that comes with obviously having to get advertising or sponsorship dollars with the right partners. And in order to do that, there needs to be an active space where people want those products. You don’t want to just advertise in a region where no one wants it. So we’re actually in a really unique space by—just when we open in locations—hearing who’s willing to even advertise, you know that there are other startups and companies, that there are other technologies out there. It’s not just the US. So we hopefully want to be a really great platform for people to tell these stories, but we also need to be a platform that people want to come to to tell us what’s going on.

Stephan Livera:

And speaking of understanding what’s going on, Bitcoin can be a technical subject, right? I’m thinking here of let’s say Aaron van Wirdum’s Taproot explainer articles or other things like that. And that’s maybe at the development and technical level, but even other aspects of it that are quite nuanced and take someone who has quite good knowledge of that industry or area, whether it’s AML laws or whether it’s economics or whether it’s some other thing. How do you think about that aspect of it? Let me put the question this way. What’s your take on the state of the way Bitcoin is covered in the media today, when it’s not Bitcoin specialist media?

Mike Germano:

Are you talking about like traditional media or the corporate?

Stephan Livera:

Right, yeah. As in how they might cover it, and they might give some explanation of Taproot or something, and it’s inaccurate. Or some other thing.

Mike Germano:

Yeah. So I think we’ve all seen just a real big failure within the corporate or mainstream media these last couple of years, which is horrible for our society. They failed on all fronts. They’re doing a failure in any type of investigative journalism, or even getting the facts right. The Internet is constantly showcasing when they’re just getting even facts wrong, because they’re trying to push an agenda. And what scares me the most is I don’t see corporate media wanting to push a positive agenda for Bitcoin at all. There’s no advantage to them for that, because Bitcoin is scary. They don’t understand it. They are jealous. Half of them are jealous. They love saying, Well, I wanted Bitcoin when it was $1,000. Like, I don’t care. That’s irrelevant for how you’re now covering that topic. And also this is a very scary thing for all their advertisers. Corporate media makes a tremendous amount of money from the same companies that will be disrupted by the adoption of Bitcoin. So there’s two parts to this question. One, they are not incentivized to cover Bitcoin properly. And two, they don’t have the staff, they don’t have the resources, and they don’t reach out to the technical people to want to do that. So traditional corporate media, they’re not going to spend 45 minutes on air properly discussing Taproot, right? Or properly getting into what the Lightning Network is really about—the advantages and disadvantages. They’re not set up to do that. They’re set up for at most a seven minute videos sketch. And also anyone technical is not going to go work full time for Forbes and do this, right? So they might interview an expert every now and then, and that’s just because they want the sound bite. So the experts that are being selected are not the ones that are doing good technical analysis. They’re the ones who are giving you a sound bite that says like, Lightning’s good. Oh, great. Thank you. And so there’s that part, and then secondary, obviously the biggest failure we’re seeing is, with all the energy FUD that comes out of corporate media—it was NBC that covered something that said, Bitcoin mining is heating up the lakes and is killing the environment. And you’re like, What are you talking about? And we actually had like a proper scientist write and actually look back and find the temperature of all the lakes and did a real amazing nutty analysis to illustrate like, Actually, they’re completely lying. Like, nothing about what they said is truthful. And what’s scary is: think about how much work we have to put in to just correct NBC when they don’t even care, and their author and all their readers are like, Yeah, Bitcoin mining is killing fish and—it’s ridiculous. They are going to push on this environmental topic non-stop. They’re going to also say, Oh yeah, the government seized Bitcoin. Well, that’s actually not accurate what you’re saying. So no one’s holding them accountable. We’re looking now—at the Bitcoin Magazine—how we can hold the media accountable, because when people just Tweet at the media and say, Hey, you got this wrong. They don’t respond. They don’t care. When other media companies are saying, Hey, factually, this is incorrect, this is inaccurate—there’s more pressure on that media company to tell the truth. So we think that this is a responsibility of ours, because you know what? It’s not a joke, but I obviously love my mom a lot, as any son would, but I like getting the texts from when she watches mainstream media when they bring up Bitcoin. So even my mom, who I keep telling her Bitcoin’s not a company that I work for—I for Bitcoin magazine—she’ll say, Michael, on Tucker Carlson, he had an episode about Bitcoin. You’ve got to watch it on channel five. So I’m watching how a large group of people—this is how they’re getting their news about Bitcoin. They are getting it from the corporate and mainstream media. And if they’re not accurately reporting and no one’s holding them accountable, then millions of people are going to be getting false information, which is never going to help our movement.

Stephan Livera:

Right. And I think there’s a range of egregious errors that I see regularly. Obviously that’s outside of our bubble, if you will, of Bitcoin specialists, podcasters, writers, et cetera, but as an example, some of the corporate media will go and ask some complete irrelevant or wrong person, or they’ll just give credence to a person who’s just going to pump a lot of the, Oh no, Bitcoin is boiling the oceans or whatever the line may be. And the problem is that they don’t even know the right person to ask that question, because they’ll just see anyone who’s saying the bad take on Bitcoin and then amplify that person. And then that person then may get the benefit of saying, Oh, look, see! CNBC and Forbes and all these other big people quoted me. I’m an expert on this. And then in some weird way, they benefit out of this because everyone’s just copying off everyone else. And they say, NPC news organization #1-4 all quoted this guy, right?

Mike Germano:

Look, think about this. Here’s the problem with the structure that we have is: in the past, if news broke about Facebook, a reporter would call Facebook’s PR department and say, Hey, I’m from ABC. They have a relationship, their corporate PR, internal PR: Hey, what’s this story about, do you want a quote on the record? And they’ll say, Sure. And we’ll quote on the record, A, B and C. Or, Hey, we’re going to quote off the record, or they’ll say, Look, you got these completely wrong—these aren’t the facts as you can see here, here, and here and here, and set the record straight. That’s what media companies are used to. They’re used to, Well, did you check in with the head of PR for Facebook or for Home Depot? And they would get that. For Bitcoin they don’t have that. So now they don’t know who to turn to because once again, their traditional approach was: get quote from company. There is no company to get a quote from. So now you have these people who don’t even know how to handle this, because they were used to being force-fed information by an internal corporate PR company. There is no one. So now you have crazy voices, all saying a bunch of different things. Once again, this is the freedom we have for people to express their viewpoints. And you’re right, they’re going to the person who they think will give them the best sound bite. And so they fall back on the easiest thing which is the person that gives them the best sound bite, not actually breaking down, Okay, who is really genuinely an expert in this field that’s going to provide us with information—even if it’s not sexy, or if it’s not going to get page views or headlines—but who’s going to provide the most accurate information? They are absolutely not incentivized, nor have they shown us that they’re willing to do that, which once again goes back to why it’s super important and essential for us to be able to provide accurate reporting on this, do more in-depth reporting so that they can cite the work that we’re doing. Because we’re like, Look, we actually have proper journalists in this space who are digging down to provide you with more information. And I guess part of our role at Bitcoin Magazine is to call out corporate and mainstream press when they are being completely inaccurate. So I think that’s something that we haven’t done enough with as an organization because we’re trying to grow as fast as we can and bring in smart people. But I think it’s our responsibility to also call this out because it’s a real negative thing. And you’re right, there’s a lot of hucksters that are going to say they’re experts in something just because they were willing to give a shitty sound bite.

Stephan Livera:

It’s very unfortunate. And so I’m curious as well as you’ve been in the media industry in your career, do you see that there’s like some fundamental problem with the model? Or has media always been this bad or what’s your take on how things have gotten to where they are in the normal media world?

Mike Germano:

I mean, I had a company in 2005, it was the first social media agency. We were building and we were half developers and half people who understood the social web, and when we sold our company to Vice, we had been building for a lot of media companies. And I grew up really just having so much respect and admiration for what media companies could do. They were the ones that were actually finding the truth. And whether—I’m not sure if Trump broke everyone’s head, or I will say obviously I was part of the media—we knew how to write a good headline to get people to read our content, right? But unfortunately, whether it’s the media that’s failed or it’s people’s desire to intake media that’s failed, this system unfortunately is now being built to just be a partisan Hyperloop of the same information that people want to hear. And when you see CNN—that was once respected and was once neutral—just be a complete shill, you know what I mean? And once again, I don’t care what side of the political aisle you’re on, the whole point of reporting is no one should know what side you’re politically on. It’s embarrassing to watch, and I think part of it also is you have a—especially I saw this at Vice—was we used to have people who wanted to tell a good story, that wanted to get that information out, meet someone maybe completely different than them, but you could empathize with what they were going through and tell that discussion. You don’t have to agree with everything that they say, what they stand for, but understand why they got there. And now obviously in what is the real disease—which is woke—that has gone through all these media organizations where people are afraid to say the truth, they’re afraid to report on facts because they’re going to get kicked out of their media organization because it doesn’t fall in line with what the corporation wants them [to say], because they’re afraid that Media Matters, which is a shitty organization, is going to go to Pepsi and get them to pull their advertising because they said something. You know, if you say that men can’t have babies and all of a sudden now you’re a transphobe and you should be kicked off of the network—we’re living in that kind of crazy time where they’re getting pressure. I mean, they’re getting self-censorship. You’re watching traditional reporters just leave the traditional media jobs saying, This is not what I signed up for, you’re not telling the truth. As dumb as it sounds, I think a turning point is going to be the way that CNN reported on Joe Rogan taking Ivermectin and saying like, Joe Rogan’s taking horse tranquilizer—you’re looking at it and going like, What are you talking about? Like factually, this isn’t true! How could you get away with saying this? They are in this little tizzy where they’re not being called out for anything. Look at all the court cases against the media companies about accuracy and they’re all saying, No, no, no, we’re not news. We’re entertainment. You know, they can identify as entertainment, which allows them to lie. I think it’s really scary and they’re fighting for relevance, which is why they hate people talking online. They’re trying to discredit anyone else, because they’re trying to say, if you just trust us—CNN or MSNBC, the mainstream media—we will tell you the truth. It’s these other people, it’s this other bad information because of Facebook allowing other people to talk. I mean, how is this not an extremely scary thing for people? How are they looking at this as like, Oh, this is a positive that the media organizations are the ones trying to get any alternative media, any alternative voice, censored, removed because they’re the one true voice. And yet we’re watching them constantly make massive failures in their reporting and not being held accountable for it. I’m horribly scared by it. It’s very sad. And you’re watching now a generation of people that are trying to push their cause, not push the facts. So whether it’s Vice or other companies that just looks like a bunch of hall monitors that came in and they’re trying to police everyone on their virtue and they’re trying to force the world to look at everything exactly in their view versus reporting on the truth and facts and telling the appropriate story—the factual story. So it’s a very scary time for media. And especially with our company, the importance of having a niche, one issue that you talk about, is: we can be experts in it. And hopefully we can help inform other people that are looking for expert opinions and not looking for more crappy fluff.

Stephan Livera:

I think it’s interesting because there’s different answers or different ideas that have been put out there as to why media has gotten so bad. One idea is Okay, the advertising model that they used to use got cut away. And now they don’t make as much, now they had to drive in a more “clickbait” fashion. And maybe that was what drove it. And then another answer could also be that Look, actually, it’s a reflection of the people. They had become very high time preference, right? Instead of being, I ought to read a book, now they want a short summary. Or now they want these 5-second TikTok videos, and it’s their impatience that has driven media companies to now respond back to that. And it’s actually in some sense our fault. Again, that’s a collectivist idea, but it’s: they’re responding back to the people. And then one other idea, and I think you touched on this a little bit, is this idea around competence: that sometimes the highly technically-skilled person can earn a lot more money in some other job. So he’s not going to become a journalist anymore, or like a proper professional anymore.

Mike Germano:

You bring up great points. I think the point I get most aggravated about that gets brought up is, Oh, well the media company is just providing you with the information you want to see and it’s your fault for liking junk food information. And I think it’s such a ridiculous way of passing the buck and them saying, Well, we actually know we can trigger you and get you going all crazy. We can get you to get all angry. We know you’re going to watch so we’re going to feed you that junk food instead of here, doing some proper investigative journalism that might take more time, more money, but would be an interesting topic. I mean, there’s groups of people that are just tuning into MSNBC and CNN to understand where they stand on issues. So like, Hey, it feels like propaganda, like we’re now updated to let you know that this is the way you should feel about inviting your family over for Thanksgiving. And everyone’s like, Yes! What CNN said. Versus—you know, I think that that’s the excuse that they use. Look, it comes down to—and I’ve been in media world over at Vice—these people have massive egos. And there is a power that comes with media that they get to influence culture and they get to be considered important, and the media likes to pat them on the back saying like, Yes, we were the ones who were telling the truth. Our job is so hard and tough and please watch me and never stop watching me. I mean, it’s just, it’s so—I think we’re at the point now where we shouldn’t have these celebrity hosts. You should have journalists that are doing the story that—I hate to say it: you almost want to forget their name—versus now that they’re like little late-night stars in late-night comedies, this crappy news source. So I think it’s actually worse. I think it’s just these people’s ego. They know that they have this attention and the corporate media trying to—all of them—keep their job. So they’ll sit there, so they can have—you know, look at the staff that it takes to put on a 30-minute Don Lemon segment. Think about tons of people, all repeating the same crap, but all these people want to keep their jobs. So I think it’s actually worse. It’s actually more ego than it is the content. And I even launched this thing called Some Good News with a guy named John Krasinski, you know, I helped launch that. And it was all just actually positive stories. Well, you know, I think at the end, after eight weeks we got over 1.2 billion views on all the social networks. People wanted to see it, it was something else that was different that was out there. It was actually just positive stories during when COVID started. And that was before George Floyd and then obviously George Floyd hit—this was just a short run for this little content we made—but people want to see positive stories. People want to hear different opinions and it’s not in the best interest traditional corporate media to do that. And if they’re going to continue to blame people saying this is what they wanted to watch, they need to then stop harassing people like Joe Rogan, because he’s doing something different. Because what the truth is, is based on viewership, people would rather watch him than watch all of your news channels. They’d rather watch Mr. Beast on YouTube, so actually they’re proving you wrong that that is not what they want to watch. They just happened to be put there because someone has said that CNN and MSNBC and Fox News, for that matter, are more important sources than anything else, that they have to be trusted over everybody. Versus, actually people that are providing good content that—the numbers don’t lie—show you that more people want to watch Joe Rogan than all of CNN.

Stephan Livera:

Do you believe that the problems we’re seeing with the media are temporary and that maybe someday it’s going to change back, or we might have some kind of return back to competent and skilled journalists? Or do you think we’re stuck with this problem for some time? I guess, does Bitcoin fix this? Or is this one of those things that it’s actually just a human thing?

Mike Germano:

I guess I’m hoping for things like—I won’t lie, I’m hoping Kyle Rittenhouse sues everybody. I really am. And I say that because I would like to see that actually go to trial. I would like to see definitions be actually made. You call this kid who’s shown nothing that he’s a white supremacist. I mean that’s a heavy word to use. There are some bad people out there that are white supremacists. What facts do we have that Kyle, is that, and why did every media organization say that? Why did they—just the complete untruth that they had to have known, if they were any media organization, they purposely report on false information. I think that we have need to have this trial, almost this legal turning point, to sit there and really classify: what are we talking about here? Where do facts actually matter, right? Versus, is this just entertainment? Because I don’t think Bitcoin, unfortunately, fixes the news. I don’t feel like the news is going to get better. I think it’s going to be considered entertainment. My biggest concern though, is the same way that they were able to kick off half the world, kick off people that had any question that wasn’t with the narrative with COVID—is that not going to happen to when Bitcoin really starts to do what we all know it’s going to do as it becomes more of a financial freedom tool for people around the world? You already see it. They say, Oh, Bitcoin is for terrorists and money launderers and drug dealers. And then you’re like, Wow, look at these millions of unbanked people in El Salvador actually utilizing—well don’t look at that story! You know? I mean, at what point are they going to start classifying us as false news because we’re not doing the narrative from the government. You’re watching them do that with just your information about your own personal body and health. When it comes to finance, when it comes to the global reserve currency, why are they not going to say that we’re a danger to the state for the content that we make? So I think—maybe Bitcoin doesn’t fix this—but I think that there’s going to be a media war on Bitcoin that’s going to happen. So that’s why I believe that it’s important to fight on every little bit of this, especially if we’re talking about COVID misinformation. If we’re talking about just reported news—if trusted news organizations have reported falsely, we need to hold them accountable because they’re going to come for us. If you look at it, we’re Bitcoin Magazine, we just talk about Bitcoin. We don’t talk about any of the altcoins, right? We’re still gonna be shadowbanned on Facebook. We’re still gonna be shadowbanned on LinkedIn. Because they lump all cryptocurrency into one, right? And we’re already seeing that. The only reason why—what’s odd enough is we do so well on Twitter—is because Jack Dorsey’s a big supporter of Bitcoin. These other networks you can’t buy ads, promote a news story on Facebook, right? So you have a hundred thousand followers and eight views? I mean, we’re already being banned on all of our social content for providing factual information. So I’m very afraid of how this censorship is working, which is why, you know, obviously the corporate media that’s willing to play along, they do these things so that the government doesn’t go after them. They’re very much, I think, the enemy, and we need to make sure that that’s being held accountable. So I don’t know if Bitcoin fixes this, but I know that Bitcoin is going to be a battle that’s going to happen because of this.

Stephan Livera:

Right. We could say it’s going against fiat media in some sense, right? For anyone who is trying to put out material, whether that’s podcasts or articles or whatever you do have that concern that they’re going to start putting those warnings. So for example, on Twitter, if you Tweet from the “wrong opinion,” they’ll put the warning: missing context, or fact-checkers—look at what the fact-checkers said. And so that must also play into your mind as well when let’s say you’re Tweeting things out, or you’re making a YouTube for the Bitcoin Magazine YouTube channel, or on other social media—that risk of having your content being de-boosted or taken down or having the content warnings or the fact-checker warnings.

Mike Germano:

Yes, no, look, it’s a huge problem. And I think it’s a bigger problem for—once again, I’m a freedom of speech person—so I want there to be more competition in the space. I want more companies to provide this content. I think it would be worse for them. At least for us, this is I think why we have a bunch of different products that—you know, a magazine is a paid yearly subscription. We have a revenue source coming in, we have our Deep Dive, which is Dylan LeClaire’s paid product to provide more on-chain analysis. We have a conference, right? That has tickets. So we have alternative revenue sources. So that’s not going to scare us off from telling the truth on a social network, but we know that that post is going to hurt us. Now, we’re almost starting to think about is it even worth being on some of these other social networks? The problem is we have to, because we have so many [scammers]—you know, like Facebook will always do everything they can to hurt our views. Yet they allow for every fake Bitcoin Magazine account to happen to shill some other crap. So it’s interesting that they come after us for actually reporting real news, but they’re not going after fake accounts, right? So we have to be active in these just because we don’t want our name to be damaged by these fake accounts. We’re going to be held to a much higher standard than the CNNs and the MSNBC’s because every little mistake we make—Oh! Look here, they can’t be trusted!—so we can’t allow that to happen. And what I’m hoping—what we really would love to build Bitcoin Magazine to—is, we get to say, Hey, look, we were a very trusted news source. When we first sold the first Bitcoin Magazine, it probably cost you two Bitcoin at the time because Bitcoin was at four bucks, the magazine was $8.88, so a good investment for some. We can do our best to try to be a respected and trusted news source so that when people who have content—I want them to come to Bitcoin Magazine and look at us as a protected platform, that we are going to sit there and say, Look, sometimes you have opinion pieces, sometimes you have investigative journalism. How could you tell that story with our platform? So that one, if you do it, you’re not going to be censored or you’re not going to be ghosted. And we got our page finally verified by Facebook. We’re the only crypto media company to be verified by Facebook, right? And that’s a big step. I know it sounds silly, but that took us a year to get. So I think it’s important for us to build a platform where this freedom of expression can happen, having alternative ways to monetize it, which we’re very lucky that we have such a good readership that’s willing to do that so that this can become a place for other people who have important stories to tell, that this can be a place for them to do that. Because if they try to do it on their own, they’re going to be banned and pushed to the garbage can of the Internet and not being allowed to tell those stories. So it’s important for us to continue to build this media platform to be trusted enough that we can at least have a seat at the table and say, Why are you banning this? We’re actually factual. We’re going against the fake fact-checkers and going against them saying, Actually, as you can see here, here’s all the facts. So we really do have a battle for facts and freedom on our hand at Bitcoin Magazine. It’s not just about telling you to buy Bitcoin. It’s much bigger than that.

Stephan Livera:

Right. Yeah. And if we all get canceled, at least there’s still the print magazine.

Mike Germano:

I will say this, man: getting canceled is fun. It’s worth it. You know, there will be different worlds: there will be the canceled and the uncancelled world. And if you look at what they’re canceling everyone for now, I would like to say that I think in a certain time, no one’s going to want to be uncancelled, as those look like the least cool, most annoying—that do absolutely nothing in the world. So I guess the whole world will be in two different sides. And I’d rather be on the cancelled and freedom side than the other side.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. I think it’s probably also going to happen to a lot of us on Twitter sooner or later, given the way things are going. But nevertheless, it’s definitely important to hold the ground that you already have on some of these platforms rather than just ceding that turf. So I think it is worthwhile still being there. Obviously you’ve got over one and a half million followers on Twitter last I checked with Bitcoin Magazine’s account. And I think the Bitcoin conference account also has a decent number of followers as well. So I mean, just all important ways to keep pushing out that material as well. So one other thing, actually, just around training of people, like obviously there’s going to be a lot of new people coming in. What’s your thinking there around training for new journalists and writers and other people who are contributing at Bitcoin Magazine, because obviously there’ll be a lot of new people coming in and that might raise some of the questions around, Okay, how’s everyone going to get trained up quickly, right? Not everyone can be the Aaron van Wirdum, right?

Mike Germano:

Yeah. I think you’re asking a very important question that we’re struggling with, which is: we’re trying to find reporters that have high ethics, are trained to tell a factual story, are talented writers. And then on top of all that, have a deep understanding of Bitcoin. There’s not a lot of that, right? And that becomes difficult, but I do think what we are allowing to have happen is—and I’m not sure that people see it yet, but it’s happening—which is: Bitcoin Magazine is becoming a place where people either A) want to tell stories about Bitcoin who understand it and really want to dive into it, or B) are coming to work at our company. And I love to use 30 seconds say: if you are a great reporter, if you do want to do proper investigative journalism, or if you do want to help people just even understand the basics of Bitcoin, please come talk to us. We want to hire those people. We want to do more of this content. The training ground for the magazine, which should be our banner product, like that’s proper investigative journalism. You’re going to be held to much higher standard critique versus maybe someone who’s writing some of our web articles or maybe some more of our video content shows. I think that it’s exciting to actually also grab people that are actually utilizing this. So let’s not make the mistake that we’re going for the traditional academic reporting crowd. And missing out on the people who are actually utilizing this. Because to become a reporter, essentially, if you’re at least telling a factual story and sharing your experience, you don’t need to be verified by the guild, we just need to make sure that we’re properly fact-checking it and it is an accurate story. And I think that that’s going to become difficult for us to obviously grow that. But the nice thing is—proof of work—we’re watching people who’ve been in this industry for a while now who’ve done good stuff and we want to bring them into hopefully a bigger platform so the more that we see people actually putting content out there, we’re identifying those and trying to bring them into the company.

Stephan Livera:

Excellent. Well, I think we’re pretty much running up to time at this point. So Mike, where can people find you? And obviously if they want to get the print magazine, what’s the best way for them to get that?

Mike Germano:

Well, bitcoinmagazine.com, you can go on our store there. You’ll be able to find the magazine. And obviously if you look all around the Internet, we are constantly giving discount codes at 21%. So please utilize those and subscribe to the magazine. I think it’ll be something that you’ll quite enjoy. You can find us everywhere @bitcoinmagazine and me, Mike Germano, you can find me on—because I was part of the first wave of social media back when you used to use your real name and I don’t have a fun one—it’s just @MikeGermano on Twitter. I would love to continue any conversation, anyone who has questions, would love to reach out. And once again, if you want to help us build freedom and facts and to help with hyperbitcoinization and you want to help us with that fight, we’d love to talk to you.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. Michael, I’ve enjoyed chatting with you. And I think it’s a really important thing that’s going on here with going against fiat media.

Mike Germano:

Yes. Let’s go against fiat media. Well, thank you. And thank you for doing your part for all these years of actually providing information to people. Truthfully, it’s people like you that are getting people to open their eyes a little bit and want to dig in more, and your commitment over, gosh, how many years of actually doing this and showing off different voices? You know, people like us wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for people like you. So thank you for all the time, energy and effort you put in over these years of helping tell these stories.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. Thanks Mike.

Mike Germano:

Thank you.

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