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The best (and worst) stories from 3 years of Cointelegraph Magazine
On Oct. 1, 2019, Cointelegraph Magazines founding editor, Jon Rice, pressed publish on the first-ever feature story for the publication a story by Swedish…
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On Oct. 1, 2019, Cointelegraph Magazines founding editor, Jon Rice, pressed publish on the first-ever feature story for the publication a story by Swedish fintech writer Jinia Shawdagor about the countrys embrace of a cashless economy.
The brainchild of former Cointelegraph CEO Jay Cassano who was managing editor at the time Magazine was designed to fill a major gap in crypto media with in-depth features exploring all angles of the issues in a thoughtful, considered way. While its easier to get traffic writing breathless stories about Bitcoin price predictions, Magazine is an attempt to give readers and the industry a more intelligent approach.
I came on board after meeting the team at Cointelegraphs conference in Singapore. Due to an amusing mix-up between Austria (where a story they wanted to cover was based) and Australia (where I actually live), I was commissioned to write Magazines seventh-ever published article, Blockchain startups think justice can be decentralized, but the jury is still out.
This stroke of good fortune led me to become a staff writer, and later to take over as editor after Rice moved on (hes now editor-in-chief of Blockworks). Three years on, Magazine has amassed a great team of regular contributors, including Blockland author Elias Ahonen who joined after being interviewed for a story on physical Bitcoin Andrew Singer, Max Parasol of the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub, Christos Makridis of Stanford University, and freelance crypto writers Jillian Godsil and Julian Jackson. Magazine is always looking for more contributors, so if you would like to write for the publication, get in touch.
Without further ado, here are some of the highlights (and a couple of lowlights) of the first three years of Cointelegraph Magazine.
Andrew Fenton, Cointelegraph Magazine editor
The most popular stories
WTF happened in 1971 (and why the f**k it matters so much right now)
The most consistently popular story on the site explores whether former U.S. President Richard Nixons decision to get rid of the gold standard, which backed U.S. dollars with gold, caused a host of social and economic problems. Since 1971, productivity increased while wages flatlined; GDP surged, but the share going to workers plummeted; and house prices went through the roof. Is it causation or merely correlation?
How to prepare for the end of the bull run, Part 1 and Part 2
Essential reading before the next bull run, we spoke with some of the most respected pundits in crypto including Filbfilb, Mati Greenspan and Scott Melker about how to play the inevitable crash. TLDR: Always take profits on the way up.
Toss in your job and make $300K working for a DAO? Heres how
Nataliya Ilyushina and Trent MacDonald transformed their own academic research into a fascinating article about how some of the employees involved in the great resignation transformed their lives by working for DAOs. (Readers also flocked to our similar explainer on how to set up a DAO, How to bake your own DAO at home With just 5 ingredients!)
Childs play: Gajesh Naik, 13, manages a fortune in DeFi
The headline says it all: A 13-year-old kid from Goa in India is managing a million-dollar DeFi platform. Would you trust a seventh grader with your life savings?
5 big questions answered
Can Bitcoin survive a Carrington Event knocking out the grid?
Should crypto projects ever negotiate with hackers?
What really goes on at a crypto OTC desk?
10 great features
The FBIs takedown of Virgil Griffith for breaking sanctions, firsthand
Author Ethan Lou attended the infamous North Korean crypto conference alongside Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith, who is now serving five years in prison for helping the country evade sanctions using crypto. Lous article portrays Griffith as so dangerously naive that he volunteered much of the evidence the FBI used to convict him.
Ethereum is eating the world You only need one internet
Zero-knowledge proofs and recursive scaling mean the entire worlds financial system could theoretically run on Ethereum. Reader feedback was very positive, with many commenting this was one of the few things ever written about zk-Rollups that attempted to explain it in simple terms for ordinary people.
NFT art revolution: Beeple on his 5,040-day labor of love
Magazine profiled NFT artist Beeple shortly before he found global fame for auctioning his Everydays work for $69 million. He already knew it was going to be a big deal, telling Magazine it was Christies first totally digital auction and that it would accept Ether. There will be no physical piece; theyre literally just auctioning off a JPEG. And so, I think that will be a very big moment, and big validation for this space.
The lizard people invented Bitcoin: Crypto is a hotbed for conspiracy theories
With the pandemic getting into full swing in 2020 and paranoia running rampant on Crypto Twitter, Magazine decided to find out why crypto fans are drawn to conspiracy theories. It turns out there are some very good reasons, not least because there really are shadowy actors manipulating events behind the scenes in crypto.
How Silk Road made your mailman a dealer
One of Magazines earliest published stories explores how Bitcoin came to public attention after being adopted for use on the darknet marketplace Silk Road. Containing a detailed first-person narrative on how one actually bought drugs or other illegal stuff on the darknet, its perhaps not surprising that the author remained anonymous.
The crypto effect: Trading altcoins at the edge of addiction
Photojournalist Matt Danzico looked at how traders were spiraling into addiction and the emerging treatment options to wean them away from their next crypto rush.
Block by block: Blockchain technology is transforming the real estate market
Imagine owning a token representing a two-millionth share of the Empire State Building. Analysts say that tokenized real estate could be worth $1.4 trillion if it captures just half a percent of the global property market.
Is Ethereum left and Bitcoin right?
Does the battle between conservative Bitcoiners who want to preserve the best money in history and progressive Ethereans who want to push things forward mirror our divided political culture? Yes, it does.
Soulbound Tokens: Social credit system or spark for global adoption?
When Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin unveiled his Soulbound Tokens paper, there was a lot of heat but not much light shed on how theyd actually work in practice. Magazine spoke with Buterins co-author Glen Weyl to get the lowdown on this important new development.
Crypto kids fight Facebook for the soul of the Metaverse
Meta is throwing everything it has into dominating the Metaverse like Facebook dominated social for so long, but Web3 proponents are fighting to make it open source and decentralized.
Most fascinating people
Dmitry Buterin: Vitalik Buterins dad revealed his own fascinating life story as a computer scientist and entrepreneur who left Russia to make it in Toronto. He spoke about raising Vitalik, psychedelics, libertarianism and philosophy.
Damien Hirst: Magazine spoke with the legendary British artist in his West London studio ahead of the launch of his innovative The Currency NFT project.
Roger Ver: Bitcoin Jesus dropped a bombshell that rather than go to prison in 2002 for selling firecrackers, hed considered killing himself to be cryogenically revived at a later date.
Peter McCormack: The podcaster told a story about how his flirtation with using Bitcoin to buy cocaine on Silk Road left him hospitalized and how he made and lost a fortune twice.
David Chaum: The crypto pioneer whose work inspired the cypherpunks told Magazine about how he risked a lifetime in jail laying the foundation for Bitcoin.
Carl The Moon Runefelt: The social media influencer genuinely believes that he manifested his crypto wealth simply by believing he would get wealthy, recalling the premise of the pseudoscientific bestseller The Secret.
Tim Draper: The former Bitcoin billionaire (down to half a billion now) shared his tips for investing success and his glass-half-full philosophy. Instead of looking for what could go wrong, he thinks: What if it works and something really extraordinary happens?
Lushsux: The controversial Melbourne street artist has been engaged in strategic trolling for a decade now and more recently began to make a name for himself and a small fortune with NFTs.
Chris Blec: DeFis loudmouth troublemaker is a decentralization maxi. Is he good or bad for decentralized finance?
Griff Green: The DOGE-loving hippy white hat hacker who quickly replicated The DAO hackers exploit to steal as much of its Ether before the hacker could get away with the lot.
The worst: Rogues gallery
January and February 2021 were something of a low point for Magazine, as three profiles of industry figures came out in quick succession who went on to become the biggest crypto villains of 2022: Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky, FTX and Alameda founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Member of the European Parliament Eva Kaili who was recently charged after investigators allegedly found bags of cash from bribes in her apartment.
Reading them back, the Mashinsky profile from January 2021 stands up okay and included criticism of the firms abrupt $20 million raise, the absurd cult around him, rumors Celsius was taking risks, and a choice quote from podcaster Peter McCormack, who said the blokes a weirdo and he needs to get his act together.
A month later, the SBF profile was far too willing to take his effective-altruism spin at face value and likened it to robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Maybe without the robbing part, Bankman-Fried said, without a trace of irony. In reality, prosecutors say he was robbing from the poor FTX users so Alameda could make risky bets.
That same month, the biggest crypto proponent in the European Parliament, Kaili, possibly shed light on why she might prefer (alleged) cash bribes to crypto ones, telling Magazine that between me and you, I think the best way to get the ones that want to tax-evade is to put them on blockchain, because nothing is ever gone forever.
Best of the global coverage
While much of crypto media is focused on the U.S., Magazine has made a conscious effort to report on the best stories from around the world.
In Georgia, crypto is a crucial tool for refugees escaping the war
Cointelegraphs European editor Aaron Wood relocated from Saint Petersburg in Russia to Tbilisi, Georgia at the start of the Ukrainian invasion. He shared the story of how Russian refugees used crypto to move assets across borders and stayed afloat by trading crypto for cash at Tbilisis physical exchanges.
Crypto in the Philippines (Part 1) and The ethics of hiring cheap Filipino staff (Part 2).
The first part of our series looked at crypto adoption in the Philippines, while the second looked at the ethics of crypto projects hiring cheap Filipino labor. The latter story was named one of the best articles of the month in February 2021 by the Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists and Researchers.
Inside the Iranian Bitcoin mining industry
Tehran-based journalist Saeed Jalili went deep inside the Iranian Bitcoin mining industry, which is dominated by illegal, underground mines.
Thailands Crypto Utopia 90% of a cult, without all the weird stuff
Magazine visited Thailand to cover the crypto digital nomad scene and stumbled across this insane story about how Bitcoin OG Kyle Chasse set up a libertarian Bitcoin commune. The tale involved unchecked merrymaking, crypto influencers, police grillings, seasteading, a reported $20,000-a-month burn rate and a major collision between idealism and reality.
What its actually like to use Bitcoin in El Salvador
Joe Hall spent two weeks in the Central American country trying to pay for everything with Bitcoin. It didnt work out so well, even at Bitcoin Beach.
Our popular China-based crypto news round-up from Our Man in Shanghai ran throughout 2021 but was put on ice following the great China crypto crackdown. Its returning soon with a wider focus on Asia and a new writer who isnt physically based in China and, as such, doesnt need to fear repercussions for speaking their mind.
Magazines guides to the crypto history, businesses, meetups, services and education in cities around the world kicked off with Melbourne (Australia) in August 2021. It has since visited Vancouver (Canada), San Francisco (U.S.), Prague (Czech Republic), Miami (U.S.), Dubai (UAE), Austin (U.S.), New York (U.S.) and Tokyo (Japan).
Uncategorized
February Employment Situation
By Paul Gomme and Peter Rupert The establishment data from the BLS showed a 275,000 increase in payroll employment for February, outpacing the 230,000…
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By Paul Gomme and Peter Rupert
The establishment data from the BLS showed a 275,000 increase in payroll employment for February, outpacing the 230,000 average over the previous 12 months. The payroll data for January and December were revised down by a total of 167,000. The private sector added 223,000 new jobs, the largest gain since May of last year.
Temporary help services employment continues a steep decline after a sharp post-pandemic rise.
Average hours of work increased from 34.2 to 34.3. The increase, along with the 223,000 private employment increase led to a hefty increase in total hours of 5.6% at an annualized rate, also the largest increase since May of last year.
The establishment report, once again, beat “expectations;” the WSJ survey of economists was 198,000. Other than the downward revisions, mentioned above, another bit of negative news was a smallish increase in wage growth, from $34.52 to $34.57.
The household survey shows that the labor force increased 150,000, a drop in employment of 184,000 and an increase in the number of unemployed persons of 334,000. The labor force participation rate held steady at 62.5, the employment to population ratio decreased from 60.2 to 60.1 and the unemployment rate increased from 3.66 to 3.86. Remember that the unemployment rate is the number of unemployed relative to the labor force (the number employed plus the number unemployed). Consequently, the unemployment rate can go up if the number of unemployed rises holding fixed the labor force, or if the labor force shrinks holding the number unemployed unchanged. An increase in the unemployment rate is not necessarily a bad thing: it may reflect a strong labor market drawing “marginally attached” individuals from outside the labor force. Indeed, there was a 96,000 decline in those workers.
Earlier in the week, the BLS announced JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) data for January. There isn’t much to report here as the job openings changed little at 8.9 million, the number of hires and total separations were little changed at 5.7 million and 5.3 million, respectively.
As has been the case for the last couple of years, the number of job openings remains higher than the number of unemployed persons.
Also earlier in the week the BLS announced that productivity increased 3.2% in the 4th quarter with output rising 3.5% and hours of work rising 0.3%.
The bottom line is that the labor market continues its surprisingly (to some) strong performance, once again proving stronger than many had expected. This strength makes it difficult to justify any interest rate cuts soon, particularly given the recent inflation spike.
unemployment pandemic unemploymentUncategorized
Mortgage rates fall as labor market normalizes
Jobless claims show an expanding economy. We will only be in a recession once jobless claims exceed 323,000 on a four-week moving average.
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Everyone was waiting to see if this week’s jobs report would send mortgage rates higher, which is what happened last month. Instead, the 10-year yield had a muted response after the headline number beat estimates, but we have negative job revisions from previous months. The Federal Reserve’s fear of wage growth spiraling out of control hasn’t materialized for over two years now and the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9%. For now, we can say the labor market isn’t tight anymore, but it’s also not breaking.
The key labor data line in this expansion is the weekly jobless claims report. Jobless claims show an expanding economy that has not lost jobs yet. We will only be in a recession once jobless claims exceed 323,000 on a four-week moving average.
From the Fed: In the week ended March 2, initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits were flat, at 217,000. The four-week moving average declined slightly by 750, to 212,250
Below is an explanation of how we got here with the labor market, which all started during COVID-19.
1. I wrote the COVID-19 recovery model on April 7, 2020, and retired it on Dec. 9, 2020. By that time, the upfront recovery phase was done, and I needed to model out when we would get the jobs lost back.
2. Early in the labor market recovery, when we saw weaker job reports, I doubled and tripled down on my assertion that job openings would get to 10 million in this recovery. Job openings rose as high as to 12 million and are currently over 9 million. Even with the massive miss on a job report in May 2021, I didn’t waver.
Currently, the jobs openings, quit percentage and hires data are below pre-COVID-19 levels, which means the labor market isn’t as tight as it once was, and this is why the employment cost index has been slowing data to move along the quits percentage.
3. I wrote that we should get back all the jobs lost to COVID-19 by September of 2022. At the time this would be a speedy labor market recovery, and it happened on schedule, too
Total employment data
4. This is the key one for right now: If COVID-19 hadn’t happened, we would have between 157 million and 159 million jobs today, which would have been in line with the job growth rate in February 2020. Today, we are at 157,808,000. This is important because job growth should be cooling down now. We are more in line with where the labor market should be when averaging 140K-165K monthly. So for now, the fact that we aren’t trending between 140K-165K means we still have a bit more recovery kick left before we get down to those levels.
From BLS: Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 275,000 in February, and the unemployment rate increased to 3.9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in health care, in government, in food services and drinking places, in social assistance, and in transportation and warehousing.
Here are the jobs that were created and lost in the previous month:
In this jobs report, the unemployment rate for education levels looks like this:
- Less than a high school diploma: 6.1%
- High school graduate and no college: 4.2%
- Some college or associate degree: 3.1%
- Bachelor’s degree or higher: 2.2%
Today’s report has continued the trend of the labor data beating my expectations, only because I am looking for the jobs data to slow down to a level of 140K-165K, which hasn’t happened yet. I wouldn’t categorize the labor market as being tight anymore because of the quits ratio and the hires data in the job openings report. This also shows itself in the employment cost index as well. These are key data lines for the Fed and the reason we are going to see three rate cuts this year.
recession unemployment covid-19 fed federal reserve mortgage rates recession recovery unemploymentUncategorized
Inside The Most Ridiculous Jobs Report In History: Record 1.2 Million Immigrant Jobs Added In One Month
Inside The Most Ridiculous Jobs Report In History: Record 1.2 Million Immigrant Jobs Added In One Month
Last month we though that the January…
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Last month we though that the January jobs report was the "most ridiculous in recent history" but, boy, were we wrong because this morning the Biden department of goalseeked propaganda (aka BLS) published the February jobs report, and holy crap was that something else. Even Goebbels would blush.
What happened? Let's take a closer look.
On the surface, it was (almost) another blockbuster jobs report, certainly one which nobody expected, or rather just one bank out of 76 expected. Starting at the top, the BLS reported that in February the US unexpectedly added 275K jobs, with just one research analyst (from Dai-Ichi Research) expecting a higher number.
Some context: after last month's record 4-sigma beat, today's print was "only" 3 sigma higher than estimates. Needless to say, two multiple sigma beats in a row used to only happen in the USSR... and now in the US, apparently.
Before we go any further, a quick note on what last month we said was "the most ridiculous jobs report in recent history": it appears the BLS read our comments and decided to stop beclowing itself. It did that by slashing last month's ridiculous print by over a third, and revising what was originally reported as a massive 353K beat to just 229K, a 124K revision, which was the biggest one-month negative revision in two years!
Of course, that does not mean that this month's jobs print won't be revised lower: it will be, and not just that month but every other month until the November election because that's the only tool left in the Biden admin's box: pretend the economic and jobs are strong, then revise them sharply lower the next month, something we pointed out first last summer and which has not failed to disappoint once.
In the past month the Biden department of goalseeking stuff higher before revising it lower, has revised the following data sharply lower:
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 30, 2023
- Jobs
- JOLTS
- New Home sales
- Housing Starts and Permits
- Industrial Production
- PCE and core PCE
To be fair, not every aspect of the jobs report was stellar (after all, the BLS had to give it some vague credibility). Take the unemployment rate, after flatlining between 3.4% and 3.8% for two years - and thus denying expectations from Sahm's Rule that a recession may have already started - in February the unemployment rate unexpectedly jumped to 3.9%, the highest since February 2022 (with Black unemployment spiking by 0.3% to 5.6%, an indicator which the Biden admin will quickly slam as widespread economic racism or something).
And then there were average hourly earnings, which after surging 0.6% MoM in January (since revised to 0.5%) and spooking markets that wage growth is so hot, the Fed will have no choice but to delay cuts, in February the number tumbled to just 0.1%, the lowest in two years...
... for one simple reason: last month's average wage surge had nothing to do with actual wages, and everything to do with the BLS estimate of hours worked (which is the denominator in the average wage calculation) which last month tumbled to just 34.1 (we were led to believe) the lowest since the covid pandemic...
... but has since been revised higher while the February print rose even more, to 34.3, hence why the latest average wage data was once again a product not of wages going up, but of how long Americans worked in any weekly period, in this case higher from 34.1 to 34.3, an increase which has a major impact on the average calculation.
While the above data points were examples of some latent weakness in the latest report, perhaps meant to give it a sheen of veracity, it was everything else in the report that was a problem starting with the BLS's latest choice of seasonal adjustments (after last month's wholesale revision), which have gone from merely laughable to full clownshow, as the following comparison between the monthly change in BLS and ADP payrolls shows. The trend is clear: the Biden admin numbers are now clearly rising even as the impartial ADP (which directly logs employment numbers at the company level and is far more accurate), shows an accelerating slowdown.
But it's more than just the Biden admin hanging its "success" on seasonal adjustments: when one digs deeper inside the jobs report, all sorts of ugly things emerge... such as the growing unprecedented divergence between the Establishment (payrolls) survey and much more accurate Household (actual employment) survey. To wit, while in January the BLS claims 275K payrolls were added, the Household survey found that the number of actually employed workers dropped for the third straight month (and 4 in the past 5), this time by 184K (from 161.152K to 160.968K).
This means that while the Payrolls series hits new all time highs every month since December 2020 (when according to the BLS the US had its last month of payrolls losses), the level of Employment has not budged in the past year. Worse, as shown in the chart below, such a gaping divergence has opened between the two series in the past 4 years, that the number of Employed workers would need to soar by 9 million (!) to catch up to what Payrolls claims is the employment situation.
There's more: shifting from a quantitative to a qualitative assessment, reveals just how ugly the composition of "new jobs" has been. Consider this: the BLS reports that in February 2024, the US had 132.9 million full-time jobs and 27.9 million part-time jobs. Well, that's great... until you look back one year and find that in February 2023 the US had 133.2 million full-time jobs, or more than it does one year later! And yes, all the job growth since then has been in part-time jobs, which have increased by 921K since February 2023 (from 27.020 million to 27.941 million).
Here is a summary of the labor composition in the past year: all the new jobs have been part-time jobs!
But wait there's even more, because now that the primary season is over and we enter the heart of election season and political talking points will be thrown around left and right, especially in the context of the immigration crisis created intentionally by the Biden administration which is hoping to import millions of new Democratic voters (maybe the US can hold the presidential election in Honduras or Guatemala, after all it is their citizens that will be illegally casting the key votes in November), what we find is that in February, the number of native-born workers tumbled again, sliding by a massive 560K to just 129.807 million. Add to this the December data, and we get a near-record 2.4 million plunge in native-born workers in just the past 3 months (only the covid crash was worse)!
The offset? A record 1.2 million foreign-born (read immigrants, both legal and illegal but mostly illegal) workers added in February!
Said otherwise, not only has all job creation in the past 6 years has been exclusively for foreign-born workers...
... but there has been zero job-creation for native born workers since June 2018!
This is a huge issue - especially at a time of an illegal alien flood at the southwest border...
... and is about to become a huge political scandal, because once the inevitable recession finally hits, there will be millions of furious unemployed Americans demanding a more accurate explanation for what happened - i.e., the illegal immigration floodgates that were opened by the Biden admin.
Which is also why Biden's handlers will do everything in their power to insure there is no official recession before November... and why after the election is over, all economic hell will finally break loose. Until then, however, expect the jobs numbers to get even more ridiculous.
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