This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss crypto, journalists using AI, and a cool photo of Earth.
JOSEPH: I can’t talk about the story just yet, but recently I had to acquire some cryptocurrency quickly for research purposes. I was not anticipating quite how dramatically the world of cryptocurrency and getting it has changed.
I first became aware of cryptocurrency, or more specifically Bitcoin, when I was an intern at VICE. Someone on my table (they put all the unpaid interns on a medium sized table in the London office) was talking about it. They were pretty deep into it as I recall, and covered it a fair bit. I then was asked to work on a collaborative documentary between VICE, Raw, and the BBC about the Silk Road drug marketplace because I already knew more than most about message encryption. I then had to learn more about Bitcoin.