All Hail the Money Machine: A Dark Markets Business Update

A Blueprint for Writers (And Other Solo Operators) After the Journalism Industry

Hello, and welcome to your Sunday installment of Dark Markets. As you read this, I’m hard at work on The Boy Who Wasn’t There, my book about Sam Bankman-Fried. These Sunday installments are usually some sample or draft from the project – the main thing your premium subscriptions have so far directly supported.

This week, though, seemed like the perfect time for an update on the business of Dark Markets. I haven’t really talked about my strategy here since last December. Wow, time flies.

Many of you first subscribed at around that time, just after I was hit by the wave of layoffs at CoinDesk ahead of my parent company’s acquisition by Bullish – an entity with a checkered past. I will never not be incredibly grateful for that early support. For the material support, yes – but above all, because it showed me that there was enough public enthusiasm to justify taking the leap into working for myself.

The Big Picture: We Did it, Joe

The Money Machine (aka “The Cash Cube”)

The more detailed sections below are (like most Sunday pieces) for premium subscribers only, largely because I’m going to be sharing detailed numbers about money. I think they’ll be really interesting and useful for people considering starting their own business, of whatever sort – and especially for writers and researchers considering career options.

But in brief, this is my excited announcement that, nine months after being one of the many great journalists let go in the collapse of CoinDesk, it’s looking like I’ve successfully pulled off my plan to rebuild my life as a “solopreneur.” After nine months of burning savings and going into a modest amount of debt, I’m now in the neighborhood of replacing my CoinDesk salary – and more importantly, I’m doing it without sacrificing my sanity, or the rest of my life.

I Left Journalism … So I Can Do Journalism

Before we get into the gory details of my transition, I want to spell out something that I may have only broadly hinted at over the past few months: I didn’t look for another journalism job after leaving CoinDesk because I don’t think good ones even exist any more.

Certainly, it would have been impossible for me to find the kind of freedom and creativity I got at CoinDesk. It was such a brilliant job thanks largely to a very, very special set of circumstances, including the support of Ben Schiller and Marc Hochstein, two of the several really good editors and journalists who are still in the mix in CoinDesk’s current incarnation.

If I had taken another journalism job, in other words, I wouldn’t have been able to keep pursuing my own interests, and in fact would have very likely gotten caught up in the last desperate thrashings of an entire industry chasing its own tail. In fact, that I was fired ahead of CoinDesk’s buyout by an entity which I had directly called out for malfeasance was a far-too-on-the-nose illustration of why careers in journalism are borderline untenable, whatever your level of talent, if you’re not a third generation Yale graduate or some such bullshit.

So my clear goal has been to build a machine that would support my own work, an aspirational state of Samsara that would remove me from the cycle of death and suffering that is the news business in 2024. The idea the entire time was to balance well-paying private client work with bigger projects – most specifically, the Sam Bankman-Fried book.