I'm not a businessman.

But I'm starting a business.

Hi.

Since getting laid off by CoinDesk in August (and weathering the craziness of the SBF Trial for Protos), I’ve had some time to reflect on what comes next. I’ve decided that at least for a few months, what comes next is building out my own platform for news, essays, and interviews.

I’m a Business Boy

I’m pursuing this goal, above all, because I don’t really see another “job” out there that would allow me to continue doing what I do best. Going solo seems like the best way to keep delivering what you want most from me.

Here’s just a few of the New Things coming:

• More “news” in the newsletter.

• A podcast, possibly including new Crypto Crooks.

• A close-up view as I write my SBF book.

Keep reading for more details. I’m laying out my strategy and plans below largely to set goals and keep myself honest. But I hope you take a moment to look over what I’ve got planned, and feel generous with feedback. Because I do not know what I am doing, and what I need perhaps most of all is insight from you, the core group that have been generous enough to support me so far.

Let me repeat that for emphasis: If you’re here, right now, I am immensely grateful. And I don’t just welcome, but *really need* your feedback on what you want most from me. Because while people seem to really like what I do, I’m still not totally sure why.

Up From Newsletterdom

First, in short: The newsletter you’re reading right now is going to become the core of something broader and more ambitious - including a podcast, live updates as I write my SBF book, community features, and more.

Flesh/Markets itself will evolve to include more analysis-in-brief: breaking-news rundowns of current events in crypto, finance, and so-called “artificial intelligence.”

Hopefully, what you’ll notice most of all is that everything gets a bit more focused and professional - a lot more like the newsletter I used to run at Fortune, The Ledger, but with the edge you’ve come to expect from me at CoinDesk.

L’Estat, C’est Moi

I want to start with a number: Six Hundred and Ninety Six.

That is the number of United States Dollars that I earned from subscriptions to this newsletter in November, after Substack’s take. Actual bank deposits.

$696.00. To me, that’s crazy.

November was our second full month in still-modest operation, and I’ve barely promoted this thing – basically just through Twitter and Substack itself.

My mindset back in September, when I first launched the paid tier of Flesh/Markets, was that it was a way for people who knew my work to make a nice gesture while I was between things.

Those boosters have been a MAJOR help, both materially, and by sending the signal that what I’m doing is worthwhile.

But it has also become clear that there’s a real broader audience out there for what I do, and that this whole newsletter thing is now a very real way of monetizing the increasingly ancient and irrelevant craft of writing and thinking.

I think it’s worth my effort to get out there and find my audience, and furthermore to try and keep getting better at what I do, without the constraints (though also support) of a parent organization. I can see a path forward to real independence, one that lets me create beyond the confines of any sort of corporate media.

Which is why that seven hundred bucks coming straight from you, my readers, is entirely different from the dollars that used to arrive in my bank account from an employer.

It’s not just different money – it’s BETTER money.

A Time to Build

As encouraging as my results have been, I’m not exactly the right person to run my own small media business. I’m disciplined and tireless, but I hate paperwork and bureaucracy. I’m not even the biggest fan of being totally organized.

I imagine that describes some of my readers as well, which is why the next few months are going to feature occasional updates, like this one, about learning to run a business.

That’s one of a few new categories of *stuff* I’ll be making more of. Here’s a quick overview of some others.

Flesh/Markets, the Newsletter

More Actionable and Regular News Analysis

There will be some changes on the content front, though rest assured everything will remain deliberately obscure, abtruse, and hand-crafted.

Flesh/Markets began three years ago as a self-indulgent, free blog where I stashed my weirdest thoughts, while covering hot current topics in my day job at Fortune or CoinDesk. Flesh/Markets will begin to integrate more of the stuff I was doing at my old day-jobs: traditionally broad but concise newsletter coverage - alongside bites of critical analysis.

There will also be more attention to market moves and other technical, granular matters for my core audience of finance professionals. I’m even considering publishing tickers – outright sacrilege!

Most of these news breakdowns will be at least partially paywalled. The goal will be to continue publishing two news editions per week, though everything will be in some degree of flux for a bit longer here as I get my legs under me.

Either way, don’t worry, we’re still going to do things [office manager voice] *just a little bit different* around here.

“Weird Money”: The Flesh/Markets Podcast

People like my writing. But my god, they LOVE the sound of my voice.

The show title isn’t set in stone at this writing – my wife thinks “Weird Money” is generic, so I’m iterating. But you get the gist. Right now, the “podcast” has three elements:

Interviews: I love talking to people. I have two great conversations in the can – one with an FTX creditor, one with the inimitable Tiffany Fong – that you can expect to see soon.

Audio Articles: I lifted this fantastic idea from Molly White at Citation Needed. Some of my longer articles and posts, such as the Venture Capital on Arrakis series, seem ripe to be consumed in audio form. I’m going to experiment with recording them myself.

More Crypto Crooks[?]: This one’s the longshot. I regularly get people asking when there will be more of Crypto Crooks, the documentary podcast series I wrote and produced for CoinDesk. I would love to make more, because I regard Crypto Crooks as the creative apex of my career so far.

But it takes many hands to put together a heavily produced narrative podcast like that. In a perfect world, we can get there and make it happen (though likely under a different name).

At least for now, podcast episodes will be free to the public. Though once I figure out how to permission things correctly, the audio articles will be the first thing to go behind the paywall.

Deeper Dives on Specific Projects and Companies

While I have been and remain obsessed with fraud and macroeconomics, I am way more pro-technology than most people might think. I’m just anti-bullshit. Flesh/Markets will begin featuring more detailed analysis of specific tokens, companies and tech in crypto, A.I., and beyond, including financial breakdowns where appropriate.

This material is almost certain to be paywalled.

Watch My SBF Book Come to Life

The last time I was unemployed I wrote a book, Bitcoin is Magic. Now I’m doing it again, with a book that will tell the story of Sam Bankman-Fried not just from inside the courthouse where he was convicted, but from the big-picture angle, examining the role of ideas like Effective Altruism and ‘rationalism’ in enabling one of the biggest financial frauds of all time.

As I write, paid subscribers to Flesh/Markets will get early drafts of book chapters, or fragments reflecting my research on particular aspects of the story, before anyone else. That means you’ll have a chance to play a role in shaping the book as it comes together.

The first draft book chapter is complete at this writing and will be shared with premium subscribers this week.

I’ll also be continuing to explore some of the marginalia around SBF by way of research for the book. One of those pieces, about Barbara Fried’s fiction and poetry, will also be published soon.

I’m also intrigued by other authors’ experiments with things like livestreamed writing sessions. All of this, again, is going to be primarily for paid subscribers.

Writing, Creativity, and Self-Development

Two of my more popular posts before September was this on creative partnerships, and this one on how to revive your focus in the era of digital distraction. I know a lot of people struggle with creativity, and with writing in particular, and after close to 25 continuous years as some form of professional writer or another, I think I have some real insight on that front.

I’ve also had a pretty remarkable post-COVID year in a few other ways. In the past two months I’ve lost 20 pounds and gotten back in shape, and I’ve also quit smoking after 20 years. I’ve joked about becoming an online life coach, but I do think I have some helpful insights on these things.

User Walkthroughs of Crypto (and Maybe AI) Tools

One of my frustrations with my work as a columnist is that, if anything, it has forced me to be too big picture. The truth is, I also enjoy (if perversely) figuring out how to actually use arcane, novel tech – and more importantly, figuring out what it’s good for from direct experience.

So my goal is to integrate that into Flesh/Markets, both on the crypto side, and the AI content generation side – which, whatever my personal discomfort, is clearly going to be an important set of tools for a lot of people. I want to see where it’s going, in detail.

First up in this series will be a guide to the tools I used to create the Rare Sam NFT series. I’m also exploring the use of EAS, or “Ethereum Attestation Service,” to use those NFTs as provenance proofs for the physical courtroom sketches accompanying the NFTs. These guides are, at least for now, likely to be available to free subscribers.

How to Do Business (or Not)

I have already found it incredibly helpful to hear about other people’s experiences building a business, and specifically an information business. Most of all, what I’ve found useful is transparency – one reason I posted a raw revenue number up top. There will be more of such detail. These posts are likely to be free to the public, except where sensitive.

Other Bets

I’m going to be entertaining a lot of other ideas, hopefully innovative models. Things like:

Office Hours: Paid subscribers will be invited to hang out and chat in private Office Hour sessions.

Book Club: Read books together, meet online to discuss and bullshit.

Discord: A way to chat with fellow readers, basically. I’m iffy on this one, but let me know if it’s something you’d want.

Why Go Solo?

Alright, if you’ve made it this far, I’ll subject you to a few more of my Peggy Hill-style “musings.”

The most immediate reason I’m going to try and make a run at this newsletter thing is that I know it can be done.

And of course, following quickly after that knowledge comes the natural question of the eternally dissatisfied: So why not me?

I’ve been absorbing some of the great content out there about running newsletters as serious businesses, and getting a better sense of just how many are successful at the kind of modest scale I’m aiming for. Much of the best stuff, like this video from Hayden Bowles, is from people who are unapologetically business people first and foremost. Frequently, you’ll hear them admit they’re hardly experts in the fields where they’re building huge newsletters. And those projects make real income.

I’m not particularly knowledgeable, skilled, or disciplined when it comes to background administrative or architectural work – things like setting up an LLC or managing bank accounts or running multiple tactical social media accounts.

But I know more about the actual topics I’m here to cover - the far frontiers of monetary technology, financial “innovation,” and techno-babble chicanery - than maybe a few dozen other people in the world. That feels, to me, like a pretty solid competitive advantage.

I’ve also been lucky enought to confirm, over the past couple of years, that I’m actually really, really good at making things. Lots of different kinds of things. Things that people love, but also that are maybe kind of weird and not for everybody.

What I really want is to figure out how to make my weird stuff, without either the restrictions of supervision or the unpredictablity of employment.

Thanks to the opportunities I had at CoinDesk, I officially became a creative hyphenate – journalist-documentarian-broadcaster. I think I might also have as good an idea of how to put those skills to use as any given manager, much less owner.

And freed from the constraints of higher-profile situations, I’m also curious to see just how adventurous we can get.

Thank You

Finally, I want to say it again: The main reason I feel empowered to try this out is that you’ve all supported me so phenomenally thus far. The enthusiasm I’ve gotten over the past three months, above all from my peers in the creative and writing worlds, has been beyond my wildest imaginings.

Other really amazing support has come from the cryptocurrency community. I wouldn’t be who or where I am today if I hadn’t followed my curiosity into the crypto story lo these many years ago. And while I love lampooning and examining the bad actors who have flocked there, I have also found a huge number of great people there building stuff that I genuinely believe in.

In conclusion: This whole thing might be a six-month experiment that leaves me broke, but rested, ready, and with a marginally profitable platform that I control … or it might be the start of something much bigger than that. At this point, I have no idea, and that’s what makes it interesting.

Thank you for joining me on this adventure.