How a Reuters reporter found cryptocurrency sources

Reuters fintech reporter Anna Irrera was interviewed about her series of stories on cryptocurrencies with Steve Stecklow.

Here is an excerpt:

Q. What types of reporting was involved?

A. The series took around 9 months and required all the types of reporting you may expect, from calling and emailing sources, to shoe leather reporting. Having good sources in the space was also very important, but we developed a lot of good new ones along the way.

As this is an online industry, it also required using a lot of different messaging platforms to get in touch with sources. Just to mention a few we used Skype, Telegram, Signal, Discord and joined cryptocurrency chat groups on WhatsApp. As I write, there are more than 5400 unread cryptocurrency WhatsApp notifications on my phone. (It’s on mute).

Being online, the cryptocurrency sector is international by nature, so Reuters’ global reach came in very handy, with other members of the team in Shanghai, London and Zurich.

Q. What was the hardest part of the reporting?

A. This is a relatively new and opaque sector, so it lacks a lot of the basic communications apparatus that is common in more developed industries. This means that it might take a lot of work simply to figure out who is running an online exchange where billions of dollars or cryptocurrencies are traded daily. For many of these companies there is no such thing as an “about us” page.

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