Digital media has spent the last two decades trying to reinvent the economics of writing, and yet the industry remains stuck in a strange paradox: more people read news than ever before, but fewer are willing or able to pay for it. Out of this dilemma has emerged a new idea known as “writer coins.” The concept borrows from cryptocurrency logic and turns readership interest into a tradeable token that can support journalists directly. I recently experimented with this by launching a MAZ coin for this Paragraph blog.
https://farcaster.xyz/mazmhussain/0xe21552c9
At first glance this looks like a clever fix to the collapse of advertising revenue and the unexpected difficulties of subscriptions. But beneath the novelty of the idea lies a deeper structural problem: we still have not solved how to fund journalism without either chasing clicks or relying on patrons. Writer coins offer an innovative mechanism, yet they also expose the uncomfortable truth that good reporting will always require stable capital, not just clever technology.
A “writer coin” imagines each journalist as their own miniature economy. Instead of subscribing to The New York Times or supporting an entire platform like Substack, readers would invest in the writer themselves. The more popular a writer becomes, the more their coin is worth; the value rises as readership grows, producing financial incentives for quality content and sustained engagement. It is essentially equity in a person instead of a company. In theory, this encourages a healthier relationship between writer and reader: supporters feel like stakeholders rather than passive consumers, and writers get access to upfront capital that allows them to pursue investigations, long-term research, or niche interests.
But as appealing as this sounds, writer coins also reflect the market logic that has damaged journalism in the first place. Audiences do not necessarily reward what is most important; they reward what is most engaging, most entertaining, or most aligned with their existing worldviews. A reporter trying to investigate corruption in municipal zoning laws will almost always lose, financially, to someone writing spicy opinion takes or culture-war commentary. We already know this from social media: virality is a terrible compass for civic value. Writer coins, if left to pure market dynamics, could accelerate that trend rather than reverse it.
Part of the difficulty is philosophical: journalism is a public good, not a speculative asset. Democracies require fact-gathering, verification, institutional memory, and courage. These are expensive. They demand time, travel, legal support, and editorial scrutiny. Historically, newspapers subsidized investigative work through advertising revenue on classifieds, cars, and department store circulars. That model is gone. Google and Facebook ate it. Subscription models emerged as the response, but subscriptions introduce another barrier: people gravitate toward a few big brands and ignore smaller, local outlets, even though local reporting is the most essential part of a functioning information ecosystem.
Writer coins attempt to individualize that problem: what if you could raise money person by person, story by story, rather than organization by organization? Yet individualization is itself risky. Journalism is collaborative. Even the most iconic lone reporter is backed by lawyers, editors, researchers, and institutional memory. If every writer has to function like their own startup, we risk turning reporting into a hustle, and hustling is corrosive to truth. Information becomes another gig economy product where emotional intensity and community allegiance matter more than accuracy.
There is also the moral hazard of speculation. If a writer’s income depends on the market value of their coin—which depends on audience excitement—then sensationalism becomes profitable. Controversy becomes revenue. Journalism already struggles with polarization because outrage pays; writer coins could further financialize outrage.
Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss the idea entirely. One of the positive aspects of writer coins is that they implicitly recognize journalism as labor that deserves investment before the work happens. Many reporters spend months digging into a lead before publishing anything. Traditional subscription and ad models only reward the end product, not the process. De-risking investigative effort is a legitimate goal, and any mechanism that moves money front-loaded to writers could be beneficial.
The real question, then, is whether writer coins are a supplement to journalism’s funding crisis or an attempted replacement. They should be understood as the former. We need multiple, layered economic structures: public subsidies (as found in parts of Europe), philanthropic nonprofit newsrooms, subscription models for large institutions, local cooperatives, and potentially writer coins as a way for loyal audiences to become micro-patrons. No single mechanism solves the problem of paying for truth.
The biggest obstacle is cultural. We treat information as something that should be free, failing to acknowledge that journalism is labor-intensive civic infrastructure. Until societies accept that reliable information requires ongoing investment, new financial gadgets will only offer temporary relief. Writer coins are creative, maybe even promising in small communities or niche expertise areas, but they cannot solve the structural reality: journalism isn’t a market luxury. It is a public necessity. And public necessities require stable, long-term systems of funding that aren’t built around attention volatility or investment hype.
Innovation is welcome. Speculation, less so. The future of journalism will likely borrow ideas from technology, membership models, crowdfunding, and cooperative ownership. But the goal should remain constant and non-negotiable: sustainable funding for people willing to tell the truth in a world that increasingly rewards anything but.
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Writer coins convert reader interest into tradeable tokens to fund journalists directly, with value rising as readership grows. The piece weighs upfront support against market-driven risks like sensationalism, urging stable, layered funding for journalism as a public good. @mazmhussain
Some thoughts on launching a WRITER COIN https://paragraph.com/@unmediatedthoughts/writer-coins-and-the-crisis-of-funding-journalism