Moving Forward
Hello Friends!
About a year and a half ago, I started a news site dedicated to cryptocurrency called Coin Fire.
A lot of you know about Coin Fire. It’s been a site that has been covering a wide range of cryptocurrency related topics. It has been cited by WSJ, GigaOm, Christian Science Monitor, VICE and many more than I can truly list. It has been an exciting, fun and at times difficult journey with the site.
What started out as just a place to begin writing and explore my desire to write and share content with others grew in to something more.
Cryptocurrency has been one of the most exciting fields to write about. It is an unprecedented intersection of technology, financial markets, and regulatory landscapes.
Writing and directing others to chase down stories in this space has been a blast. We’ve seen a lot of success in a short period of time, which has been truly amazing.
As many have noted on Facebook and LinkedIn, I’m working with a few of my friends to launch a new general technology site. We’ve got some ideas on the burner that are ready to bubble over. I think we are going to be able to tackle a broader range of topics than Coin Fire, yet with the same set of principles that guided Coin Fire.
Coin Fire received many offers over the course of our history from individuals wishing to purchase the site. We have turned down more than a few lucrative offers. I wanted to make sure we kept doing exactly what we were doing and to do so uninhibited by someone else calling the shots. Other times the buyers didn’t seem very reputable and I hated the idea of the site falling in to the wrong hands.
Recently, we received one such offer and the individual behind it has been one of the most respectable, understanding, and honest people I’ve interacted with. Ofir Beigel has been writing on 99bitcoins for quite some time now and when he approached myself and our team about Coin Fire, we finally had someone I felt comfortable with.
So, I won’t drag this out and I’ll cut straight to the chase. Mr. Beigel has acquired Coin Fire. It’ll be rolled in to the 99bitcoins brand in the near future.
This move finally allows myself, our contributors, and our editorial advisory team the time to focus in on a project we’ve been dying to work on and gives us a bit of a breather to finally focus on it.
Running Coin Fire has been an adventure in always working. Even when a minor drought happened for the site with content, we were still working behind the scenes. A lot has happened and a lot of major regulatory and legal issues presented themselves due to some of our reporting. Even in the darkest times we were constantly working. I cannot, sadly, share the details on those things at this time but I’m sure they will be the subject of some reporting in the future.
I’ve been very honored to embark on this journey with many others. I don’t have the space to thank them all, but every single reader was valued — even if we disagreed.
I want to make sure those that purchased Coin Fire Plus memberships aren’t left high and dry, so I’ve arranged things around so that anyone who wishes to receive a partial refund on a Coin Fire Plus membership can email me: mike@lifedatatech.com and we can work it out. I want to thank you again for your support, and for taking a risk on us.
We aren’t closing up shop because of any pressure from any authorities, from any companies we covered, or due to any major legal issues.
We are simply moving forward with bringing the ideas I believe are important in journalism to an expanded general technology space. I still stand by our reporting on controversial issues. Only time will tell who was correct in the grand scheme of things regarding topics such as GAW, or even more recently Cryptsy. The chips have fallen in place regarding some of our past reporting regarding GAW and I’m certain we will see that trend continue in the future with others.
We still love the cryptocurrency space, but myself and several others have a desire to have a run at general technology reporting with the same sort of ethics, guidelines, and principles that you witnessed at Coin Fire.
I’m not completely exiting the cryptocurrency space either. I love this community. Soon I’ll be making a formal announcement regarding a book about the entire GAW Miners controversy. Be sure to follow me on Twitter for more details about that.
Thank you to everyone for making this such an interesting and amazing period of my life.
The best is yet to come.
