Ethan Lou is a journalist turned Bitcoin miner turned two-time author whose latest book, <\/b>Once a Bitcoin Miner: Scandal and Turmoil in the Cryptocurrency Wild West<\/b><\/em>, is a modern western recount a gloomy millennial\u2019s rebirth in the wild west of crypto \u2014 complete with scammers, party drugs and a North Korean crypto conference.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cWant to go to a crypto conference in North Korea in April?\u201d is not a common question, but was asked of me by Lou in early 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n The Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference, attended by about 100 people, is the big attraction in Lou\u2019s book. This is because eight months after the event, in November 2019, Virgil Griffith, who worked with the Ethereum Foundation and who was among the attendees Lou got to know, was arrested by the FBI for breaking sanctions and illegally providing \u201chighly technical information\u201d to the North Korean government.<\/span><\/p>\n With Lou watching from the New York courtroom\u2019s gallery on the first day of the trial in September this year, a \u201cquite emotional\u201d Griffith <\/span>pled guilty<\/span><\/a> to a charge of conspiracy to violate sanctions laws in a deal which may see him spend over six years in prison. This was a surprise to Lou, who notes that Griffith\u2019s lawyers had requested <\/span>the judge to allow for two suits \u201cso that he can wear different outfits on different days,\u201d suggesting that they, too, had expected the trial to last longer than a day.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lou, who considered the conference an innocuous opportunity to see North Korea, recalls how Griffith\u2019s initial arrest was a shock to everyone who had attended. He explains that the event was advertised as a crypto conference and he \u201cthought we were going to hear from the North Korean crypto people because North Korea has been accused of doing lots of shady stuff with crypto,\u201d referring to <\/span>accusations<\/span><\/a> of state-sponsored hacking, among others.<\/span><\/p>\n But, there were no North Korean crypto people.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt turns out we, the participants, were asked to be presenters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Though it appeared that some of the attendees, like Griffith, came prepared to present, \u201cmost of us thought we were going to take information from the Koreans,\u201d he says, adding that he declined to give a presentation. As most presentations were prepared just days before, the event\u2019s content consisted of only \u201csurface level, Wikipedia-type information.\u201d Lou notes that the event was organized by \u201cthe cultural side,\u201d of the DPRK administration and that their \u201ccrypto people\u201d never made themselves known.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Still Day 6. At the conference. From inside the building looking out. This monument here is of a pen and then there’s an atom on top, symbolizing science and writing and stuff. 26\/15 pic.twitter.com\/iMDuwOG5Br<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Ethan Lou (@Ethan_Lou) October 27, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think Griffith had any intention of benefiting North Korea in any tangible way. I don\u2019t think he brought North Korea any benefits and he didn\u2019t derive any personal benefit \u2014 he paid quite a lot of money to be at the conference.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n What the group of merry conference-goers missed out on expected North Korean crypto insight, they gained in friendships and interesting stories \u2014 much of the time was spent touring Pyongyang and getting \u201cvery drunk with our Korean minders.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt was a very interesting insight into North Korea for sure, but there wasn\u2019t any crypto insight.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Lou, 31, was born in Harbin, a northern Chinese city near the Russian border. He soon moved to Germany on account of his father doing Ph.D. work related to engineering there. Growing up in Germany, he developed a passion for reading and writing which inspired him to pursue the \u201cvery natural choice\u201d of journalism for his undergraduate degree at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Alum & author @Ethan_Lou<\/a> joins @Ryerson_Alumni<\/a> on Nov. 23 for a Book Talk about his new book, Once a Bitcoin Miner: Scandal and Turmoil in the Cryptocurrency Wild West.<\/p>\n RSVP for the event: https:\/\/t.co\/FmpyidjGD7<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 School of Journalism (@JSchoolNow) November 12, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lou discovered Bitcoin around 2012 while exploring the dark web with his friends. This secretive underbelly of the internet which can only be accessed by the Tor browser once played host to the infamous Silk Road drug marketplace where BTC functioned as the payment method. Its operator, <\/span>Ross Ulbricht<\/span><\/a>, was sentenced to life after his 2013 arrest which resulted in the United States government\u2019s seizure and <\/a><\/span>subsequent auction<\/span> of 144,000 Bitcoin.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n He re-encountered Bitcoin the following year in New Brunswick, a Canadian province on the Atlantic where Lou was an intern for a local newspaper when he interviewed <\/span>Anthony Di Iorio<\/span><\/a>, the founder of the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada.<\/span><\/p>\n Returning home to Toronto after his internship and variously working as a journalist for The Canadian Press and the Toronto Star, he familiarized himself with the burgeoning local Bitcoin scene where Di Iorio, who had relocated to the city and co-founded Ethereum with Vitalik Buterin, was now active.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Another character who Lou\u2019s book recounts a meeting is Gerald Cotten, who, in 2013, founded the QuadrigaCX exchange before <\/span>dying in India<\/span><\/a> in 2018, taking the private keys to his 115,000 customer\u2019s Bitcoin to the grave.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It was from Cotten\u2019s exchange that Lou purchased his first Bitcoin that year and promptly \u201cordered 10 hits of LSD for 0.412 Bitcoin on the dark web.\u201d There was no going back on his trip into cryptocurrency.<\/span><\/p>\n After working with the Toronto Star newspaper from 2013 to 2015, Lou was hired by Reuters which sent him to New York in early 2016, and later that year to Calgary where he focused on reporting about the energy industry. The province of Alberta, awash with oil and with Calgary as its largest city, is to Canada what Texas is to the United States. With its pre-oil history of cowboys, Calgary has held proudly to its western roots, and the oil boom of the previous decades no doubt attracted a new crop of daring adventurers seeking fortune in the west.<\/span><\/p>\n It was here that Lou organized a weekly Bitcoin meetup, where we met. Lou\u2019s was not the only show in town, as <\/span>Jan Cerato<\/span>, a local crypto hype-man who held a meetup at a nearby cowboy-themed saloon on a different day of the week, somehow began<\/a> to see him as competition. In Lou\u2019s book, Cerato fills the role of comic relief via his various misadventures. Moving in the same circles, I grew to respect Lou as a serious journalist \u2014 he once told me he would protect his sources even if it meant prison, a statement whose validity I never doubted.<\/span><\/p>\n Lou had begun mining Bitcoin a few months prior when, while looking for his bike around the loading dock of the Reuters building, he happened upon a stash of treasure \u2014 eight discarded Dell Optiplex 780 computers. \u201cEach one could hold two GPUs, so it wasn\u2019t a lot, but I ended up buying GPUs and using those to mine,\u201d he recalls, adding that he needed to rent a car for $15.63 \u2014 which annoyed him \u2014 to lug the computers to his apartment a few blocks away.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cEventually, it became a whole dedicated facility with ASICs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n With the crypto industry moving a mile a minute as Bitcoin forked, the bull markets raged and his mines whirring in new BTC as he worked his corporate job at the news desk. Lou recalls that \u201cI didn\u2019t really have the chance to stand back and assess everything.\u201d That was until one day, sitting in his grey cubicle, he \u201csuddenly realized, if I so fancied, I could pick up the phone and buy an elephant.\u201d He was a crypto millionaire.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n No elephant was purchased that day but its scent was one of adventure, such which Lou felt was out of reach while living the 9-5 life. He resigned. \u201cI had the feeling that I guess any typical millennial just entering the workforce feels \u2014 maybe they call this a quarter-life crisis. Am I in the right place? Am I doing what is meaningful to me? Since I have the means, why don\u2019t I go on an adventure?\u201d he recounts.<\/span><\/p>\n And adventures he went on. In addition to those in North Korea, his book details a time he and I spent on a \u201cThai island partying with members of a cryptocurrency incubator on a hillside resort.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe big boss who funded everything was an early Bitcoiner and had made a fortune. People came and went, staying for free, indulging in crazy merrymaking. At least once, they had allegedly brought over a shaman.\u201d Lou wrote in Chapter 16.<\/span><\/p>\n Another adventure of his is a book of its own, <\/span>Field Notes from a Pandemic: A Journey through a World Suspended<\/span><\/em>, which was published<\/a> last year. It recounts his travels through Beijing, Singapore, Germany and back to Canada upon the cusp of the pandemic which seemed to follow him and, with air travel all but shut down, left him sheltering in my empty apartment in the German town of Bayreuth for six weeks during the eye of the storm.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I wasn’t going to be a total cheapo so while I won the first book from @Ethan_Lou<\/a> I bought the second. #amreading<\/a> #nonfictionnovember<\/a> #bookstagram<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/m7FeN4Qnnr<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Jeanne Kwong \u913a\u79cb\u7433 (@Jeanne_August) October 29, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It has long been said, often by critics, that the cryptocurrency industry resembles the Wild West. Lou agrees, though making clear that \u201cI don\u2019t consider that comparison an insult. I think that there are lots of cool things about the Wild West, at least the idea of it. That which attracted people to the west back then is what attracts people to crypto right now.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Though the real wild west was largely built on \u201cinjustice, colonialism and brutality,\u201d Lou says that the dream of the wild west lives within our minds.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe wild west has a powerful draw largely because it\u2019s a place where there\u2019s lots of opportunity and wealth \u2014 it\u2019s also spacious and it\u2019s open to everyone and, most importantly, it\u2019s free from the societal hierarchies back home.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cYou go to the west so you can you can discard your past, you can bury your name and you can be born anew,\u201d he says, inspiring ideas of poor European peasants moving to the wildlands of the Americas, or perhaps Di Iorio who moved west to Toronto where he co-founded Ethereum.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The wild west\u2019s frontier eventually moved even further westward, and so it is in crypto, according to Lou. While more established players like <\/a><\/span>VISA<\/span> and cities like Miami<\/a><\/span>\u00a0are entering the partly-tamed lands, many of the early trailblazers like Coinbase, which has <\/span>worked to sanitize<\/span><\/a> its idealistic early days, have upgraded their disreputable gambling saloons into modern glass offices.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But, the Wild West heart of crypto is fighting back. Lou points to the example of Shapeshift, an old player in the industry<\/a> whose CEO <\/span>Erik Voorhees<\/span> is <\/span>transitioning<\/span><\/a> the company from a \u201ccorporate structure to become a DAO, and the specific reason is that it wants to make it harder for regulators to rein it in. This is coming as the SEC is becoming <\/span>increasingly hawkish<\/span>,\u201d Lou explains.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA lot of law is suddenly entering this space. At the same time, people are coming up with ways to flout the law.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The Metaverse, Lou believes, marks the next frontier.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOur online lives are just as real as our lives offline now. Online, we have no rights \u2014 we are beholden unconditionally to the digital masters. I think we already live in a Metaverse.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The battle for rights and freedoms in the Metaverse will be a major conflict of this new frontier. According to Lou, this will consist of a battle between centralized applications run by corporations and permissionless decentralized applications operating on blockchains.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n He uses the example of Facebook, now fittingly called Meta, whose <\/span>Facebook Zero <\/span>initiative allows<\/a> for mobile users in certain developing countries to access \u201ca form of limited internet curated by Facebook, but it\u2019s free,\u201d adding that \u201cbig corporations are shaping the way we perceive reality,\u201d as this will cause many people\u2019s entire experience of the internet to consist of only Facebook.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDecentralized applications are the key to preventing big tech dominance. The Metaverse is not only inevitable, but already here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/20190419_025049.jpg\")
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Journalist in training<\/h4>\n
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Crypto cowboys<\/h4>\n
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A crypto western<\/h4>\n
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