The Wall Street Journal Created Its Own Cryptocurrency…And Then They Killed It

With the help of a few veteran crypto developers, The Wall Street Journal’s Steven Russolillo launched WSJ Coin in order to better understand the technology, the purpose, and the rapidly growing interest behind today’s expanding cryptocurrency market. 

And it looked like the project might be a bigger success than intended, generating industry buzz and legitimate investment interest from visitors at the Token2049 crypto conference in Hong Kong. 

That is, until Neal Lipschutz with the Standards and Ethics Group at The Wall Street Journal shut the project down, citing ethical considerations. 

“We’re not in the business of getting into the cryptocurrency world. We’re here to report it and to explain it. Just like we report on banks, [but] we don’t go out and start a bank, we’re not going to create a currency”. 

Neal Lipschutz – Editor for Ethics and Standards, The Wall Street Journal