Journalists to launch digital currency to fight fake news

The Californian investment fund, HigherOrderVC, and journalists from across the world have teamed up to create a new cryptocurrency to provide financing for investigative journalism.

The new virtual currency, named PressCoin, is aimed at empowering independent journalists with new tools to stand against fake news, as well as improving their objectiveness and financial independence. PressCoin is reportedly expected to wean journalism off the advertising revenue model, upending corporate media monopolies with collaborative content.

“Today journalists are bound to the vested interests of publishers. More and more publishers are chasing advertising dollars. To get views, they defer to social media platforms. And so does their content. This not only compromises the integrity of quality, independent journalism, it also pushes money onto social media platforms,” says Amit Rathore, PressCoin’s President, as quoted by Payment Week, a New York-based magazine covering mobile payments.

A 28-day initial coin offering (ICO) is scheduled on November 22, with an initial price of one PressCoin set at one US dollar. The cryptocurrency is registered in the UK and will be operated as a public limited company after the ICO is completed. The creators are planning to publicly release 100,000,000 units to investors during the offering.

The new digital currency is based on the blockchain system that functions as a decentralized ledger of its contributors’ interactions, their engagement, and influence on the publishing platform.

A monetization element reportedly takes its value from a participating news site’s paid elements and distributes financial rewards to its content creators.

“When you integrate something like that on the blockchain and allow them to share in the total revenue that we’re generating, then you’ve got a real game changer I think in terms of how you incentivize people to interact,” said Nafeez Ahmed, editor of Insurge Intelligence, PressCoin’s flagship publication.

The creators expect all the publications to center around such areas of coverage as democracy, politics, energy, education, health and wellness, and science.