The ‘Coinscum Standard’

Welcome to our Coinscrum community guest contribution section. Below, you will find a short version of our conditions for guest articles that we publish, followed by our full guidelines in long form.

Background

Coinscrum is about supporting crypto and digital assets so as for it to become mainstream across global markets. We focus on content that speaks to the main builders, investors and traders of digital assets and have been doing so since 2012. The quality and accuracy of our content is very dear to us – (no pumping shitcoins, 2017 style). We therefore invite our guest contributors to abide by our standards and follow our guide below so that we can keep inspiring our readers and viewers about a future where crypto markets play a major and legitimate part in global financial markets.

Conditions for guest contributions: 

• Content must be original, purposeful and pragmatic
• Elements put forward must be well researched and referenced to confirm them. Specific claims must also be substantiated
• Make it readable: structure it into short digestible paragraphs and a clear conclusion. Use sub-headlines, bullet points, and numbers lists when possible, and break up paragraphs with illustrations or graphs where appropriate.
• Minimum 800 words, extra kudos for 3000+ word articles.
• Include one (legal) photo, Linkedin page, and a 50 word biography

Editorial Guidelines:

Stay Original

We pride ourselves on being the original London Bitcoin Meetup. We hosted the first London talk for many of the key people and projects in this space (the likes of Vitalik Buterin, R3, Andreas Antonopoulos) and we strive for unique content from high quality contributors. Subsequently, the article presented must not consist of text substantially copied, rehashed, plagiarised, adapted, aggregated, or syndicated from other sources.

As we saw with many of the 2017 ICOs based on copied code and continue to see with forked projects from long standing blockchains, duplicated content does not have much sustainable value. In short, no piggybacking, share your truly original thoughts with us and let yourself be honestly recognised for your insights.

Bring Purpose To Your Prose

There is only so much time in the day, week, year but the internet (and crypto twitter) hosts a growingly unlimited amount of information. Useful or not, it’s becoming harder to make the trees out from the leaves sometimes, even in our own crypto microcosm. There has to be a purpose behind any contribution and it must carry valuable and actionable information to our readers. Think: What does the article achieve?

Be Pragmatic

Speculation is rife in the cryptoverse and, as in any market, it probably influences trends, movements and prices enough as it stands. Everyone benefits from a level-headed and ideally longer-term view in a perpetually volatile market. Be objective in how you present your idea and make a reasoned case. No need to snatch for headlines and getting dragged into ‘When Moon’ price discussions, a rational view of what new trading infrastructure enables or well structured technical analysis is much preferred.

Research And Reference

For our institutional audience, we strive for content with an empirical basis. Opinions are more than welcome so long as they are backed with proof – preferably drawn from data. On top of that, we want to let our readers know of the sources that may have inspired the post and those that support any of its claims – and we think they have the right to know so. We don’t worry about referencing at an academic level but we do want claims and quotes to be correctly attributed with a link to the source. So please make sure that your sources are referenced in the text (hyperlink is fine) and linked at the bottom of the post.

As they say: don’t trust, verify!

Keep It Clear And Concise…

Base it on a clear structure and make sure it’s readable and easily intelligible. Provide a relevant title and article metadata that will engage your reader but also keep the article focused from the beginning. A Wise man once said: ‘’Say what you’re going to say, Say it and Say what you have said’’. Short paragraphs avoid intellectual pondering and ensure your article is practical. We want to make sure your prose is highly impactful and that the reader can draw key takeaways throughout your post.

But Still Rigorous

That being said, we are looking for a decent length to give space for some good storytelling and rigorous analysis. After all, a good article needs to provide some fat for us to chew on. Just take a look at Paul’s article on “The fractal relationship between bitcoin’s first two bubbles and what they might tell us about a third”. We try to have a minimum of 800 words to allow space for you to posit interesting views and back them up sufficiently to be worth reading many times over, open up dialogues and eventually lead to a thread of articles.

Why such strict guidlines?

We have been hosting events and producing content around bitcoin and crypto for 8 of the 11 years of bitcoin’s lifespan. Our aim is to keep being as relevant as we have been and making sure our content is evergreen is key. Quality in both analysis and synthesis is also necessary due to the highly knowledgeable nature of our audience. Many have already invested heavily in educating themselves about crypto, monetary terms and time. The very least we can do is provide well reasoned arguments to each opinion put forward.

In summary, we are looking for stuff that people will find 2 years from now and will help them just as much. Everyone else skims the surface, but we’re providing true value by offering a deep understanding of our subject matter.

After all that…if you still want to contribute

Fill out this form in full and we’ll get back to you.