Once a Bitcoin Miner

Sales and Market Bullets

Once a Bitcoin Miner is a narrative for a general readership. It immerses outsiders in the cryptocurrency world but is light on technical discussion, and any tech explanations are woven into the storyline.
Lou has written for the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, Maisonneuve, the South China Morning Post, The Walrus, and the Washington Post. He has served as a visiting journalist at the University of British Columbia.
Offers an intimate look around some of the major events of this space: the founding of Ethereum, whose coin Ether is the second-biggest cryptocurrency; the death of Gerald Cotten and the collapse of his QuadrigaCX platform; and the arrest of Virgil Griffith in the United States following his North Korea trip. Griffith’s trial starts September 2021.
Once a Bitcoin Miner is an investigative piece about bitcoin, but it’s also a narrative. Ethan, through his own story of bitcoin to bust, looks to illustrate big picture regulatory and policy dysfunction in the cryptocurrency world.
Bitcoin is back in the news cycle on a daily basis, especially with Tesla purchasing 1.5 billion dollars’ worth of the cryptocurrency in February 2021.
Virgil Griffith was arrested by the FBI following his North Korea trip in April 2019, and his trial is set to begin in September 2021 and surely will be covered extensively in the news media.
Ethan Lou was born in Harbin, China and speaks Mandarin. He grew up in Wuppertal, Germany.

Audience

People investing in cryptocurrency or the crypto-curious
Readers of immersive personal accounts into worlds everyday people do not see such as The Dogs Are Eating Them Now (Knopf Canada, 2013), The Hillbilly Elegy (Harper, 2016)
People interested in the Dark Web
Fans of investigative journalism

Promotional Plans

Outreach to major North American dailies
Pre-publication op-ed campaign
Outreach to business, finance, and political publications
Pitch for interviews on programs with a focus on current events, business, finance, and international politics
Targeted social media and Google advertising
ARC giveaways through ECW Insiders, LibraryThing, NetGalley, Edelweiss, etc.