Wall Street Journal reporter Steven Russolillo was recently assigned a not-so-simple task: understand the booming cryptocurrency space. In order to accomplish this, Steven decided to “get his hands dirty” by launching his own cryptocurrency: $WSJ.

According to Steven, the goal of WSJCoin is for “people to buy subscriptions using our new tokens, and we think this is a good way to attract a new audience”

Before selling the token, it had to be developed. To start, Steven looked at various ICO services, such as Developcoins, which create a “done for you” cryptocurrency.

Steven wanted to make sure his cryptocurrency was done professionally, so he traveled to one of the largest crypto-cities in the world – Tokyo, Japan. From there, Steven met with developers and miners in order to learn more about cryptocurrencies.

After shopping around, Steven decided to launch $WSJ on the lesser-known Iroha platform. Iroha is an implementation of the HyperLedger blockchain.

Steven partnered with developer Makoto Takemiya and got to work creating $WSJ. The token was designed with a supply of 8.4 billion coins, and once all the specifications were determined, the coin was born.

From there, Makoto built a Point of Sale system, and even purchased a round of beers using the newly minted cryptocurrency.

Now that WSJCoin was being used, Steven traveled to the Token2049 conference where he pitched the coin to various token experts.

How Did It Fare?

The coin was well received by the community, however Steven had trouble selling it to investors. Although conference attendees, including Former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas, supported the coin, they acknowledged that cryptocurrencies are risky assets, and should be thoroughly researched before investing.

After returning back to the United States, Steven met with Wall Street Journal Editor Of Ethics & Standards Neal Lipschutz. Steven needed Neal’s approval before bringing the coin to market.

Despite Steven’s enthusiasm, Neal rejected the coin, explaining that the Wall Street Journal is in the journalism industry, not the cryptocurrency industry.

The segment highlights that although cryptocurrencies may be simple to create, the network effects required to make a cryptocurrency successful are not so easy

The full video can be watched here.