Coil Invests in Hacker Noon to Deliver Streaming Micropayments

Content-monetization specialist, Coil, announced on June 10 that it had made a strategic investment into independent technology publishing platform, Hacker Noon.

This also marked the start of a three-year partnership between the companies, focusing on Web Monetization for Hacker Noon’s contributing writers.

A match made in heaven

Hacker Noon is a tech-focused news website boasting 4 million monthly readers and featuring content created by over 10,000 contributors.

Coil is a platform allowing subscribers to stream micropayments to creators based on the time spent consuming their content. It uses a proposed open web standard called Web Monetization to do this.

Putting the two together would seem like a natural next step, as Hacker Noon CEO David Smooke explained:

“We want to become the best place for tech professionals to read, write and publish. To date, we’ve provided editorial resources, validation, and distribution. Now with this strategic partnership, Hacker Noon will experiment with streaming micropayments to writers based on how much time Coil users spend reading their stories.”

Get paid in real time

From today, Hacker Noon writers can add their Web Monetization meta tag to stories, enabling Coil to automatically credit their wallets in real-time while those stories are being read.

The reading experience will remain exactly the same, with no pop-ups or paywalls. The only difference will be that those who are Coil subscribers will be streaming micropayments directly to the writers.

The Web Monetization standard supports a number of wallets, allowing payments to be made in a wide range of fiat and digital currencies.

Writers will also be able to donate their received earnings to charity through the Coil platform.

Upping the stakes

Coil’s investment of $1 million means that it will take around an 8 percent stake in Hacker Noon. As well as implementing Web Monetization, Smooke said that the money would be used to “expand the editorial, sales, and most importantly, software teams.”

As Cointelegraph reported, last month Coil announced a partnership making the Uphold wallet available as an option for Web Monetization users. This enables payments in over 50 fiat and digital currencies, and brings bank connectivity to over 34 countries.