Topic: [2016-01-27]Don’t Listen to the Mainstream Media on Bitcoin or Blockchain (Read 278 times)

Jon Southurst is head of content and marketing at blockchain data service Kaiko.com. His work has appeared in CoinDesk, NewAsianist, The Toronto Star (Canada), The Age, MacAddict and other technology magazines.

In this piece, Jon takes aim at the mainstream media and their issues reporting on emerging technologies in the sector.

Bitcoin is a spanking-new, highly-specialized topic. Even those deeply involved don’t agree on many points. So why trust a reporter who’s only given it an hour’s thought, max?

My well-meaning, non-tech friends know I’m interested in bitcoin –  since I’ve written about it every day since mid-2013 and bewilder them with it on Facebook.

They often send me links to bitcoin articles, usually from the mainstream media. In a way, it's a fresh perspective, since bitcoiners spend most of their days buried in chat rooms and Reddit, and forget the outside world.

I said fresh — but not particularly edifying. Quite the opposite, in fact.

After the excitement of the immediate at bitcoin’s edges, it’s a bit depressing to see where the outside world is stuck.

One example of many

The latest is this one, from John Naughton at The Guardian. Reading The Guardian for finance and economic commentary is like reading Hustler for the literary reviews, but some people do.

The first thing you see is a big photo of Estonian Prime Minister, Taavi Rõivas  –  and a caption saying his government is experimenting with ‘blockchain technology’.

Here’s the first red flag. As a proud (and upstanding) e-Resident of Estonia I’ve heard this a few times already. The link is tenuous at best  –  the laudable Estonian e-Residency program has a few links to the hypothetical BitNation project, but that’s it.

As to what the blockchain experiment actually entails, the article doesn’t mention it. There’s more information in the sentence before this one.

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