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Over a Dozen Researchers and Critics Respond To New York Times' 'Thinly-Veiled Cryptocurrency Ad' (mollywhite.net) 39

Molly White: On March 20, 2022, the New York Times published a 14,000-word puff piece on cryptocurrencies, both online and as an entire section of the Sunday print edition. Though its author, Kevin Roose, wrote that it aimed to be a "sober, dispassionate explanation of what crypto actually is", it was a thinly-veiled advertisement for cryptocurrency that appeared to have received little in the way of fact-checking or critical editorial scrutiny. It uncritically repeated many questionable or entirely fallacious arguments from cryptocurrency advocates, and it appears that no experts on the topic were consulted, or even anyone with a less-than-rosy view on crypto. This is grossly irresponsible. Here, a group of around fifteen cryptocurrency researchers and critics have done what the New York Times apparently won't.
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Over a Dozen Researchers and Critics Respond To New York Times' 'Thinly-Veiled Cryptocurrency Ad'

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  • Investors with short positions on cryptocurrency write counter-article to author's article who has long positions on cryptocurrency.

    • I'm just waiting until we can (stupidly) invest our life savings in cryptocurrency-backed IRAs -- oops, they're already here [investopedia.com] ... and I've seem TV ads [ispot.tv] for them. (Having trouble imagining many things dumber than this.)

      • I keep saying this, but letting phony-money ponzi schemes into the boarder economy is going to *suck*.

        If you think 2008 was bad, wait until "too big to fail" crypto crashes the market. Those of us who aren't laid off will be working 80/hr weeks to pick up the slack from all the layoffs, and we'll just be glad we weren't fired.

        If you want to stop that, now's the time. It's your last chance people.
        • by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

          It won't be from any layoffs. Crypto currency failing will not crash the broader market, just crypto, thankfully.

          It will be when or before those people retire and their IRAs and 401Ks are at rock bottom because of their crypto currency holdings and then expect to go on the government dole. That will be the pain point for the public.

          • This is naive. Crypto is currently metastasizing through pension funds and IRAs and who knows what else.

            A crypto crash would affect you right now. And it's only getting worse because people who don't understand or care about the implications have too much invested already.

  • People still trust them as a news source? Weird.
  • Remember John M Border? He was determined to run out of charge, strand a Tesla on highway, get the money shot of the car being towed. Plan was to try to drive a Tesla and prove the supercharging network would not work. It was back in 2013. But the damned Tesla just would not cooperate.

    He took a random detour through some Manhattan neighborhood to pick his brother, hoping the city driving will chew up the range. Ran the car with full blast AC and lied about it. Drove it way over 70 mph and lied that he was

    • A New York Times reporter sent an email to Candace Owens asking for comment regarding her stance on Ukraine.

      “We note that you advanced the idea that Ukraine was a corrupt country, which matched comments we’ve seen from Russian state media. I’m wondering if you have any context or further comment to add about this comparison?” the email from NYT said.

      She responded:

      I am very confused by this e-mail. I learned about “the idea that Ukraine was a corrupt country” from the New York Times. You guys have covered the corruption of Ukraine extensively, for years. As just one example, here is a piece from the NYT Editorial Board entitled, “Ukraine’s Unyielding Corruption”: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0... [nytimes.com]

      I educated myself about both the neo-nazi problem in Ukraine and the unyielding corruption by reading your newspaper, not Russian state media. Is there something specific I said that was different from what you guys have written in the past?

      Also of note: Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation for two full years, until suddenly it wasn't. Everyone and their dog said that the laptop couldn't be confirmed, until the NYT suddenly confirmed it [nytimes.com]

      People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.

      The NYT is completely disreputable at this point. It's basically the media outlet for the Democratic party.

    • by danda ( 11343 )

      What he did not know was Tesla was instrumented more than NASA rockets. It had a complete log of everything he did with the car

      reason enough for me never to purchase a tesla.

      • Why? What are you hiding?
      • Yeah. Electric cars predate the invention of the internal combustion engine, and now that we've got the battery technology to make them shine, you've got to wonder where are all the simple, inexpensive electric cars that just reliable go from A to B under the direct control of an old-fashioned human intelligence?

        Oh right, they're busy carving a bountiful niche at home in China. Ah well, the first models designed for the international market should be shipping soon, so hopefully some of that sweet, sane te

        • You can technically order one of those cars from China. The problem is that old automotive industry protectionism laws prevent you from registering it for street use.

          It's ironic how some people will whine about FAANG being anticompetitive, when there are more traditional industries with actual laws creating barriers to new competition. Even Tesla ended up finding that out.

          Too little regulation creates problems in the case of cryptocurrencies. Too much regulation creates problems in the case of cars.

        • by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

          >you've got to wonder where are all the simple, inexpensive electric cars that just reliable go from A to B under the direct control of an old-fashioned human intelligence?

          Sorry, not doing without rear view camrea, blind spot detection and adaptive cruise control, at the very least.

      • Unfortunately, the majority of current ICE cars are also collecting as much data on you as possible - and beaming it back to the company so they can attempt to monetize it.

        Oh brave new world!

        • by danda ( 11343 )

          yeah, I'm not buying those either. and if I did, I wouldn't connect it to my phone.

          serious question though: if one does not connect the vehicle to a working phone, do they still send data back somehow? ie, using some kind of "free" cell or satellite network?

          • My 2015 Camry (I finally dumped the Escort three years ago) has its own 3G connection. Sometime this year that will stop working! It doesn't seem to do a whole lot with it, other than support the worst voice assistant I've ever seen or heard of.

            My wife's 2019 Outback has a 4G data connection, which it seems to use quite a bit. For instance, it will show you the current speed limit for the road you're currently driving on. Subaru also tries to get you to buy into their "Starlink" group of network-connected s

  • It looks like some message board posts reformatted and published on a personal website. There seems to be no editing whatsoever. It's almost unreadable. How did this make the front page?
  • At what point, if you lure more "fools" into a "greater fool" zero sum Ponzi scheme that is (still) unregulated with zero protection, do you become complicit? What is stealing some crypto currency compared to the creation of a crypto currency? (freely stolen from Bertolt Brecht https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
  • This may come as news to some, but the New York Times has been grossly irresponsible on a number of occasions in the last 5 years, or so.

  • So far all the comments here are thinly-veiled (or completely bald-faced) _ad hominem_ attacks on the researchers who are debunking the puff piece ("they must be short sellers!!!") or the NYT ("they suck!"). Not one comment seems to have read the referenced article or make an attempt to discuss what it actually says.

    Personally, I think it's an epic takedown - a master class on how to hold an author accountable and ask that they actually support their arguments with, you know, *facts* and stuff...

    • by nyet ( 19118 )

      There are almost as many (other) inaccuracies in there responses as the inaccuracies they (rightly) point out.

    • Not one comment seems to have read the referenced article or make an attempt to discuss what it actually says.

      Um, you are aware that this is Slashdot, right?

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      To be fair, it's (apparently) 14000 words.

      Did the NYT switch to charging by the pound?

    • by Entrope ( 68843 )

      It's the NYT. They apparently don't want people to read their articles, so why should we bother trying to bypass the paywall for 14,000 words of "it's an environmentally destructive tulip-bulb scheme with lots of drug dealers, cybercriminals and Charles Ponzi types in the background... and the foreground"?

    • Not one comment seems to have read the referenced article or make an attempt to discuss what it actually says.

      You must be new here

  • Lost me here

    "There are: Cardano, Avalanche, and Solana are some of the bigger ones. They are a lot less used, though—although Solana boasts a huge number of transactions per day, around 90% of those are just validators voting among themselves rather than doing anything useful. I think it's reasonable for him to say most crypto activity takes place on PoW chains."

    "Also worth pointing out that a bunch of PoS chains (e.g. Polygon) are sidechains to PoW ones anyway so still require the ridiculous power co

    • can you elaborate please?

      are you saying that the claims are not true?

      I have a friend who keeps saying that Solana and Cardano are the 'next gen web3' that solve all the PoW issues of bitcoin/etheruem. I don't care enough to find out, but I'd love to tell him he's wrong.

  • isn't doing it for the money... they're doing it for a shitload of money.
  • Who could possibly think 'Crypto' is a scam. It's not like we've seen anything like this in other commodity markets. Blockchain technology is not a scam, individual blockchains are not necessarily a scam. Where there is an unregulated market there will be grifters. The ultimate maturity of Blockchain technology may take another decade or more but I think it could revolutionize things by de-centralizing ledgers that are currently controlled by a single entity that you have to trust. "Did Bob really just spe
  • They are so nice 'n paywalled, it's like a good suit of armor to protect me from their narrative.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature cannot be fooled. -- R.P. Feynman

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