TD₿: Everyone's a Scammer by Michael Goldstein
TL;DR Bitcoin will brake for no one on its race down the road to global adoption. Do not give your seat up for someone else.
Hey Bitcoiners,
This morning, Axios broke a bombshell story that The Block CEO Michael McCaffrey was secretly receiving millions of dollars from Sam Bankman-Fried while publicly pretending that the organization was independent in its news coverage.
Here is an excerpt from the article that summarizes this development:
Since its founding, the Block has been known for the quality of its reporting; however, over the years, there has been a noticeable shift in coverage away from Bitcoin to all things “crypto.” Perhaps, we now know why that is.
To me, this is just another revelation when it comes to the amount of influence that SBF had over the media, politicians, and investing community. He used billions of dollars worth of stolen funds to bribe individuals to push his agenda(s). This is just another development in the FTX fiasco that makes you facepalm. 🤦
I do feel for some of the employees of the Block, including Frank Chaparro, who just put out a good interview with SBF last week where he held no punches and drilled SBF on his fraudulent behavior.
Below is Frank’s thread in reaction to the news this morning that I think deserves to be shared.
This is the kind of backdoor dealings and questionable behavior that occurs in the land of “crypto.” Most of “crypto” is just insiders trying to pour their ill-gotten gains into marketing campaigns to further pump their illiquid tokens and eventually dump them on unsuspecting retail investors.
All of this reminds me of this classic piece from Michael Goldstein. Everyone is a scammer, and everyone wants your bitcoin. (9/11/2014)
I don’t know what is going to become of the Block from here, but their reputation has been tarnished. One way they could work on rehabilitating it is by focusing more of their coverage on an immutable truth machine that has no, and needs no, marketing team.
Just a thought…
Tick tock next block,
Sam Callahan
PS - Goldstein recently launched his own Substack newsletter, the Bitstein Brief. He is a prolific writer and a Bitcoiner that influenced my thinking greatly. Please consider subscribing to it.
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Meme of the Day
Great read, as always