A new crypto publication walks into the jaws of a long-running conflict.
Welcome back, readers, from what I hope was a restful holiday season. In our always-on world, it’s worth remembering the value of truly unplugging for a while so you can come back stronger and more focused.
Of course, the world does keep turning, and fintech and crypto saw plenty of action while The Ledger was on hiatus. Of particular note was the launch of Nakamoto.com, a new journal exploring high-level concepts around cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
The new journal is, notably, headed up by Balaji Srinivasan, an entrepreneur and executive who has been broadly critical of established media outlets. In this age of hot takes, it’s admirable when anyone puts their money where their mouth is and tries to build a better version of something they think is broken.
In this case, though, Srinivasan may have gained some perspective on how hard it is to build a trusted publication. Nakamoto.com was met with almost immediate, widespread outrage among its ostensible intended audience: bitcoin advocates.
Understanding why, and what the blowback means, requires some context. In the world of cryptocurrency, the past year or so has seen deepening divisions between two notional groups. On the one hand are those sometimes referred to as ‘bitcoin maximalists,’ who believe for a variety of reasons that bitcoin itself should be the focus of crypto development and investment.
According to these folks, the enemy is anyone who supports nearly any cryptocurrency that’s not bitcoin – so-called ‘altcoins.’ These projects are seen as sapping the energy needed to advance the cause of bitcoin. The criticism is substantially driven by the high percentage of outright scams that plagued crypto at the height of the 2017-2018 crypto bubble, when hundreds of millions of dollars were funneled into fraudulent or doomed altcoins.
Nakamoto.com seemed to ignore this conceptual divide. It adopted its name from bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, and specifically stated that all of its contributors would be pro-bitcoin. But bitcoin purists were quick to point out that many of the high-profile contributors were directly involved in currencies that arguably compete with bitcoin. They included Vitalik Buterin, cofounder of Ethereum; Roger Ver, cocreator of Bitcoin Cash; Michael Arrington, an advocate for XRP; and Zooko Wilcox, creator of Zcash.
This quickly got the publication branded as something akin to a scam itself.
At least one initial contributor, Adamant Capital founder Tuur Demeester, even asked for his name to be removed from the site, saying he was “not comfortable attaching my name to the platform.”
There was other fallout, including a high-minded Telegram group that was quickly overrun by hostile trolls and other bad actors, and had to be closed to new participants.
On one level, it’s a bit hard to credit the criticisms of Nakamoto.com. Blockchain is a relatively complex new technology, and an outsider would rightly wonder how it makes sense to malign efforts to fully explore its potential. The ‘bitcoin vs. shitcoins’ division is as oversimplified as most binaries (especially as it plays out in the overheated rhetoric of so-called ‘crypto Twitter’).
That may be exactly why the incident matters, though. Those hostile to established media have in recent years often pounced on perceived failures of reporters and outlets to be ‘neutral.’ There are certainly plenty of news sources that stray from even the broad ideals of being accurate and trustworthy, but many others (including Fortune and The Ledger) sincerely aim for them.
But neutrality itself isn’t as simple as it sounds, and is ultimately very much in the eye of the beholder. And when audiences bring sharply divergent worldviews to the table, establishing trust is a lot harder than it seems.
