If you have followed Bitcoin Perception for longer than two weeks, you already know how the mainstream media's Bitcoin coverage often oscillates between bemusement and bewilderment.
Well, it’s not all that bad all the time, but sometimes you stumble upon things and you realize how some themes are so weirdly interconnected that you just have to make a thing out of it.
Going through the past week's stories, I couldn’t help but notice that some selected reporters, in an attempt to offer a fresh narrative angle, ended up revealing more about their own preconceptions and biases than what perhaps they were intending to do.
So, let’s have a look.
Allison Schrager's piece in Bloomberg Opinion, "Crypto Is Going Mainstream, Which Means It’s Over", highlights a trend I've noticed since the Bitcoin ETF launch: a peculiar 'protest' against Bitcoin going mainstream, where reporters complain about Bitcoin diverting away from its core values.
But Ms. Schrager, when stating that 'a currency that is not backed by a government has no intrinsic value, because it has no claim on real assets’ reveals she isn't exactly a champion of cypherpunk values.
Unabashedly exposing her logical fallacy, Ms. Schrager oddly laments Bitcoin's loss of rebellious charm with its mainstream acceptance, as though Bitcoin’s purpose was to stay underground forever.
What this trend reflects, really, is a media narrative confused about Bitcoin's disruptive origins and its integration into traditional finance.
Because if they weren’t, we wouldn't be seeing the likes of CNBC’s TechCheck saying;
“Bitcoin was supposed to be so much more – a revolution, bypassing the traditional financial system with a democratic, decentralized, peer-to-peer electronic cash system for unbanked populations. But Wall Street did what Wall Street does best.”
What’s going on here? When did this new wave of cypherpunk journalists infiltrate the MSM?
Now, a similarly interesting thing to see are custodial solutions being debated in mainstream media.
Scott Chipolina from The Financial Times highlighting the Bitcoin ETF's risk having 9 out of 11 custodians being Coinbase is worthy of our attention, I think.
One thing is to question the risks of a single custodian, which is entirely okay:
But to stand up and take a stance in the name of decentralization is a new one, at least to me:
Are we watching traditional finance reporters unintentionally argue for self-custody?
It's almost as if Mr. Chipolina is on the verge of becoming a Blockstream Jade hardware wallet reseller, championing the very ethos of Bitcoin that mainstream finance often views with skepticism.
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