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Thank you for your research into this! I found it difficult to locate good sources too, and that fact is worthy of more disclaimer than I gave. I think you're r

• davidgerard 9y ago
  > It could indeed be just a blip, but would you agree that there exist reasonable incentives for usage of DLTs in unstable economies? tl;dr no. Cryptocurrencies (we're not talking about the general euphemism "DLT", your question is about cryptocurrencies and specifically Bitcoin) don't solve any of the problems people have in that situation. When every story about "Bitcoin in [troubled country]" has turned out to be made-up rubbish, this leads me to consider all such claims wishful thinking on the part of holders.
• davidgerard 9y ago
  Further on this: I'll just have a little rant. I'm writing a book on Bitcoin/blockchain https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/ and have taken to researching Bitcoin/blockchain stories that make it to mainstream media - because this is what ordinary people hear about it - and tracing them to their sources, because far too much of what I'm trying to use as sources just doesn't check out. In almost all cases they're complete BS started by Bitcoin/blockchain promoters. Every "Bitcoin adoption in xxx" story is rubbish. Most corporate blockchain adoption stories are rehashed press releases, usually from IBM. Blockchain marketers consistently claim some prominent company "is using" a blockchain when there’s just been a press release that they are "investigating" running a future trial. This is because an "investigation" is cheap, and telling Beleaguered Bob in the office to look into this "blockchain" stuff is worth the PR value in showing you're fully up to date with current buzzwords. "Researching the opportunities" could mean anything, but pretty much always does mean nothing. If you see a use case that catches your attention, a web search on the company names and the word "blockchain" will often track down the original press release. Check very carefully which details are clearly substantiated in the present tense, and which are (what's a good word) aspirational. Journalists who bother actually picking up the phone and talking to people, e.g. Izabella Kaminska at FT, get a barrage of personal abuse from Bitcoin advocates, whose social skills really haven't gotten any better in the past several years. The Bitcoin press is possibly even worse - it pretends to be news coverage, but it's actually advocacy blogs posting any boosterism that crosses their path, because what their readers want is reassurance that this is the future and their holding will go TO THE MOON. The best of them is probably CoinDesk, and even they've never seen an unreleased hype they didn't like and run an enthusiastic article on. The mainstream press keep assuming all this is specialist coverage that's done with journalistic intent (rather than advocacy from holders) and copy'n'pasting it. Even when the Bitcoin blogs are trying to do real news, they're inexcusably sloppy, and you really do have to check every factual claim individually. tl;dr Bitcoin journalism is bloody terrible.