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Story author is Nick Paumgarten. Staff writer at the New Yorker for 13 years. Seems to favour stories on sports talk radio, internet dating, a bit on the WEF (W

Story author is Nick Paumgarten. Staff writer at the New Yorker for 13 years. Seems to favour stories on sports talk radio, internet dating, a bit on the WEF (World Economic Forum). His Twitter (grand total of 20 tweets) has a mugshot of a motorcycle. Not what I would consider to be a credible authority on economic theory or cryptocurrencies. I'll take this story like I have most from the New Yorker: cursory homework done by an upper middle class person who was born and raised on the US northeast coast.

CPLX 8y ago
Did you read the article? The entire point of the thing is to talk about crypto from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know much about it at the outset. He investigates it and reports back, as a proxy for the reader.
- FabHK 8y ago
  > He investigates it and reports back, as a proxy for the reader. And that's enormously valuable. People are often dismissive of The Economist, since many of the writers in its anonymous collective are young Philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) graduates from Oxford, and what do they know. But they're smart, and by virtue of their association with The Economist and its network have access to world class experts, and they can talk to them on and off the record, and synthesise the gist of some development or controversy in an excellent short article.
xrd 8y ago
The New Yorker, as you say, is probably not the place you would expect to find the greatest journalistic minds writing about crypto. It is, however, a place where you can often find smart writing on things that are verging from obscurity into the mainstream, and I think this article does do a decent job of communicating the perspective of a layperson like the author who is new to the crypto world. Did you read a different motive of the article than that? Or, did you feel that there was something inaccurate about it? I felt like he did not dismiss Lubin's assertions late in the article about the future of crypto when debating Nouriel Roubini. It seemed pretty balanced to me in just reporting their arguments, and not taking sides, which I think is actually quite rare in mainstream journalism when discussing anything crypto! To me, it didn't seem like there were many assertions made that contradicted the bright future or doom of crypto coming from the prophets or naysayers.
rconti 8y ago
The less someone posts on Twitter, the more interested I am in what they have to say.
logosmonkey 8y ago
What in the world does having a Twitter avatar of a motorcycle have to do with anything?

CPLX 8y ago

Did you read the article? The entire point of the thing is to talk about crypto from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know much about it at the outset. He investigates it and reports back, as a proxy for the reader.

FabHK 8y ago
> He investigates it and reports back, as a proxy for the reader. And that's enormously valuable. People are often dismissive of The Economist, since many of the writers in its anonymous collective are young Philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) graduates from Oxford, and what do they know. But they're smart, and by virtue of their association with The Economist and its network have access to world class experts, and they can talk to them on and off the record, and synthesise the gist of some development or controversy in an excellent short article.

xrd 8y ago

The New Yorker, as you say, is probably not the place you would expect to find the greatest journalistic minds writing about crypto. It is, however, a place where you can often find smart writing on things that are verging from obscurity into the mainstream, and I think this article does do a decent job of communicating the perspective of a layperson like the author who is new to the crypto world. Did you read a different motive of the article than that? Or, did you feel that there was something inaccurate about it? I felt like he did not dismiss Lubin's assertions late in the article about the future of crypto when debating Nouriel Roubini. It seemed pretty balanced to me in just reporting their arguments, and not taking sides, which I think is actually quite rare in mainstream journalism when discussing anything crypto! To me, it didn't seem like there were many assertions made that contradicted the bright future or doom of crypto coming from the prophets or naysayers.

rconti 8y ago

The less someone posts on Twitter, the more interested I am in what they have to say.

logosmonkey 8y ago

What in the world does having a Twitter avatar of a motorcycle have to do with anything?