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Simply a cold blooded, profoundly biased, partisan piece of the most outrageous propaganda on Bitcoin. > By the end of Feb. 14, 2021, nearly 40 people had died

Simply a cold blooded, profoundly biased, partisan piece of the most outrageous propaganda on Bitcoin. > By the end of Feb. 14, 2021, nearly 40 people had died, some from the freezing cold. And you know what? These deaths may not have happened if it wasn't because of Bitcoin. I look forward to the NYTimes' take on the Christmas lights. Maybe they can somehow let the reader infer someone has died because they made electricity more expensive.

survirtual 3y ago
Don’t you know? It is Bitcoin’s fault Texas has a neglected power grid and a wildly corrupt power industry that does not use profit to update and maintain their grid. It is Bitcoin’s fault that when their grid failed, their prices skyrocketed further exploiting Texans, while people died from the cold. It is Bitcoin’s fault that Texans have made no real change since this event has happened, neither politically nor with infrastructure, and held none of the leaders in industry nor politicians accountable. It is Bitcoin’s fault that the power industry has an outrageous lobby funneling money from their customers right into the pockets of politicians, to avoid wasting profits on doing their job. It is Bitcoin’s fault that everyone up and down the chain of supply excessively squeezes every ounce of profit from the public without any shame, guilt, or consequence and without contributing an iota of the value they claim to be offering. It is Bitcoin’s fault that the countless billions in the US that go into the power industry are squandered in fraud, waste, and abuse instead of modernization and clean energy. It is all Bitcoin’s fault. Ban Bitcoin before people paid outrageous sums of money might be forced to actually do their jobs.
- 99throw99 3y ago
  [flagged]
lisasays 3y ago
You can say the piece was biased if you want. But to apply the description "cold-blooded" seems, well, quite weird.
crazygringo 3y ago
You are misreading the article. It is not blaming Bitcoin for deaths at all, or even suggesting that. That sentence was clearly simply to illustrate that it was a bad storm, not an everyday one. I don't see what's biased or partisan or outrageous at all. It seems like quite a researched and fact-based article to me. And I don't even know what "cold blooded" is supposed to mean. Perhaps you're having such a strong emotional reaction because you don't like the article's findings? But I can't tell, since you haven't actually responded to the factual claims at all.
- walkhour 3y ago
  The factual claims are accurate. The implications are not. Only one side of the story is told. You can outright lie with a stream of facts, and that's the approach of hit pieces like this. I said cold blooded because the authors are aware of how they mislead, and do it nevertheless, because they have an agenda, otherwise an article can't be this biased.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    Well could you please explain the side you think they are taking, what the other side is, and what kinds of facts support that side? Because I honestly don't know them. Claiming an article is "this biased" doesn't help anyone here if you don't explain why.
    - walkhour 3y ago
      A non biased article would've mentioned how much Bitcoin mining accounts for the total energy used in US. And that would've been compared to the energy used in other industries. Take videogames for example. Just that datum would've changed the whole narrative of the article. The article does mention something in passing about how other industries at least bring jobs. I guess that's a net positive then. Were the authors aware of how tiny Bitcoin usage is and how much waste there is going around? Of course they were. Was this datum useful to the reader? Yes. Did the authors purposefully decide to exclude this datum because it didn't fit the narrative? Of course. Just imagine your average reader, if at the end of the article they were told, that we can't even agree on whether Bitcoin mining consumes more power than Christmas lights. Apparently that was not the case using the 2008 Christmas lights usage, and we don't know now, because both sides of the argument get wildly different values. Your average reader leaves the article thinking they know everything they need to know about Bitcoin: it's bad because it makes energy more expensive, and people have died, possibly because energy was expensive.

survirtual 3y ago

Don’t you know? It is Bitcoin’s fault Texas has a neglected power grid and a wildly corrupt power industry that does not use profit to update and maintain their grid. It is Bitcoin’s fault that when their grid failed, their prices skyrocketed further exploiting Texans, while people died from the cold. It is Bitcoin’s fault that Texans have made no real change since this event has happened, neither politically nor with infrastructure, and held none of the leaders in industry nor politicians accountable. It is Bitcoin’s fault that the power industry has an outrageous lobby funneling money from their customers right into the pockets of politicians, to avoid wasting profits on doing their job. It is Bitcoin’s fault that everyone up and down the chain of supply excessively squeezes every ounce of profit from the public without any shame, guilt, or consequence and without contributing an iota of the value they claim to be offering. It is Bitcoin’s fault that the countless billions in the US that go into the power industry are squandered in fraud, waste, and abuse instead of modernization and clean energy. It is all Bitcoin’s fault. Ban Bitcoin before people paid outrageous sums of money might be forced to actually do their jobs.

99throw99 3y ago
[flagged]

lisasays 3y ago

You can say the piece was biased if you want. But to apply the description "cold-blooded" seems, well, quite weird.

crazygringo 3y ago

You are misreading the article. It is not blaming Bitcoin for deaths at all, or even suggesting that. That sentence was clearly simply to illustrate that it was a bad storm, not an everyday one. I don't see what's biased or partisan or outrageous at all. It seems like quite a researched and fact-based article to me. And I don't even know what "cold blooded" is supposed to mean. Perhaps you're having such a strong emotional reaction because you don't like the article's findings? But I can't tell, since you haven't actually responded to the factual claims at all.

walkhour 3y ago
The factual claims are accurate. The implications are not. Only one side of the story is told. You can outright lie with a stream of facts, and that's the approach of hit pieces like this. I said cold blooded because the authors are aware of how they mislead, and do it nevertheless, because they have an agenda, otherwise an article can't be this biased.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Well could you please explain the side you think they are taking, what the other side is, and what kinds of facts support that side? Because I honestly don't know them. Claiming an article is "this biased" doesn't help anyone here if you don't explain why.
  - walkhour 3y ago
    A non biased article would've mentioned how much Bitcoin mining accounts for the total energy used in US. And that would've been compared to the energy used in other industries. Take videogames for example. Just that datum would've changed the whole narrative of the article. The article does mention something in passing about how other industries at least bring jobs. I guess that's a net positive then. Were the authors aware of how tiny Bitcoin usage is and how much waste there is going around? Of course they were. Was this datum useful to the reader? Yes. Did the authors purposefully decide to exclude this datum because it didn't fit the narrative? Of course. Just imagine your average reader, if at the end of the article they were told, that we can't even agree on whether Bitcoin mining consumes more power than Christmas lights. Apparently that was not the case using the 2008 Christmas lights usage, and we don't know now, because both sides of the argument get wildly different values. Your average reader leaves the article thinking they know everything they need to know about Bitcoin: it's bad because it makes energy more expensive, and people have died, possibly because energy was expensive.