Coinbase Launches 'Fact Check,' a Section on its Blog To Combat Misinformation about the Company and Crypto World (coinbase.com) 49
Crypto giant Coinbase on Thursday launched its own media operation. The company is calling it "Fact Check" -- and giving it a dedicated section on its blog. In a blog post, Coinbase Founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said the firm, which recently went public, will use Fact Check to combat misinformation and mischaracterizations about Coinbase or crypto being shared in the world.
"Unfortunately, we also see misinformation published frequently as well, whether in traditional media, social media, or by public figures. This doesn't always come from negative intentions. Our business, and crypto, can be difficult to understand, and often people are rushed to post first impressions online, making mistakes in the process. At other times, misinformation comes from people pushing their own agenda, or from those who have a conflict of interest," wrote Armstrong, who in the post outlines in detail his thinking behind launching Fact Check. An excerpt from the blogpost: In the future, we will need to move beyond fact checking, and start creating more of our own original content to communicate with our audience, and tell the stories of crypto that are happening all over the world. Many of these stories are not being told by traditional media. Fact checking is still largely reactive, but we need to move to a more proactive stance on content creation to have a true media arm. Distribution of our content will happen through podcasts, YouTube, our blog, Twitter, and every other channel we own. But in the future, it will also likely move to more crypto native platforms, like Bitclout, or crypto oracles. Long term, the real source of truth will be what can be found on-chain, with a cryptographic signature attached.
"Unfortunately, we also see misinformation published frequently as well, whether in traditional media, social media, or by public figures. This doesn't always come from negative intentions. Our business, and crypto, can be difficult to understand, and often people are rushed to post first impressions online, making mistakes in the process. At other times, misinformation comes from people pushing their own agenda, or from those who have a conflict of interest," wrote Armstrong, who in the post outlines in detail his thinking behind launching Fact Check. An excerpt from the blogpost: In the future, we will need to move beyond fact checking, and start creating more of our own original content to communicate with our audience, and tell the stories of crypto that are happening all over the world. Many of these stories are not being told by traditional media. Fact checking is still largely reactive, but we need to move to a more proactive stance on content creation to have a true media arm. Distribution of our content will happen through podcasts, YouTube, our blog, Twitter, and every other channel we own. But in the future, it will also likely move to more crypto native platforms, like Bitclout, or crypto oracles. Long term, the real source of truth will be what can be found on-chain, with a cryptographic signature attached.
Re:Fact Check? (Score:5, Informative)
From this article, I'd say yes:
https://blog.coinbase.com/fact... [coinbase.com]
No different from PR efforts from fossil fuel or tobacco companies.
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Yep, that's some hardcore greenwashing.
The standard methodology used today for assessing Bitcoin's carbon footprint was laid out in Stoll et al 2019 [sciencedirect.com] A more modern calculation [sciencedirect.com] puts it at 480-500g CO2/kWh. The average EU CO2 intensity in 2019 by contrast was 275g/kWh, and falling quickly.
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Take a look and judge it for yourself. Their first article on the environmental impact of crypto mining felt like a bunch of Greenwashing BS to me:
https://blog.coinbase.com/fact... [coinbase.com]
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These 'currencies' act much more like a stock with their volatility. It is not where anyone would put savings that they want to keep long term.
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Your examples of energy waste all have physical world benefits (or at least usefulness if not a benefit)...
You think that 200-year old ugly art someone paid millions for, has usefulness? Sorry, but that's hardly the metric we should be using.
crypto currencies have no physical world benefits or usefulness unless you are stuck in sub zero temperatures with only an electric cord and a mining machine.
Huh. Must be why hardly anyone is into it. Guess we should forget about it now. Just a passing fad.
My point regarding the coloring of energy waste, is the manipulative Green powers will soon start targeting your "waste", which THEY will arbitrarily define. Doesn't really matter if we're talking about crypto. Crypto just seems to be THE energy hog and target right now,
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Besides, when it comes to energy whores, don't we have hottubs and hairdryers to make illegal? Where are the legions of tree-huggers bitching about every sports stadium sucking gigawatts of power for every "pointless" sporting event? How much gas is wasted driving warmongering hardware around the planet all day, all night? You really think you can hang ALL the energy suck in the world on crypto and people will believe you?
That's a bit like asking where are all the nuclear non-proliferation proponents bitching about people throwing rocks.
The world is full of energy suck, no doubt about it.
But let's not lose sight of the scales of energy suck.
BTC is using between 80 and 115tWh of power per year. That's more than the total energy use of many countries.
It's around 3% of the total energy use from all sources, for all reasons of the entire fucking United States, for a financial device that is fucking tiny in terms of actual
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Besides, when it comes to energy whores, don't we have hottubs and hairdryers to make illegal?
Well, those happen to be useful, and don't have the energy footprint of a medium-sized country to boot.
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Besides, when it comes to energy whores, don't we have hottubs and hairdryers to make illegal?
Well, those happen to be useful, and don't have the energy footprint of a medium-sized country to boot.
A few years ago, someone pissed away 10,000 BTC, on two pizzas.
Even with that now-insane move, it was still useful.
And today, you can buy a small country with two pizzas worth of BTC.
Maybe even a medium-sized one.
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Counterpoint: you can't buy anything with BTC. No one uses it as currency, like no one did back during the Papa John's incident either. Any place that takes BTC simply converts it to hard cash on the spot.
Which just makes matters worse, since the Bitcoin market is so small and volatile. Don't believe me? Try selling 10,000 BTC, see what happens.
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Counterpoint: you can't buy anything with BTC. No one uses it as currency, like no one did back during the Papa John's incident either. Any place that takes BTC simply converts it to hard cash on the spot.
Currency: A currency in the most specific sense is money in any form when in use or circulation as a medium of exchange.
From the consumer perspective, it is currency. They see a vendor accepting something of value in exchange for services. If the vendor wanted to take my BTC and hold it because they thought they would profit even more from it, I don't give a shit. I'm already out the door with my product in hand.
Which just makes matters worse, since the Bitcoin market is so small and volatile. Don't believe me? Try selling 10,000 BTC, see what happens.
If I wanted to sell 10,000 BTC today for only $10K each, I'll bet I could find 10,000 buyers
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Currency: A currency in the most specific sense is money in any form when in use or circulation as a medium of exchange.
Not Bitcoin, then. A bunch of nerds hoarding a deflating asset and sometimes trading it for something is not circulation.
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Currency: A currency in the most specific sense is money in any form when in use or circulation as a medium of exchange.
Not Bitcoin, then. A bunch of nerds hoarding a deflating asset and sometimes trading it for something is not circulation.
Tell that to the growing horde of vendors who are starting to accept that currency for all manner of exchange.
And if THAT is what you call a deflating investment, find me another one that has shown a return like that in the last decade
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Currency: A currency in the most specific sense is money in any form when in use or circulation as a medium of exchange.
A definition which BTC fails to pass. It's a token, not currency.
I can trade Rolexes for cash and use that to pay for pizza, too. Does that make watches "currency"?
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Currency: A currency in the most specific sense is money in any form when in use or circulation as a medium of exchange.
A definition which BTC fails to pass. It's a token, not currency.
I can trade Rolexes for cash and use that to pay for pizza, too. Does that make watches "currency"?
No. It makes you a cash customer who used to own a Rolex.
Regarding BTCs definition, sorry. It is most certainly in circulation. It can most certainly be used and accepted as a form of currency, regardless of what happens in the background, because people may not convert it at all. That means they simply accept your BTC payment as BTC and it stays BTC.
I think you also need to understand the difference between a coin and a token. BTC holds it's own independent blockchain, which defines it as a coin, and
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So, your point is that a currency that buys you a country (sic) for the same amount you could get a pizza two years ago... is somehow useful?
That's a bold move, Cotton.
That pizza transaction, was over 11 years ago.
And governments spend trillions to sustain the value of fiat currency. Pretty ignorant move to assume a dollar costs a dollar when a fucking penny costs 2.4 cents to make. Those bitching about waste in crypto, should perhaps understand their stance is more hypocritical than they assume.
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And governments spend trillions to sustain the value of fiat currency.
Just FYI, the value of your all-mighty, non-government-backed currency dropped 10% since you first posted on this thread.
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And governments spend trillions to sustain the value of fiat currency.
Just FYI, the value of your all-mighty, non-government-backed currency dropped 10% since you first posted on this thread.
Government spends trillions of taxpayer dollars to create the illusion of value of fiat currency. Sometimes we have to send our own citizens off to war to sustain that illusion.
Perhaps we not discuss value. Few realize the true cost, is considerably higher on one side.
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You know, the rest of the world seems to do just fine keeping money value without wars though.
This is exhausting. Please look up the definition of "currency", you're embarrassing yourself.
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You know, the rest of the world seems to do just fine keeping money value without wars though.
Yes, because the rest of the world hasn't gone through multiple World Wars. Or formed an alliance with US Military forces to sustain that peace.
You're right. This is exhausting due to your incomprehensible ignorance in that statement.
I figure this won't take long. Maybe another year or two. By that time the world will have recognized the difference between a coin and a token, and embrace the most popular ones into broad circulation, or it will crash and burn, blackballed by the status quo and deemed a c
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That pizza transaction, was over 11 years ago.
That's a very short time for someone to wait.
Pretty ignorant move to assume a dollar costs a dollar when a fucking penny costs 2.4 cents to make.
Most money does not exist in physical form in the first place, so this cash cost argument is useless.
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It's rather amazing that we've seemingly abandoned any concern about cryptocoin in general causing serious instability in the financial market.
Bwahahaha! Maybe only in the mind of you cryptonerds.
Bitcoin et all are insignificant in the grand scheme of world financial markets. Wake me up when a single transaction worth a couple thousand BTCs doesn't send its market value down 10%.
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It's really remarkable. Every single of those items listed as "myth" are hard, verifiable facts.
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Yep, this is exactly why Wikipedia doesn't permit "original research", anything that is written has to be written by third parties using third party sources.
Bitcoin, and pretty much everyone involved in it, are just desperate to keep the party going, and everyone involved is going to lose boatloads of money when their neck of the woods decides to either tax or regulate it into the ground, if not ban it entirely.
Well I learned something new (Score:3, Interesting)
From TFA
Half of global mining takes place in Sichuan, China
I knew a lot of mining took place in China, but I had no idea it was that much in one region.
Even though you probably have to take Coinbase assessment of mining electricity sources with a grain of salt, it's nice to see an assessment from the other side of the coin when anything else I've read seems very slanted the other way.
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it's nice to see an assessment from the other side of the coin when anything else I've read seems very slanted the other way.
Yes, it's so important to hear from the vested interest profiting from the activity in question, can't trust those outside observers especially when they've formed a well-supported consensus...
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Yes, it's so important to hear from the vested interest profiting from the activity in question
It actually is because they are more familiar with how it all works, thank a lot of places coming up with estimates that are based on dubious premises or really old information (like assuming power consumption of an 80's PC).
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(like assuming power consumption of an 80's PC).
I'm pretty sure Coinbase would like to sell you figures based on 80s computers though. You know, back when a CPU + MoBo + video card would consume something like, what, 50 watts?
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Yep, the CPUs sometimes had no heatsinks at all back then! A fan on a CPU heatsink would've been the '80s equivalent of a LN2 cooling setup.
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I'm pretty sure Coinbase would like to sell you figures based on 80s computers though
And what would you say would be the cost per kwh to mine one BTC with an 80's computer vs. a custom ASIC rig now?
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(reposting due to incorrect reply target)
Opinions from people with vested interests cannot be trusted to be impartial, and companies lie all the damn time. Opinions from vested interests should be considered to be worthless hot air until proven otherwise (and most often they aren't).
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Opinions from people with vested interests cannot be trusted to be impartial, and companies lie all the damn time. Opinions from vested interests should be considered to be worthless hot air until proven otherwise (and most often they aren't).
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Spicey!
Here's one for you (Score:2)
FALSE - putting rich wall street assholes and Chinese billionaires in charge of one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world is INSANE. That is completely the opposite of the point of crypto. Also, putting profits for the stock holders above running an actual customer-first business is going to kill their company.
how wasteful (Score:2)
Circular fact-checking/debunking (Score:2)
Our fact-checkers checked out your phony fact-checkers and debunked their phony fact-checking. Beware the person who merely declares something to be true or false without backing it up with observable facts not other people's commentary.