First, a moment of silence for Sam Bankman-Fried. You may have noticed that we don’t spend a lot of time focusing on criminal activity at Bitcoin Market Journal. We are unique in that we don’t cover a lot of hacks, scams, and frauds. We barely mentioned SBF’s trial. Why? Because we are building trust in crypto. It’s not that we turn a blind eye toward bad behavior. It’s that the bad behavior gets blown way out of proportion, especially when it comes to crypto. Imagine if you were trying to encourage the adoption of money, back in the days of Money 1.0. You persuade the public to trust these strange golden coins. You advocate for merchants to accept this new form of payment. You explain to everyone why it is a better way of transacting than haggling cows and sheep. But every other day, Ye Olde Town Crier loudly proclaims every bad thing anyone is doing with the new money. “Hear ye, hear ye! In this day and age, this newfound currency doth fall into the hands of rogues and miscreants! Carrying it upon thy person doth mark thee as prey for marauders who may descend upon innocent wayfarers with pillage and robbery! 'Tis a tool that doth make the act of bribing elected officials all the more convenient!” It would be pretty hard to get the new money into circulation.
If we covered every bad thing that people do with traditional money, there wouldn't be any airtime for anything else. Every robbery, every bribe, every tax evasion would keep the news channels busy 24/7.
But crypto gets put under the microscope, because it's new.
These continual Town Crier news stories -- which hopefully have culminated with the trial of SBF -- are like resistance to the revolution. They provide friction for moving forward -- but they also make us stronger.
Meanwhile, these stories about the bad actors are not at all representative of the industry as a whole. They do not capture the thousands of investors and builders who are trying to do it "the right way."
Through all the noise of the last year, we at Bitcoin Market Journal have tried to provide a steady signal of trust. We want to make this new form of investing accessible to as many people as possible ... and that requires trust.
Of course, we need to keep our crypto investments safe -- just as we need to keep our traditional money safe. There are bad actors in crypto -- just as there are bad actors in the traditional financial system.
But this doesn't make the system itself bad.
The financial system, on the whole, has allowed humanity to flourish and thrive. And the new financial system, built on blockchain and crypto, will allow us to thrive harder.
To get there, we've got to trust that this new financial system is leading us somewhere better. One day at a time, one newsletter at a time, we will continue to build that trust.
Eventually, even the Town Crier will join us.
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