Coinbase CEO Says FTX’s Collapse Sparked Citizen Journalism
The CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, praised the work of crypto experts and citizen journalists after the decline of FTX.
The CEO and co-founder of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, has praised the efforts of citizen journalists and blockchain experts in regards to the emerging FTX problem and its former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried.
Armstrong claimed in a Nov. 16 tweet that has been retweeted over 9,000 times as of this writing that average folks, rather than established media, had revealed many of the events involved with FTX’s liquidity crisis and eventual bankruptcy declaration.
Armstrong, commenting on a recent “puff piece” in the New York Times, stated: “Feels like a turning point for citizen journalism and loss of trust in MSM” – alluding to the mainstream media.
Twitter has broken just about every piece of this FTX story using blockchain analytics, while NYT is writing puff pieces on a criminal.
Feels like a turning point for citizen journalism and loss of trust in MSM.
Crypto Twitter has also been quite critical of the story, with Polygon Studios CEO Ryan Wyatt writing to the author that Bankman-Fried had “committed significant crimes” and that the article was “a disservice to all those impacted.”
Elon Musk has tweeted many times on the emergence of citizen journalism on Twitter since purchasing the social media platform in October.
Mainstream media will still thrive, but increased competition from citizens will cause them to be more accurate, as their oligopoly on information is disrupted
As an illustration of the emergence of blockchain analysis and citizen journalism, on November 5, blockchain tracker Whale Alert reported that slightly under 23 million FTX Token FTT, representing around 17% of the circulating supply and valued at $584,8 million at the time, had been transferred to Binance.
This occurrence was one of the first indicators of FTX’s liquidity crisis, although the New York Times did not report it until November 8.
Blockchain investigators were also the first to report the FTX attack, with Twitter users tracking the transfer of cash to other wallets and concluding it was a hack hours before FTX’s official disclosure.
Twitter Spaces has also become the home of “The Roundtable Show,” a gathering of crypto community members hosted by Mario Nawfal that has been providing live updates and commentary on the FTX saga as it unfolds, with participants including Elon Musk, BankToTheFuture CEO Simon Dixon, and internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, with 891,499 people tuning in.
Twitter has played a significant role in breaking news and providing analysis of the FTX crisis, but it has also been a breeding ground for conspiracy theories and downright erroneous information.
Later refuted,recent Bankman-Fried’s cryptic Twitter thread sparked widespread allegations on the site that he was utilizing the freshly posted tweets to erase previous, perhaps damning tweets.
Twitter users pointed to Bankman-Fried’s plane departing The Bahamas for Argentina on November 12 and assumed he was escaping there, which he denied. A source then informed that Bankman-Fried was under Bahamian authorities’ surveillance.
