FT columnist Jemima Kelly and former Alphaville editor Izabella Kaminska pushed back on the idea that critical articles written about Bitcoin amounted to "FUD."
Listen to the CoinMarketRecap podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts
Day two of Bitcoin Amsterdam was dominated by a heated debate on how mainstream media outlets cover the industry.
The panel — called Bitcoin's Media Problem — featured two journalists who have worked for major news outlets, and two journalists from crypto-focused publications.
Izabella Kaminska, who used to be the editor of FT Alphaville, said she knew BTC was going to be a big thing all the way back in 2011 — and it deserved a lot of scrutiny.
Reflecting on the articles that were written during her time at FT Alphaville, she said:
"I think our critiques were actually very valid. I wouldn't call it FUD. I think we were ahead of the curve on a lot of the stuff that later became understood in the industry — everything from the scaling challenges to the environmental footprint. I remember writing loads of pieces about how it's not going to be a cheap payments system. I think all of that was not FUD — it was educated criticism and hopefully helped the system get better."
Bitcoin Magazine's Pete Rizzo said the idea that criticism was not allowed in the Bitcoin community was "completely false" — but he suggested that many mainstream media journalists are ill-equipped to cover the industry because they lack an understanding in software ethics, monetary ethics and the history of economics. He added:
"Criticism requires that you're coming from a place of knowledge and understanding. I think one of the places that journalism has really failed is that the media outlets no longer support that — and specifically with cryptocurrency they don't support that. And the end result is a lot of consumer harm."
This riled Financial Times journalist Jemima Kelly, who argued that the real consumer harm comes from the "utopian vision of what Bitcoin can do." She said that she believed she was well-informed enough to cover BTC — especially considering she first started writing about it in 2015, long before many crypto journalists had even entered the space.
Cointelegraph reporter Joe Hall, who was also on the panel — conceded that Kelly had written about Bitcoin for longer than he had. Nonetheless, he provocatively argued that he knows more about BTC than she does.
He went on to suggest that many of those criticizing Bitcoin live in countries with stable economies and governments — but in nations where their currency is regularly debased, BTC has become a crucial tool for protecting savings.
Jemima Kelly went on to have a testy exchange with moderator Daniel Prince, who asked her whether she had seen the latest inflation print. She retorted: "Have you seen the latest Bitcoin price?"
The FT columnist pointed out that many retail investors jumped into the space in 2021, as BTC rallied towards a new all-time high of $68,700.
"If you invested a year ago you would have lost two-thirds of your money. That's not funny when you don't have any money."
Prince argued that these losses would only have been criticized if consumers actually sold their Bitcoin — and Kelly replied:
"Some people actually need enough money to pay for their mortgage. Some people aren't Bitcoin whales. Some people don't have money. Some people in the Ivory Coast don't have enough money to sit on their sats for years on end. If you tell them to buy Bitcoin and it plunges by two-thirds, you don't think that's consumer harm? People can't afford to HODL."
Kelly did concede that Bitcoin was an "amazing invention" — but in her eyes, this isn't enough.
"There's value in teaching a whole generation about how money works, and how it doesn't, but there's also value in having censorship-resistant money. I do think it's nice to have that. But because there are so many cons, it's not worth the cons."<div><iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1363037797&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true"></iframe></div><div><iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1363037797&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true"></iframe></div>
