Conflicts of interest in Bitcoin media
I am a tech reporter that has written three stories on Bitcoin in a newspaper the past year. I have passed on a lot of stories and in talking with sources over the year I have learned that the community prides itself on building transparency-enabling technology. But many of the story pitches that are sent to me seem to be manufactured by one specific group that is not very transparent in its behavior.
Take this for example. This morning there was an article on Coindesk covering ASICBOOST.
I have never mined before but this story on the face of it appears to be one-sided because it provided no evidence of wrong-doing. I looked around today and found that BitMain, the miner in question, did post an explanation around the accusations. At the newspaper I work at, the story would have been updated to include a link to the news information, but this has not happened with the Coindesk story.
One of the contributing authors to the Coindesk story is Alyssa Hertig who has a relationship with Peter Todd, a Bitcoin Core developer and consultant at Blockstream, the company which also employs Gregory Maxwell who led the accusations against the miner in the story.
I also learned that Coindesk itself is owned by a company called DCG. And DCG’s owner, Barry Silbert, has a documented history of using social media to endorse and promote investments he has not adequately disclosed such as another cryptocurrency called Ethereum Classic.
This is not the first time a reporter had an undisclosed relationship with a person they covered. And this is not the first time an investor has used a media platform to actively promote his/her investments.
At places like the newspaper I work at, it is acceptable to get to know the people we report on, but if we get too close we can lose our objectivity and are asked to remove ourselves from it.
Yesterday a source pointed me to publicly accessible images from Julia Tourianski’s Instagram account. Tourianski is a Russian-Canadian blogger who often goes by the name “Your Hydra.”
Last year Tourianski was interviewed with John Dilley, an employee at Blockstream and Bitcoin Core contributor. In the podcast Tourianski talks about an article she wrote the month before about a debate in Bitcoin about scaling. And how here faith was restored because of the actions of Blockstream.
But Tourianski does not inform the audience in either the interview or her blog post that she is Dilley’s girlfriend and the mother of Dilley’s son.
It may be possible to be objective during debates but not disclosing investments or familial relationships is considered unethical in most corners. In this case, it may be part of the manufactured stories like the Coindesk report on mining above.
Below are photos from the Instragram account that were identifiable. The pattern of interest is how Tourianski is close to many Bitcoin Core supporters and other reporters who have written about Bitcoin.
Eric Martindale is currently a Blockstream employee and used to work at BitPay: https://blockstream.com/team/eric-martindale/
John Dilley is currently a Blockstream employee and is the father of Tourianski’s son: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnnydilley
Victoria van Eyk used to work at ChangeTip and Bitcoin Magazine: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/authors/victoria-van-eyk/
Tone Vays used to be a writer at Coin Telegraph and Brave New Coin and is currently host of CryptoScam: https://twitter.com/tonevays
Tatiana Moroz is a folk singer and founder of CryptoMediaHub: https://twitter.com/queentatiana
Peter Todd is a Bitcoin Core developer and consultant at Blockstream: https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc
Matt Corallo is one of the co-founders of Blockstream, a contributor to Bitcoin Core and now works at ChainCode. His online handle is “TheBlueMatt” https://www.reddit.com/user/TheBlueMatt