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@ Colin Gifford
2024-09-02 06:30:58Hello and congratulations,
If you are reading this, you have been accepted for the journalist role at the Australian Financial Review (AFR) in the cryptocurrency and digital assets team- specialising in bitcoin reporting.
Don’t worry if you have never studied bitcoin or even bothered to take 15 minutes to learn the value proposition because neither have we! That’s why we have written the following 4 rules all AFR journalists must abide by when writing about bitcoin (with examples!).
Rule 1: Bitcoin has no intrinsic value; therefore it is a Ponzi scheme.
Repeat this line in some way, shape or form whenever you can. If you can declare it dead or compare it to the tulip bubble of 1636 without analysis even better.
Remember, since bitcoin doesn’t generate cashflows and can’t be valued the same as a company, it is inherently worthless. Ensure you look past gold’s five-thousand-year-old use case when making this claim (very important).
Since it’s worthless and you can’t earn that precious dividend our close friends at all major banks offer, the only reason to buy bitcoin is to sell it at a higher price to a greater fool. Ignore the fact this is literally how a stock market operates.
**Rule 2: Bitcoin and Crypto are the same thing. **
Bitcoin = Ethereum = NFT = Sam Bankman Fried. You must group all these terms together as often as possible with the goal of obfuscating scam artists with underlying technologies.
Because SBF was the crypto guy, and bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, any proof of his fraud is also proof the reader shouldn’t trust bitcoin.
From here the next leap is easy – bitcoin is only used by criminals and money launderers. Ignore the blatant contradiction from Rule 1 (bitcoin has no value at all) and instead focus on dangers of allowing an immutable, censorship resistant protocol.
Getting quotes from reputable sources are important, so make sure you use people like J.P Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon on why we need to shut down bitcoin and protect the readers from criminals.
Ignore his $350 million money laundering fine his company received last year…..
Rule 3: Proof of work is wasteful
Learning about bitcoin’s security mechanism proof of work (PoW) ironically takes a lot of time and energy. So, we instead suggest you skip this and learn the following
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If bitcoin mining uses a lot of power, that means it’s stealing energy from a family because all energy units are created equal
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Bitcoin uses more energy than a small country. Don’t explain why that matters, just leave it there; the reader will figure it out.
Rule 4: There on this earth is worse than volatility.
Our readers are rational investors who don’t like risk. Instead, they would prefer a prudent portfolio strategy of taking on a leveraged position of 5:1 to buy the greatest asset ever created by god, Australian Real Estate.
We stress that since bitcoin’s price decreased last week, it can’t possibly be a store of value and is therefore worse than the Argentinian Peso.
Volatility is bad, and all Australians must take out as much debt as possible to keep our “economy” afloat achieve financial freedom.
Conclusion
At the AFR are the last stand against new ideas. Bitcoin is a scary asset, but nothing is more intimidating than learning about it.
Colin Gifford
June 2024
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