Nothing has done as much harm to blockchain development, and the consequent potentially beneficial advances in technology that would result from it, than the heavily biased media reports that have been published to criticize cryptocurrencies. There are three major contributing factors to this situation.
The first is that blockchain and the cryptocurrencies that feed it are relatively complicated technologies that can be difficult for non-technical people to understand.
The second is that the people who stand to lose the most from decentralized cryptocurrencies are central banks (which have enormous financial resources at their disposal).
And the third factor is that the early implementation of Bitcoin was promoted in a way that made it attractive to criminals and it was used in a lot of illegal transactions, something that severely harmed the image of the technology.
Wealthy opponents can afford to run extensive propaganda campaigns
Because the main opponents to cryptocurrency advances are central banks, they can buy a lot of media space, and presumably a lot of editors opinions as well. Banks are an important source of revenue for most media production companies, whether for print, radio, or television. Nobody in the media business is likely to get far by antagonizing the banking industry.
The only safe and free space for opinions that go against the mainstream is the Internet, and early efforts to attract people to take an interest in cryptocurrency were actually quite antagonizing to bankers and government authorities.
The main thrust of the publicity efforts back then focused on the facts that cryptocurrency was at that time anonymous and decentralized, meaning it was beyond the control of governments and banks. To some extent it still is.
Mainstream media has mainly focused on scandals and failures
The media dedicates very little attention to successful cryptocurrencies, and typically does not report on useful blockchain innovations. Most people who are curious about these technologies need to turn to the Internet to get their information.
On the Internet anyone can publish what they want and that’s a really good thing because it’s possible to get a diversity of different views on any topic, but can also be a problem because it’s very difficult to verify facts and the sources of those facts.
Unless you are careless, there isn’t really much to fear
It’s true there have been scandals and failures in the cryptocurrency world. This is a new technology and mistakes have been made, and of course there are always people in any industry looking for someone to take advantage of. It’s common in every class of business, and cryptocurrency is no exception.
The simple reason that some people have lost money on bad deals in the cryptocurrency industry is that they just did not do their research.
It’s like 20 years ago when the DotCom Bubble finally burst. People were shocked to find that their failure to research what the Internet companies they were backing actually did was resulting in them losing money.
The same thing has been happening with cryptocurrency investment. People see the huge success of Bitcoin and Ethereum and assume that every new ICO launch is going to be a fast track to immense profit, but that’s a dangerous way to invest.
When investing in any cryptocurrency, and especially an ICO, you should be prepared to put in the same kind of research that you would when considering buying shares or investing in an IPO. If you do that, and you do it correctly, it greatly reduces the chance that you’ll lose money. Throw in other time tested investment strategies like diversification and risk management, and you really would have to be incredibly unlucky to fail.
Don’t let propaganda fool you. Choose your own investments according to how they feel and the diligent research you perform. Everything else is just the bankers trying to keep their hold on power over the way people do business.
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