Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s chief executive and co-founder, lauded independent journalists and blockchain analysts working to tackle the ongoing FTX collapse and mismanagement of funds from Sam Bankman-Fried, its disgraced former CEO.
Armstrong tweeted on Wednesday that citizen journalists, rather than global media, had exposed the events linked to FTX’s liquidity crisis and Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
He slammed a recent NYT piece, stating: “Twitter has broken just about every piece of this FTX story using blockchain analytics, while NYT is writing puff pieces on a criminal.”
Twitter has broken just about every piece of this FTX story using blockchain analytics, while NYT is writing puff pieces on a criminal.
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) November 16, 2022
Feels like a turning point for citizen journalism and loss of trust in MSM.
He added it was a “turning point for citizen journalism and loss of trust in [the mainstream media].”
Twittizens Unite on FTX
Speaking on the matter, Elon Musk tweeted his support for citizen journalists. He said at the time that “increased competition from citizens” would lead to increased accuracy “as their oligopoly on information is disrupted.”
Additional condemnation of the NYT piece include Polygon Studios chief executive Ryan Wyatt, who said that Sam Bankman-Fried had “committed significant crimes [which were] a disservice to all those impacted.”
Mainstream media will still thrive, but increased competition from citizens will cause them to be more accurate, as their oligopoly on information is disrupted
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 11, 2022
One such journalism outlet, Whale Alert, found in early November that users had transferred roughly 23 million FTX tokens (FTT) to finance, totalling $584.8 million USD or 17 percent of market supply. The NYT did not write about the incident until 8 November, according to reports.
Twitter Spaces also hosted several meetings for The Roundtable Show, hosted by Mario Nawfal, which covered the crisis as it unfolded. It hosted several prominent people, including Kim Dotcom, Musk, and others, leading to a surge in interest related to the FTX scandal.
User Tobias Silver also revealed a major FTX Tron account hack, leading to a major investigation on the person responsible for the incident. News later revealed that Tether had blacklisted the people, found to be regular users, from moving roughly $47 million in Tether (USDT) from FTX to Kraken.
Kraken’s chief security officer later revealed them to be “normal people who have lost their life savings,” according to Silver.
