If Twitter is the Kingdom of Lies, then Bitcoin is the Currency of the Realm*
Recent studies — and recent news stories — make clear the interest in and value of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are driven less by actual substance and more by the excesses of the media, social or otherwise.
Platforms like Twitter, Reddit — and “it” crypto social messaging app, Telegram — work as megaphones for often badly conceived ideas, barely substantiated claims and more than a little disagreement between evangelists and skeptics.
In the era of peak-influencer marketing where a couple of well-placed comments can engage and enrage partisans from all sides it shouldn’t be a surprise there’s a financial bubble as audacious as the one enveloping blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and the once-booming, yet now-busting Initial Coin Offering (ICO) craze.
For those catching up, Bitcoin was the first “cryptocurrency”, a type of electronic cash or digital currency built on a larger infrastructure, a distributed ledger technology call the Blockchain.
Now, while the proliferation of fake news and conspiracies on social media platforms has been reported on ad nauseam by the press and debated at the highest levels of government in capitals across the globe, some of the most spurious claims on social media can quite easily move massive amounts of the…
