Everyday is now constant onslaught of amateur tabloid journalism created by people are using their bully pulpit in order to manipulate their followers in order to make a quick buck. Each headline is more alarming than the next, one reads BITCOIN CASH TO THE MOON, the next BITCOIN CRASH SELL NOW. This type of reporting on cryptocurrency serves no true purpose other than as clickbait. These types of articles seem to be growing in popularity and are now generating some sizable profits so I felt the need to speak out against this.
As a community Steemit prospers when as a whole we can produce content that is:
- Well Written
- Personal
- Thought Out/Structured
- Original
- About A Topic you have Vast AND Reliable Knowledge on
- Factually Accurate/True
- Helpful/Educational
- Creative
- Edited
- Cited (if necessary)
- Carefully Curated
- Properly Tagged
Over the past month or two as Steemit has risen in popularity and cryptocurrency has become more well known and accepted by big business and even some parts of the media there have been some alarming events taking place that I feel should be brought to light. As I have touched upon in some of my other articles recently there was this big push I noticed, basically a few of the more popular cryptocurrency youtubers seemingly got together and decided to use their platform to convince a large number of their subscribers/followers (I can't estimate the number but the volume of trades indicates a lot of them) to BUY and HODL Chaincoin. Chaincoin has been dead since 2014 and only recently started development due to the huge boom in crypto this year and they want their cut. Anybody who understands blockchain technology can see that it offers nothing different or of value and due to its horrible development how could you ever have faith that it will be able to SCALE.
This is one of the hugest and most underreported factors of success in a coin and it is rarely talked about by many of these popular so called cryptocurrency youtubers. When talking about scaleability what makes this critically important is the ability to support thousands of transactions per second. Consider this, Visa's network currently has to be able to support the near instant transfer of value from one person to another about 2,000 times a second. Bitcoin is somewhere around 7 I believe and Ethereum just 13. Both of these coins have plans, development teams, and a sound roadmap on how to solve these issues as well as massive community support. Chaincoin literally has this to say about their roadmap:
"The development roadmap is our backbone and is what will make ChainCoin a unique coin in the marketplace. It’s going to require hustle and a lot of hard work, but with support from the community, we’re confident we can execute this plan and achieve our mission for ChainCoin."
Their roadmap is essentially viral marketing and false advertising on the back of a coin that will never be successful. Due to the fact the coin was so dirt cheap, anyone savvy enough to buy loads of it at fractions of a penny a few months ago or the creators of ChainCoin themselves was able to make a killing over the las month. There was absolutely no activity on this coin until April, then a few blips. What happened was a few people got together and decided they were going to buy a large sum of ChainCoin at $0.072 a coin and then use their youtube, blog, and social media to promote this coin with viral and misleading titles like "CHAINCOIN PUMP AND HODL" or "Chaincoin to the MOON!!!" ("to the moon" seems to be very popular with manipulators these days) and see if they could convince the market to go buy it. This worked flawlessly.
As you can see the craze is over (although the youtuber "highoncoins" is still trying to scam people) now as quickly as it started but this frenzy of cash perfectly illustrates why we need to curate our content better and stop supporting people who are manipulating their followers just to make a buck.
Headlines and videos like this getting so many views so quickly is a huge part of the problem, it spreads misinformation rapidly and it muddies the truth at the same time.
What we need is for the more well versed and powerful of the Steemit community to be more proactive in calling this type of content out and also flagging it. We need to help each other and not achieve through the failure of others. When we see these alarmist or sensational pieces, take the time to curate it, you may be saving someone from making a horrible decision. And please new investors, do your homework. I understand the rush of adrenaline and the sense of independence you are just getting a taste for but don't allow your eagerness to succeed quickly make you vulnerable to the snake charmers who will promise you the world for nothing in return.
Keep this quote by Edmund Burke in mind as you browse and curate content.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
For more crypto and finance related news please follow, upvote, and resteem @steeleminer.