I was hit with a little inspiration today when Nathaniel Whittemore covered a couple New York Times hit pieces targeted at Bitcoin in a recent episode of his podcast, “The Breakdown.” The first article attempted to dispute Bitcoin’s decentralization by using mining stats from the early days when very few people were mining. A second article by Paul Krugman attempted to disparage Bitcoin by saying it was essentially useless. That coming from a Nobel Prize-winning economist who is infamous for an article about the internet being a passing fad. Why do we trust these people, let alone even care what they think?
The difference between signal and noise is simple, but difficult to see during times of panic like today or euphoria when prices are going parabolic. In my eyes, price in and of itself is noise. Price is made on the margins; buyers and sellers outnumbering each other for short periods of time. It tells you nothing about network strength or long term adoption. Price stories are nothing more than attempts to generate clicks by inspiring fear or greed based on short-term price movements.
Signal, on the other hand, is deeper; a look under the hood, if you will. Stories about
