Media Watch

Headlines were made here in New Zealand about a recent abduction attempt upon the family of a crypto exchange and payment system provider in France. Fortunately the attempt was unsuccessful, owing to intervention by members of the public: bravo to them.

The RNZ nine-to-noon programme interviewed a crypto-shill on the 8th of May 2025. The subject of the interview was the 'Lindy Effect' which is also known to some as 'regulatory escape velocity'.

The gist of the effect is that the longer something exists, the more justified it's existence is. I can imagine the eyelids of agnostics, scientists and statisticians twitching at this thought, and they are not alone, because the effect is also an example of base rate fallacy being ignored for financial gain. For it to be taken seriously is unscientific in the extreme.

Memories are short in NZ politics. Patrick (Paddy) Gower has gone and interviewed a basic crypto scammer, Derek Handley, calling him a "tech guru" but I have my doubts this person can drive a C/C++ compiler.

It's another sad day for journalism in NZ. Stuff are uncritically reporting on "meme" coins which is simply double-speak for Pyramid schemes, and Pyramid schemes are illegal under the Fair Trading Act whether or not they provide a product or service, or both.

I read a good article about crypto on Slate today. It's not all bad news on this website! I welcome their criticism of crypto, we need more of this.

If we can't be bold enough to call a scam a scam, then scams will proliferate and Bitcoin and crypto-currencies are examples of what can happen when criticism is excluded, these scams rely on the chilling effect of stifling criticism to get to where they are.

During the morning news scroll, before my eyes were properly open, I noticed the popular NZ news website Stuff was shilling Bitcoin in a 'sponsored' content article.