Today we are sitting down with Mr. Joris, one of the senior managers at Exxon chemical. We did an interview in June and now Mr. Joris, uncle of Serge, is back in Belgium. So it is an opportune moment to do an interview with him.
Serge: It has been some time since last we spoke about digital currency and about Bitcoin in particular. Have you been checking up with the BTC news?
Mr. Joris: Yes after the wonderful information and talks we had in June, I began looking for every possible source of information that was out there about digital currency. Bitcoin did intrigue me very much because it can be viewed as the standard to which other crypto currencies are compared to.
I have looked at a lot of news sites and I will pick out two as a comparison. First I came across Coindesk, one of the leading news sites out there concerning Bitcoin. However I began getting irritated with their journalists. These “writers” as I like to call them, make mistakes like; spelling, grammar, common sense and write 4-12 line long sentences. In some articles 1 sentence is the length of 1 paragraph. These are mistakes that actual journalists will never make. What I mean with real journalists are people that have enjoyed some form of high education, like you had Serge, preferably of academic origin.
Don’t get me wrong, people that do not necessarily have a paper that says “went to this or that university” can be also good journalists but those people are very rare. Look at Jean-Pierre Buntinx from CryptoArticles. He doesn’t have the necessary credentials of a “journalist” but his articles are much better written than 95% of what is out there on the internet.
Furthermore the inaccurate reporting of some of these “writers”, and I use the term loosely, doesn’t inspire trust or objectivity. Objectivity is one of the most important aspects of a journalist and if a “writer” doesn’t have that then that writer isn’t a journalist.
The second one is Cointelegraph. From a business perspective Cointelegraphs layout looks amateurish and that is putting it mildly. I know it might come across as a bit harsh but it is an apt description nonetheless. The same goes for investors, Venture Capitalists and others that are looking for accurate information. All these colors and drawings make it look like it is a tabloid style news site.
Furthermore are, just like Coindesk, most of the articles on there are just as biased. Agreed the quality of the articles is slightly better than the ones on Coindesk but not by much I’m afraid.
My conclusion is that most news sites are just getting paid to write articles in a certain way, whether it is to discredit a company (without actual proof I might add) or to hype a company or product to the moon and beyond.
The general quality of the articles is extremely poor, mainly because the “writers” are clueless people who think they can write. Now it doesn’t mean that there aren’t any real and excellent journalists out there. Most of them are running little and medium sized news sites, like CryptoArticles, and as such they try to provide objective articles based on the facts.
Now let me point out that this is my personal view on the whole “news gathering” aspect of digital currency. However if you really want to have an unbiased view on Coindesk or Cointeleraph please feel free to stand in Wallstreet and ask the managers, CEO’s of companies etc. what they think about the sites, without actually reading the article titles ( If they do read them most of these ladies and gentlemen tell you to ****off with that nonsense). 99,5% will agree with what I said about the tabloid-like or comic style layout and the amateurishly written articles (if they even look at them). After all that some people still wonder why Bitcoin and digital currency is being hit left and right by bad press in the corporate and financial media. I think it is clear why.
Like I said not all news sites are bad or amateurish. Some news sites even get looked up by big business and financial companies alike. I know for a fact that CryptoArticles is part of that small group of news sites.
Serge: You let slip that you were also looking at other digital currencies. I know this is a very personal question but have you been investing in Bitcoin or other crypto and if so can you tell us why you did it?
Mr. Joris: Well as you know I do not like to discuss my investment strategies but I can tell you this: I bought thousands of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin. I will not disclose how much the exact number is. I believe that Bitcoin, along with only a handful of “altcoins”, will continue to exist and grow.
As for the other digital currencies that I have invested in I will say this to potential investors/buyers: do good research before committing to anything and do not go to the biggest news site there is and only listen to what they have to say. Take a look at other, small and medium sized news sites. Again I do not reveal my strategies but I bought recently Blackcoin and Urocoin. I bought these alt coins because they have great potential. What they are you should find out for yourselves.
Serge: Now the financial system is throwing out all bad reports about digital currency and Bitcoin in particular. What are your views on the matter?
Mr. Joris: Now Serge you have been active in the day trading business and you know what the banks are all about. You know as well as I do that when the establishment of a bank is shouting “don’t invest because the company is bad” it is more often than not the complete reverse.
I have been speaking with some longtime friends of mine that have very high positions in certain prominent banks. Every day they keep an eye on the Bitcoin and certain altcoin courses and fluctuations. The fact that some in the financial sector are yelling so hard is because they do not know what digital currency is. They think that Bitcoin or “crypto currency” is something entirely new but these digital currencies are not new. Nor is the volatility that plagues the digital currencies.
Let’s go back 20 years or so and look at the stock exchanges. Certain commodities, stocks, shares etc had the same volatility as Bitcoin and other crypto have today. Granted there weren’t peaks where a company went from 1 dollar to 1000 dollars but there were stocks that went from 0.0001 dollars to 2.5 dollars and then back down again.
Now let’s get back to present day. How do I get paid by Exxon chemical? Exxon chemical sends me my paycheck from their bank account to my bank account. This transfer of currency is digital. Ok it is way simplified but you get the picture. The same goes for Crypto currency. For example: I buy a giftcard for Amazon.com at Cryptothrift to give to my daughter. I pay the person that is offering said gi
ftcard the amount of Bitcoiins, Litecoins whatever. I transfer that amount from my wallet to the sellers wallet. Granted, there is an escrow step in between, but that is for buyer and seller protection.
As you can see it is the same work ethic. The only difference is that the banks aren’t involved and that you are responsible for your own wallet. So these things are nothing new under our everyday sun.
I would add that I particularly liked your analysis of the “financial sector”. “The banks” aren’t one solid wall against Bitcoin or digital currency. They can be best viewed as separate entities making decisions as they see fit, most of the time within the confines of financial law and practice.
On a closing note I would like to give out some advice. The Bitcoin and digital community should have a better marketing system and educational tools to draw in the general public. Bitcoin has also suffered a lot of damage to its image and the only way to solve that and go forward is to educate as much people as you can.
Bibiliography.
http://www.cryptoarticles.com/crypto-news/bitcoin-banks-and-bonking-bankers
The previous interview with Mr. Joris can be found here:
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