Crypto’s dislike for NYT peaks with SBF speaker deal

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For­mer bil­lion­aire Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has con­firmed he will speak vir­tu­al­ly at New York Times’ (NYT) Deal­Book Sum­mit event next week, result­ing in major back­lash online.

The last time cryp­to Twitter’s crit­i­cism for the NYT approached this cal­iber was back in Jan­u­ary, when the out­let released a piece on Pudgy Pen­guins — an NFT project that soared to an all-time high floor price after the piece was released.

The project’s founders soon after pro­ceed­ed to rug-pull, emp­ty­ing the company’s wal­let and then attempt­ing to sell the com­pa­ny for 888 ether to an investor.

The author, Kevin Roose, had been gift­ed two NFTs pri­or to pub­lish­ing, but claimed they would be returned due to jour­nal­is­tic ethics. But cryp­to Twit­ter was quick to crit­i­cize NYT for shin­ing a huge spot­light on a less than hon­est project.

Indeed, the out­let is often cen­sured for fail­ing to under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of the indus­try on which it’s report­ing — a com­mon occur­rence among many larg­er out­lets. How­ev­er, the com­mu­ni­ty has arguably nev­er been so riled up as now.

NYT <3 SBF

On Wednes­day, SBF con­firmed the inter­view would still take place on Twit­ter. It came as quite a sur­prise — replies poured in, many angri­ly ask­ing why some­one sus­pect­ed of the biggest fraud in the indus­try to-date is still walk­ing around, let alone wel­comed to speak at an event sell­ing tick­ets for over $2,000 a pop.

NYT’s speak­er line­up is an inter­est­ing group of peo­ple to throw togeth­er. It includes Ukraine pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky, as well as Mark Zucker­berg, for­mer prime min­is­ter of Israel Ben­jamin Netanyahu, for­mer US vice pres­i­dent Mike Pence, and Ben Affleck.

At the event, NYT colum­nist and edi­tor Andrew Sorkin claims he will “bring togeth­er today’s most vital minds on a sin­gle stage.” Deal­Book Sum­mit says it will reveal “hid­den com­plex­i­ties, unex­pect­ed rela­tion­ships, and the wide-rang­ing rip­ple effects of change.” 

It wouldn’t be sur­pris­ing if even Mike Pence didn’t want to be rub­bing (vir­tu­al) shoul­ders with SBF right now. How­ev­er, NYT has decid­ed to take an oppor­tu­ni­ty any media out­let would pounce on. There are, of course, sev­er­al ways to go about it on-stage.

As a bit of con­tent mar­ket­ing for the event, NYT released an inter­view with SBF, smack dab in the mid­dle of the FTX and Alame­da Research meltdown. 

Read more: Exclu­sive: Moon­stone Bank explains ties with Alame­da Research

The arti­cle focused on SBF’s phil­an­thropic and polit­i­cal endeav­ours (for anoth­er take, Pro­tos has report­ed on both). While infor­ma­tive, pub­lic sen­ti­ment found that it “tip-toed” around the ele­phant in the room and labelled it a “puff-piece.” Even Twitter’s chief night­mare Elon Musk took the time to reply:

“This is one the biggest fail­ures in US jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty of the 21st century.”

A protest out­side the NYT Deal­Book Sum­mit event against SBF’s speak­er deal has been pro­posed, but Pro­tos has been unable to con­firm if this will take place.

Sorkin has respond­ed to con­cerns about the inter­view going for­ward. “There are a lot of impor­tant ques­tions to be asked and answered. Noth­ing is off limits.”

Indeed, while cryp­to Twit­ter is out­raged that SBF is not in prison, that’s hard­ly the fault of the NYT. Not to men­tion, the pub­lic might be able to hear the most thor­ough first-hand account from SBF to date, since things fell apart.

Let’s just hope we get some­thing a bit more enlight­en­ing than “F*** regulators.”

For more informed news, fol­low us on Twit­ter and Google News or lis­ten to our inves­tiga­tive pod­cast Inno­vat­ed: Blockchain City.



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