By
Bena Ilyas
April 18th, 2024
Coinbase has also been a recent victim of this fake news syndrome. The company saw an avalanche of information being spread about its “investor and executive stock sales.”
Coinbase, through a blog post by its CEO, Brian Armstrong, has announced the launch of a “Fact Check” section on its blog page. According to the post, “this section of the blog to combat misinformation and mischaracterizations about Coinbase or crypto being shared in the world.”
The public-listed crypto firm, citing the level of misinformation that has long bedeviled institutions, businesses, and particularly in the crypto industry, believes it is now time for it to become a ‘media company’.
Per the post, the ”fact check approach is not about antagonizing or embarrassing others, but simply sharing what happened through your own channels.” This is an attempt to combat the information that misrepresents the business or crypto. To him, “people are rushed to post first impressions online, making mistakes in the process. At other times, misinformation comes from people pushing their own agenda, or from those who have a conflict of interest.”
Armstrong also cited different technological companies like Tesla, Facebook, Apple and a host of others who had to combat different levels of misinformation concerning their businesses and activities. He noted that “companies are now emerging as a third source of truth, and can create accountability when misinformation is spread via other channels.”
While admitting that battling misinformation can be quite challenging, he posits that “every tech company should go direct to their audience, and become a media company.”
Coinbase Addresses Executive Share Sales News and Others in Its First Set of Fact Check
Interestingly, Coinbase has also been a recent victim of this fake news syndrome. The company, upon its public listing, saw an avalanche of information being spread about its “investor and executive stock sales.”
Per the Fact Check post, the misinformation started with a Twitter user who created a false chart. This chart snowballed into “a false narrative that Coinbase executives were selling the majority of their stock when we listed on Nasdaq, which continued to spread on Twitter.”
The firm, however, dispels this rumor saying “Coinbase executives and early investors sold portions of their total holdings to create liquidity on the opening day of trading for Coinbase stock. These sales are critical to a direct listing. Despite misguided commentary on social media and in some news outlets, these sales represented small percentages of their overall holdings.”
In another fact check blog post, the firm also dispelled the rumor that crypto is being used by criminals for illegal transactions. According to the firm, “crypto is not a haven for criminal activity or illicit financial dealings, but a medium for a wide range of secure, trackable transactions.”
And while addressing the burgeoning environmental concerns about Bitcoin mining, the crypto exchange admits that Bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive process, however, it claims that “teasing out the actual environmental impacts of that energy use is, like a lot of things, complicated.”