The BTC Times: A new Bitcoin News Site

[mk4]

Just wanted to share what I found on the Twitterz.

So it looks like a new Bitcoin new site is born, which is led by board members Jameson Lopp, Lina Seiche(Samson Mow's girlfriend), Aaron Van Wirdum, Giacomo Zucco, etc.; with investors Samson Mow(Blockstream), Charlie Lee(Litecoin founder), Riccardo Spagni(Monero lead maintainer), etc.[1]

Reading only a few of their top stories(sidebar), it seems to be one of the better Bitcoin "news" sites as their posts seems A LOT less clickbait-y, and with actual good information.

While it's all good and all that, while I think the people in charge will use this platform for good, I'm just ever so sliiiightly worried that Samson Mow and company is slowly but surely getting a bit too much authority in the Bitcoin space. Idk, I'm probably just overthinking it and being a bit too pessimistic though.

What do you think?

https://btctimes.com/

P.S. They managed to get a hold of the @btc Twitter handle. Cool.

Obligatory I'm not affiliated with the website and yadda yadda.



[1] https://www.btctimes.com/news/cutting-through-the-noise

Tweet links:

• https://twitter.com/btc/status/1292160378609123329
• https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/1292318813065580545
• https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/1292319609635262465

[1714799685]

1714799685

[1714799685]

1714799685

[davis196]

I don't read Cryptocurrency news websites anymore.I got tired of all the clickbait,fake news and infomercials.
However,I might give BTCtimes a chance,if they keep their promise and try to deliver interesting content.
Some members of the team behind BTCtimes are close to big altcoin projects like Litecoin and Monero,this raises some reg flags and makes me think that this is going to just another "Bitcoin kinda sucks,check our altcoins!" type of "news" website.Let's hope that this might not happen.

[UserU]

I don't read Cryptocurrency news websites anymore.I got tired of all the clickbait,fake news and infomercials.
However,I might give BTCtimes a chance,if they keep their promise and try to deliver interesting content.
Some members of the team behind BTCtimes are close to big altcoin projects like Litecoin and Monero,this raises some reg flags and makes me think that this is going to just another "Bitcoin kinda sucks,check our altcoins!" type of "news" website.Let's hope that this might not happen.

Time will tell. Usually new sites would start off okay-ish, until the revenue starts pouring in then there may be changes in the direction

[mk4]

Yeap. I definitely have a lot more confidence with this one as the "board members" are actually people that are reputable in this space.

I just tried open their website and my browser shows warning with error code "SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN", which left bad first impression.

Weird. Was working for me at the time I posted this, and it's still working at the moment. Probably was a short downtime.

[UserU]

Finally they've installed the SSL cert. Previously the site was running on HTTP.

[DooMAD]

I sometimes worry that all media is effectively predestined to reach a stage where the money becomes more important than the journalistic integrity.  Almost all of the other cryptomedia sites are absolute trash because of this.  I hope this one doesn't follow suit, but my experience seems to suggest otherwise.  Fingers crossed, I guess.  I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt for now.

[mk4]

I sometimes worry that all media is effectively predestined to reach a stage where the money becomes more important than the journalistic integrity.  Almost all of the other cryptomedia sites are absolute trash because of this.  I hope this one doesn't follow suit, but my experience seems to suggest otherwise.  Fingers crossed, I guess.  I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt for now.

Yeah, I pretty much have the same thoughts not only with BTC Times but with all sites in general. It's likely that at some point they will be making good amounts of money and they'll sacrifice quality for quantity. It's quite a pessimistic way of looking at things, but more realistic in my opinion.

[20kevin20]

A constant thirst of power & money. I always take all this stuff with a large grain of salt rather than be excited about it. It scares me when I see larger crypto-related compabies trying to get into all domains. Like, Binance's CZ doesn't bother me at all for now running exchanges, crypto price listing websites and even hardware wallets under his company but it does become a huge privacy issue if he ever decides to cooperate with governments or turn everything into something similar to what Facebook and Google are today.

I wish I was optimistic whenever I saw these kind of news, but I just can't. This is the nature of humanity - once you get the taste of money, you'll only want more.

[Lucius]

When I look at who is behind the project, at first it seems like a very interesting team, especially Jameson Lopp which is known to me personally because of its testing project (metal seed plates/devices).

Personally, I very rarely visit crypto news sites because mostly there can be found quite poor quality content, and anyway everything that is relevant and interesting will be published on the forum. There is no basis to say how this news site will work and whether it will be any different from the others, but I think everyone deserves a chance to prove themselves.

[amishmanish]

All these people are pretty much well-wishers of bitcoin. Samson Mow is just a well known name on twitter due to his association with blockstream. He and Coblee also seem to be one of the "approachable" people in bitcoin, compared to a lot of others who are either too intimidating or privacy oriented. These two guys frequently lighten up the conversations.
The website was loading a little slow. What the hell is B2G?? LOL. Bitcoin market capitalization vs gold. Neat boast there to clarify intentions. A few heavy-weights coming together to take a stand for better media representation must be hailed as a welcome move. Like, like.

[mk4]

*snip*

I wish I was optimistic whenever I saw these kind of news, but I just can't. This is the nature of humanity - once you get the taste of money, you'll only want more.

While there's a non-zero chance that their intentions aren't 100% good and while we definitely have the right to be skeptical, I don't think we should come to conclusions that quickly either.

To be fair, it's not Samson Mow alone. It consists of a good number of people. Hopefully one of them does a whistle-blower move if ever something shady happens.

[kryptqnick]

I haven't heard of the website, so thanks for sharing. While it's impressive that big names stand behind it, given that they are parties interested in the prosperity of their own projects, it's reasonable to assume that this website is bound to be biased. I don't like how their logo doesn't feature the Bitcoin kind of B with serif, but other than that the website looks nice. Clearly, they are just starting as there isn't much content on the website, but there's a chance this will become a mainstream crypto news website. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what becomes of it.

[RapTarX]

While it's all good and all that, while I think the people in charge will use this platform for good, I'm just ever so sliiiightly worried that Samson Mow and company is slowly but surely getting a bit too much authority in the Bitcoin space. Idk, I'm probably just overthinking it and being a bit too pessimistic though.

What are you exactly worried of? I guess there's nothing to worry about Samson Mow to have much authority is Bitcoin space. Do you think that he can influence people to believe that BCH is real bitcoin someday? No, I guess. Therefore, nothing to worry about IMO.

[bL4nkcode]

if they keep their promise and try to deliver interesting content.

Soon as news/media website accepts paid press release then those interesting content will be no good.

Encountered this while accessing the site. idk why then don't fix it for just an ssl error.


I'm using firefox btw.

[o_e_l_e_o]

The site is completely broken on Tor - all I'm getting is a logo and menu bar at the top, followed by a page of black. This is the same on every link I click on from the menu bar. When trying to access it outside of Tor I also get an invalid SSL certificate warning.

Not a good first impression all round. Perhaps they should have actually tested their website before launching it.

I don't read any crypto "news" sites because they are, without fail, clickbait trash designed to make the owners money and will "report" any old spam without even the slightest bit of fact checking or journalistic integrity. You can get better news from this forum than you can from these sites. I would give this one a go simply because of the names behind it, but they are going to have to fix their site first.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

While it's all good and all that, while I think the people in charge will use this platform for good, I'm just ever so sliiiightly worried that Samson Mow and company is slowly but surely getting a bit too much authority in the Bitcoin space.

I don't know who Samson Mow is--that's the first time I've heard his name.  That probably goes to show you that I need to start paying attention to crypto news (lol).  But in any case, it doesn't sound like he's the top dog at this news org so I'd just wait and see what happens if I were you.

I don't read Cryptocurrency news websites anymore.I got tired of all the clickbait,fake news and infomercials.

I don't either, and for precisely the same reason.  In addition, I don't know anything about who's running these crypto news sites and they could very well be used for nefarious purposes, like pump and dump schemes and such.  It isn't as though any of them have a long track record or an extensive reputation for honesty and being unbiased.

The BTC Times does sound interesting, and I might give it a shot.  I'm not really interested in the personalities in the bitcoin world, and a lot of news sites tend to structure their stories around the big shots in bitcoin and the rest of the cyrpto world.  Hopefully that won't  be the case, and I also hope it doesn't turn into a bunch of click-baity nonsense if it doesn't get as much viewership as it was expecting.

[newIndia]

While it's all good and all that, while I think the people in charge will use this platform for good, I'm just ever so sliiiightly worried that Samson Mow and company is slowly but surely getting a bit too much authority in the Bitcoin space.

I don't know who Samson Mow is--that's the first time I've heard his name.  That probably goes to show you that I need to start paying attention to crypto news (lol).  But in any case, it doesn't sound like he's the top dog at this news org so I'd just wait and see what happens if I were you.

Ex-employee of BTCC. Twitter bio says CSO @Blockstream, CEO @Pixelmatic, creator of @InfiniteFleet, 25% of @magicalcrypto. Except for Blockstream, I have not heard of any of the either.

https://twitter.com/Excellion

[hatshepsut93]

I only visit Coindesk when I'm curious to see what's going on in crypto, maybe this site would be a good alternative to it, but it seems to be focused 100% on Bitcoin, which is kinda bad for me, because I'm always a bit curious what's happening with alts, because it's always good to know what's happening on the crypto market as a whole.

I don't know who Samson Mow is--that's the first time I've heard his name.  That probably goes to show you that I need to start paying attention to crypto news (lol).  But in any case, it doesn't sound like he's the top dog at this news org so I'd just wait and see what happens if I were you.

He's pretty big on Bitcoin twitter, and he has a podcast together with fluffypony (lead dev of Monero), Charlie Lee and other guys.

[ChiBitCTy]

I like the outlay of the website and the user friendliness of it and what not, it does seem to be a bit less "click-batey" as well, but it obviously lacks in information/ articles / opinion pieces etc.  Looks like it could have a nice future ahead of it though.

[mk4]

What are you exactly worried of? I guess there's nothing to worry about Samson Mow to have much authority is Bitcoin space. Do you think that he can influence people to believe that BCH is real bitcoin someday? No, I guess. Therefore, nothing to worry about IMO.

Too much power of a certain authority. You really think that people shilling BCH is the only problem that we can have in this space? lol

it does seem to be a bit less "click-batey" as well, but it obviously lacks in information/ articles / opinion pieces etc.

Well, it's a new website, just to be fair.