In the world of media, “If it bleeds, it leads,” is still very much a fashionable trope. However, when it comes to Bitcoin, there’s a new trope in town: “If it misleads, it leads.”
In a recent article[1] for The New Republic, Jacob Silverman, a highly talented writer, discusses the recent ransomware attack on JBS[2] Foods. On Sunday, May 30, the world’s largest meat processor suffered a massive cyberattack, shutting down a number of its operations in the United States and Australia. The attackers demanded[3] payment via cryptocurrency. The JBS attack occured shortly after Colonial Pipeline, one of the largest pipeline operators in the U.S., admitted to paying a ransom of about $4.4 million in bitcoin.
What is Silverman’s solution to the problem of ransomware attacks? The banning of bitcoin. By identifying a very real problem but offering a false solution, Silverman commits a basic error in reasoning.
The irascible biologist Richard Dawkins once compared the atheist movement to the herding of cats. Atheists, he argued[4], “tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.” This tendency can also be applied to the world of Bitcoin. If fiat currencies represent domesticated dogs, who are relatively predictable and very much controlled by their owners (i.e. central banks), bitcoin is more like a group of wildcats roaming the hills: highly volatile, explosive in nature and beholden to no one, not even Elon Musk.
How do you herd cats? How do you go about banning bitcoin? The previous sentence may indeed be grammatically sound, but that’s about where the soundness ends. After all, for a ban to be truly effective every single one of the 195 countries in the world would need to sing from the same
