Why it is so difficult to write about IOTA

To write responsibly about a topic an author must take both sides into perspective: Good and bad. If you try to do this with IOTA you risk being pulled into a shitstorm by a small but radical part of the scene. What to do?

How difficult it can be to write about cryptocurrencies became clear to me in early 2014. At the time someone told the Coinforum that he had taken out a loan to buy Bitcoin at the height of the 2013 bubble and now did not know what to do. At that moment I realized that I might have blogged too euphorically. Would not it rather have been my duty to point out such risks?

Reporting unilaterally almost inevitably means lying, no matter what. Anyone who writes anything good (or bad) about a cryptocurrency generates an incomplete picture that expresses the author's personal opinion - and possibly his own investment in a currency - but purports to be objective information. That could be called a lie. Since many people learn about cryptocurrencies because they think about investment decisions - this is irresponsible.

Light and shadow

Since then I've been trying to write both good and bad through the cryptocurrencies that are often an issue here - Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum. I try to highlight light and shadow, opportunities and risks and pick the news from the daily stream of news accordingly. I also hope to neutralize my own opinion - which I can neither conceal nor ignore. Whether and how well I succeed I don't know. But at least I try to do the right thing in some way and give balanced information to my readers.

For controversial topics this is often difficult. So my blogging about the dispute between small blockers and big blockers was often full of booby traps. Partly because the topic has provoked extreme reactions, partly because I had a strong opinion on it myself. Even writing about Bitcoin Cash, a product of this dispute, is often difficult. But unfortunately that's nothing against the problems IOTA is facing.

Only light

Some time ago I wrote about how IOTA would be presented at the Hannover Messe - especially by Fujitsu. Good news! At the end of March I wrote about how RWTH Aachen University is beginning to use IOTA for an "Internet of Production". Also good news. IOTA is an interesting project - a cryptocurrency based in Berlin which is being tested by theGerman industry. I am happy to bring you "Good News" about IOTA.

The control of the narrative

I tend more and more to write nothing negative about IOTA and to restrain myself in neutral articles with compensatory comments and explanations that I would supplement with other currencies. A recent article on Bitcoin.com explains hugely why. Unfortunately, the article compares the methods of IOTA's Troll-Army with Goebbels, which is very awkward, and given the fact that the IOTA Foundation has its base in Germany, is also to be understood as a crude, deliberate provocation. I distance myself from comparing the IOTA scene in any way with Nazis. Such a comparison relativizes the crimes of mass murderers and has nothing to do with it - nothing at all.

But otherwise the article describes very aptly how I got to know the eager representatives of the IOTA scene.

But there is also bad news about IOTA. For example, the University College of London (UCL) has terminated collaboration with the IOTA Foundation because "it is inappropriate for security researchers to become the target of legal threats when they reveal their findings." The background is that of the IOTA scene the researchers from MIT or DCI have more or less declared enemies and that one of the IOTA developers wanted to sue them. As far as I know, UCL should test the long-announced Wallet for IOTA.

Or that the Financial Times criticizes IOTA, both technically and socially. Above all, the business newspaper denounces the way the IOTA scene deals with journalists. She recalls the case of Amy Castor, a former Forbes author who has elicited a statement from an opinion-critical article from an important IOTA representative that is simply undignified. Kryptoszene.de writes more about it. The FT also mentions that there is a "troll army" of IOTA that does not shy away from the threat of physical violence to prevent people from expressing themselves.

*"When journalists break the red line such as by reporting something or when Twitter users go too far, such as by sharing tweets the IOTA supporters follow a predictable pattern:

The first hit usually happens on Twitter. The author of an article gets veiled threats. He is said to be 'not a journalist' and should know better than to spread 'FUD and disinformation.' If the author once committed some tiny rule violation - such as tweeting a now-defunct cryptocurrency, an embarrassing personal one To post a blog, to have been photographed with an inappropriate Christmas sweater - then this is pulled out and used as a weapon. It is a dirty war and anything but a fair game.

Next the comment columns of the article will be filled with copied complaints from the Troll army. If it is a publication like news.Bitcoin.com, it is suggested that the company deliberately spreads 'FUD against IOTA' because it fears that Bitcoin will be threatened by IOTA's superior DAG technology. Or because the author is annoyed that he did not buy IOTA when they were at 20 cents. While some journalists and researchers refuse to be so oppressed, others give in, erase their tweets, and withdraw from the public discussion of IOTA to enjoy a quiet life. "

What to do?

As a blogger I am now in a dilemma. I would like to continue writing about IOTA because of the great interest it has in Germany and because I appreciate that IOTA is committed to massively scaling a cryptocurrency. Despite that I think it is important to be skeptical - the tangle is an exciting technology.

However there is an imbalance. When I write good news then everything is fine. If, on the other hand, I write a bad one, there can be an obligatory shitstorm which keeps me busy for hours or days and robs me of a lot of nerves. I am urged to give up the balance and adopt a one-sided narrative. This is not an option for me. In order to be able to continue to bring articles such as the fair or the tests of the RWTH, I must also address negative aspects. And that means being attacked. To be honest, I do not have the nerve to do that, and it's not the job of the blog to be investigative or ideological in any way and to defy hate storms.

The simplest alternative would be to stop writing about IOTA. Neither positive nor negative. But I do not like that too, because I miss an exciting topic and make room for those who want to control the narrative. So I honestly do not really know how to proceed with the topic.

I am currently experiencing this although my recent articles on IOTA have been consistently positive. Because I am the lead moderator of the Coinforum where there was a very active IOTA thread in which there was a noticeable effort to stop criticizing IOTA. When I gave my opinion there recently there were insults and the call for my dismissal as a moderator one of my co-moderators was the same afterwards. We then made sure that the rules of the forum the Netiquette, apply even if someone criticizes IOTA or the behavior of the IOTA scene. The result is that we almost always have to delete Mods comments that offend us, and that the IOTA hardliners are constantly calling for me to be deposed as Mod and slander me elsewhere. The pattern should be known.