The blockchain blog. A guide for Bitcoin, Ethereum, ICOs & co.

There’s a big difference between being convinced by a technology or by the people who report about it.

If you don’t know this technology and its functionality, then you won’t be able to tell good information from bad. You won’t be able to uncover lies, recognize false statements and you’ll be dependent on everything you read, see or hear, for better or worse.

I want to change this with this blockchain blog and give you the opportunity to obtain the right knowledge. You can then use this knowledge to evaluate the information you receive in a critical and competent manner. This will set you up to make successful investments in the crypto space and protect yourself from scammers.

Who am I and what makes this blockchain blog special?

Every day, I find at least 40, often over 100 new messages about Bitcoin, blockchain and crypto in my inbox. 90% – if not 99% – of them are simply wrong. Some of them are just dumb chatter by ignorant people, but unfortunately many of them are false statements that are made deliberately.

Governments and above all the financial sector already feel that the world is changing and that their power is threatened. False statements, but also many scammers that hop on the train every day, are able to convince many people who become victims to this problem. If you’re able to tell good information from bad, you can profit. That’s the reason I started this blog. To finally shed light on this issue and make even laypersons understand what advantages the blockchain can bring, how Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies work and how they will change our lives.

This blockchain blog shows the way. Like a signpost.

Since the summer of 2017, contributions from the entire public spectrum, whether it’s unknown blogs and the big media such as the Times or the Financial Times, but also mass media such as the “Sun” or the “Daily Telegraph“, and also specialized media such as “WIRED” have been reporting more and more about Bitcoin, blockchain & co. Unfortunately, reports and news from these companies, many or which are highly acclaimed, are for the large part disappointing, if not even fundamentally wrong. I had no idea how little my colleagues understood about this material, while at the same time presenting themselves as experts or at least falling victim to “experts”. They report of things that they didn’t research, they listen to these so-called experts and they print or publish unverified “facts” that are simply wrong, stupid, misleading or completely irrelevant. The meaningless statements are just dumb chatter, the misleading statements on the other hand can cause the unqualified reader to lose a lot of money.

90 – 99 % nonsense

Most of the things that are said, printed, published or sent out are wrong. The layperson doesn’t recognize when they receive wrong or misleading information or when they are being manipulated. I did notice and I didn’t like it. That’s why I decided to debunk the charlatans and non-experts – or better yet: To show the reader the true world of Bitcoin, blockchain & co. Many contributions in my blog are set up in a way where I take a publication from a different source and try to correct it in a sober, factual and informative way. I use school grades to emphasize the quality of the presented publications to my readers. I categorize the publications from my journalist colleagues and writers to also give my readers something to laugh about.

The categories

Nonsense
Clueless
Stupid
Fake news
Wrong
Misleading
Ridiculous

I will try to sort the reviewed contributions into these categories, so you can spot quickly which article is worth reading and which you can use to relax or even laugh about. Obviously, I will also try to clear up any errors or false information. By doing so, I will make some of my colleagues angry. But who knows, maybe this will help them.

Everything only negative?

No, of course not. There are also the categories “Worth reading” and “Excellent”. In addition, you can simply sort the articles by school grades. All contributions will receive a grade. I don’t want to play the role of head teacher, but all other grading systems are simply to complicated and that’s why this is a risk I have to take. Like I said, it’s not all bad, wrong, misleading or manipulative. There are a lot of great contributions, a lot of horrible contributions, and everything in between.

When experimenting with these grades, I encountered some publications that definitely deserved the grade F, but even this wasn’t enough to qualify them because they were so misleading and so deliberately wrong that they were actually dangerous. That’s why I added another school grade, which is “Dangerous”. These are the publications you really have to watch out for.

Bitcoin, the blockchain, cryptocurrencies, wallets, Private Keys, ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) and the new decentralized world which we are entering are not simply about an extension of the internet or a new Facebook – it’s about money, a lot of money, for each of us and it’s about the truth and nothing but the truth. This new decentralized blockchain world will massively change our society and it’s important that everyone knows how this world works. This is what this Blockchain blog is all about.

Joe Martin

I’m a child of the computer age and I am fascinated by Bitcoin, blockchain & co. As a journalist with over 25 years experience in the world of technology, I have the ideal prerequisites for introducing the fascinating world of cryptocurrencies to you in a way that is easily understandable.

Using the example of Bitcoin, my book explains how blockchains work and why they will change the world. Bitcoin is the point of origin for the fourth industrial revolution, and anyone looking to secure his job, his assets, his family and his future, should understand the basics of the crypto world. In this book, Bitcoin and co., the blockchain and its significance are explained in a way that is understandable for anyone but is also entertaining.