The Biggest Threat to the Bitcoin Is Still the Fake News and Misinformation Spread About It

When Bitcoin was introduced, the main aim of the people that created it was to give the world a currency that will have the capacity to control and limit itself. This is against those that are based on what other institutions make of them. Since its arrival, it has faced a lot of oppositions. This ranges from the fact that the traditional banking industry is afraid of what it portends for their businesses. So, they fought vehemently against it. Business analysts who also see it as a threat to the traditional order have also not been kind to it. But the fact remains that all these challenges could not deter Bitcoin, which witnessed an astronomical rise in value and popularity - the type that no one could ever have predicted.

The rise in the value of Bitcoin beyond expectations brought shivers to the spine of those in charge of the financial sector that is backed by the standard currency. They had to get back at the cryptocurrency with all they could muster – the biggest of which is fake news. The number of misleading and false reports thrown out in quick succession about Bitcoin succeeded in soiling the name of a hitherto very sincere endeavor. Even when the value of the currency has been tamed, as the rise was the major reason why these traditional institutions got upset, they did not stop. Fake news about Bitcoin has even increased in recent months, and this has continued to negatively affect the value.

Half-Truths and Fake News

The fake news phenomenon has thrived because the cryptocurrency market has been without a standard regulatory body. But when you come to places like US, South Korea and Japan where there is some form of regulation for the currency, you will see less of the fake news. Bitcoin has received a lot of bashing from financial institutions because it has been very difficult to stamp out or control the issue of fake news about it. They named it a bubble because it has no solid bases. But when you look down deep, you will also realize that these financial institutions have also contributed to producing and spreading the fake news. The situation on the ground is that these institutions have actually embraced more of the fake news about the currency than the true stories. They ignore stories that talk about the way forward and how to solve the problems faced by Bitcoin.

For the media houses, they found out that people are more interested in the fake news about the currency. So, in the bid to enjoy the traffic that it produces, they latch on these controversial and in most cases unproven information. Most of the regulators will read this biased news and believe them to be the truth. This never augurs well with the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin Scams

It would be good to note that one of the major problems that Bitcoin is facing is the numerous scams about it. They include the Bitcoin wallet scams, the Bitcoin Ponzi scam, the Bitcoin phishing scam, the Bitcoin mining investment scam and the Bitcoin exchange scam. These do not have any direct link with Bitcoin itself. But the media revel in them and label Bitcoin a scam due to these.

The very annoying thing is that alternate financial newswires like Yahoo Finance are also involved in spreading this fake news about Bitcoin. It had one of its recent publications titled “Bitcoin scams: don’t fall victim to them!”

Fortune titled its own, “Bit Con? Veteran fraud expert sets his sights on Bitcoin”. The fact is that some ICOs and crypto-currencies are scams, but they do not have any links to Bitcoin. But the mainstream media will have none of this. They will always link them to the Bitcoin, and this is making people to change their perceptions about the currency.