In the bitcoin community, ecosystem, or whatever the buzzword of the day is, we all know that the mainstream media can't actually report the accurate news. The don't seem to check any facts or even manage to convey the actual truth most of the time (yes I am saying they lie in case that appeared to only insinuate the fact).
In fact the only time you ever hear about bitcoin in the mainstream media is when it's either declared gone, involved in something illegal, or otherwise makes it look bad in anyway. So we know they can't be unbiased.
Now they can't do math either?
In this doom and gloom piece from Fortune, they blast the headline in big bold letters:
...$72M Was Stolen ...
Well it actually said that "Bitcoin Worth $72M Was Stolen in Bitfinex Exchange Hack in Hong Kong" but that didn't have near the sarcastic affect as the above.
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| Exhibit A - BIG DRAMATIC TITLE |
Let's review this heap. First, we'll make sure the date is today and this wasn't published yesterday or anything ... yep that's today. August 3rd, 2016 at 6:42 AM. They know when they are.
Next, they seem to sure know exactly how many coins were lost, this coming after the more dramatic sounding 120,000 they first alarm everyone with. Of course, this is from the same clan that brought you the infamous: BITCOIN IS DEAD!
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| Exhibit B - Coins |
Well, there seems to be a discrepancy there since it's been stated as 119,726 and 119,756 so maybe somebody turned a 5 backwards but regardless its 244 off. That's $138,372.40 USD. Trust me folks, they would have made just as big a deal had it been the 138k in dollars. Except they would have said it was 140k.
It's a far cry from the 120k bitcoins they fire the story off with:
Nearly 120,000 units of digital currency bitcoin worth about US$72 million was stolen from the exchange
The "nearly" 120k sounds like allot more than the alternatives of "over 119k" or "less than 120k". It's a subtle word people associate with as close as it could get without saying that. Regardless, the only price quote in the entire story is located here:
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| Exhibit C - $545 Price |
That is the only one time a price is quoted and it depends on who you ask really since we had a price index of $548.19 at 7am (roughly the time of the article), however when the lost coins were announced the price was around $471.19 which is roughly $56 million, $56,427,829.64 to be exact.
However, lets just give them credit for bothering to look up the "press-time" price in the first place.
119,756
x $545.20
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
= $65,290,971.20
How do we get $72 million out of $65 million? The price was around $650 when someone first noticed they couldn't get into Bitfinex, that would have been $77,841,400 and another index had the price at $660 which would not be right either. $72 million would come to $601.22 but well after the fact that Bitfinex was down and there was a hack with probable funds lost the price was around $610 so we know that can't be the number they used.
Most likely they just type in the coin loss, multiplied by $600 and round up to the nearest drama. Like the rest of this article it was over-inflated meant to elicit a much more drastic reaction because 65 doesn't sound nearly as devastating as 72. Which is either lazy or malicious. Perhaps they made up the number? Is this a new branch of mathematics?
Maybe they just suck at math?
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| Exhibit D - Bonus Gem |
Math by Media ( Mainstream )
Finally we have this little gem. I'm not sure on what planet 23% from $601.22 (using their numbers) then plus 1% comes to $545. They say bitcoin PLUNGED to a dying dismal value of destruction to the tune of 23% ... followed by Wednesday only creeping up a mere 1%. Which by their price quote, the only price they went and got, would be around $5. According to their number that would have risen from around $462 down from $601.
The greatest gift to the world of mathematics I am not but I am fairly sure that a price increase from $462 to $545 is not 1%. Yes, I know what they actually meant but that's not how they presented it and even a justified 1% is wrong and miscalculated as well since its based on the wrong numbers to begin with.
They get the percentage from taking the margin of the 23% drop and reducing it by the new margin between the quoted price and the mysterious $601.22 minus the previous miscalculated margin which is roughly around 1%. At least that will be the justification if ever questioned, but certainly misleading and obviously done with that intent. At the end of the day it certainly makes it more alarming, shocking, and more interesting. Just pretty damn inaccurate.
I guess they call this branch, dramatic math.
Report by dinbits
Image source: dinbits staff
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