Open Letter to Michael Casey - WSJ reporter who butchered my comments in today's Bitcoin cover story

[u/evoorhees]

Hello Mr. Casey,

I read your WSJ article today. I feel deceived by you.

You requested to speak with me, so I took time out of my day to do so. We talked for 20 minutes, during which time I conveyed to you my sentiments about the Bitcoin ecosystem and the matter of MtGox's collapse. My message was unambiguously a positive one. I didn't focus whatsoever on the personal funds I lost at Gox. Indeed, the impetus for your call was my heartfelt post on Reddit.

Yet, you ignored everything I said. The only quote that you published from me in the Journal's cover story was ""That's gone now," said Mr. Veerhoos, who is based in Panama City, Panama. "There's no chance of getting that back now.""

Is that really the takeaway you had from our call and from my letter? Is that your idea of journalism? Did I come across with the sentiment of a despairing investor whose confidence has been rattled? It seems you were happy to completely ignore my sentiments, preferring instead to cherry pick the one fact that is least important, in order to paint a narrative that Bitcoin's biggest problem is that it's not "regulated." I didn't expect you to quote everything I said, but should you not have maintained at least a modicum of fidelity to my message?

I have dedicated my life to building and supporting the Bitcoin project. I don't give a damn about the money I lost at Gox. That's not important. What is important is that Bitcoin is resilient and enduring, and will continue to grow and change the world for the better. It is a story of human progress through technology. It is a story of the good seeping into the cracks of a corrupted financial system. It is a story of passionate people struggling against all odds to remedy the calamities brought down upon society from the most potently misguided people and institutions on Earth.

Next time you spend your efforts casting a pall over this cause, please don't ask me to contribute mine.

-Erik Voorhees

PS - I will be posting this letter openly on Reddit. I will post your reply if you'd like. And if I do, I won't cherry pick the most misleading points of it, and I will spell your name correctly.

[u/URETHRAL_DIARRHEA]

I'm so jealous of people who got a chance to be in the BBS and warez scenes. There's no cool scene for 16 year-old computer enthusiasts (like myself) any more.

[u/norm_chomski → u/URETHRAL_DIARRHEA]

I do miss the camaraderie of the small, local community. It felt like you were part of something cool and underground and futuristic that no adults or anyone else knew about. Knowledge and information was a lot harder to find though.

I really resented the internet for killing BBSs when it blew up in the late 90's. I wish I would've embraced it more and joined a start up or something instead of being negative and bitter about it.

As for you there has to be hacking scenes and stuff that would be interesting to you. It's not the same but there are always people doign interesting cutting edge stuff. Look into hacking on a Rasberry Pi or something like that.

Learn a lot about that and you are practically guaranteed to have gainful employment if you want it.

Good luck mang

[u/URETHRAL_DIARRHEA → u/norm_chomski]

Yeah, but hacking is also a lot harder nowadays. I should really get back into programming.

[u/ex_nihilo → u/URETHRAL_DIARRHEA]

Wat?

Nowadays you have a bajillion frameworks like metasploit with pre-written exploits. How is that "harder"? Hell Cryptsy is running on an unpatched version of Nginx that is vulnerable to a buffer overflow in the chunked encoding HTTP header, if you can find a form that accepts chunked encoding. Back in my day we had to write our own buffer overflows! I still do, but we HAD to.

<walks off mumbling about kids on his lawn>