The BBC and crypto FUD

Although it's not perfect, the BBC is generally more reliable than most big media outlets, but over the past few years I've been sorely disappointed in its coverage of crypto (focused 99% on BTC). Today was a pretty good example.

They ran this story with the headline:

Binance: Financial watchdog FCA bans crypto-currency exchange

It's a pretty startling piece of news to read first thing in the morning, and a bit surprising too. The first line goes:

Binance, the world's biggest crypto-currency exchange, has been banned by the UK's financial regulator.

One could be forgiven for thinking that Binance was now banned in the UK. You have to read 'til about halfway through the article to find that all of the stuff that came before it was pure FUD:

This means that people in the UK are not allowed to use Binance's services to speculate, or bet, on whether the price of a crypto-currency like Bitcoin goes up or down.

However, they are still allowed to use the website to purchase and sell crypto-currencies, which is not regulated, crypto-currency analyst Colin Stone told the World Business Report programme on BBC World Service.

So is Binance banned in the UK? No. Leverage trading is banned - just one of the many services that Binance provides. This is just one in a litany of articles demonstrating a shocking anti-crypto bias from the BBC.

A few weeks ago, they ran a story about how Bitcoin was to blame because a woman sent all her life savings to a man pretending to be [insert name of Doge-loving billionaire douchelord]. An internet scammer told her that if she sent him money, he would send back even more.

When there's positive news about Bitcoin, they ignore it or distort it to remind the public that crypto is all a scam, and whenever something mildly bad happens, they blow it out of all proportion.

Shame on the BBC for this irresponsible behaviour. I know they are not the only news outlet that does this, but I would have expected better from them.