hi everybody charal hoskinson here I uh still have a swollen eye from viral conjunctivitis so apologies if it scares you a little bit um from time to time I uh I comment on various stories that uh we have uh written either about the company myself or uh products or projects that we happen to be working on uh but this first time I've actually ever directly commented uh with a video on a negative story uh outside of things inside the cryptosphere uh so the particular comment um the particular story comes from an article written by a journalist named David Morris uh called boxing with shadows as Charles hoskinson His Own Worst Enemy so to provide some context and I will post the article in the show notes um in the the comment section of the uh of the video uh that particular day I was on a media tour throughout New York it was a very intensive two-day tour uh that was the second day I believe and we had been on TV we'd gone to the Yahoo finance and got bumped there then we went to Fortune Magazine and spoke there we talked to people at Barons people at the Wall Street Journal uh and it was a pretty long uh day uh I was with my media director I was with our PR firm we were actually using two different firms one was Waxman and the other was Ketchum uh every every single journalist was aware that we were on a a media PR tour and uh breaker said we'd love to interview you I said really don't have a lot of time but we found a way to kind of sneak them in at the very end of the day and then I had to rush from the interview to uh go to uh dinner it's Mr wilinsky for a private event so uh the interview was pitched to us as a discussion of what is cardano what are we working on the iow K Summit basically what we've been talking about for two days uh never did we enter into this interview knowing in any way shape or form that it was going to be uh some sort of trial on my character whether uh I'm a horrible human being or not whether the on Twitter is actually real life Charles hoskinson or not uh that to me was incredibly disingenuous and um it really just shows you the character and journalistic standards of both the author as well as the public I do not appreciate walking into an interview not being told that it's going to be a hostile interview or that this interview isn't some way different than what I've been told I've been interviewed by people from uh ton vay who's straight up called me a scammer who said I should be in jail for ethereum uh I went on ivonne's podcast he's been friendly with the EO side of the world and other people I'm happy to talk to critics I'm happy to enter into situations where people are free to ask very pointed negative questions or have a preconceived notion that I may not be a good actor what I'm not happy to do is sit down with a journalist and be told that we're going to have an open conversation about our products or the things we're working on and then for an article to be written basically saying it was all just a test to see if I was a horrible human being or not first there were some things that were just blatantly unfair in that article that I just really wanted to point out first talking about our PR people and the other people around me and acting as if they weren't allowed to speak guys it's a PR and media tour he knew everyone knew it was even on Twitter that for 12 hours we had been busting our balls going from one location to another location from the Fox News building to the Yahoo's uh uh office uh all the way around New York and of course your PR agency always goes with you on a PR tour because they're the Liaisons who actually set up the tour set up the relationship with the journalists this was not mentioned at all they weren't just silent actors in The backdrop they were facilitators of course my assistant travels with me everywhere I go I have Josh go with me he manages my schedule and makes sure that I get from point A to point B and manages all the logistics behind getting the point a and point B and of course our media directors with us were on a media tour so why are they relevant why should they even be mentioned in the story but apparently that's part of the mure uh waving off the waiter if you've ever been in a very noisy New York City restaurant and multiple times we told the waiter we're only here for an interview we're only here for about 45 minutes and then we have to head off to actually dinner we told the waiter this three times he still wanted us to order something and we were in a a recorded interview was that mentioned was that ever brought up no because it wasn't relevant or connected to apparently the author's agenda uh which was just incredibly dising ous uh we spent more than 10 minutes discussing the do you know who I am tweet for context I explained where it came from why I tweeted it the backstory behind it the particular actors involved none of that worked its way into the story because I guess it wasn't part of their particular agenda or what they wanted to write about and nowhere in any of this did we get an advanc notice copy or even warning that breaker magazine wanted to to go down this road and say these types of things or portray a story like this um you know I would highly recommend that anybody in the cryptocurrency space avoid David Morris avoid breaker magazine because they're just not honest actors uh you know if they wanted to write a story about my conduct or character then they should have at least had the courage to show up and directly confront me about it and say well we heard about X we heard about y Dan larer said this Chico crypto said this vitalic said this this person said this what's your response to that you know frankly I would have been happy to walk into that interview and frankly I probably would have allotted far more time for example we did talk about my past with Forbes uh we had a two and a half hour interview that day with Laura Shen who's writing a book about the history of ethereum she's been speaking with all of the ethereum founders getting the entire scoop The Good the Bad and the Ugly hearing all the wor Stories the rumors the gossip and straight up asked me all kinds of incidents events this person said this this person said that I spent two and a half hours on the record on a recording talking to her I'm very happy to confront my past I'm very happy to confront my statements you know another thing that wasn't mentioned was the competitive nature of the cryptocurrency space people have a financial incentive in this space to lie people have a financial incentive to demean to belittle and to make up things this is not me playing a victim this is a reality that every cryptocurrency founder suffers in faces numerous times people have made up stories that vitalic butterin has been killed or died in a car accident to try to affect the price of ethereum numerous times on forch people have made up rumors about me dying Dan lar are dying people have been threatened people have had bricks thrown through their house windows uh people have been kidnapped you know there were numerous cases where home invasion occurred not too recently um somebody's house was broken into and he was tortured with a hand drill and a drill went into their legs to try to steal crypto this is a violent industry with some Bad actors and some really deplorable conduct was this ever mentioned in the breaker magazine article that we cryptocurrency Founders deal with this on a daily basis from harassment to death threats to other such things that we live under that constant environment and those threats no never mention coindesk at least writes these articles as does coin Telegraph as does ARS Technica and others from time to time at least people with proper journalistic standards uh you know the other thing is that we also live in a situation where our mistakes are broadcast over and over and over again relentlessly one statement one tweet the do you know who you I am tweet has been replayed put on tell t-shirts memd at nauseum with no context no no no Humanity behind that it's the same for vitalic when he was uh talking about some things related to pedophilia they were taking out of context they were blown up put into National media and people still today harass him and Harang him about that it's the same for Dan larer it's the same for most people in the space was any of that context provided in the article no uh it was just basically a hitpiece and uh I rarely respond to these but uh David actually did interview US very long time ago in January of 2014 um at uh the Miami the North American Bitcoin conference when we announced ethereum uh we had kind of a special relationship in that respect because he was the very first journalist uh to actually interview the ethereum founders uh so I I consider him to be an actual journalist and I hold him to much higher standards than uh what he portrayed in this article uh so this is my rebuttal to that I'm happy to talk about my past I'm happy to be the subject of criticism uh but you know if you're going to interview me at least have the goddamn decency to tell me that it's actually going to be an interview about my character and conduct and not about my products don't bait and switch me that's dishonest and it just tells you that they're not a real publication they never told us walking into that that that's what we were walking into I'd have been happy to take those questions I spent two and a half hours with Laura chin that day uh taking those kinds of questions on the record for a book uh we've been happy to do that I've done it on live interviews where we didn't know the questions ahead of time and people could ask me anything I've been happy to talk to critics uh but this was just really a low blow and it was a very shameful article uh so everybody in the cryptocurrency space uh please do not uh please do not talk to David uh he's going to bait and switch you and breaker magazine I do not consider to be a legitimate publication at this point they broke any semblance of journalistic Ethics or standards uh they didn't even give us a chance to comment on the story they just pushed it out released it uh but I guess that's the state of Journalism today and that's the state of how things are so just a brief statement uh thank you all for listening and uh until next time cheers
