The FTX crisis and its former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, have been extensively covered by citizen journalists and blockchain specialists, according to Brian Armstrong, CEO and co-founder of Coinbase.
Armstrong claimed that the majority of information concerning FTX's liquidity crisis and eventual bankruptcy filing has come from common people and not from established media in a tweet from November 16 that has been shared over 9,000 times as of this writing.
Regarding a recent "puff story" in the New York Times, Armstrong stated that it seemed like a turning moment for citizen journalism and a loss of faith in MSM.
“Crypto Twitter” has also been highly critical of the article, with Polygon Studios CEO Ryan Wyatt tweeting at the author of the article that Bankman-Fried had “committed significant crimes” and it was “a disservice to all of those impacted.”
Since he bought Twitter in October, Elon Musk has talked about the rise of citizen journalism on Twitter more than once.
As an example of how blockchain analysis and citizen journalism are becoming more popular, on November 5, blockchain tracker Whale Alert reported that just under 23 million FTX tokens (FTT) had been moved to Binance. This was about 17% of the total supply and was worth $584.8 million at the time.
This was one of the first signs that FTX had a liquidity crisis, but the NYT picked up on the story on November 8.
Blockchain investigators were also the first to tell people about the FTX hack. Twitter users closely tracked the movement of funds to different wallets and figured out it was a hack hours before FTX announced it.
“The Roundtable Show,” a gathering of crypto community members hosted by Mario Nawfal, has moved to Twitter Spaces. This is where 891,499 people can listen to Musk, BankToTheFuture CEO Simon Dixon, and internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom talk about the FTX story as it unfolds in real-time.
Twitter has helped break news and analyze the FTX mess, but it has also been home to a lot of conspiracy theories and just plain false information.
A recent cryptic thread by Bankman-Fried on Twitter spread rumors that he was using the new tweets to delete older, possibly incriminating tweets. This theory was later disproven.
Twitter users also pointed out that Bankman-private Fried’s jet left The Bahamas for Argentina on November 12 and thought he was running away. He denied this, and a source later told the media that Bahamian authorities were watching Bankman-Fried.