Cryptocurrency podcast “Off the Chain,” produced by Anthony Pompliano, a partner at Morgan Creek was inexplicably removed from the iTunes store before being restored, for which Pompliano thanks fans who criticised Apple for its actions.

The adage, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”, is well known and appears to be true in the case of the “Off the Chain” podcast, which was inexplicably removed from the Apple store app last week. It was brought to public attention when the show’s producer Anthony Pompliano tweeted about an episode he had created which featured an interview with bitcoin maximalist Murad Mahmudov, which had subsequently been removed by the tech giant. The episode focussed on the “ultimate argument for Bitcoin” and reached no. 4 in the US investing category, before being removed.

“No warning. No explanation.”

Pompliano, who’s day job is crypto analyst and partner at Morgan Creek, an investment advisement firm based in North Carolina, tweeted:

Last week we released a podcast discussing the ultimate argument for Bitcoin. It exploded & ranked #4 in US investing category before mysteriously being taken down by @Apple. We had no warning. We don’t know why. They took down our podcast, but they can’t take down Bitcoin! — Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) November 6, 2018

Pompliano, who is also known as “Pomp”, also stated that searches for the show were not working. Twitter followers tweeted Pomp asking why Apple may have wanted to remove the show, to which he replied, “no clue.”

“We popped to the top because of a powerful message and now it’s taken down. No warning. No explanation. No help” he wrote.

“Great promotion of the pod”

In the meantime however, it appears that the podcast has been restored – and without explanation from Apple. Late yesterday (6th November), Pomp tweeted, “THE PODCAST IS BACK.”

🚨 THE PODCAST IS BACK 🚨 Apple has finally restored the Off The Chain podcast thanks to all of your tweets, emails, and messages. This episode is the ultimate argument for Bitcoin. Share. Rate. Review. Lets get it to the top of the charts tonight.https://t.co/Zf2tyFXc6V — Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) November 6, 2018

Reaction on the thread has been overwhelmingly positive, with many commending the high quality of the show. A user named @Espen11 tweeted, “You should probably thank Apple. Great promotion of the pod. ;)”. When questioned on what reason Apple had given for taking the podcast down, Pomp tweeted,

“Never got a response but it just magically reappeared. Wish we knew but we’ll take it”

It seems as though we won’t know why the cast was taken down. The possibility of a glitch seems possible, however that it should have lasted so long seems strange. The twitter response seems generally to be one of scepticism, hinting at some kind of attempted censorship – however this remains speculative. Regardless of what the reason was, it seems the whole episode has acted as good publicity for the podcast – and ironically seems to highlight pro arguments for decentralisation.

Image Source: “Flickr”