TL;DR: At roughly the same time, two seemingly unrelated events happened, shedding light on language usage’s importance in getting basic facts correct. Celebrated feminist author Naomi Wolf recently claimed homosexual men were routinely executed in Victorian London, causing widespread modern condemnation and scorn. Similarly, cryptocurrency news outlets ran headlines insisting a “51% attack” on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain occurred during its latest network upgrade hard fork, throwing the project’s very viability in doubt. As subsequent, careful analysis of both shows, neither is true.

Death Recorded, Naomi Wolf, Bitcoin Cash

Without appeal to cabals or grand conspiracies, sometimes a narrative is so juicy and ripe it writes itself. Wokeness seeps through modernity’s pores, and various historically oppressed groups and subcultures are beneficiaries of earnest revisionism. Even if one spent no time thinking about homosexual men and their plight, doubtful anyone would argue they’ve not had a wonderful time of things when it comes to legal protection.

Everyone listen to Naomi Wolf realize on live radio that the historical thesis of the book she's there to promote is based on her misunderstanding a legal term pic.twitter.com/a3tB77g3c1 — Edmund Hochreiter (@thymetikon) May 23, 2019

And so, it isn’t difficult to believe author and polemicist Naomi Wolf’s assertions such men were put to death in England during the Victorian era. Wolf’s bona fides are strong: Rhodes Scholar, trusted advisor to major US progressive politicians, and relatively recent recipient of an Oxford Doctor of Philosophy degree in English literature. She’s often pronounced a thought leader of Third Wave Feminism.

Her latest book, an extension of that 2015 doctorate, Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love, was the focus of an interview she gave to the BBC 3’s program, Free Thinking later last month. During the interview, Wolf triggers presenter Matthew Sweet by insisting “several dozen” executions of homosexuals were carried out during that time based on records she found to have been categorized as “death recorded.” One tiny problem. Death recorded actually proves Wolf wrong, and has the opposite meaning of the one she ascribed. Death recorded meant a kind of reprieve, of not being executed.

51% ‘Attack’

Again, this isn’t the work of some blogging yahoo. Naomi Wolf is the progressive’s progressive, ticking all the right opinions on all the correct boxes. The BCC 3 and its host are hardly known for their anti-homosexuality, so that can’t be it. Instead, live as it happened, Sweet does what good interviewers and journalists do: double checks and challenges assumptions. It’s a remarkable piece of audio, and well worth a listen. To her credit, at least initially, Wolf, though clearly caught off guard, appears to understand the book’s central thesis has been effectively gutted.

For whatever reason, cryptocurrency news outlets have not reached such a level of maturity and basic journalistic standards. When technical debt, a code bug, was exploited during the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) scheduled network upgrade hard fork of 15 May 2019, outlets were quick to seize on its implications relative to the project’s detriment. And when a Crypto Twitter personality rediscovered what he termed as BCH being “hit by 51% attack from just 2 miners,” off to the implication races media ran.

Entire articles mulled Bitcoin Cash’s demise, and especially from outlets who literally never cover BCH unless the story is decidedly negative. All of them turned on the word “attack.” There was little-to-no discussion about how the BCH community was actively talking about, considering, in rather frank and stark terms, all that had occured during what was expected to be a fairly uneventful upgrade. The Honest Cash platform, for example, hosted two competing accounts, both by professed BCH supporters, here and here.

In fact, like Sweet to Wolf, it wasn’t really until cryptocurrency exchange/bank Coinbase issued their deep dive, digging into the minutiae of what exactly happened regarding a so-called attack, that real perspective was given. Regarding one of the “attackers,” researchers noted, “We find it remarkable that BTC.top derived the technical solution to recover BCH funds mistakenly lost by users, choosing to send the coins to their intended recipients rather than claiming the funds for themselves.” That conclusion, curiously, didn’t make headlines. There’s been no follow up from cryptocurrency media outlets since giving their readers decidedly skewed perspectives. No discussion of honest nodes. Instead, they’re left with the mistaken assertion death recorded means execution.

DISCLOSURE: The author holds cryptocurrency as part of his financial portfolio, including BCH.

CONTINUE THE SPICE and check out our piping hot VIDEOS. Our podcast, The CoinSpice Podcast, has amazing guests. Follow CoinSpice on Twitter. Join our Telegram feed to make sure you never miss a post. Drop some BCH at the merch shop — we’ve got some spicy shirts for men and women. Don’t forget to help spread the word about CoinSpice on social media.