[creatrixcordis]

i’m surprised not a single interest group has hired a company like cambridge analytica to influence popular opinion of bitcoin, or a fake news network to aid in pushing the price higher, not that we would know about it, the big players in bitcoin would benefit from a scheme like this, it would be a small investment for greater returns, i am interested to see if it will ever reach a point where people will feel comfortable with it’s volatilty, but i strive to understand how the control of bitcoin network and its software is not in the hands of who contribute code, are we trusting a few now compared to a few banking institutions, is that the underlying tradeoff?

[lucaspiller]

How do you know they have not? As I understand Cambridge Analytica work rather discretely, so how do you know a piece on Bitcoin by say NYT (or even this!) isn’t funded by them?

[endgame]

While they probably work on discrete campaigns, you may have meant "discreetly".

[creatrixcordis]

it is a possibility, i guess they would pay the journalist or influence his sources, i guess the old adage of who controls context or environment somewhat therefore controls opinion... similar to the sort of things that spy agencies engage in

[whiskers08xmt]

The open source nature of Bitcoin, makes sure that development can always be forked. We saw this as recently as with the creation of Bitcoin Cash, which forked form Bitcoin to implement bigger blocksizes, and which is not developed by Blockstream. In the end, if you don't read the code, you'll have to trust someone else did, and would raise a fuss about any shady findings.