CoinDesk retracts two articles

Crypto industry news outlet CoinDesk has retracted two opinion articles criticizing the founder of the cryptocurrency TRON and the head of U.S. investigations at Chainalysis, which specializes in financial analysis and forensics of crypto, reports Gizmodo’s Mack DeGeurin.

DeGeurin writes, “CoinDesk claims the articles were removed because they contained ‘personal attacks’ lodged against the two, but one of the authors tells Gizmodo she believes there’s another, more nefarious explanation: CoinDesk’s close connections with the crypto industry.

“‘If you retract an article while you have such a huge conflict of interest, that’s just not okay,’ one of the authors, who wrote under the pseudonym L0la L33tz, said in an interview with Gizmodo. ‘In my opinion, this is coming all the way from the top.’

“CoinDesk Chief Content Officer Michael Casey disagreed with that characterization in a statement sent to Gizmodo. Casey said the company retracted a recent story critical of TRON founder Justin Sun, written by ‘awbivious awbivious’ and published on August 26, because it breached CoinDesk’s policy prohibiting pseudonymity for authors of articles engaged in ‘highly personalized attacks.’ The retraction led to a review of CoinDesk’s other editorials for ‘consistency’s sake.’ That review, Casey said, ultimately resulted in the retraction of L0la L33tz’s article, which had been published more than a month prior.”

Read more here.