Last updated: 21st January 2024
People who write about Bitcoin are an interesting mix, ranging from many enthusiasts and hobbyists to a smaller amount of qualified card-carrying journalists. Therefore, it can be quite hard to understand the point of view being taken, and while we can’t speak for other people writing in the industry, we can about ourselves.
So for visitors to our site, as well as those interested in working with us, we have put together this editorial policy so you can know who we are, the reason the site was set up, and how we approach our writing on the site.
Who runs the site?
Our editor entered the bitcoin space after working for over a decade in the Irish video games industry, and BitcoinsInIreland.com is his second time setting up a commercial website. The first was back in the dial-up days of 1998 with a video games site called Irish Player (which closed in 2004), and was at the time one of Ireland’s largest specialist video game reviews site. It didn’t do much by way of news, as everyone did that, but we covered the few Irish events that went on at the time, reviewed games, and other similar things that were going on locally.
Fast forward over a decade during which he worked in video games Marketing and PR, including many years working with virtual currencies since the mid 2000’s before the genesis block was mined, BitcoinsInIreland.com was set up to write about his experience finding out about the various elements of bitcoin, and covering the nascent Irish bitcoin and blockchain scene. He also founded the Bitcoin Marketing Team, a specialist Marketing Agency in the sector.
What’s the site about?
BitcoinsInIreland.com was founded in 2014, as a way for me to write about the experiences in bitcoin thing and to cover the local Irish bitcoin scene. Having mined on a laptop and doing considerable damage to it, and then leasing 12ghs for 6 months with a supplier who let him move it around, not tied to a particular pool, this generated some stats for BTC Guild and gHash.io which got the ball rolling with content.
In September that year, a local bitcoin enthusiast did a really good deal on on what would become our Review Rig consisting of four antminer s1‘s, showing the hardware ropes, which he could then hack to run on nine pools concurrently, and starting to go through the various bitcoin pools mining blocks on blocktrail.com. This then led to the first section on mining pool reviews . This went on to generate some bitcoin which were reinvested into more bitcoin reviews including using bitcoin services, ATMs, bitcoin exchanges and other things you can spend bitcoin online.
So given this background and the way the site has evolved, we have put together a very clear and simple Editorial Policy to outline how the site runs, so our readers can be informed, and any people looking to work with the site can understand what is and isn’t cool.
Our Editorial Policy
- Bitcoin is risky, unregulated, and the price is very volatile. We’ve written a risk warning so please read it.
- We are a commercial site. We generate some bitcoin from our mining, buying it locally if we need, or get some in through advertising. We use this to put our bitcoin where our mouth to fund the site.
- We cover things we find cool, or that we can see lots of people are using, or things that we have come across in our use of bitcoin.
- We scrutinise products we review in a step-by-step manner looking at how the user flow is, and if it does what it says it does. If we wouldn’t use it ourselves, we don’t cover it.
- We may cover bitcoin products and services that have affiliate programs if we feel it’s useful. However we will not promote things we think in our opinion are scams, ponzi schemes, or areas we have concerns about the fundamental viability of (and keep in mind we’ve steered clear to date of bitcoin cloud mining). Where something uses an affiliate link, the article will be clearly flagged as a promoted piece.
- Sometimes there will be a crossover between the site and Bitcoin Marketing Team clients. This will be flagged as a partner post.
- Where we have received remuneration for posting a press release or sponsored post about a project, it will clearly be flagged at the bottom of the post.
- For the rest, we just come across things as we go and cover them, or get suggestions from our readers.
- We’ve written about faucets, which allow people to earn free bitcoin for doing small tasks, looking at ads, and generating tiny amounts of bitcoin. They aren’t exactly worth it, and it’s way less hassle to just buy a couple of cents worth of bitcoin. But they’re a fact of life with bitcoin, and one of the main entry points into bitcoin for a lot of new users. We can’t guarantee the ads they show are safe for work. Also faucets are often traded between owners, the microwallets on which they are run come and go, and some use dodgy types of advertising on them. We review these regularly and cull any that try and do anything dodgy in our tests.
- Some of our content, such as bitcoin gambling, is aimed at adults only. It is clearly flagged as such, and we link to GambleAware on all articles.
- Comments – We had a massive issue in the past with late-night trolling which spilled over from bitcointalk, and disabled comments in response to stop this. We may switch these on in future, but for now they’re off. Tweet @BTCinIreland which is just as public.
- User Reviews give people the opportunity to grade the things we review, and we encourage our readers to do so.
- We’re not always right and are happy to take criticism. Articles written on our site is just our point of view, but we’re taking a video games journalism-style approach to the way we look at bitcoin. We’re not professional traders, or big holders. But we think bitcoin needs something like what we’re doing, and hope you agree. If not feel free to contact [email protected].
