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Comment by mtlynch | Hacker News Reader

I normally like Molly White's crypto coverage, but this seems like a deliberately obtuse take.

In the blog post she references (but, tellingly, does not link) Armstrong says specifically that Coinbase will engage in politics around crypto:

>We focus minimally on causes not directly related to the mission:

>Policy decisions: If there is a bill introduced around crypto, we may engage here, but we normally wouldn’t engage in policy decisions around healthcare or education for example.

>...

>Political causes: We don’t advocate for any particular causes or candidates internally that are unrelated to our mission, because it is a distraction from our mission.

[0] https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-comp...

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This is A very practical take. It’s odd that I have say it’s a sane take, because 15 years ago this would be the way 95% of companies operated.

makes me wonder if something is a true distraction is there an associated cost for taking on that distraction. I guess an opportunity cost of resources and focus/attention the employees are asked to grapple with.

Companies engaging in political activities to further their goals is understandable.

Shoving politician rankings into their user facing app to attempt to get customers directly involved in their political lobbying is a bit too much. People would absolutely criticize other tech companies for doing this.

> In the blog post she references (but, tellingly, does not link)

This is standard procedure for most journalists - they prefer to present only their interpretation (or spin) of events, rather than let their audience form their own opinion.

See for example how many stories of someone making offensive statements omit quoting those statements. And if you'll allow me to reach a bit, it seems the cruder and more unpersuasive the statements are, the more likely they are to be quoted, while any more intellectual, compelling reasoning gets omitted.

Edit: Flimm points out that in this instance, there is a link. So the article merely misrepresents it, and does not also omit it, which I maintain is the norm.

I see two links, including one to the Coinbase blog.

Whoops, my mistake. I missed the link back to the original. Thanks for the correction! I'd edit my original comment, but I'm past the edit time window.

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