A California legislator “accused” me of being a billionaire this week, which is just good TV, frankly, and I of course could not help myself from telling that story. But there were a few other things worth covering as well. Feel free to jump down to the clown car conclusion, or take the scenic route that starts right here. 👇🏻

The ethics of being defamed. Last week, in yet another casually atomic blog post, Coinbase pre-empted what they felt to be a hit piece coming from the New York Times. It was both a challenge to the media, and an S.O.S. to the technology industry. Tribal lines were drawn, and so began the next heated chapter in this never-ending drama that is the relationship between the press — in some sense led by the Times — and tech.

With nothing more to speak of than a topic, tech influencers rushed to the defense of Coinbase, assuming the Times’ piece was a lie, a distortion, an attack. Journalists across Twitter, who had likewise not read the piece, defended the reporter, the reporting, the concept of reporting. These more general defenses quickly gave way to (for some reason) an animated conversation on the strategic merit of the Coinbase move — as if the press were on the sidelines rooting for a successful corporate PR strategy — which itself finally gave way to the meat of the tizzy: Coinbase, the press said, had shattered its trust with the media. A code of ethics had been breached. A pernicious double standard had revealed itself.