Thursday, April 19, 2018

FT Alphaville's Dan McCrum: When the Student Becomes The Master

We looked at the professional style of FT Alphaville's founder Paul Murphy a few times:

Possibly The Funniest (Profitable) Stock Recommendation of All Time (PSON)
...For our younger readers, here is Mr. Subliminal on Donald Trump cheating on his wife Ivana in 1990:

                                                                               Comedian
And here's FT Alphaville's editor, Paul Murphy,
 
Hard-bitten journalist
on former FT Alphaville owner Pearson and its stock, Dec. 1, the day the Financial Times was handed over to Nikkei, while appearing to be having a normal conversation with Alphavillein Bryce Elder:

...PM
(So here’s our advice on the stock at 832p….)
PM
( Run )
BE
...Today, though, the message is dovish. So we’re all choosing to forget about 2016.
PM
( Scarper )
PM
( Get out )

...MUCH MORE

And:
Watch as a Master Trolls the Trolls: Pluto Edition
Some say "Don't feed the trolls".

Hah!

Here Paul Murphy doesn't just chum them in.
He gets 'em close and then shoves the gavage tube down their troll throats to force-feed the little buggers and  create a 42-comment foie gras.

Hah!
So you've got that  Now stir in a bit of Izabella Kaminska, only the second editor in Alphaville's history, as she riles up the crypto crowd:
Why blockchain is a belief system
109 comments
Bitcoin’s fractioning problem
110 comments
Busting the myth that bitcoin is actually an efficient payment mechanism
189 comments
(and many, many more posts)

Mix well and:

Sell all crypto and abandon all blockchain

et voilà:
160 comments

I looked at the story a couple hours after it was posted and "What the hell?..."
There were already something  on the order of  50 comments. Some brilliant:

It's a common enough behaviour to have it's own vocabulary: gazumping and gazundering. Who knows why people do things? I didn't say double spending was possible with proof of work, only gazumping.
And some straight up deranged.

I think even Mr. McCrum was a bit impressed:

at