The street cats know something about me that took them a while to work out: I am not a source of food by nature. I am a person who brings food, for reasons of my own, on a schedule I control, and the arrangement continues only as long as those reasons hold.

They still eat. They just stopped confusing me with the food.

Everyone reading crypto content — including this article — should perform the same separation. Not cynicism. Just the basic question a street cat answers within a week: why is this person doing this, and what happens to them if I act on it?

1. Free Content Isn't Free, It's Funded

Every piece of crypto content you consume is paid for by something. That's not sinister, it's arithmetic — people don't produce steadily for nothing. What matters is knowing which funding model you're reading, because each one bends output in a predictable direction.

• Affiliate and referral links. The writer earns when you sign up to an exchange, buy a hardware wallet, or subscribe to a tool. Bends toward: recommending things with affiliate programmes, and away from things without one. Notice that the best option for you might simply not have a programme.
• Paid placement. A project pays for coverage. Sometimes disclosed, often disclosed in a way designed to be missed. Bends toward: positive coverage of whoever paid, and silence about their problems.
• The writer's own position. They already hold it. Bends toward: talking their book, usually sincerely — people genuinely believe in what they own, which is exactly why this one is hard to spot.
• Engagement itself. On tipping and ad-supported platforms, attention is the revenue. Bends toward: urgency, prediction, and confident takes, because measured uncertainty doesn't perform. This blog sits in that category, and you should factor it in when you read me.

None of these make someone dishonest. They shape what gets written and what quietly doesn't.

2. The Tells

Practical signals, in rough order of usefulness:

• Predictions with dates and prices. Nobody knows. Anyone presenting a target as knowledge is either performing or selling. The honest version always contains "if" and "roughly".
• No downside section. Any real recommendation has one. If an article about an exchange, a wallet, or a coin contains no paragraph about what could go wrong, something was removed or never permitted.
• Urgency. "Before it's too late", "the window is closing". Genuine long-term theses do not expire on Thursday.
• A link that isn't the plain link. Referral URLs are fine and standard — but their presence tells you the recommendation has a revenue attached. Check where the button actually goes.
• Unfalsifiable enthusiasm. If nothing could make the author change their mind, you're reading identity, not analysis.
• Volume out of nowhere. A dozen accounts discovering the same small project in the same week is a campaign, not a coincidence.

3. My Own Disclosure

It would be absurd to write this without stating my own position, so:

I write about Bitcoin because I hold it and find it interesting. My site carries affiliate links for cat products, and I earn a small commission if anyone buys through them. I accept donations for the street cats I feed, over Lightning. I publish on a platform where reader tips and engagement are part of how content gets rewarded.

That is the complete list, and it should tell you where to be sceptical of me: I have an incentive to make Bitcoin sound compelling and to publish frequently. Weigh accordingly.

Any writer who cannot produce that paragraph on request is telling you something by its absence.

4. How to Read Anyway

The goal isn't to trust nobody. It's to make trust a decision rather than a default.

• Separate mechanism from recommendation. An article explaining how something works can be excellent even from a conflicted source, because mechanisms are checkable. It's the "you should buy this" part where incentives do their damage.
• Verify anything load-bearing yourself. Supply schedules, fee rates, how a protocol behaves — check on your own node or a primary source. Don't take a number from a blog, including this one, for a decision that matters.
• Prefer writers who are visibly wrong sometimes. Someone who publishes a correction, or says "I got this wrong last year", is operating in reality. An unbroken record of correctness is a curation decision.
• Follow the people who explain what would change their mind. It's the rarest signal in this space and the most reliable.
• Read the people you disagree with. Not for balance as a virtue — because the strongest criticism of your position is where the actual information is.

5. The Reader's Own Incentive

One uncomfortable last point.

Content that flatters your position feels like analysis, and content that threatens it feels like ignorance. That bias is yours, not the writer's, and no disclosure protects you from it. Most people don't get farmed by a hostile actor. They get farmed by a sincere writer whose sincere position happens to match theirs, and by their own preference for hearing it again.

The discipline is to notice which articles you enjoyed and ask whether you learned anything or just felt confirmed.

The Point

The colony worked me out quickly. I am a man with reasons, arriving at seven, and their trust in the bowl is separate from their trust in me — which is the correct arrangement, and honestly the one I'd choose for them.

Read the same way. Take the food, keep an eye on the hand, and never confuse the two.

Ask who pays the person telling you. Then read them anyway, carefully. 🐾⚡

Nothing here is financial advice — I feed a cat and write about Bitcoin, which qualifies me to advise you on neither. Disclosures above are complete as of publication.

Tags: Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Media, Crypto Education, Investing