The block-chain technology, used in crypto-currencies such as bitcoin can also be applied in situations other than those that involve commercial transactions. The basic idea of crypto-currency is to obviate the need for a trusted, centralized oversight of digital transactions. Since I have seen people complain so much about 'trusted media' nevertheless spewing fake news or propaganda, this have prompted me to seek of way of solving this using what I may call it 'crypto-news'.
In a nutshell, 'crypto news' does away with the need for a media in the same way 'crypto-currency' does away with the need for a bank. So news here, or 'information' will be traded like a currency! Tying to create 'fake news' will be like trying to create a fake bitcoin.
There is some analogy between news, digital currency, bank and media that I like to exploit to create a 'bitcoin' equivalent of 'news'! First, note that a digital currency is nothing but 'information' inside a computer. As mere information, it should be easy to fake. Just type the 'I have $1000' into the computer! So what is the big deal? For mere information to behave like solid money, in the sense of 'difficulty to counterfeit', some trick need to be done. Normally the bank need to be involved. The trusted bank will tell us what is a 'fake $1000' and what is a 'real $1000'. Since people don't print money, the bank can only know that I have gotten a real $1000 if there was a transaction that took place. In other words I can only get $1000 from someone else during a transaction. Any other way of getting the $1000 will be like 'printing it' rather than 'receiving it'. So it will be a counterfeit money. So a record of transactions is essential in ensuring that the digital currency is only 'flowing', but never getting created nor destroyed.
Of course there is also the 'mining' which add new 'bitcoins' to the circuit. The idea is to ensure that you 'mine the real thing' rather than the 'fake one'. They make 'mining a fake one' extreemly costly to the miner. In our case 'crypto-news miners' will be the journalists. Since 'mined bitcoin' is just information, I suppose that the measures used to ensure that the watever 'mined' is a 'real bitcoin' can be employed to ensure that the whatever news 'mined' will be real news.
Finally, there is the 'motivation' aspect. We must 'motivate' the journalist to independently 'mine' the news without being employees of any media. This can be done by making the news into an actual currency traded! We can use anything as a 'medium of exchange', from gold to just fiat papers. Some 'medium of exchanges' do have intrinsic values e.g. gold. So using news as a 'medium of exchange' will be even better than bitcoin since the former have some intrinsic value. So if you have some real news, you can trade it with a bitcoin, or with some other 'real news' that you don't have. You might be having real news about what is going on in China but you don't know what is going on in U.S. You can simply trade these news etc.
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