Major British Paper Edited by Former Chancellor Can’t Spell Ethereum

Former British Chancellor George Osborn once bought some bitcoin in 2014, but the paper he edits, the Evening Standard, can’t spell ethereum.

“Bitcoin, etherium and other cryptocurrencies surge in popularity,” Jim Armitage writes as pictured above, with it unclear whether Osborn himself edited the print headline.

Almost all major papers in UK have been covering a story by FCA that finds some 2.6 million Brits bought crypto and 2 million still hold it.

That gives us a glimpse on the popularity of cryptos in UK, but an even better indication is arguably this paper which can’t spell eth.

A very small point you might say, but we have a big point. Elon Musk, who was given some bitcoin in 2013 when those unfamiliar with it called it bitcorn, learned about ethereum in 2018.

He was forced to learn about it because he was being spammed on twitter, with busy Musk wondering what is this etherium.

That’s a common misspelling for those unfamiliar because it’s spelled as you pronounce it.

Meaning we can tell neither the writer for the Evening Standard, nor its editor, nor anyone else in their office who may have come across this headline, and perhaps even their readers, none of them knows what is ethereum.

They do most likely know what bitcoin is and they probably think etherium is just a bitcoin flavor, but ethereum is actually a lot more than that.

Ethereum is a world computer like bitcoin with its own eth crypto currency and asset, but in addition it has a programming language called Solidity which allows eth to have apps that do stuff.

So like you download Tinder or Facebook on your phone, here you download Compound or Curve or Balancer where you can earn interest on your eth by lending it to others without there being any bank involvement or any direct human involvement as all is managed by the code itself.

In addition these apps can give you a token which is basically ownership over this code, and now you can tell the code what to do provided other token holders agree with you.

Meaning while bitcoin is disrupting primarily the gold market but also international transfers, ethereum has the potential to disrupt the very bread and butter of banking functions.

It’s still very new, invented just in 2015, and as this is very new tech it’s more at the stage when wi-fi for example would barely connect rather than at the very refined stage as now where wi-fi hardly disconnects.

And because it is new it remains generally unknown as shown by this headline misspelling in a major paper.

But that misspelling itself is a sign it is becoming known and that it is following bitcoin’s trajectory with misspellings and all.

Meaning ethereum may be more where bitcoin was in 2013 as far as general awareness goes, but whether it will continue to follow the bitcoin trajectory, remains to be seen.

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