Editor-in-chief’s note: At CoinDesk, retractions are almost unheard of. Normally, if a story contains an inaccuracy or doesn’t otherwise meet our standards, we simply and unstintingly correct the article, address what went wrong with the writer or editor, and then move on.
However, upon review of our opinion pages, we have found that one written under a pseudonymous byline about Chainalysis fell so far short of those standards that we are compelled to retract it. We take a firm position that a person’s right to privacy is to be respected – articulated here in relation to our opposition to “doxxing” harmless individuals. As such, we allow the use of anonymous sources and, from time to time, publish articles written under pseudonymous bylines, but with one very important caveat: we cannot grant the cloak of that identity protection to a writer who launches an outright personal attack against an individual. The article about Chainalysis contained such an attack on one of the company’s staff members. Any person, whether they are in the public eye or not, deserves to know who is assailing their character in a public-facing outlet such as CoinDesk. Given that the very nature of the piece violates that standard – allowing us no way to merely correct the story and be done with it – we are removing the story in its entirety as well as a podcast directly related to the article.
