Explaining confusion

Today (well, Thursday) in #ExJo

One particularly difficult task in explanatory journalism is dealing with things that aren’t confusing because they’re complicated, or detailed or require lots of context to understand but are confusing because … they don’t really add up. A court ruling on Thurs in the SEC’s suit over the Ripple cryptocurrency token was one of those.

There was nothing wrong with the headline on Bloomberg’s news story on the decision: Ripple XRP Sold to Public Not Securities, Judge Says

But the broader sense of the situation was better summed up by the headline on Bloomberg’s crypto newsletter: Did Ripple Win or Lose in Court Today? Yes.

The newsletter went on to walk through the judge’s finding that Ripple should be categorized as a security, and therefore an investment that should be registered with the SEC, only when sold to knowledgeable investors and not when it was sold to the general public. It’s a ruling that many found, well, counterintuitive, given that the point of securities law is primarily to protect mom and pop investors, not hedge funds. That awkwardness was examined at length in Matt Levine’s Money Talk column that day.

Any lessons here? One is that newsletters and columns, with their greater freedom in tone and lower burden of including things like reaction, market response, etc., can be more flexible than straight news stories in responding to the unexpected. Another, I guess, is that the weirder news is, the weirder an explainer might have to be!