I don't think it's fair to consider writing an analysis (even a favorable one) about a topic as _shilling_ for it. It's not like he was pushing shitcoins or minting NFTs.

I have always been (and remain!) bearish on crypto but it absolutely was something that couldn't be ignored a few years ago. Even if you came to the conclusion that it was bunk, there was significant enough fervor that any technologist needed to reckon with their position on it.

For example, lots of engineers proclaimed very loudly that document databases would replace the RDBMs, or that GraphQL was the future of APIs. They were wrong, as it turned out, but only with the wisdom of hindsight.