Roger Ver, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) creator and erstwhile Bitcoin activist, took to YouTube today to share his reactions to an email he received from Craig Wright, a former BCH ally now turned adversary.
Wright lashed out at Ver, declaring “war” in the coming hardfork and spewing invective at him. Wright threatened to “do [two] years of no trade. Nothing,” although it is uncertain at this juncture what this threat entails.
The context of the letter is the upcoming planned hardfork of the BCH chain, into the “ABC” version which Ver and his bitcoin.com domain are supporting, and Wright’s “SV” (“Satoshi’s vision”) version, supported by coingeek.com owner Calvin Ayre.
Ver said “maybe I’ve been fooled – maybe” by Wright, who is commonly known as “fake Satoshi” for his claiming to have invented the Bitcoin protocol without ever furnishing any proof.
(image courtesy of YouTube/Roger Ver)
This is “not the sort of thing that a forty-something year old […] business man would say,” Ver told his YouTube audience, in response to the letter.
In Ver’s estimation, the fork will ultimately fail to yield a successful competitor in the form of SV, comparing the furor surrounding the fork to the – thankfully – deflated expectations anticipating the infamous “Y2K” bug, almost twenty years ago.
He claimed “about 10/1 in favor of ABC,” referring to the respective collections of mining power standing by to support the various implementations – and he would appear to be correct, according to the website coin.dance, dedicated to monitoring the mining power of various cryptocurrencies.
Civil strife
Given the internecine warfare that’s been going on both within and without the Bitcoin Cash community for the better part of the year, the tenor of this letter is unfortunately not exceptional. Wright was referred to earlier this year as a “fraud” and “crazy” by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
Just today, seemingly to follow up on the email, Wright accused Ver and Jihan Wu – co-founder of hardware mining manufacturer Bitmain, and siding with Ver and ABC – of some scandalous things:
If @jihanwu, @Rogerver & ABC devs want to make #Permissionless Kiddie porn sites and Silk Road Version2.0
They can piss off to #Dash
They are NOT adding this to #BCH
This is the ONLY real use case they have and it is not happening!
— Dr Craig S Wright (@ProfFaustus) November 8, 2018
Crypto enthusiasts have begun taking to twitter, commenting on the depressing display:
This is an email from Craig Wright that @rogerkver showed in his recent video (https://t.co/yoFmmJxeOi)
… I honestly wouldn't wish this scenario on anyone (even if it is a bluff)
We created soverign money to avoid being able to be attacked like this#bitcoin #bcash $bch pic.twitter.com/oOvmEgv0gz— Alistair Milne (@alistairmilne) November 8, 2018
This really is a sitcom.https://t.co/36NQwP1q8F
— StopAndDecrypt (@StopAndDecrypt) November 8, 2018