Crypto War of Words

The long-standing dispute between Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and self-proclaimed “Bitcoin creator” Craig Wright appears far from over.

Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin calls nChain Chief Scientist Dr. Craig Wright a fraud at Deconomy Conference in Seoul, South Korea (April 3, 2018. File Photo)

Vitalik Buterin, the fiery Canadian founder of Etheruem, took to Twitter to share some of his thoughts on the ‘Bitcoin, Controversy over Principle’ presentation at Deconomy Conference in Seoul, South Korea early Tuesday. The segment in question featured talks from Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver, Blockstream's CSO Samson Mow, and Craig Wright himself.

I'm going to live tweet comments on the "Bitcoin, Controversy over Principle" section of Deconomy for fun.

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 3, 2018

Among other things, Buterin talked about some common misconceptions about the overlaps between the history of cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies, as well as the philosophy behind decentralized currencies.

Here are a few of the more interesting tweets from Buterin:

21. Craig Wright begins: "We're going to talk about the lies"

"Samson said that money was used first in barter and as a store of value - BULLSHIT!"

Then proceeds to brag about how many university degrees he has..... eh, at least he read Graeber.

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 3, 2018

25. Re selfish-mining: "you actually have a negative gamma" ... "you actually help the honest miners by attacking the network"

My bulls*** meter appears to be showing a negative value.... oh wait that was an integer overflow.

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 3, 2018

62. So I *do* think both sides need to improve their discourse.

But Craig Wright *is* crazy.

Fin.

— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) April 3, 2018

But that wasn’t all. Moments after Buterin finished tweeting, attendees uploaded footage showing the young entrepreneur addressing some of the erroneous claims made by Wright in a post-presentation Q&A session.

This is when the Ethereum founder really gets rolling. “Given that [Wright] makes so many non-sequiturs at this stage,” Buterin begins, “why is this fraud allowed to speak at this conference?” The confrontational remark was loudly applauded by numerous members of the audience.
Full video below:



Following the altercation at the stage of Deconomy, Wright resonded with his own name-calling barage. He has since downplayed some of the disparaging remarks made by Buterin on Twitter, but here's what he initially had to say:

Vitalik has one issue...

When we demonstrate what BCH can do, he knows that ETH will wither and die.

— Dr Craig S Wright (@ProfFaustus) April 3, 2018

As we don't want to screw it up :)

Oh well.... looks like I broke Vitalek...

:)

He is a twig.. must remember to be gentle next time .... https://t.co/cGVdLV9OlT

— Dr Craig S Wright (@ProfFaustus) April 3, 2018

This is hardly the first time Buterin and Wright have crossed swords. The Ethereum founder has long expressed skepticism about Wright’s claims of being the person behind the mysterious moniker Satoshi Nakamoto. Indeed, a few months back Buterin once again asked Wright to cut the lies and drop the claims he created Bitcoin.

Wright was recently hit with a lawsuit alleging the self-proclaimed Nakamoto swindled $5 billion worth of Bitcoin from his former business partner, the late Dave Kleiman.