A dark day for blockchain projects: BSV de-listing from Binance
I’m reminded of that scene from Star Wars where Queen Amidala is in the Galactic Senate and she says “So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause”.
This is how the announcement today of Binance de-listing Bitcoin SV (BSV) feels.
Quick background for those “out of the loop”:
- Craig Wright (CSW) claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, original author of Bitcoin, a claim which he has been making for several years but has not yet come close to genuinely validating this claim. He has made several attempts to “pull the wool” over peoples eyes by signing a message with the wrong private key though, which was quickly debunked.
- He’s been caught a number of times lying / doctoring documents:
https://github.com/kosinusbch/cult-of-craig - Craig has been making claims he will start taking people to court over defamation where they state he is not Satoshi Nakamoto, at which time in court he will no doubt have to prove he is Satoshi.
- Twitter user @hodlonaut (Famous for starting the Lightning Network LNTorch) decided to poke the bear and vehemently claimed that CSW was not Satoshi Nakamoto.
- Craig sent a legal notice to @hodlonaut about his prior tweets. Many users now have the hodlonaut astronaut image as their display picture on Twitter, as hodlonaut has closed their Twitter account down.
- Craig has also sent a legal letter to Bitcoin commentator Peter McCormack:
https://twitter.com/PeterMcCormack/status/1116733748794540033 - Peter McCormack has responded and all hell has broken loose:
https://twitter.com/PeterMcCormack/status/1117448742892986368 - CZ from Binance chimed in, virtue-signalling as always despite being one of those known fraudsters in a number of ways (We’re still missing millions from the Binance Charity Fund for example):
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1117281761539411970 - Then in his usual hypocritical style, said one thing but did another:
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1117606851351179264
Which mostly brings you up to speed.
Now, CZ makes a good point:
People should be getting mad at CSW, and they are.
But this is not how things are playing out
We’re now seeing Binance de-listing BSV:
This is despite CZ previously stating that in the past they “wouldn’t give notice” (eg Cloakcoin CLOAK) further cementing the hypocrisy of CZ:
Obviously keep in mind that Binance is an independent company and is free to do whatever they want, list whatever they want, or specifically in this case not list whatever they want. They’ve shown time and time again they’re not actually about the community, they’re about the money ($100K listing fees etc, not listing permissionless and decentralized projects such as Vertcoin).
But, is this really what we as the broader crypto community want to encourage?
I don’t want to see CZ de-list BSV over the actions of one person
We’re now seeing other exchanges like Kraken and ShakeShift jumping on the publicity bandwagon
We come back to my original paragraph:
“So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause”
Canen from the Vertcoin project makes some very valid points about this de-listing as well:
You see, Binance are totally fine to take peoples money, over and over again, and once they’ve milked the cow they virtue-signal and move on, preying on the fact a large number of users don’t know any better about what’s actually going on.
So I ask you this
Should Exchanges like Binance now begin playing Judge, Jury & Executioner in the event that they don’t like somebody in a crypto community / project?
What if Bittrex took issue with me, @dgb_chilling , not liking a specific pre-mined staked coin that I’ve called out a number of times for being a scam, despite the fact Binance have never listed it. Should Bittrex then de-list DigiByte? Is that something we want to encourage? Despite the fact I’ve never once been paid by “DigiByte” (As there is no centralized entity to pay me)?
What if Poloniex / Circle decided that they didn’t like the dance that Vitalik Buterin from Ethereum did, should they then be encouraged to de-list Ethereum?
Or what if Canen were to say something negative about BSV that UpBit disagreed with, should they then de-list Vertcoin?
Or, should somebody in CZ’s position be clever enough to understand that despite having a hand in the creation of the project BSV, CSW is not the sole driver and even if he were to disappear tomorrow to go sip cocktails on a deserted island beach somewhere, that BSV would continue without him?
Should a decentralized and permissionless project be punished for the actions of one user?
Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely can’t stand CSW in any way, shape, or form. I feel very strongly about him being a fraud and a charlatan.
However, do we now punish the entire project because of that?
Or do we let him duke it out in court, prove once and for all that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, or forever debunk that myth due to his inability to sign a message with Satoshi’s private keys?
Despite stating “We don’t choose sides”, they just did.
They’ve listed a fork of Bitcoin (BCH technically but still), as a project they believed had merit. They’re now holding that project to ransom over the actions of one user.
Do we really want this?
Do we want to usher in a new era of Exchanges being the all-powerful authority, with thunderous applause?
Or did cryptocurrency start as a way to get away from this nonsense. With decentralized and permissionless blockchains being the answer to this?
Craig is a fraud, but let the courts beat that out of him.
I do not support any exchange decision to de-list a decentralized permissionless project based on the actions of one individual.
I wholeheartedly support them de-listing outright scam projects such as Bitconnect or TPAY.
The difference is that exchanges are now holding projects ransom over the behavior of one person. They don’t like it, you’re out, and your community is punished.
And we are ringing this in with thunderous applause.
Today is a sad day for Crypto indeed.
