Roger Ver Takes Stance Against Craig Wright, As Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork Looms

November 8, 2018 10:12 PM

“It’s never easy to admit that you’ve been fooled. Maybe I’ve been fooled.” That’s how Roger Ver, one of Bitcoin’s first champions, began a video posted today to the YouTube channel of his company, Bitcoin.com.

In the video, titled “Roger Ver’s Thoughts on 15th November Bitcoin Cash Upgrade,” the original crypto millionaire presents an email he says he received from Craig Wright on November 3 after Bitcoin.com announced it would be supporting Bitcoin ABC’s upgrade plan over Wright and nChain’s.

The emails states, in part: “Side with ABC, you hate bitcoin, you are my enemy. You have fucking no idea what that means. You will.”

Wright signs off, not with “sincerely,” but with “fuck you.” Charming.

For context, Bitcoin Cash has been steadily moving toward war over the past several months. The Bitcoin Cash network upgrades every six months. In preparation, Bitcoin ABC, the dominant full node implementation for Bitcoin Cash, released changes to the consensus protocols in August. Craig Wright, the nChain chief scientist who once claimed to be Satoshi, then announced the launch of a competing full node, called Bitcoin SV (Satoshi’s Vision). Oh, and the two implementations wouldn’t be compatible with one another. He gave an ultimatum: Join us or die. Just kidding, it was more like the email he sent to Ver. Still, harsh.

Clearly, not everyone has joined Bitcoin SV, which as of press constitute less than 10 percent of the functioning nodes. Bitcoin Unlimited, another full node implementation, ignoring the ultimatum, tried to compromise. Many others sided with ABC. Their reasons for doing so are many, and can get pretty technical, but Ver sums up perhaps the most important reason: Wright himself.

Says Ver in the video, “I support ABC because I think it has a better team. I think it has people that are easier to get along with. I think it’s people that are more competent, in general.” He then relays a story about a Bangkok miners meeting the first week of September:

“At one point, there was some technical talk starting and Craig got up and said, ‘This is a bunch of bullshit and lies’ – were his words – and then I asked some other people that were part of nChain, after their boss had just left the room, ‘Are what the other people saying, was that a bunch of BS and lies or is there some merit to it?’ And they said that ‘no, there was some merit to it.’ So it seems strange to have Craig refuse to engage in any sort of technical debate there. And my suspicion at this point is because he can’t.”

It’s long been thought by many that Wright is a charlatan. But Ver’s personal revelation comes at a crucial time for the network he helped create – the one that’s about to be split into two.

Still, he’s comfortable letting the Bitcoin Cash network hard fork: “If your wife wants a divorce, you don’t lock her in a closet and say ‘no.’ If a faction of Bitcoin Cash wants to, you know, hash away on some other coin, it’s their hash to do it with.”

Jeff Benson is Managing Editor of ETHNews. He’s worked as a writer and editor everywhere from Sudan to Reno. He holds a bachelor’s in politics from Willamette University and a master’s in nationalism studies from University of Edinburgh. When he’s not in the newsroom, he trots the globe and writes about it. He holds a bit of value in ETH.

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