Roger Ver: ‘Maybe I’ve Been Fooled’ by Craig Wright
Craig Wright, who claims to have invented Bitcoin, said that he "f*cking disappeared" in 2011 so the project wouldn't be controlled by a single person. | Source: CoinGeek/YouTube
Early cryptocurrency adopter and outspoken Bitcoin Cash evangelist Roger Ver said that he is having second thoughts about his former alliance with self-described Bitcoin creator Craig Wright.
Ver, the owner of crypto wallet service and bitcoin cash mining pool Bitcoin.com, stated in a newly-uploaded YouTube video that Wright — whose firm, nChain, is the developer of BCH software implementation Bitcoin SV — had “fooled” him.
“It’s never easy to admit that you’ve been fooled, but maybe I’ve been fooled,” Ver said while sharing a screenshot of an email that Wright had allegedly sent him after he publicly backed BCH development group Bitcoin ABC — not Wright’s SV — in the debate over the impending BCH hard fork.
Wright allegedly wrote:
“Side with ABC, you hate bitcoin, you are my enemy. You have f–king no idea what that means. You Will. I AM Satoshi. Have a nice life. You will now discover me when pissed off. And, no. You Could have had proof. Your choice. F–k you.”
Ver and Wright had already been feuding for several months in the lead-up to the hard fork, so it was no surprise when Ver publicly backed Bitcoin ABC’s vision for Bitcoin Cash — or when the characteristically-bombastic Wright lashed out by accusing Ver of wanting to promote child pornography.
Hover, Ver claimed that his spat with Wright is about more than personal insults and political differences. He said that, over time, he had become skeptical about Wright’s technical acumen.
“Some things Craig says, I think are really spot on, but other things, he has no clue what he’s talking about,” Ver said, adding later that Wright had refused to engage in a technical debate at a recent BCH mining conference.
“It seems strange to have Craig refuse to engage in any sort of technical debate there, and my suspicion at this point is that he can’t. And I’ve seen a bunch of things happen that make me skeptical — very, very, deeply skeptical.”
That’s a significant departure from comments about Wright that Ver has made in the past. While he had shied away from outright stating that he believes Wright is Satoshi, he had praised his vision for cryptocurrency as consistent with the one laid out in the Bitcoin whitepaper.
“Satoshi or not, the things Craig Wright is saying are exactly the things that caused me to sign up for Bitcoin in the first place,” Ver told Motherboard last year. “They are also the the things that led to its success.”
Now, though, Ver said that even incontrovertible proof that Wright is Satoshi would do nothing to change his opinion of him or his vision for BCH. Paraphrasing Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Ver said that if Wright did turn out to be Satoshi, it would lower his opinion of Satoshi — not elevate his opinion of Wright.
Featured Image from CoinGeek/YouTube
