Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Poon Call Out Craig Wright at Deconomy 2018

Deconomy, an international blockchain forum, is taking place in Seoul, South Korea, from April 3 to 4 at the Walkerhill Hotel. Organizers have looked to bring audiences the “brightest entrepreneurs, thought leaders, investors, developers, academic and policy groups, and blockchain enthusiasts” to present and discuss the biggest topics within the blockchain industry.

Among the event’s many speakers was Craig S. Wright, chief scientist at nChain, who in 2016 controversially proclaimed himself to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. He joined Blockstream CSO Samson Mow and Bitcoin Cash proponent Roger Ver on a panel discussion entitled “Bitcoin, Controversy over Principle.”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is also a featured speaker at the event, but on the afternoon before his panel, he live-tweeted the presentation featuring Mow, Ver and Wright.

During Wright’s comments, Buterin tweeted that the scientist was “crazy.” In the subsequent Q & A period, he pointed out several errors in Wright’s presentation and asked, to hefty applause, “Why is this fraud allowed to speak at this conference?”

A longtime proponent of Bitcoin Cash, Wright’s views on the cryptocurrency differ from the Ethereum mogul’s, who claims that Bitcoin Cash is a “fraud.” At the beginning of Wright’s segment, Buterin stated on Twitter:

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 — BULL****!”
Then proceeds to brag about how many university degrees he has….. eh, at least he read Graeber.

During his presentation, Wright spoke directly about the lighting network, which was created by OmiseGO advisor Joseph Poon. Wright commented that “LN work is as hard as breaking a discrete log.” He later got technical in his speech, saying that “gamma can be less than zero” while discussing the concepts of “selfish mining” and “honest mining.”

His ideas were difficult to understand even for Poon, who commented from the audience, “I wrote the lightning network paper, and I straight up don’t understand a word of your presentation.”

In response to Buterin’s barrage of tweets, Wright fired back and insinuated that ether was an inferior currency, stating, “Vitalik has one issue… When we demonstrate what BCH can do, he knows that ETH will wither and die.” He later followed up with a comment that he “broke Vitalek [sic]” — that he was a “twig” and that Wright “must remember to be gentle next time.”

The ongoing feud began following Wright’s previous statement that he was Satoshi Nakamoto. Buterin has long been skeptical of this, and he has repeatedly asked Wright to “cut the lies and drop the claims.”

In addition, Wright was the subject of a recent lawsuit by his former business partner Dave Kleiman, who claims Wright “swindled” him out of $5 billion in bitcoin.

To see Buterin’s live tweetstorm, click here.