Buterin Calls Craig Wright a ‘Fraud’ at Deconomy Conference

The name of Satoshi Nakamoto is praised by the entire cryptocurrency community, however, the person claiming to be Nakamoto – Craig Wright – is not. At the Deconomy conference held in South Korea, Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, referred to Wright, who was on stage as part of a panel, a ‘fraud’ in front of a huge crowd.

During the panel discussion, called “Bitcoin, Controversy over Principle”, featuring Roger Ver, Samson Mow, and Craig Wright, Buterin confronted Wright saying: “given that he makes so many non-sequiturs and mistakes, why is this fraud allowed to speak at this conference?”

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@VitalikButerin to @ProfFaustus , “Why is this fraud allowed to speak at this conference?” 😂 #Deconomy2018 pic.twitter.com/RbnhAIeKiI

— Hope Freiheit (@the_hopemeister) April 3, 2018

Buterin, who was sitting among the spectators during the discussion, even live-tweeted every claim made by the three and critiqued every nonsensical claim with technicalities.

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

Rise of Wright

Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist, and businessman came into the limelight with his claim of being Satoshi Nakamoto in a blog post published in May 2016. Wright’s claims were followed by a massive media push by news organizations like the BBC, Economist, and GQ.

However, a majority of the cryptographic community did not take the claims seriously as the technicality of the proofs put forth by Wright was not convincing enough. Many experts even branded them as nearly nonsensical.

Lawsuit for nothing?

In late February, he was sued for Bitcoins worth billions by the ‎estate of the late IT security‎ expert Dave Kleiman.‎ The allegations concern the ownership of between 550,000 and 1.1 million bitcoins, as well as the ‎intellectual property rights of various blockchain technologies.

However, the real question is whether Wright has that amount of Bitcoin in his possession?