Update: see below for Cøbra’s statement regarding the downtime
Bitcoin.org co-owner “Cøbra” published an open letter yesterday to the Bitcoin community suggesting a hard fork to change the current PoW system to a hybrid PoW and PoS system.
Cøbra, who is also the co-owner of bitcointalk.org published this open letter on Medium essentially implying that the Bitmain, with its estimated $3b in operating profits for 2017, completely or nearly completely controls the majority of mining. From there he sites various security issues that he believes may be exploited by Bitmain, and then goes further in saying that the Chinese government may overtake their equipment to “push a Chinese geopolitical agenda”.
Cøbra then suggests that the only way to combat this is to “… adopt a new hybrid PoW system, possibly with a PoS combination, and choosing algorithms that are very easy and simple to build ASICs for. The playing field needs to be even again, and structured in a way where it’s harder for one entity to dominate it.”
Hard forks on Bitcoin seem to be happening more and more frequently, some with very blurry visions and reasons. This, however, seems to be causing a divisive line as some people are agreeing with Cøbra due to the fact that his co-ownership status seems to lend credibility.
David Harding, another Bitcoin contributor seems to want to dispute Cøbra’s influence and contribution, essentially stating that Cøbra is overselling his influence and contributions by only stating his co-ownership of the site.
A long discussion between the two happened on Twitter, which painted all parties in a fairly bad light, but mostly came at the expense of Cøbra.
(list showing the contributions to bitcoin.org)
After the heated conversation in which Cøbra disappeared, at 07:35 GMT this morning, the bitcoin.org website went offline. It is not confirmed that Cøbra took the site down, but it does seem that after the many negative comments on both his Medium post as well as on Twitter, he might have done so.
This is concerning in the wake of Roger Ver and Bitcoin Cash seemingly trying to take the Bitcoin brand from Bitcoin with phrases like “Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin”, using basically the same logo and marketing to uninformed people. It is also concerning because we may see a hijacking of the site similar to Mycrpto taking over the Myetherwallet twitter account.
This is quite concerning as Bitcoin has taken a few big knocks over the past few months from regulators, speculators, public opinion and other cryptocurrency development teams.
We will follow the story as it breaks, so look out for tweets from @LetsEarnBTC
Update:
Cøbra has since in a comment on Reddit, as well as in a tweet stated that the downtime was a DDoS attack.
He claims to have been attacked personally as well, in both instances he’s blaming the Chinese government.
What are your opinions on the volatility of Bitcoin, not only in price but also with the team behind it? Do you think the downtime was related to a DDoS attack?
Comment your thoughts below or via the social media buttons!
Tiaan Wolmarans is a cryptocurrency investor and trader, airplane pilot, musician, and writer.
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