Vitalik and Craig Throw Punches: 3 To The Moon, 3 Rekt
By: Will O Leary
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Bitcoincash, Blockchain, Ethereum

As this picture shows, the distance between moon and back is quite short. There’s a crypto lesson in there somewhere.

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TTM

Look, Bitcoin Cash is freaking weird. I’m not saying it’s totally useless, but a cult of personality has really cropped up around Craig Wright and Roger Ver. The same could be said of Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum, but I think most unbiased observers would tell you that there’s more to like about Ethereum and some legitimate separation between the proclamations of its founder and those of the Bitcoin Cash duo. To my knowledge, Vitalik hasn’t tried to turn an entire country into a little haven for his coin of choice, the way Wright has.

I thought about putting this story in the Rekt category because some would argue that this is the pot calling the kettle black. In the end, I think it’s a good thing that a major name in crypto is challenging Bitcoin Cash, particularly given how aggressive BCH has been in targeting other crypto projects and people who question it. Even the most ardent critics of Ethereum and Vitalik probably have to concede that, while he may be the embodiment of centralization, he doesn’t appear to be a scam artist with motives beyond the success of his project.

Say it with me: regulations are a good thing. They normalize crypto and clear things up for new investors and adopters. Racy headlines lead to volatility, while leads to stigma, which hurts adoption and the future growth of the space. We should be especially happy that Australia is targeting exchanges for this regulation, since they largely represent the main on-ramp to crypto. Regulating exchanges is a decision that can only mean exchanges are here to stay. One day maybe the market will learn to see news like this for what it is.

I’m probably offending decentralization purists with this, but I’m starting to appreciate companies taking an active stance on stamping out scammers. This is a move specifically designed to prevent cryptojacking, a tactic used by bad hombres — North Korea, for example — to take over the installer’s machine and use it for the purposes of mining cryptocurrency. It’s absurd to expect people to have enough knowledge to steer clear of apps like these on their own. Google is an easy target for the libertarian-anarchist corner of the crypto community, but certain things just work better when someone with greater capability and will owns the process end to end. These are much more malicious than bad ICO advertisements, so it’s good that they’re being prioritized.

Rekt

If a coin is endorsed by a celebrity without any known connection to crypto other than the coin he or she is shilling, avoid it like the freaking plague. The only possible exception to this rule is Richard Sherman of the San Francisco 49ers, because I harbor the irrational hope that one day he’ll come on our podcast. Not only is Binance shaking its fist at Centra Tech, the crypto project that received paid endorsements from boxer Floyd Mayweather and DJ KHALED!, but the SEC is using the f-word (fraud) to describe it. A crypto project probably shouldn’t be super flashy and investors need to beware of shiny objects. The SEC charges that Centra Tech’s ICO was a scam, and robbed investors of tens of millions of dollars. I don’t know who the hell is investing in this crap, but your gut check should start with questioning the reason for the noise around a particular project. Is it based on tech? Project leads? Endorsements? The use case? Something else?

So, um, the guy who publicly threatened to eat his own genitalia if Bitcoin fell short of $1 million by 2020 turned out to have ulterior motives? Really?

Look, I am still here for McAfee’s entertaining tweets, but just for the laughs. If you follow his investing advice, you are basically fine with either losing your money or passing the bag to some other sucker when you buy his pump and sell the dump. Hard pass on this end.

Liechtenstein is historically a tax and banking haven and this strikes me as another case of a small country trying to strengthen its financial position for less-than-clear reasons. Maybe I’ll move this up to TTM in the future, but I just don’t really trust governments that effectively serve the interests of super powerful financial entities.