An article about the recent BSV Genesis hard fork by ZDNet is causing quite the stir in the crypto industry. The piece describes the network upgrade as a new beginning for Bitcoin.
The article represents BSV as the original Bitcoin and Craig Wright as its creator. Since Wright is still to prove his claims, some crypto industry observers have labelled the ZDNet article as irresponsible journalism.
ZDNet Promotes BSV as Bitcoin, Outrage Ensues
ZDNet published the controversial article on February 4, the day of the BSV Genesis upgrade. The piece’s title is “Will Genesis upgrade signal the beginning of the Bitcoin financial powerhouse?”
Will Genesis upgrade signal the beginning of the Bitcoin financial powerhouse? https://t.co/h2ka1T7yWx by @eileenb
— ZDNet (@ZDNet) February 4, 2020
As the title suggests, the article discusses the potential implications of the BSV Genesis hard fork. Frequently, its author describes the hard fork as being beneficial to Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin SV network is consistently referred to as Bitcoin throughout. Meanwhile, the author calls the leading blockchain network in terms of market capitalisation Bitcoin BTC. For the lay person, it must make for very confusing reading.
In terms of justification, the author simply injects their opinion, without addressing any of the nuances of the situation:
“Miners of other Bitcoin protocols, such as Bitcoin BTC, seem to feel threatened by Craig Wright, who I think is indeed Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.”
There is no discussion of the huge numbers that reject this version of events. The author fails to mention any of the evidence that suggests Wright has fabricated largely debunked documents to prove himself Satoshi Nakamoto.
The piece also makes repeated references to “what Satoshi intended”:
“Many other changes were made to the original Bitcoin protocol that essentially made BTC unusable except as a “collectible,” which is totally not what its creator Satoshi had in mind.”
However, in 2010, as well as frequently drawing parallels to gold in terms of scarcity, Nakamoto described their creation using the very term that they totally didn’t have in mind…
“Bitcoins have no dividend or potential future dividend, therefore not like a stock. More like a collectible or commodity.”
With the identity of the Bitcoin creator still not proven, Nakamoto’s true intentions remain a mystery. As NewsBTC recently reported, some make a strong case that Bitcoin was intended as a store-of-value, akin to gold, and not as a payments network at all.
ZDNet now faces criticism from the crypto asset industry over the article. Questioning the publication’s ethics, Monero founder Riccardo Spagni said the publication had “eschewed any semblance of responsible journalism.”
Disappointing that ZDNet has eschewed any semblance of responsible journalism and is promoting a known fraudster and his forked version of Bitcoin. What happened to ethics over there, @ldignan?
— Riccardo Spagni (@fluffypony) February 5, 2020
Similarly outraged was long time BTC proponent Hodlonaut. The planet hopping feline called the article’s BSV promotion “disgraceful.”
Disgraceful to see @ZDNet promoting BSV like this https://t.co/sEcjLvCAcK
— hodlonaut🌮⚡🔑 (@hodlonaut) February 5, 2020
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