BTC maximalists’ continued embrace of violence to advance their strategic goals has been on full display during the Granath v. Wright libel trial currently underway in Norway.
On September 14, BTC evangelist and self-proclaimed “professional cypherpunk” Jameson Lopp felt the need to voice his opinion on the Oslo trial where Magnus “Hodlonaut” Granath is attempting to justify his defamatory internet posts against Dr. To Craig Wright, the real world personality behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, author of the 2008 Bitcoin White Paper.
The opening stages of the trial did not go exactly as the Granath team had hoped, in part due to their client’s infantile tendency to treat the proceedings as something of a joke, along with his apparent belief that he and his online friends believe in anything. the subject at any given moment represents literal and unassailable truth.
This week, Lopp’s frustration with his space cat champion’s antics evidently got the better of him, prompting him to tweet that “The only way to stop Craig from cosplaying as Satoshi is to put him in a box.” The tweet immediately prompted many Twitter users to accuse Lopp of , that he dog-whistled a death wish at Wright.
The only way to stop Craig from cosplaying as Satoshi is to put him in a box.
Lopp’s defenders made a half-hearted attempt to gloss over his shit, with some claiming that the “box” Wright was supposed to be stuffed into was a reference to a prison cell. Others suggested that Lopp was referring to a witness box like the one in Norway that Wright found himself in at the time. That claim was undermined by the fact that Wright’s lengthy appearance in just such a box during last year’s Kleiman v. Wright has done nothing—quite the opposite, in fact—to disprove the legitimacy of Wright’s Satoshi claims.
Lopp may be many things, but he is not a complete fool. He could have easily removed any lingering ambiguity by adding the word “witness” to his tweet. Lopp’s failure to supply this clarifying adjective strongly suggests that his ultimate goal was to create both ambiguity and an atmosphere of plausible deniability.
Special weapons and tactics
There is precedent for prominent individuals expressing their desire for someone to commit acts that the speaker would prefer not to do personally. The most infamous of them is Henry II. “Will no one rid me of this all-consuming priest? a remark which convinced four of his knights to assassinate the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, who had thwarted Henry’s ambitions on many occasions.
While Henry later protested that he never intended his words to lead to violence, Becket’s permanent removal from the stage was undeniably something Henry desired. Henry’s apparent reluctance to actually say “somebody’s going to kill that prick” has since been adopted by everyone from mob bosses to presidents of the United States as a means of communicating their desires while insulating themselves from personal culpability should those desires instigate the heinous actions of others .
And it would hardly be the first time BTC antagonist maxi/Wright has voiced the idea that extrajudicial killings are no big deal if Maxi is the one choosing who has to die. Four years ago, the pseudonymous entity Cøbra publicly advocated “murder markets” as the cornerstone of an “ideal anarchist society” to “remove the undesirables”. Cøbra was eventually revealed as another internet tough guy/girl who wilted under Wright’s legal pressure, warning Wright’s lawyers that they “will face consequences for your behavior”.
Five years ago, Lopp was the victim of an incident in which an unknown person called the police and claimed to be inside Lopp’s house with hostages, weapons and explosives. Lopp, who subsequently announced that he would be living “off the grid” to minimize the likelihood of future incidents of this nature, wrote that his batterer “didn’t have the guts to put her own life at risk by physically attacking me”.
Leaving aside the current irony of this quote, one would assume that someone who has been on the brink of a potentially life-threatening situation might be a bit more sensitive to the possibility that their actions could endanger the life of another individual. However, Lopp clearly prioritizes his personal economic interests over the well-being of others.
Follow Lopp’s money
Earlier this year, Lopp published an article “On BSV Scalability” that attempted to poke holes in Bitcoin SV’s winning story of unlimited scaling and ultra-low transaction fees. While some of Lopp’s critics calmly debunked the numerous (purposeful?) errors in his work, others questioned why, if BSV is really such a non-entity compared to the big bad inevitable BTC, Lopp spent so much time and effort convincing others there was nothing to see here and they should proceed as quickly as possible, preferably with their heads down, so as not to observe the reality that the BTC camp considers heretical and/or impossible.
Lopp has good reason to want individuals to ignore BSV, namely the fact that he runs Casa, a BTC-based business that charges up to $5,000 a year to protect the contents of your digital wallet. Casa previously offered its own Node product that allowed BTC users to cosplay as network nodes without all the pesky realities that make up real blocks. Casa Node ultimately failed because there’s only so much the average BTC user is willing to pay to use their “yeah baby I’m full node” pickup lines on the bar.
Casa Node also allowed users the dubious privilege of joining the Lightning Network, a clunky and highly proprietary “layer 2” solution to BTC’s chronic network limitations. Such solutions are unnecessary on BSV, which already processes millions of transactions every day and theoretically never hits a capacity ceiling. So, Satoshi’s questions aside, the root causes of Lopp’s hostility towards Wright/BSV are pretty obvious.
Although we certainly wish Dr. Wright’s long, healthy and productive life, veiled threats of violence of the kind directed by Lopp and his ilk, could never reach their ultimate goal. Contrary to what Granath and his friends believe, BSV and Dr. Wright are separate entities that, while undeniably connected, do not require the existence of the other. As they say, you can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea. And all the death wishes in the world won’t stop BSV, an idea whose time has come.
Watch: Key Witnesses to Satoshi Trial in Norway Recorded on Day 4
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