Bitcoin FUD and tool for freeing humanity

Quote of the Week

“Bitcoin is a tool for freeing humanity from oligarchs and tyrants, dressed up as a get-rich-quick scheme.” - Naval Ravikant

Bitcoin FUD stories result in price drop

This week we saw a lot of false stories, rumors and attacks on Bitcoin, which resulted in a 10% price drop on Thursday. FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and denial or doubt. FUD stories are more or less bad stories about Bitcoin that are spreading via social media or news sites, that are not substantiated. These stories have been circulating in 2017 already. In the new bull market they are here again.

For instance:

• Tether is responsible for Bitcoins price rise. False. Tether is a way to buy bitcoin for many people and where was Tether’s impact on the price through the bear market?
• Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto. This guy claims to have the copyright to the Bitcoin whitepaper and to be the original owner of the website bitcoin.org. False. The real Satoshi Nakamoto has a known PGP public key, therefore it is cryptographically possible for someone to verify themselves to be Satoshi Nakamoto. Craig Wright has been unable to do this. Instead he and his followers as the founders of Bitcoin SV are responsible for one of the worst attacks on Bitcoin in 2017 resulting in a hard fork. Don’t fall for his scam. Craig Wright sent out his lawyers to threaten the team of the bitcoin.org website, where Satoshi himself published the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2009 to take down the PDF, because of copyright infringement. Satoshi released the whitepaper with a MIT license, which basically permits reuse. The answer of the bitcoin community was that hundreds or thousands of people, including me, posted their copies of the whitepaper on their webservers.

  Come and get it, Faketoshi.https://t.co/rNOlcA0FRt

  — Anita 🏼🏳️‍🏻‍♂️☮️ (@AnitaPosch) January 21, 2021

• There has been a double-spend on the Bitcoin blockchain. False. Cointelegraph, one of the worst FUD story sources in the crypto media space, published an article saying that there has been a double-spend on the BTC blockchain. They cited a Bitcoin SV representative, yes, the same dishonest people as mentioned above. What is a double-spend: in layperson’s terms it means that money that has been spent, was spent a second time. This was a problem that Satoshi Nakamoto solved for the first time in the history of digital money. A true double-spend would really be very critical, because then it would be possible to cheat and all trust in Bitcoin as a secure system would be lost. The funny thing is: what happened can happen on all blockchains, on the BSV chain too. If you want to know more read this tweet by Andreas M. Antonopoulos:

  A more detailed explanation of the whole

  “A double-spend broke Bitcoin” FUD that was circulated by an irresponsible publication.

  1/

  — Andreas M. Antonopoulos (@aantonop) January 21, 2021

Thought of the week by Anita Posch

Bitcoin to Fiat converter

I often find it difficult to convert a certain amount of bitcoin or satoshis into Euro or USD. Yes, I also struggle ;-) Now there is an easy solution: https://xsats.net/SAT/USD/

Why strategy investor Lyn Alden does not invest in Ethereum

I stick to work in the Bitcoin space only, because otherwise I lose my focus and there is enough to learn about Bitcoin every week. Of course I still read and think about the differences between Bitcoin and other open blockchains. Lyn Alden did a great interview with me about why she is bullish on Bitcoin and here is her piece about why she does not invest in Ethereum.

Global Bitcoin meetup, join for free!

On Saturday I will be co-hosting an online meetup with Bitcoin Sydney, Bitcoin Hong Kong, Bitcoin Greece and Bitcoin Toronto.

Come an join

Meetup agenda:

1) Representing Bitcoin Sydney: “Bitcoin Blocks from Space: Setting up a Blockstream Satellite node” By John Pratt, organiser of Bitcoin Sydney & Ketan Gulabdas, Ministry of Nodes.

2) Representing Bitcoin Hong Kong: “Improving the Lightning user experience with LNURL” by Leo Weese - BitcoinHK

3) Representing Thessaloniki’s Bitcoin Meetup: “An overview of Schnorr/Taproot” by Dr. Kostas Karasavvas, Organiser, CTO at Block.co, Faculty at UNic & AUTh.

4) Representing Bitcoin Toronto: “DIY Bitcoin: Do It Yourself” by KryptoKidz, Organizer of Bitcoin Toronto Meetup

Podcast of the week audio only

Fereshteh Forough: Bitcoin in Afghanistan

Video

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If you want to check, here is today’s Bitcoin price.

No financial advice. DYOR.