Craig Wright hits out at John McAfee as Bitcoin Cash fork nears

The man behind the Satoshi’s Vision Bitcoin Cash project has lashed out at crypto-commentator and US Presidential candidate, John McAfee over his take on the upcoming BCH fork. 

As part of an ongoing, sustained social media attack on his opponents and detractors, Dr. Craig Wright has lashed out at entrepreneur, noted crypto-commentator and bon viveur John McAfee.

In an early morning tweet (at least by GMT standards, Lord knows where McAfee is in the world right now) the man who is apparently using Mortal Kombat-inspired tactics in an effort to get nobody to vote for him in the 2020 US Presidential elections, literally pledged his allegiance to Wright’s Bitcoin Cash rivals, Bitcoin ABC. In a tweet to his 800,000+ followers, he showed a screen shot of a message he had sent to Bitmain’s Jihan Wu – one of the driving forces of Bitcoin ABC, alongside Roger Ver.

In it, McAfee – rather faux-regally, it should be said – states that as “the oldest warrior still on the battlefield”, that Wu can expect “his sword and his loyalty” in any upcoming Hash War with Wright’s Bitcoin SV.

Those who stand against Jihan Wu are a idiots who don’t see the realities of the playing field. Please, get real. I will not let my ego destroy me by making me think I could challenge the only real power in this space. My email to him should make it clear to anyone where I stand. pic.twitter.com/WJBJyzaEAy

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) November 15, 2018

Wright, who has been on something of a social media warpath over the last 24hrs – including threatening to tank the price of Bitcoin (BTC) in sell-off should miners congregate against him to provide hash power to Bitcoin ABC – responded quickly, dubbing him ‘McFee’ (a reference to the money he made through paid-for endorsement tweets for ICOs), and a snipe at McAfee’s recent endorsement of the BitFi wallet.

Just a reminder

McFee is a conman and scammer

Remember that “unhackable” wallet with zero Security a few months ago. https://t.co/EH2l69LSzF

— Dr Craig S Wright (@ProfFaustus) November 15, 2018

Wright has been busy on Twitter this morning, in fact, and appears to have woken up ready for a fight (assuming he is on European time). After closing his Tweetskreig of last night with a shot at Bitmain, he opened up this morning’s salvo with a quote from the Nakamoto white paper he claims to have penned himself. The passage, at least from Wright’s point of view, is no-doubt meant to justify any upcoming Hash-based battle for the Bitcoin Cash blockchain.

Just a reminder

Sustainable hash

Not a day, not weeks, not a burst.

Continuous competition until one dies as we do not stop pic.twitter.com/UbHPWRF7UF

— Dr Craig S Wright (@ProfFaustus) November 15, 2018

He then moved on to directly addressing Bitmain’s Jihan Wu and his partnership Roger Ver – who he has apparently verbally attacked in private emails of late – in another tweet. This one repeats a previous threat to embroil Bitmain and Ver in a legal battle should they look to redirect their mining pool resources away from BTC to support BCH ABC.

Just a reminder

If Jihan and Roger break their contracts and direct BTC miners of users to BCH for a day…

We will help you start a long messy class action.

No #socialists telling you what your systems do pic.twitter.com/EojqC4frft

— Dr Craig S Wright (@ProfFaustus) November 15, 2018

Yesterday, we reported on the reasons behind the acrimonious split in the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem – which is largely the result of a schism between Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV over whether the cryptocurrency should add features to its protocol (ABC) or roll-back its feature set to better resemble the original Bitcoin protocol (SV). It is, however, being played out on a battlefield manned by big players in the mining industry, with other factors such as block size and the potential for centralisation of the network at play too.

On paper, at least, Bitmain is potentially the biggest player of all. The question is just how committed that company’s shareholders and board are to taking on the task of supporting ABC by rallying mining power against any potential attempt to take control of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain by the – currently dominant – mining interests supporting SV. It will all play out, one way or another, in the next 24hrs – and lots of people will be watching.