Snowden told the Australian computer scientist that he’s both a perpetrator of fraud and a “miserable corncob.”
Famous whistleblower and ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden clapped back at the self-styled Bitcoin creator Craig Wright on Monday, after the latter accused Snowden of being a traitor.
The intelligence expert suggested that Wright has committed fraud, and is lying about his identity as Bitcoin’s creator.
The feud began with Snowden publishing a copy of Bitcoin’s whitepaper on Twitter, in celebration of the document’s 14th birthday.
Snowden added that its creator remains anonymous after all of that time, which he finds “remarkable.”
Craig Wright responded to this comment minutes later, claiming that “he” was never anonymous, while calling Snowden “traitorous scum.”
Snowden lashed back about an hour later, boasting about Wright’s court loss to the popular Bitcoiner “Hodlonaut” on Twitter. The case, which closed earlier this month, confirmed that Hodlonaut’s characterization of Wright as a “scammer” and “fraud” did not qualify as defamation, as they had “sufficient factual grounds” to claim as much.
Snowden followed up by calling out Wright for his inconsistency in claiming he was “never anonymous.” He displayed a prior note from the computer scientist in which Wright claims to have spent years in “anonymity and hiding” as Satoshi.
“Dude can’t even commit fraud properly. Just embarrassing,” finished Snowden.
Snowden is largely a fan of Bitcoin, remarking today that its layer-2 lightning network has enabled “basically instantaneous” transactions. However, he has criticized the base layer protocol for having poor privacy.