Craig Wright’s November 2018 prediction that there is a “fatal flaw” in Bitcoin that would see the entire blockchain collapse in 2019 has, it is now safe to say, moved from doomsday prediction to another of his litany of lies and misjudgments. Wright based the hilariously evidence-free claim right when Bitcoin Cash was forking into his pet project Bitcoin SV, and the claim looks now like having been nothing more than a pathetic attempt at creating FUD around Bitcoin.
Wright’s “Fatal Flaw” Claim
Speaking on The Crypto Show on November 12, 2018, Wright made the dramatic claim that those in charge of Bitcoin had lost control of the project and had left a fatal flaw undiagnosed:
With the changes from the original Bitcoin and what they’ve done to add Segwit and whatever else, they don’t understand the system well enough and they will learn next year that there is a fatal flaw in BTC, and by ‘fatal’ I mean there won’t be any BTC left at the end of next year.
What was this fatal flaw? Wright didn’t say. What might it at least look like? Again, Wright didn’t offer his thoughts. He simply made a spurious claim, backed with no evidence whatsoever, that Bitcoin was doomed. Of course, as his case with Dave Kleiman showed, Wright has form in this respect.
Pure FUD?
Wright’s claims came just three days before Bitcoin Cash forked to create Bitcoin SV, which Wright presides over, and so it would have been in his interests to disparage both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash in order to drum up enough support for his new token. Drumming up support is one thing, but to casually claim that the world’s biggest and most resilient cryptocurrency has an undetected bug that only he knows about and that will destroy over a decade’s work, is quite another.
The fact that Wright made these claims without even the slightest hint of evidence, allied to the fact that he has barely mentioned the prophecy since, should be enough to convince anyone with half a brain that he was making the whole thing up, and trying to create FUD in order to crash the BTC price and increase the appeal of his own project. It isn’t the first time Wright has flat out lied to gain a perceived advantage, and it won’t be the last.
