The CC Forum on Blockchain, AI, and Digital Innovation starts today in London, and one of its panels is causing quite the furor in the cryptocurrency community. Having discovered that Craig Wright is one of the scheduled speakers, a few prominent members of the community have already announced that they won’t attend the conference, refusing to give credence to his claim that he’s the inventor of Bitcoin.
The CC Forum on Blockchain, AI, and Digital Innovation kicked off today in London. While there are a few interesting panels scheduled for the event, the one that caught the cryptocurrency community’s attention is called The Global Centralized Financial System: What Are The Flaws & Challenges And What Are The Possible Solutions?
Moderated by Max Studennikoff, the panel will consist of Nouriel “Dr. Doom” Roubini, Craig Wright, Brock Pierce, Bobby Lee, and Tone Vays.
If the presence of Nouriel Roubini, who’s perhaps the most popular cryptocurrency skeptic out there, wasn’t enough, that of Craig Wright definitely got the community reacting. Wright has received a lot of negative attention for having claimed that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. What is more, the conference has planned another panel which will only feature Wright, and it seemingly credits him as being Satoshi Nakamoto. It’s called What Was Your Purpose As Satoshi Writing The Whitepaper?
Naturally, a lot of prominent figures decided to take a stand against giving merit to Wright’s claim. The official Twitter page of BitMEX Research posted a reminder of court rulings and fraud accusations against Wright.
Another popular figure to express negativity was Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin, who said that “many of us made the pledge not to attend a conference that invites faketoshi. Yet you still plan to share the same stage with him. Shame.” Lee’s comments were directed at another panelist, popular Bitcoin analyst Tone Vays.
Tone Vays is a popular cryptocurrency analyst and commentator, and he has defined himself as a Bitcoin maximalist. However, being featured on a panel with Craig Wright did cause a backlash from the cryptocurrency community. A lot of people criticized Vays for accepting to speak at the conference.
Vays previously chose to boycott another conference back in May called Magical Crypto which was held in New York, explaining that he found the concept of a “Bitcoin conference by shitcoiners hypocritical.”
Vays claims that he didn’t know that Craig Wright would be on his panel until the last moment, and has pledged to “defend Bitcoin against scammers on the stage.”
He’s also said that he is the last Bitcoin maximalist standing, and that if he refused to go to the conference, this would only hurt the attendees.
I made a pledge to boycut @magicalcrypto because I find the concept of #Bitcoin conference by shitcoiners hypocritical.
But I have NO PROBLEM defending $BTC against scammers on the same stage. Me NOT going only hurts attendees.
No one has to attended to watch http://t.co/zIqJ8TN21U— Tone Vays [Bali – Financial Summit] (@ToneVays) October 14, 2019
However, the community remains highly skeptical of his presence there, and prominent members are seemingly united in their belief that the best way to battle Wright’s statements is to simply boycott conferences which include him.