Andreas Antonopoulos has caught the ire of numerous bitcoin maximalists following an announcement he is to hold a Livestream on ethereum 2.0.
“More than 1500 people voted for me to answer questions about ETH2.0 this month. Thanks for the simple, non-controversial subject,” Antonopoulos said, further adding:
“I’ll be answering questions about POS, sharding, epocs, phases, & more” at 5 PM UTC later today.
That’s all it took to trigger whatever pretend bitcoin maxis are left, with Pierre Rochard stating “let’s be clear about who started this: Andreas.”
Apparently talking about ethereum 2.0 is “attempting to bring down maximalists” with Antonopoulos stating:
“I’ve had my book co-authors told to stop working with me to avoid negative effects on their career… it is a very real campaign of harassment from where I stand.”
Just a couple ago he started himself a harassment campaign against Joerg Molt who never said he is Satoshi Nakamoto. Andreas also claimed he is a scammer. Thousands of followers copied his words without making a proof of the statement.
Who is Andreas Antonopoulos? In 2012 a new name came to the table and reached a lot of attention:
Andreas Antonopoulos
Andreas started to visit meetups. Especially the Bitcoin meetup. He created his own fan cult because he was the first guy to talk about the philosophy of Bitcoin in a more technical driven way. A lot of people in scams used his knowledge, later on, to sell their products by pretending knowledge. But he got a great gift in 2017. People spend Bitcoin for him afte r well-known people twittered Andreas is running out of money. How could it be that a Bitcoin specialist never tried mining? Because he has become a Bitcoin Maximalist in the eyes of his community they supported him, cause he wrote the book "Mastering Bitcoin". But history showe d his real intension when he was supporting the Ethereum community and called Bitcoin Maximalists a danger for the whole idea.
One of the best know Bitcoin contributor Jimmy Song wrote this text:
What's common to Michael Saylor and Andreas Antonopolous?
Michael Saylor is the new darling of Bitcoiners, having put some $400M into Bitcoin over the past 6 months. This is a startling turnaround from 2013 when he dismissed Bitcoin and calling its days “numbered.” By contrast, Andreas Antonopolous has upset Bitcoiners with his newest contention that Bitcoin Maximalists are the biggest threat to Bitcoin. This is similarly a startling turnaround from 2013 when he was one of the few content creators who explained Bitcoin to noobs.
The contrast between these two people is interesting and speaks to a lack of hero-worship in the Bitcoin community. No one is sacred and no one is irredeemable. One of the things I love about Bitcoin is that it is very much a meritocracy. You might be a core maintainer like Gavin Andreesen, respected by the whole community in 2013. His status was never higher than in 2013 when he was the face of Bitcoin Core. Then he started talking about becoming a benevolent dictator who would throw his weight around. He then got duped by a conman and in 2020, he’s essentially a persona non grata in the Bitcoin community. You can also be like Wences Cesares, who led an attack against Bitcoin in Segwit2x and tried also to take control in 2017. But apologizing and supporting Bitcoin development brought him back into the good graces of the community.