Bitcoin in Brief Saturday: Forks and Fights

Bitcoin in Brief is your daily roundup of the stories that matter from the cryptosphere. Drama; in-fighting; hacks; humor; it’s all here. In today’s edition, Vitalik Buterin gets catty, Coinbase meets “coinbase”, and Tim Draper has an audacious suggestion for India.

Also read: Help Wanted! Japan Needs Crypto Engineers

Coinbase and “coinbase” Are Not the Same Thing

Coinbase is a cryptocurrency exchange; coinbase (lower case) is a field used for claiming the block reward when mining bitcoin and other cryptos. Confusing the two is easily done, as happened to one Tron enthusiast on Wednesday. After spotting the magic word in the mainnet code for TRX, he theorized that the coin was poised to be listed on Coinbase. Crypto twitter promptly piled in, mocking the unfortunate individual with “coinbase” references they’d spotted in other altcoin code.

Coinbase Does More Coinbase Things

Coinbase (the exchange, not the input field) has had a busy week, announcing its support for bitcoin forks and a venture project to invest in early stage crypto companies. Expect a lot of ethereum-related stuff. In addition, the WSJ is reporting that Coinbase is in talks with the SEC with a view to becoming a fully regulated brokerage. No wonder they’re steering clear of potential security tokens.

Nice Guy Vitalik No More

Vitalik Buterin is one of crypto’s mildest mannered figures. He’s rarely caught up in Twitter spats or found talking smack about his counterparts. That all changed this week when Ethereum’s founder put his nice guy persona on hold. Not content with calling Craig Wright a fraud to his face, he’s taken potshots at EOS and Tron. Buterin’s April 1 blog post addressing ethereum’s token supply was 20% plagiarized from Tron, as a in-joke regarding Justin Sun’s penchant for copying whitepapers. On Friday, Justin Sun tweeted a diagram explaining why “#TRON is better than #ETH.” Not to be silenced, Buterin retorted with yet another jibe about Sun’s penchant for plagiarism:

Tim Draper Thinks Bitcoin Should Become India’s National Currency

Venture capitalist and crypto bigshot Tim Draper is always bullish on bitcoin. In the past week he’s came out as particularly bullish on bitcoin in India, telling the Economic Times “If I had a meeting with [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi, I would have let him know he is making a huge mistake. [Bitcoin] should be the national currency.” He added: “If the local authorities [in India] are banning crypto, then companies in the space should move elsewhere. The government needs to realize that it is stifling innovation and should instead be creating an environment where these ideas can be tested and promoted.”

What other stories caught your attention today? Let us know in the comments section below.

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