In this position statement, I urge Ethereum’s community to fork, soft and hard.
Like almost everyone, I fully dismissed Bitcoin in 2011 when a devastating MT Gox hack created a meme that Bitcoin was not safe, not secure, that the network could not be trusted with our money.
Bitcoin almost died back then.
I did not pay any attention until early 2013, getting actively involved in late 2013/early 2014 when fate so had it I was to publicize findings that MT Gox had 200k bitcoins that they were hiding. The bitcoin CEO meme arose at the time because a beautiful woman who was the CEO of a bitcoin exchange jumped to her death on the news of MT Gox’s bankruptcy. At least six individuals are known (from blurry memory) to have died because of MT Gox.
The bitcoin community was never offered the option at the time to undo the catastrophe. There was no bitcoin address sitting there with 750k bitcoins, or really, any bitcoins that could be attributed to MT Gox, even on balance. We searched and searched for months. Nothing could be found.
Whether the bitcoin community would have allowed a 750k bitcoin address known to belong to the MT Gox thief to sit there, is not in any way known. I, personally, doubt it because there were many efforts to bail out MT Gox, but the loss was so great, it simply was not an option.
If ethereum is willing to bring darkness upon itself and allow $250 million to be burned as well as the inevitable loss of life through suicide, if they care not in any way about improving, rather than destroying, lives, if they wish to crucify us in absolutes, then I expect the best to leave and tirelessly work towards something that serves my mother, exhausted father, and actually improves, not destroys, our world.
A world which is currently on standby. The immensely fast response of Vitalik Buterin, the founder of ethereum, backed by the development team, who in an amazing act of leadership came out within two hours to say the best course of action is to take the loot from the thief and give it back to the rightful owners, ensured that now the whole world is waiting to pass judgment.
I can assure you, had the community’s first response been let them burn, the mass media would have quickly reflected public opinion and rightfully, in my view, disparaged a dangerous technology which has no safeguard for hundreds of millions.
If ethereum upholds the rights of criminals above those of decent people, then it has no value proposition. Whatever small benefit it may offer is insignificant to the greater danger of hundreds of millions burned.
I urge the community to take quick action, squash the uncertainty and exercise their rightful power to deny an outright criminal his gains, avoid a train wreck. The alternative is to stand by and evilly laugh, staring at the two trains nearing each other, looking at the button which creates a new track, and state to all, nay, let them die.
Fork it. Fork it soft and fork it hard. All else is suicide, literally.
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