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Hostile Takeover? A Coup d’é·tat In BitShares Leads To BitShares 2.0

Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:44 PM
Justin OConnell
Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:44 PM

BitsharesA shadowy figure – either an individual, but most likely numerous individuals – has apparently taken over enough shares  in BitShares, the Bitcoin 2.0 technology, to considerably steer the project. So much so, in fact, that, in response, a BitShares 2.0 project has been launched this month. 

Inner turmoil has seemingly undermined the expansion of the BitShares project, which has suffered the negative effects of not only a dilution of BitSharesX (BTSX), but also the negative impacts of publicized inner-strife, beginning with the evidence that the original BitShares white paper  is no longer online.

As natter in Bitcoin and BitShares forums would have it, Chinese whales have entered the market and made demands regarding a uniform marketing strategy for BitShares. Concerns among BitShares participants have been diverse, including the threat of a Chinese whale accumulating BitShares with the plan to dump them .

Participants lamented the fact that they now had a “professional PR initiative ” due to this whale’s perceived control over the market. According to rumors, no Core Developers were able to make comment on any subject on the forum unless approved and posted through the so-called “Spokesman.”

Also read: BitShares Brings A Human Element To Bitcoin 2.0

Essentially, the story goes, Chinese stakeholders have accumulated enough BTSX to censor the development team. They suffered, according to the story, under a dilution of the cost of BitSharesX, and, now disgruntled, want more control over how BitShares is run. “Since Bitshares likes to call itself a company,”  one BitcoinTalk poster, in a thread called ‘Bitcoin oligarchy rears its head,’ says,

This development is akin to a hostile corporate takeover, except that the raiding parties have the ability to kill the price in such an illiquid market.

This month BitShares 2.0 was announced. The program will be released around September this year. “It is a game changer in the crypto world,” Wright tells CCN.com. According to him,  it solves all of the complaints most mainstream pundits have about Bitcoin.

Some of the capabilities of BitShares 2.0 include, among other things, a Smartchain which can do more than the block chain, according to BitShares 2.0 proponents. For one, this Smartchain can process 100,000 transactions per second compared to the seven transactions per second the Bitcoin network can process, with reliable one second confirmation times, while Bitcoin takes one hour to confirm a transaction. Automatic and regular payments are available on the Smartchain, as is multisig.

BitShares 2.0 consists of totally new code, “re-written from the ground up.” It is no longer a block chain project, according to Wright, but a “Smartchain” project. On BitShares.org, BitShares recently released a blog about why they were starting over: “There are many reasons for starting over from scratch and producing a new toolkit and this article hopes to shed some light on what we learned from BitShares 1.0 and the many advancements that BitShares 2.0 allows,” the project wrote.

To be certain, it is unclear to CCN.com exactly how the unraveling of BitShares 1.0 came to pass. There has been discussion on forums about what happened between the technology, nefarious interests behind the scenes and mismanagement. At the end of the day, CCN.com wishes BitShares 2.0 the best of luck with the Smartchain.