Balchunas made a subtle comparison of the top two cryptocurrencies, saying that Ether “just isn’t the same or as secure” as Bitcoin (BTC).
Bloomberg’s top analyst Eric Balchunas recently struck the wrong nerves when he made some posts that appeared to be condemning Ether ETH $1 863 24h volatility: 0.3% Market cap: $224.89 B Vol. 24h: $6.67 B and the Ethereum network at large.
On Monday, the exchange-traded fund (ETF) specialist was responding to ETF Store president Nate Geraci’s request for a crypto book recommendation.
Balchunas responded by sharing an excerpt from Benjamin Hart’s book, ‘Bitcoin: Beginner’s Guide’. However, he also made a subtle comparison of the top two cryptocurrencies, saying that Ether “just isn’t the same or as secure” as Bitcoin BTC $64 468 24h volatility: 0.2% Market cap: $1.29 T Vol. 24h: $16.14 B .
Eric Balchunas Faces Huge Backlash for Latest Claims about Ethereum’s Vulnerability to Government Control
According to the book excerpt, it is possible for the United States government to “shut down Ethereum”. That is, by simply telling Amazon Web Services (AWS) to turn off its cloud services.
The book also theorized that it is very much possible for a group of terrorists to kidnap Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and force him to release as much Ether as they want.
Interestingly, the two theories of the book have been immediately debunked, causing Balchunas to take down the said post from the online space.
Firstly, Ethernodes suggests that AWS only caters as a hosting provider to about 28.4% of Ethereum nodes. So, if AWS should turn off its cloud services, even that is not enough to shut down the entire network.
On the issue of kidnapping, Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano expressed displeasure. He tagged Balchunas’ post as “absolute blatant misinformation and pretty much complete propaganda”.
Sassano hinted that the move by Balchunas was grossly irresponsible, saying:
“You should be utterly ashamed of yourself for even sharing this (and you only deleted it because you didn’t want to deal with people calling you out).”
Criticisms followed Balchunas’ post from every direction, with Consensys product manager Jimmy Ragosa also having something to say. In Ragosa’s opinion, the excerpt that Balchunas shared reeks of propaganda in its grandest state.
As mentioned earlier, Balchunas has since deleted the post. However, his views about Ethereum may not have changed yet.
In the meantime, though, Ethereum developers will continue with solo staking and low hardware requirements to further decentralize the blockchain.
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