AUS
NZ
UK
CA
USA
IND
Pro- and anti-bitcoin supporters used to co-exist on various social media platforms. They had divergent views, they had arguments, but they stuck to the subject – Bitcoin.
However, all that changed on Thursday morning, when two famous names engaged in a Twitter brawl and things took an ugly turn.
It all started when controversial whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted: “I was looking to understand why @nntaleb (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) was cyber-bullying a young woman who writes on economics, and I stumbled upon a frankly unbelievable history of inability to handle even gentle criticism—by a man who titled his book "Antifragile." This behavior goes back years.”
For the uninitiated, Mr Taleb is a Lebanese American essayist, He is also known as a mathematical statistician and was formally an option trader and a risk analyst.
In retort to Mr Snowden, Mr Taleb said that he was just trying to defend himself as the pro-bitcoin mob of “16,000 people” was cyber-bullying him. He ended up calling Mr Snowden a “liar”.
There may have been one-off mobocracy cases on social media – especially in the Reddit space. However, these cases never got amplified. However, Mr Snowden and Mr Taleb’s banter has ended up amplifying the issue – since both of them are influencers in their own respect. It has brought to fore the issue of cyberbullying in the turf-war for cryptocurrency.
And it is an issue that needs to be reined in – much before it becomes a Frankenstein Monster. After all, cryptocurrency is picking up fast – very fast.
Impact on bitcoin price
Bullying aside, this can be a case of personal rivalry as well. When Elon Musk criticises or praises any cryptocurrency, he does that by virtue of being one of the high-profile investors in the asset class. But in this case, Mr Snowden is a whistleblower, while Mr Taleb is seasoned mathematician. Even if they hold rival positions on Bitcoin investing, yet at the heart of the latest Twitter brawl lies the issue of cyberbullying.
Till now, the tussle doesn’t seem to have impacted Bitcoin prices– it’s already trading up 3 percent. Moreover, it is unlikely that Bitcoin prices will be impacted by this banter.
