Twitter suspended the @Bitcoin Twitter account, which is managed by an anonymous user, during the weekend. The account was briefly taken over by a user claiming to be Turkish, and then a user who claimed to be Russian, before apparently being returned to his previous owner on Monday afternoon.
"We do not comment on individual accounts, so there's nothing to share," said a Twitter spokesman when asked about the suspension. "That's silly if you ask me", the user behind @Bitcoin tweeted . "I would like to know why my account was given to someone else, and then when it is reset I am missing 750,000 of my followers."
The @Bitcoin account had more than 821,000 followers when it was suspended. Those followers disappeared, but it seems that Twitter is restoring slowly .
The mysterious suspension stoked conspiracy theories in the bitcoin community. The @Bitcoin account is compatible with Bitcoin Cash, also known as Bcash. Bitcoin Cash was founded by a group of developers, miners and other community members who split up in August 2017, doubling the bitcoin blockchain and establishing a new cryptocurrency, after a dispute over how to address the escalating problems of scale. network.
The relationship between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin, or Bitcoin Core, is rough. Some Bitcoin Cash followers suspected that their enemies on the Bitcoin Core side caused the suspension of @Bitcoin by falsely reporting it to Twitter via spam or harassment.
Twitter rewards bad behavior. To review, #Core fans
– Reported @Bitcoin acct to abuse
– I reported my Reddit and GitHub accounts for abuse
– Drowning Bitpay and Xapo applications with a star review and vote
etc.
This is how they "debate" with those who disagree.– Jeff Garzik (@jgarzik) April 8, 2018
There have been calls to report the @Bitcoin account before. In January, a user called others to report the account, calling it "Fake @Bitcoin account". Some community members agreed, while others objected, saying that the owner of the account should be able to tweet about what they wanted. As with many online conversations about bitcoin, it is difficult to say who is real and who is a puppet of socks; the thread was finally blocked because the moderators claimed that the users were "brigading and fraudulent votes". Likewise, on Twitter there was an avalanche of tweets from accounts that claimed that they had informed @Bitcoin to spread what they considered Bitcoin Cash propaganda. Others said they reported it for "spam," "hate speech," or "price pumping." "I complained to Google, because when I used Google bitcoin, I got a Twitter account on Twitter prominently with three separate posts, and always the first was that bcash was the real bitcoin," says a Reddit comment. "It seemed like a fraudulent statement with the intention of confusing and inducing newbies to buy their cheap product."
Some said they believed that the account had been previously hijacked by Bitcoin Cash supporter Roger Ver. The account, which was registered in August 2011 according to his Twitter biography, only started tweeting about Bitcoin Cash in January. At that time, @Bitcoin tweeted "The ownership of this account has not changed ownership, I became busy with other things, much has changed since then and I have decided to take a more active role in the community once More. "See affirms that it has no connection to the account, and that it is" owned by someone involved in Bitcoin since 2009. "
I've never had the account @Bitcoin . It is owned by someone involved in Bitcoin since 2009. It is compatible #BCH is well known in the Bitcoin ecosystem, but does not want to deal with the incessant drag so it has decided not to make public its identity.
– Roger Ver (@rogerkver) April 9, 2018
A deeper conspiracy theory says that Twitter suspended the account due to the support of CEO Jack Dorsey for Bitcoin Core and the investment of $ 2.5 million in Lightning Labs, a startup construction technology for Bitcoin Core.
"I would love to hear a public explanation from @twittersupport about why #bitcoin competitor #LightningNetwork investor @jack disabled this account, gave it to someone else, only to return it in the face of public reaction with 750,000 fewer followers," account @Bitcoin tweeted after being restored.
Some felt that the @Bitcoin account should not be used by anyone. "Twitter is a platform for people to promote their own agenda", tweeted to Nick Tomaino, a cryptocurrency venture capitalist. "The correct thing is that @bitcoin remains inactive / suspended".
Twitter began blocking ads related to cryptocurrencies at the end of March, but confirmed that it does not have specific content rules for cryptocurrencies.
