David Schwartz, chief technology officer at Ripple, has weighed in on the debate about Bitcoin not being part of crypto that was reignited by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
A lot of X commentators misunderstood Dorsey’s statement, which caused some confusion.
Linguistic nuance
The Rippled CTO, who recently announced that he would be leaving the job at the end of the year, added some linguistic nuance to the conversation.
The phrasing with no indefinite article means that Bitcoin is not part of the class of tokens that are generally considered to be crypto in modern investment discourse.
However, using an indefinite article would mean that Bitcoin is not a cryptocurrency itself, which is obviously not the case.
Some took Dorsey’s words literally, pointing to Bitcoin’s fundamental cryptography. However, this was not Dorsey’s point.
Longtime altcoin opponent
Dorsey, who first encountered Bitcoin all the way back in 2010, has been a longtime opponent of alternative cryptocurrencies.
As reported by U.Today, he previously ruffled some feathers by trolling the Ethereum community with the Ethiopian flag. He also claimed that Ethereum had "many single points of failure."
For many Bitcoin maximalists, the term “crypto” has become somewhat pejorative.
They believe that “crypto,” which is highly speculative and virtually infinite, has little in common with the flagship cryptocurrency, which is believed to be highly decentralized and scarce. This essentially explains why Dorsey is vehemently rejecting the term.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team