Dorsey Engages in Twitter War Over Ether’s Security Status

Jack Dorsey, a longtime Bitcoin advocate, is engaged in a Twitter war with several crypto industry experts after he answered “yes” to a query asking if Ether was security.

The remark drew the attention of Udi Wertheimer, a Bitcoin Ordinals developer at Taproot Wizards, who implied on June 6 that Dorsey was a “clown.”

Dorsey tweeted in response, “ETH is not a security.” Teach me, wizard,” which prompted Wertheimer to share a five-year-old video of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler declaring that ETH was now “sufficiently decentralized” and not a security.

Gabor Gurbacs, strategy counsel for stablecoin issuer Tether and investment management firm VanEck, responded to Wertheimer’s remark by stating that Ethereum’s recent transition to proof-of-stake may have reactivated securities laws.

The online altercation follows the SEC’s filing of litigation against cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Coinbase on June 5 and 6 for allegedly offering unregistered securities in the form of tokens.

Dorsey also tweeted a screenshot of a 2015 post by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, in which he referred to altcoins as a “distraction” and stated that Coinbase should “be focused” on Bitcoin.

Dorsey continued his pro-Bitcoin tweeting spree by retweeting a video of Jack Mallers, CEO of Bitcoin Lightning application Strike, criticizing Armstrong for prioritizing altcoin development over Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.

In 2021, when Dorsey was in command of Twitter, the company sold 140 nonfungible tokens (NFTs) based on Ethereum, but he refused to invest in Ether then.

Dorsey also minimized Ethereum’s development in August 2021 when he stated that Ethereum alone could not disrupt significant technology.

Recently, Dorsey has provided funding and become an advocate for Nostr, a decentralized “Twitter killer” network that incorporates Bitcoin Lightning-based payments on the “Damus” platform.