Binance’s BNB, Bitcoin Fall After Crypto Twitter Personality Cobie’s Wild Guess
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Binance’s BNB token and bitcoin (BTC) plunged on Monday as a rumor spread that the crypto exchange’s CEO faced an international law enforcement request to arrest him.
It turns out that the catalyst for all of this was an encrypted message contained in a tweet that apparently wasn’t meant for the public eye — at least not yet — and that may have just been a wild guess.
“Interpol Red Notice for CZ”, read the tweet from @cobie, which is well followed by the crypto community. Not only is that account private, the text of the message was actually a jumble of letters and numbers. It had been encrypted with the SHA-256 hash function, the same cryptography that secures many cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin.
But someone figured out how to crack the post, and word spread. With Binance and its CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, having been sued by US regulators for “willful evasion” of US laws, the idea that CZ could face a criminal investigation rang true for many – and prices reacted accordingly when word spread quickly. Binance’s exchange token and bitcoin fell rapidly.
Spokespeople for Binance and Interpol did not respond to a request for comment. On Twitter, Binance Chief Strategy Officer Patrick Hillmann said of the rumor that “One of two things is true: 1. It’s bullsh-t 2. A law enforcement agent is illegally leaking elements of a case file.” He added: “My bet is #1.”
Later Monday, @cobie said via Twitter that they had posted the encrypted tweet after hearing a rumor. Effectively, @cobie created a record of something they could reveal later they knew in advance – assuming it came true. (Also, the person could just silently delete the tweet, and no one would be the wiser that it was wrong.)
“The point of a hash commitment plan is that no one should be able to read them until after the secret is revealed,” @cobie tweeted. “It appears that someone I discussed the rumor with (a handful of possible people) leaked the seed to ‘make a stir’ at my expense, remove the context of rumours, etc.
@cobie added: “Anyway, it wasn’t meant to be readable unless I revealed it, so sorry about that. Will once again narrow down the list of people I can trust. Since tweeting only leads to bad things instead good things, will probably do much less in the future.”
UPDATE (April 4, 2023, 02:03 UTC): Completely rewrites history to note that the catalyst for the rumor was just a guess.
