Doxxing Scammers and Sharing Their Names – Bitcoin Magazine
This is an opinion editorial by Robert Hall, a Bitcoin pleb.
Is it OK to Dox Scammers?
This question has become relevant after the spectacular collapse of Terra/LUNA, Three Arrows Capital and Celsius. At a basic level, I think it’s perfectly fine to dox these people in the wider “crypto” industry because they are swindling middle-income people out of their hard-earned money.
It does not matter that the industry is new and lacks significant regulation in the space. Fraud is fraud regardless of industry. Bad actors in the fiat world have the book thrown at them; the same standard should also apply to bad actors in cryptocurrency.
Fraudsters in the broader cryptocurrency industry are making Bitcoiners look bad. The average retail consumer doesn’t know the difference between bitcoin, ether, dogecoin or thousands of other shitcoins.
The only thing people curious about Bitcoin will hear in the media is that these bitcoin-adjacent companies gambled away their customers’ money on high-risk tokens and hid what they were doing from the general public. They will take this information and be turned off to bitcoin even if it had nothing to do with it. It’s not fair, but that’s how people will react.
If we want Bitcoin to succeed, avoiding the fraudsters is critical to preserving the mission at hand, which is the global adoption of bitcoin as the global reserve currency.
Self-policing should be encouraged as it reinforces good behavior and drives out the bad. If scammers know they can’t make a profit and walk away unscathed, they’re less likely to enter the room in the first place. Self-policing also keeps the authorities’ heavy hand away from an industry that is still in its infancy. Government regulations kill innovations before they get off the ground. That’s the last thing we need right now.
Like it or not, every Bitcoiner is a soldier in this culture war. On the one hand you have fiat values of lies, deception, greed and despair. On the other hand, Bitcoiners stand for truth, honesty, hope and love. These are the values we want to maintain and present to the world as an alternative to the dystopian picture of hell caused by fiat values.
If we allow fiat values to permeate what Bitcoin represents, what is the point of this whole experiment of creating a new monetary system? We might as well give up now. Never before has there been an opportunity for the plebs to set the rules of the economic game.
We should not lose the chance we have to change the world for the better.
Bitcoiners were right all along
I think a round of applause should be given to the Bitcoin Maximalists who warned people about Celsius and Terra’s problems before the house of cards collapsed. I saw countless tweets in my feed from people thanking Bitcoiners for asking them to withdraw bitcoin. They saved countless people from being pulled in the carpet. This was an act of love and kindness.
Bitcoiners didn’t have to do this. They could have sat back and said nothing.
Bitcoiners did this out of a sense of duty and honor. It’s like watching someone drown in a pool: A sane person doesn’t sit there and let the person drown, they take action to help the person in need.
Bitcoiners knew these companies were in trouble and set out to save as many people as possible. Where were the altcoins during this debacle? Did they talk?
There is no other community like the Bitcoin community. These are some of the most intelligent and thoughtful people you can engage with on the internet or in real life.
Wear the Bitcoin Maximalist label with pride. We are the tip of the spear in this revolution.
This is a guest post by Robert Hall. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
