I've been looking into this recent BitShares Hard Fork and something just doesn't fit.
For those that don't know about BitShares, it's a decentralized exchange. Don't hold me to this, but it may be the first DEX built after the launch of Bitcoin.
At the very least, it was one of the first. BitShares also offered DeFi way before the current craze was a dream in a coins' eye. Who built it? That same man Daniel Larimer who helped build Steem. The one that sold his part of the ninja mined stake to Ned. And we know the story from there.
It made possible the events that led to another Hard Fork. The one that led to the creation of HIVE. See where I'm going with this? This alone is enough info to make me suspicious of this Hard Fork. But there's more.
BitShares Was Broken (In Part) & Was Recently Patched
For the record, BitShares has had a rough history. There have been bumps along the way. When I came around, there was the Arise Banking mess which involved Jared Rice. Not sure what ever happened to him but BTS was able to move forward.
There has been trouble between BitShares and different exchanges in the past as well, to the immense detriment of BTS. Check out this post on Medium b.y Michael Taggart back in Dec of 2017.
You can read the full depth of the article but a major point is this:
In early October the popular cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex announced they would be delisting all of the BitShares (BTS) trading pairs (ETH/BTC, BTC/BTS) from their exchange.
Which led to this:
BitShares holders were forced to remove all of their BitShares from the exchange and all BitShares trading on Bittrex has ceased. As a result, $150 million was wiped off the BitShares market cap, almost instantly.
The story goes on. In the article, Taggart explains why centralized exchanges might take issue with a DEX such as BitShares.
And what do we have today? There's not as much of a shortage of decentralized exchanges anymore. Uniswap has surpassed the trading volume of Coinbase!
Could people be tired of the crap centralized exchanges are known for pulling? High transaction fees, disabled wallets, and using your crypto as a proxy against your will are a few examples of concern.
Accusations Without Any Proof
But wait? How could there not be proof? Isn't BitShares an open sourced project? All the code should be right there on GitHub.
I have no idea idea where to find what coding the two sides are talking about, but I do know functions of BitShares were broken. Someone had written code that disrupted its Bit-Assets.
And I assumed, as the developers assured, that the update to BitShares MainNet 4.0 had fixed those issues. Here's where the contention comes in.
A group that calls themselves the BTS China Association or (BCA) initiated the hard fork. The new coin is called New BitShares or NBS. They claim a backdoor was written into the new code. But wait a minute.
The fix seemed to prevent a previous loophole from allowing certain investors to manipulate the price of BTS. So which is it? Like I said. BTS sure seemed broken which would make it easy to manipulate. Perhaps it was broken to be manipulated. I don't know.
When Two Sides Claim The Opposite, Someone Isn't Being Honest
On Twitter, claims couldn't contradict themselves any better than this:
https://twitter.com/ioBanker/status/1304635001175146496?s=19
- ioBanker
And this:
https://twitter.com/cancanel78/status/1304822854744264704?s=19
- cancanel78
Now that BitShares has updated to MainNet 4.0, it could be difficult to point out this backdoor code. So where is it? Does anyone know which repository to look for it in GitHub?
Of course, if no such backdoor code exists, that'll make the code impossible to find.
Something smells fishy, and I'm pretty certain I know which way the wind is blowing.
Thanks for reading and as always...
Bottom Image Courtesy Of Hive.io Brand Assets
Want To Join The HIVE Community? Use My Referral Link To HiveOnboard.com
