Ethereum Insider Steven Nerayoff has threatened to release more evidence on the alleged irregularities involving the network. His comment suggests that this evidence could have far-reaching consequences as it will expose “criminals on a magnitude that is unprecedented.”

Nerayoff Promises To Expose Criminals Posed As Altruists

Nerayoff stated in an X (formerly Twitter) post that he was soon going to unveil “data” that unmasks certain criminals that are currently posing as “altruists.” He noted that he had made good on his earlier promise of the recording. As such, the crypto community can also be certain that he will make good on this one, too. 

It is uncertain who these “altruists” might be. However, Nerayoff could be alluding to Ethereum founders Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin, as he had earlier remarked that the duo were “carefully crafted” as “crypto saviors.” Meanwhile, Nerayoff, who was an active participant during Ethereum’s ICO, made further claims against the ETH ecosystem. 

A “few players” are allegedly said to control the vast majority of Ether. The Ethereum insider alleged that these same persons have significant control of other cryptocurrencies, including the “majority of rug pulls, fraudulent ICOs and exploits.” Nerayoff also hinted that everything might not be as it seems as he says that “the whole game is rigged and controlled by these few.”

A former Ethereum core developer, Lane Rettig, had previously backed some of Nerayoff’s claims as he said that 70% of pre-mined ETH was immediately distributed. Then, Rettig seemed to be suggesting that a majority of the distributed ETH went to Etthereum’s founders or those closely associated with them. 

Meanwhile, Nerayoff highlighted the fact that none of Ethereum’s founders or close associates have come out to refute his allegations. He suggested that they have chosen to remain silent because everything he has said so far is true. 

ETH price falls to $2,200 | Source: ETHUSD on Tradingview.com

Nerayoff Comes For Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin

The Ethereum insider wasn’t done as he took a swipe at co-founder Vitalik Buterin. He labeled him as a “false altruist” and accused him of putting up a facade. Nerayoff also said that Buterin makes a lot of calculated financial decisions for someone who says he doesn’t care about the money. 

His comments about Buterin also suggest that the Ethereum co-founder might be one of the criminals that he was referring to in his earlier remarks. Nerayoff even went as far as alleging that Vitalik controls the market. 

One of Nerayoff’s boldest claims to date came in a subsequent post where he accused Vitalik of blowing “half the Ethereum ICO proceeds betting it all on the price of BTC.” The Ethereum co-founder went on to beg the Chinese government after this was done, Nerayoff claimed. 

Featured image from Blockmanity, chart from Tradingview.com

The ‘Ethereum is a security’ debate has been going on for a while now. With the move to proof of stake from proof of work closer than ever, the thoughts and think pieces around these have ramped up significantly over the last couple of weeks. It has begun to gain more traction as some notable personalities in the crypto community have chimed in in support of Ethereum being a security and founder Vitalik Buterin has now taken to Twitter to address them.

Buterin Strikes Back

Vitalik Buterin has responded to those who keep saying that Ethereum is a security. This school of thought has arisen from the fact that Ethereum is now moving to a new proof mechanism and a lot of personalities have argued that this makes the digital asset a security. One of these has been a Twitter user and Bitcoin supporter who goes by the name Nick Payton on Twitter. According to Payton, the fact that users of the network were able to vote to change to proof of stake made it a security.

Related Reading | Investor Sentiment Nosedives As Crypto Market Sheds $50 Billion

This obviously struck a nerve with founder Buterin who had lashed out at Payton. In a quote tweet, the Ethereum founder explained that believing that the network moving to a proof of stake mechanism meant that users could vote on protocol parameters was a “bold-faced lie”. He explained that proof of stake does not work any differently from proof of work in that regard, saying, “Nodes reject invalid blocks, in PoS and in PoW. It’s not hard.”

ETH price maintaining above $1,000 | Source: ETHUSD on  TradingView.com

In another tweet, the Ethereum founder also corrected some grammatical uses that may have led to confusion. “When talking about things like proof of stake, we don’t say “it’s a security”, we say “it’s secure”,” said Buterin, alluding to the words often used to describe the move to proof of stake. “I know these suffixes are hard though, so I forgive the error,” he concluded.

But Is Ethereum A Security?

Mostly the debate about whether Ethereum is a security has been happening in circles that are densely Bitcoin maximalist. However, their support of bitcoin does not mean that their stance on Ethereum being a security has not been taken seriously and has been garnering support from crypto investors.

Besides the move to proof of stake which is believed to give users the right to vote on protocol parameters after the merge, there is also the fact that Ethereum had an ICO when it first launched. It was not incredibly popular at that point but a lot of people had first gotten into the digital ICO back in 2014. Due to this, many believe that Ethereum qualifies to be called a security.

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Another prominent figure in the space who has chimed in is MicroStrategy CEO, Michael Saylor. According to Saylor, Ethereum can be classified as a security because of a number of things. “It was issued via an ICO [initial coin launch],” said the CEO. “There’s a management team. There was a pre-mine. There’s a hard fork. There are continual hard forks. There’s a difficulty bomb that keeps getting pushed back.”

“For it to be a commodity, there can’t be an issuer, and the truth is you can’t really make decisions. One of the fundamental insights in the crypto industry is the fact that you can change it is what makes it a security,” Saylor added.

Featured image from Bloomberg, charts from TradingView.com

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