Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin believes Bitcoin SV is a fraud but says centralized exchanges like Binance should “burn in hell”.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has publicly questioned both Binance and Bitcoin SV in an interview with YouTuber Hardcore Crypto.

Buterin called Dr. Craig S Wright’s Bitcoin SV a “complete scam” in the interview, which was released amidst a major cryptocurrency market correction.

Ironically, Bitcoin SV is one of few coins to be gaining ground as the rest of the market sees red and has trebled in price over the past month.

Binance delisting Bitcoin SV is worrying

Buterin said he was concerned about Bitcoin SV it being delisted so abruptly by centralized exchange Binance following CEO CZ’s anger at Wright suing people who doubt his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

“Obviously BSV is a complete scam, but the delisting from Binance – that was interesting. There’s arguments in favour of it, but then there’s also an argument that this is a centralized exchange that’s wielding a lot of power.”

‘Dangerous and pernicious force’

CCN’s Greg Thomson made a similar point in an opinion piece at the time:

“There’s a case to be made that by delisting BSV on a whim, Binance has shown itself to be a much more dangerous and pernicious force in the crypto space than Bitcoin SV ever could have been.”

Thomson alleged that Binance artificially inflates the trading volumes of BNB and Launchpad tokens and charges exorbitant listing fees rumoured to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars – and possibly more than a million.

However, since October last year listing fees have been donated to the Blockchain Charity Foundation, instead of filling Binance’s coffers.

Binance simply has too much power

Buterin said in the interview that Binance – whose turnover is around $2.7 billion a day at present – simply has too much power.

“They’ve asked for big listing fees,” he said, adding, “They influence which coins win and lose by deciding which trading pairs they have – so it’s weird to criticize that one decision (the delisting) without looking at all their others.”

Buterin said he had long been opposed to centralization.

“I’m sure you’ve heard my comment last year about wanting centralized exchanges to burn in hell as much as possible!

“I do really want decentralized exchanges to succeed. ”

Ironically, Binance has just launched its own decentralized exchange called Binance DEX, however, it has a reported daily trade volume of just $13 million spread across a range of little known coins.

* 128 MB blocks are an insanely stupid idea.

* Every technical proposal CSW has put forward is so stupid it makes the iota team look like it's run by Dan Boneh.

* You can't not talk about CSW because who else does BSV have?

* No idea what their vision or goal even is. — Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) December 7, 2018

Buterin’s ongoing feud with ‘dumpster fire’

This is not the first time that Buterin has sunk the boot into Bitcoin SV or Craig Wright.

In December he called Bitcoin SV a ‘pure dumpster fire” and questioned the point of the Bitcoin fork’s 128MB block sizes.

This will increase to 2GB block size, which supporters say will enable it to become the most scalable blockchain in existence.

Ethereum is also attempting to scale massively, with Buterin publicly predicting a million transactions a second.

Despite the projects having major differences in their use cases, Bitcoin SV supporters believe Buterin sees BSV as a threat.

Buterin called 128MB blocks “an insanely stupid idea” and said that “every technical proposal CSW has put forward is so stupid it makes the IOTA team look like its run by Dan Boneh.”

Is Bitcoin SV hatred backfiring?

However, there are signs the vitriol against Wright is backfiring in part, by ensuring wall to wall coverage of his claims and engendering sympathy for him.

Commenting on the video, viewer Ivey Benjamin wrote: “Lol the more I listen to the ones against BSV the more I feel like CSW might actually be Satoshi.

“CSW for the most part in his recent interviews looks so relaxed and just explains what bitcoin and blockchain are supposed to be so well.”

Bitcoin SV has been one of the most successful coins in the past month, shooting up by 320% during a couple of heroic pumps.

It is the only coin in the top ten to have been unaffected by the current crypto market correction and is still up 86% on a week ago.

While it’s been linked to “fake news”, manipulation, and Wright registering the copyright to Bitcoin (for a $35 fee with no official determination whether he was the author), at least some of the increase appears to come from speculators taking a punt on Wright being able to prove in court he really is Satoshi Nakamoto.

There’s also speculation he was close to another man named Paul ‘Soltoshi’ Calder Le Roux, who various people believe is Satoshi, and has access to one million BTC on an encrypted hard drive.