Bitcoin core developer Mike Hearn’s farewell essay has drawn much criticism, particularly that it was a publicity stunt for his latest project R3CEV. In November, R3CEV, a New York City startup, announced that Hearn and four other people would lead the blockchain consortium.
Hearn has refuted the claims in a “small followup” post on Medium. He addressed the banker conspiracy theory saying, “After I privately concluded Bitcoin wasn’t working I took a job with a startup that’s looking at how to apply distributed ledger technology in the existing financial system (R3 CEV)… R3 is not a Bitcoin company, or even a cryptocurrency company, and there is no “BankCoin” or “R3Coin”… conspiracy theories are just a waste of time when there are more serious issues to consider.”
Hearn also pointed to the official R3 blog, penned by Todd McDonald that says, “The resulting kerfuffle has led to a few quite detailed (and somewhat enjoyable) conspiracy theories on The Internets, mainly saying that R3 instructed Mike as part of some coordinated ‘attack’ on Bitcoin. If only we had such control over a brilliant mind like Mike. He is a programmer after all …”
Moreover, he also spoke about the article on the New York Times by Nathaniel Popper, published around the same time as his blog post. He clarified:
“I wrote my article because I knew the story in the NYT was coming (and had told my colleagues about it) but wasn’t sure what it’d say, so I wanted a chance to put things in my own words. I wasn’t asked to write, or paid to, nor can I financially benefit from doing so in any way. The timing was chosen by the NYT.”
