Bitcoin.org head Cobra actually wants to rewrite the Bitcoin white paper, and the community is already furious

Bitcoin.org owner Cobra (pseudonym) wants to make changes to the Bitcoin white paper released by Satoshi Nakamoto. This news has once again sparked heated discussions in the cryptocurrency community.

Cobra and Theymos, the mysterious owner of the famous Bitcoin forum BitcoinTalk, jointly own and operate Bitcoin.org. They actually had a "premeditated plan" to modify the white paper.

No one in the community really knows Cobra. Apart from occasionally popping up (in January this year, Cobra once refused to add Coinbase to Bitcoin.org), there is basically no news about him.

This news was posted on the open source community GitHub, titled "Bitcoin White Paper Amendment". People can't help but start to wonder who this Cobra is and why he thinks he is qualified to modify the Bitcoin legend?

Here’s what Cobra had to say on GitHub:

I think Satoshi's original intention for the Bitcoin whitepaper was to make it a high-standard reference. But it is outdated now. Its role as a reference has changed since 2009. Moreover, if Satoshi didn't want the whitepaper to be modified, he wouldn't have applied for the MIT license in the first place. In addition, it is clear that Satoshi's whitepaper uses some terms inappropriately and contains many errors. The Bitcoin whitepaper is supposed to be a learning resource for the Bitcoin software. But it seems that it is not doing a good enough job. Thousands of people are reading this whitepaper every month, but they don't know that they are being misled.

As soon as this news was released, many community members couldn't hold back. Here are the views of two netizens:

Many dictators will rewrite history in order to achieve their own political goals.

This is outrageous! You are not the author of the white paper, so you have no right to modify it. My God, someone is so shameless.

Indeed, Cobra’s move has aroused the dissatisfaction of most people, who believe that this behavior is improper. Legendary documents such as the Satoshi Nakamoto white paper that opened up new frontiers for Bitcoin should be worshipped.

However, some people agree with Cobra’s point of view, including Theymos. He said:

This is a very interesting suggestion! The whitepaper is outdated. I keep hearing people say "go read the Bitcoin whitepaper!" as if it is very useful.

Netizens who agree with Cobra's point of view said that Nakamoto's white paper may indeed be misleading. However, judging from the comments of netizens on reddit and Github, there are more voices of opposition.

When this news came out, the community was hotly discussing the issue of block expansion. It was said that the Bitcoin Core development team "rebelled" and might not be able to release the 2MB hard fork code on schedule. Therefore, some people said that it was really not a good time to propose amending the white paper, which would only cause trouble.

Some people also think that the community has given too much power to the person in charge of Bitcoin.org. If you Google the Bitcoin white paper, the first link will definitely be Bitcoin.org.

It is still unclear whether the white paper will be revised. Perhaps this is just another boring hype.

Theymos and Cobra have said that they can do whatever they want on Bitcoin.org, r/bitcoin, and Bitcointalk.org, and that it is a market choice whether people continue to use these sites.