OpenNode Co-Founder: Tim Draper's Bitcoin Cash Tweet Was From a Hacker
On September 4th, long-time Bitcoin investor Tim Draper confused his 144,000 followers when he tweeted out a promotional tweet about Bitcoin Cash.
"I recently purchased some BCH. So easy to buy/use. Go to http://Bitcoin.com. Thank you @rogerver_cash for this innovation. #bitcoin #BitcoinCash," the tweet from Draper's account read.
The now deleted tweet from Tim Draper's account. Source: Twitter
Tim Draper is a venture capitalist best known in the Bitcoin space for participating in the Silk Road auction of bitcoin, purchasing nearly 30,000 coins for a purported $19 million. He has also made investments in Baidu, Hotmail, Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, and Coinbase.
Being an earlier Bitcoin adopter, his seemingly sudden involvement in Bitcoin Cash shocked many on Twitter. Weirder still, the account he tagged in the tweet, which uses the handle @rogerver_cash, is not the official account of Roger Ver, formerly known as “Bitcoin Jesus.”
The confusion was finally resolved after two days of radio silence on Draper's end, with a co-founder of Bitcoin payment processor OpenNode revealing that the investor had been hacked.
OpenNode Co-Founder Confirms Draper's Bitcoin Cash Tweet Wasn't From Him
João Almeida said on September 6th that Draper's account was hacked, hence the tweet and the subsequent deletion of that message:
"Can confirm his account was compromised and he deleted the tweet as soon as he was aware."
Tim Draper invested $1.25 million into OpenNode in 2018.
The confirmation of a hack is in line with Draper's usage of Twitter. Looking through years of his tweets, the BTC Times found no mentions on the investor's timeline of any other popular cryptocurrency but Bitcoin. Not even Ethereum, which he has purportedly invested in, was a topic of one of his tweets. Furthermore, the BTC Times could not find a video in which the investor mentioned the term "Bitcoin Cash."
Draper is also not an active user of Twitter, posting only a few tweets a month. That may explain why he did not instantly delete the tweet once it was published.
Plot Twist
In an interview published on September 11th, Tim Draper revealed it was indeed him who published the tweet, dispelling previous assumptions that his account had been compromised.
Speaking to the recent controversy, Draper explained that he authored the tweet after talking to Roger Ver: “I didn’t realize it had security problems, but he did create a token that was easily moved, and so I did put that tweet in.” Ultimately, Draper removed the tweet in question after he “did a little more research.”
Draper further stated that he is “a big Bitcoin owner” and his main focus remains on Bitcoin, but that he wants to “recognize people for the other things that they do in the Bitcoin community, and how they’re improving this world.”
UPDATE (Sep 12, 6:40 UTC): Added "Plot Twist" section at end of article after Tim Draper stated during an interview that the tweet in question was in fact posted by himself.