The individual behind the Cøbra pseudonym is making thinly veiled threats of violence against the law firm representing Dr. Craig Wright in the defense of his copyright in the Bitcoin white paper.
Last week, Dr. Wright’s copyright infringement suit against Cøbra gained momentum as a U.K. court ruled that Wright’s lawyers could serve Cøbra with papers regarding Bitcoin.org’s hosting of the white paper. As the white paper’s author, Dr. Wright maintains that sites which promote the bastardized BTC protocol, such as the Cøbra-controlled Bitcoin.org, have no right to host his work.
The following day, Cøbra’s Twitter account warned Simon Cohen—whose ONTIER law firm represents Wright—that he was “a stain on the British legal profession. There will come a time when you will face consequences for your behaviour.”
Were this anyone other than Cøbra, such warnings could be dismissed as typical ‘internet tough guy’ bluster. But Cøbra has previously tweeted his support for so-called ‘assassination markets,’ arguing that “an ideal anarchist society needs a functional way to remove undesirables, and a collective incentive for their elimination could be one way of implementing P2P ‘law’.”
A few years ago, Cøbra tweeted a message acknowledging the death of Timothy C. May, founder of the crypto-anarchist movement, with which Cøbra strongly identifies. May was also a prolific writer, and his Crypto Anarchist Manifesto and Cyphernomicon texts both contain references to assassination markets.
The Cyphernomicon is more explicit on May’s view of extrajudicial killings, and while he qualified his moral outlook as something that “many will find unacceptable or repugnant,” he believed “anonymous rodent removal services will be a tool of liberty.” May also claimed that “the liquidation of politicians and other thieves” reflected the “positive side of crypto anarchy.”
Crypto-based killings is my business
The crypto world’s association with murder-for-hire was strengthened courtesy of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road online marketplace that facilitated Bitcoin-based sales of illicit products. Ulbricht, currently serving life in prison following his 2013 arrest, was alleged to have paid others to murder certain individuals who threatened to cause grief to his operations (although no murders were proven to have occurred as a result of these payments).
While Silk Road never permitted its vendors to offer murder-for-hire, other sites soon emerged for that express purpose. The same year Silk Road was shut down, Forbes reported on the launch of Assassination Market, described as “a kind of Kickstarter for political assassinations.”
The individual behind Assassination Market, who adopted the pseudonym Kuwabatake Sanjuro, said the site was designed to destroy “all governments, everywhere.” (Several years later, Cøbra expressed similar views, calling Bitcoin “a declaration of war against governments” and “a tool to destroy the state’s monopoly on violence.”)
While Assassination Market reportedly garnered deposits of around 180 BTC, no killings appear to have been carried out. Similar sites have appeared over the years with a similar lack of homicidal results.
However, the individuals who transferred BTC to these sites didn’t know in advance that they were being scammed, meaning they were sincerely seeking the violent deaths of individuals (be they public figures or ex-lovers). And where there’s a market for a product or service, someone will eventually deliver that product or service.
Cøbra v evil
In 2018, as part of his public statements supporting assassination markets, Cøbra tweeted that “in an anarchist society, there still needs to be *some* way to remove evil human beings without a centralized authority.”
In case you were wondering, here’s a list of the individuals and entities that Cøbra has declared ‘evil’ over the years: Roger Ver, John McCain, Barack Obama, Bitmain, BitPay, Blockstream, Coinbase, Twitter, Israel and China. Oh, and Craig Wright.
To our knowledge, Cøbra has yet to seek the deaths of any of those individuals listed above, or any individuals that work for the companies he’s dubbed evil. Then again, Dr. Wright is the only one of those names pursuing legal action that could deprive Cøbra of the income he derives from promoting the Bitcoin.org site.
So Cøbra has a clear motive to see Dr. Wright exit the scene and has proclaimed the moral flexibility necessary to seek said exit. With the past year’s dramatic surge in the value of the BTC token, Cøbra presumably has the wherewithal to pay the fare. And Cøbra has kept his real-world identity a closely guarded secret, lessening the likelihood of suffering any repercussions from illegal acts.
Not for nothing, but Dr. Wright and his legal representatives may want to have someone else start their cars in the morning.
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