A week in tweets: Buterin claims his second “fraud” victim

Paternal instincts kicked in for Ethereum’s creator Vitalik Beuterin at the start of the week when he heard the news that new age guru Deepak Chopra had been invited as a guest speaker to the Ethereal conference in New York, one of the Ethereum community’s more notable gatherings. The Twitter-happy coder took fire at Chopra and vented in a tweet "Why is this fraud allowed to speak at this conference, part 2[?]"

For the second time in a week he took aim at a charlatan after he previously confronted the infamous Bitcoin-bragger Craig Wright at the Deconomy conference in Seoul, calling him a fraud to his face.

Self-described as the "SXSW of  blockchain" events, Ethereal is supposed to be a cultural celebration as much as it is technological and brings together artists, musicians, developers, investors, entrepreneurs etc. to share their stories. However,  inspired by Vitalik’s tweet about the "fraud" Deepak Chopra being invited to Ethereal, other blockchain luminaries echoed the distaste, including  JP Morgan’s recently departed head of blockchain Amber Baldet in an exchange with Ethereum Foundation developer Alex Van de Sande.

The crypto community are clearly a passionate lot, not just when it comes to currency partisanship but passionate about the discipline of science and logic and the hundreds of protestations on a Reddit thread attested to that. The criticism didn’t go unnoticed by the Ethereal event team and they took to a Reddit to offer an explanation.

The reaction was a bit over the top considering the invitation was to a mindfulness leader to lead a meditation but nonetheless Chopra has been criticized for years by members of the medical and science communities for his pseudoscientific claims and mingling terms from quantum physics with his own metaphors for human energy and healing which has been denounced by physicists.

Nonetheless, the Ethereal event sounds like an interesting gig and with or without Deepak will have some great speakers in attendance.

To wrap up the week on a light note, we have a look at the most entertaining Twitter thread over the past seven days which involved the grandfather of Ethereum, 24-year-old Vitalik Buterin and founder of the "new age cosmic enlightenment" Deepak Chopra.