ETF analyst sparks outrage with ‘blatant misinformation’ about Ethereum

Bloomberg’s senior exchange-traded fund (ETF) analyst Eric Balchunas riled up the online Ethereum community who claimed he posted “misinformation” in a now-deleted X post.

On Oct. 7, Balchunas shared an excerpt from Benjamin Hart’s book, Bitcoin: Beginner’s Guide, and added that Ether (ETH) “just isn’t the same or as secure” as Bitcoin (BTC) in response to a request for a crypto book recommendation by ETF Store president Nate Geraci.

The book excerpt claimed that the United States government could “shut down Ethereum” by telling Amazon Web Services (AWS) to turn off its cloud services. 

AWS is used as a hosting provider for 28.4% of Ethereum nodes, according to Ethernodes. Not enough to totally knock the network offline.

The book’s other claim was that a rogue state or terrorist organization could kidnap Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and force him to hand over “all the Ether they want.” 

Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano said in response to Balchunas’ deleted post that it was “absolute blatant misinformation and pretty much complete propaganda.” 

“You should be utterly ashamed of yourself for even sharing this (and you only deleted it because you didn’t want to deal with people calling you out),” Sassano added.

Consensys product manager Jimmy Ragosa stated the shared excerpt was “the most propaganda-ridden paragraph ever.”

Related: Bitcoin maximalism is misguided — Satoshi Nakamoto was a ‘Maxi Plus’

Balchunas’ fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart replied to the now-deleted post saying, “These replies are about to be amazing hahaha.”

Balchunas replied, “Lol I don’t have time today, will just leave up Bitcoin sections.” 

Ethereum developers have also recently emphasized solo staking and low hardware requirements to further decentralize the blockchain.

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