'Professor' Jiang's Bitcoin 'CIA operation' claim triggers backlash

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Jiang Xueqin, popularly known as "Professor Jiang," is best known for his commentary on geopolitical matters on his YouTube channel "Predictive History."

With 2.3 million subscribers, Jiang is a very popular YouTuber whose videos keep going viral. Though he uses the term "Professor," he hasn't taught at a university level.

On Apr. 15, he appeared on podcaster Jack Neel's YouTube channel and made several claims about Bitcoin (BTC) that caught the attention of the crypto community.

The American deep state created Bitcoin as a surveillance and ops-funding tool and it's a "CIA operation," Jiang claimed.

In fact, he called Satoshi Nakamoto, the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, a cover for a CIA operation. Nakamoto’s anonymity is “institutionally suspicious,” he said.

Jiang put forward three questions under what he calls the game theory framework:

Who had the technical capacity to build Bitcoin?
Who benefits from Bitcoin's transparent ledger?
Why would anyone build such a system and give it away for free?

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are the obvious answers, he highlighted.

“When you do game theory analysis, you look at all possibilities, you end up with the deep state,” Jiang said. “You end up with the CIA.”

Bitcoin's ledger is public, which means all the transactions are publicly available; so, it's not a privacy tool at all. Instead, it's a financial surveillance tool, he argued.

Regardless of the open-source code, he questioned where the Bitcoin network's servers are physically located.

The popular YouTuber also claimed that the Winklevoss twins had insider information, which is why they invested in Bitcoin so early.

Bitcoiners slam Jiang's Bitcoin claims

The Bitcoin community sharply criticized Jiang's Bitcoin claims and put forward a range of arguments to debunk his claims.

A crypto user on X, who uses the handle ZynxBTC, said it doesn't matter who created Bitcoin because it is decentralized and not controlled by any single entity.

Regarding the presence of Bitcoin's physical servers, he said they are spread across the world, where nodes are running the network.

"Bitcoin is ultimately an IQ test and this "Professor" has failed," ZynxBTC remarked. "It's been 17 years and they still fail to understand the basics."

Another veteran Bitcoiner, Ansel Lindner, called Jiang one of those "dimwits" who don't understand Bitcoin's decentralization model.

Investment strategist and Bitcoin advocate Lyn Alden agreed with Lindner, saying people like Jiang don’t understand the open-source or the proof-of-work aspects of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is transparent and decentralized and it doesn't matter who created it, she added.

At press time, Bitcoin was trading at $74,365.83.

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'Professor' Jiang's Bitcoin 'CIA operation' claim triggers backlash

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Bitcoiners slam Jiang's Bitcoin claims