Who Is This Cobra Character?

The controversial owner of the web portal Bitcoin.org and Bitcointalk, an anon named ‘Cobra Bitcoin’, has been a popular subject within the cryptocurrency community lately. It’s strange that a person who nobody really knows has so much control within the BTC community, and lately his messages have been very cryptic, even making some  believe his accounts have been compromise .

There are a few characters within the bitcoin space who are anonymous but have enormous amounts of control over certain aspects within the bitcoin space. For instance, there is Theymos, the co-owner of Bitcoin.org, and Bitcointalk who helps operate those sites with Cobra Bitcoin. (Theymos also controls r/bitcoin and the bitcoin wiki page). Cobra was first introduced in a Github update over three years ago as the co-owner of Bitcoin.org alongside Theymos. Since then his commentary and Bitcoin.org Github requests have been very contentious.

A few tendentious discussions Cobra has brought up over the years include kicking Coinbase off the website’s recommended business list when they said they would support an alternative software client other than Bitcoin Core. Cobra has asked the community and fellow Bitcoin.org team members to change certain statements Satoshi Nakamoto made in the Bitcoin white paper. He’s asked the community to change the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm as well, among many other controversial subjects. Cobra is not a software developer, but he is mentioned as a contributor to Core’s scaling roadmap. Moreover, there is very little information about Cobra, as Bitcoin.org’s Whois records are protected by Whoisguard, and the owner’s identity remains private.