IN DIFFERENT circumstances the two people could be good friends. Each is rather shy and very smart. And each is passionate about bitcoin, a digital currency. One invented hashcash, which foreshadowed components of the crypto-currency; the other is the author of the first Chinese translation of the white paper in which Satoshi Nakamoto, the elusive creator of bitcoin, first described its inner workings.
Adam Back is the chief executive of Blockstream, a Canadian startup, which employs some of the main developers of the software that defines bitcoin’s inner workings. Jihan Wu is the boss of Bitmain, a Chinese firm, which makes about 80% of the chips that power “miners”, specialised computers that keep the bitcoin network secure, confirm payments and mint new digital coins. But far from being fellow-travellers, each represents one of the two main camps in what has come to be called a “bitcoin civil war”, fought over how, if at all, the system should grow
