Changpeng Zhao's short-lived scramble to try to reverse the Binance hack really has me scratching my head. He actually thought he could roll back the Bitcoin blockchain. Was he serious?
As a whole, this situation makes Bitcoin look really good. Perhaps he would suggest such a thing to show how censorship resistant the blockchain really is. No one can control it.
However, it makes him look really bad. It makes him look like the leader of the biggest crypto exchange doesn't understand the fundamental concepts that make blockchain great.
| Everyone in favor of a rollback | Not in favor |
|---|---|
| Binance | Literally everyone else |
How could CZ ever in a million years expect to get the support to do this?
The fact that this hack and subsequent rollback suggestion was compared to Ethereum's DAO hack hardfork is even worse. No transactions were ever rolled back on the Ethereum blockchain.
Vitalik even had to pop up and make a Twitter comment about the situation. The only thing done in the DAO hack fork was a state change. All the money from the DAO was returned to the rightful owners, and even this was extremely contentious. Rolling back Bitcoin would be far worse for multiple reasons.
First of all, you can't just run around deleting other people's transactions because your personal security wasn't good enough. Second, Bitcoin is more mature than Ethereum, so a rollback on Bitcoin would cause much more outrage than one on Ethereum, and a rollback on Ethereum would certainly end with yet another unabandoned fork that refused the rollback. Guaranteed.
Also, it's just insulting. 10% of all Ethereum was stolen in the DAO hack. The majority of the community was affected. Meanwhile, this paltry Binance hack accounts for 0.04% of all Bitcoin. Go home CZ, you're drunk.
The timing of this hack is also pretty crazy. I'm guessing this operation was planned for quite a while. Everyone thinks it's an inside job, and it probably is.
On the other hand, Binance has never been hacked, so there was a lot of incentive by competitors to cut them down a notch. Could Binance employees have been paid off to engage in this corporate espionage? It's fun to speculate.
The market didn't even react to this hack. If anything, price action has increased. I find it kind of funny at this point. The hacker funds obviously aren't going to be put on any centralized exchanges. They are locked up for a bit. Meanwhile, Binance needs to replace 7000 more Bitcoin to their coffers. It's like 14,000 Bitcoin just disappeared off the market... lol.
If you just had 40 million USD stolen from you you'd probably get a little crazy as well. That's probably what happened. CZ was looking for any way to get those funds back.
Honestly if I was him I would backpedal and make the claim that the suggestion was made, not in seriousness, but to show the world that even the world's most powerful exchange can't bend Bitcoin to its will.
CZ is not a fool.
